Obviously UBI steals from the taxpayer and redistributes wealth.
The truck drivers specifically I think have a longer time ahead of them because self-driving vehicles are a long way off depending on who you ask.
But in general I think we've seen automation increase profits by reducing human resource costs. This often happens at the expense of the consumer though because we end up with less people working at stores due to self checkouts. Or when contacting a company for support you deal with automation that often attempts to make it hard to get someone on the phone who can actually help you.
I used to be very pro anarcho-capitalist or libertarian ideals with a focus on the free market. But now I'm not nearly as sure. I think Marx and the commies have a valid argument when it comes to the wealthy and powerful exploiting the value of the working class. At the same time I understand that the wealthy & ambitious generate lots of value for many people.
There are always people who resist change, and fear it. In New York City they thought all of the horses concentrated in such a large metro would result in so much manure that it would become unmanageable, and then innovation gave us the automobile and all was well.
But I think you can also reach a point where you no longer innovate because certain corporate institutions have managed to corner everyone else out of the market.
In the USA I'd point to Walmart, and now Amazon. You go to every small town and there's empty brick & mortar business spaces because Walmart has the ability to price their goods at a level unobtainable by the small businesses. They'll also lobby for raising minimum wage(something that seems contrary to their bottom line, at face value) because it makes the margins for their competition untenable. Then after achieving this, they automate more jobs and score another win.
Sometimes it appears that innovation might be stagnating. Much of the work towards innovation now is in the digital space too, and we've created tons of new jobs where people were "independent" via Youtube, Twitch, TikTok, and even Only Fans. But the more online we become it may also be that our quality of life and happiness is trending down.
And there's a certain danger in all of these jobs dedicated towards no actual product. Content creators make entertainment and even informational products, but it's hard to say if there's anything of value being actually created overall.
AND there's the fact that they serve a real function for the platforms they use to profit from content, but once again it's nebulous in it's value. Google is really a data company, and their model is targeted advertising generally. But the data has more value than just advertising especially for governments.
There's good arguments to be made that most of the big tech companies are branches of the government, and were even started by the govt.
They censor speech too, at the request of the govt. A pretty slick workaround since they aren't bound by the constitution.
Sorry for the book I wrote lol. It's something that's hard to articulate via text without touching on multiple points.