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Hm, to me the "on demand" economy, which Uber and the like are part of, is the ultimate pursuit of self-interest. The entire model is built on getting exactly w

Hm, to me the "on demand" economy, which Uber and the like are part of, is the ultimate pursuit of self-interest. The entire model is built on getting exactly what you want when you want it, with no downsides. Once there are robot cars there is no longer a limit to how many cars can be on the road. Imagine one car zipping around for every Amazon delivery, 24 by 7.

Fricken 10y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with you. While autonomous vehicles can be tremendously valuable tool, if we let narrow self interest and unfettered capitalism determine how they're implemented, they'll cause as many problems as they solve.
wrsh07 10y ago
But ultimately, it also means you can share perfectly. I don't need to own a hammer if I can get one exactly when I need it.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
There are more and less naïve ways of pursuing self-interest. Or maybe I should use the word greedy, because it's effectively a synonym here. Owning a bunch of cars (or hammers) so that you can use them whenever you need is one strategy; efficiently sharing them with everyone else so that there's always one available when you need it is another. For fulfilling needs that most people have, sharing can indeed be a more efficient solution than owning - especially if the good itself is expensive to make (with "expensive" including also energy use and environmental impact). Now, if you absolutely, positively need to own something because you like ownership itself, then that's a need sharing won't address - but that's a need society will always have to fight against in more extreme cases, because no matter how wealthy the world is, one can always invent something to own that's beyond the society's ability to provide sustainably to everyone.
twinkletwinkle 10y ago
> Once there are robot cars there is no longer a limit to how many cars can be on the road But there are resource costs. Also your reductio ad absurdum doesn't make sense. No one is saying there should only be one car that everyone shares. However it's reasonable to say the optimal number of cars (where I might define optimal as "One is always available to you in a short amount of time") is somewhere less than the number of people.

Fricken 10y ago

I don't necessarily disagree with you. While autonomous vehicles can be tremendously valuable tool, if we let narrow self interest and unfettered capitalism determine how they're implemented, they'll cause as many problems as they solve.

wrsh07 10y ago

But ultimately, it also means you can share perfectly. I don't need to own a hammer if I can get one exactly when I need it.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

There are more and less naïve ways of pursuing self-interest. Or maybe I should use the word greedy, because it's effectively a synonym here. Owning a bunch of cars (or hammers) so that you can use them whenever you need is one strategy; efficiently sharing them with everyone else so that there's always one available when you need it is another. For fulfilling needs that most people have, sharing can indeed be a more efficient solution than owning - especially if the good itself is expensive to make (with "expensive" including also energy use and environmental impact). Now, if you absolutely, positively need to own something because you like ownership itself, then that's a need sharing won't address - but that's a need society will always have to fight against in more extreme cases, because no matter how wealthy the world is, one can always invent something to own that's beyond the society's ability to provide sustainably to everyone.

twinkletwinkle 10y ago

> Once there are robot cars there is no longer a limit to how many cars can be on the road But there are resource costs. Also your reductio ad absurdum doesn't make sense. No one is saying there should only be one car that everyone shares. However it's reasonable to say the optimal number of cars (where I might define optimal as "One is always available to you in a short amount of time") is somewhere less than the number of people.