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I am looking for a short story I read many years ago. The plot circled around a system where a truck delivery organization existed only to support itself.

For some reason it is linked in my memory with some Kurt Vonnegut's stories, but it might be just a coincidence.

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    There was a short film on Dust recently about a corporation (fairly obviously an analogue of Amazon) run by an AI that had gone crazy. It would deliver worthless tat to people via flying drones and was making the world uninhabitable. In the end the protagonists turned out to be robots
    – Valorum
    Nov 23, 2019 at 21:02
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    Hi, welcome to SF&F! This might get closed because it doesn't have very many details, or it might get closed because it doesn't seem to be SF. You should check out the suggestions to try to add enough SF type detail to the question.
    – DavidW
    Nov 23, 2019 at 21:02
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    @Valorum Reminds me of a story where an advanced predictive AI was shipping goods to people in anticipation of their orders. And if they didn't want what was delivered, that was bad... (for them).
    – DavidW
    Nov 23, 2019 at 21:04
  • Seems similar to Theodore L. Thomas's "The Good Work", previously identified here. That story also describes a system which revolves around workers doing useless work, but not a truck delivery organisation specifically.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Nov 23, 2019 at 21:10
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    @RonJohn No, they do not. They exist for the profit of the owner. The part of gain that is invested increases the usefulnes, and is a free parameter. That the organisation continues to exist is only relevant because it makes the profit continue to resist. A company investing always all gain would be interesting, because it grows maximally. Nov 25, 2019 at 1:15

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It's a novel rather than a short story, but I think you're looking for The Scheme for Full Employment by Magnus Mills, published in 2003, which is about exactly the situation you describe.

The scheme referred to in the title involves the driving of "UniVans" from depot to depot picking up and unloading cargo - the cargo being replacement parts for UniVans. "Gloriously self-perpetuating, the scheme was designed to give an honest day's wage for an honest day's labour", "the envy of the world: the greatest undertaking ever conceived by man". The novel is a satire of labour relations and describes how the scheme is brought to the brink of disaster.

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    very interesting and something like this may happen as the result of automation/robotics. i think the new economy brought on by major tech advances will have some very unintuitive consequences as we struggle to deal with millions of job-age people unemployed indefinitely.
    – releseabe
    Nov 25, 2019 at 14:22

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