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It's not "personal belongings," it's "personal space." Hot-sheeting happens where sleeping space is extremely limited, like oil drilling camps, but it hasn't t

It's not "personal belongings," it's "personal space." Hot-sheeting happens where sleeping space is extremely limited, like oil drilling camps, but it hasn't taken off among the general population, despite the fact that you only use your bed for around 1/3 of the day. People are willing to pay for their own beds and, frequently, their own apartments or houses, despite the fact that most of that space goes unused most of the time for someone with normal work and sleep schedules. Do you AirBnB your bed (at hourly rates)? Do you AirPantsAndT your clothes? Most people don't. I doubt I'll last another 50 years, but I'll probably live long enough to see the end of the current robot taxi fad.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
criley2 10y ago
Conflating a home and a car is a bad argument. Homes have been required for hundreds of thousands of years. Shelter has been a human need since before humanity. Cars have not been. The earliest proto-human sought shelter from a storm. They did not seek personalized shelter during transportation. I don't like the argument at all, and I think it's a cop out, a slippery slope argument. >Do you AirBnB your bed (at hourly rates)? Do you AirPantsAndT your clothes? Most people don't. This is just a very feeble slippery slope that ignores the very real differences. Yes, clothing and shelter have been humans needs for far longer than civilization itself. Can you say the same for micro-space in a personal transport? Were humans owning personal space inside of pack animals 10,000 years ago? It's a bad argument. There's no slippery slope here. Homes and clothes are fundamentally different than cars. You cannot live a civilized life without a home and clothes. You can live a civilized modern life without a car. Obviously we approach higher order needs differently than lower order.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  > Conflating a home and a car is a bad argument. Homes have been required for hundreds of thousands of years. Shelter has been a human need since before humanity. > Cars have not been. The earliest proto-human sought shelter from a storm. They did not seek personalized shelter during transportation. Are you familiar with New World Economics' discussion of "really narrow streets"? One thing the author points out (in "Let's Take a Trip to an American Village") is that even in the 19th century, the US was very interested in what he calls "My Personal Means of Transportation" -- the fashionable thing to do was to have a carriage house, no matter how little you actually needed a carriage. I think you see less of this pattern elsewhere in the world (or else you just see less wealth; consider how "pedestrian" seldom has positive connotations and "equestrian" never has negative ones), but there's definitely an enthusiasm for personal transport in the US.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  > Conflating a home and a car is a bad argument. Homes have been required for hundreds of thousands of years. Shelter has been a human need since before humanity. The need for transportation is just as ancient as the need for shelter. Before cars, it was a horse, or camel, or a chariot, or something else on wheels. I think you underestimate the strength of car culture, and the value people place in personal space (at least in the US). And as with so many things, why can't these unnecessarily-competing worlds coexist? There are millions of overly confident entrepreneurs rationalizing millions of wacky, over-engineered money-grabs and only a few of those ideas have strength to be so culturally and socially transformative as the world you describe. Is the end of car ownership one of those lofty ideas? I am not so sure. Edit: and on a more personal level, I see ideas like that -- the end of ownership, whether it be cars, software, or land -- as an attack on individual ownership, so that moneyed interests can instead own everything and lease it to the peasants at their leisure (and profit). The world needs the opposite: to make ownership easier and less costly, and to restore the the increasingly-stratospheric costs of everything* down to levels that put ownership within reach of the common man. Not owning cars is just another step towards feudalism. * As for how, there could be much to gain simply by analyzing the cost structure of stuff and stripping out unnecessary middlemen, expenses, and materials. Adopting a more restrained form of capitalism, like what one sees in tight-knit economic communities or in idealized small-business environments, could perhaps foster a business culture centered around balancing customer, employee, and shareholder value. The current system of only maximizing shareholder value creates much of the turmoil, unnecessary innovation, and naked profiteering we see today.
qmr 10y ago
Self driving cars are the future, hardly a fad.
- username223 10y ago
  Human extinction is definitely the future, eventually. Beyond that, I find it hard to make absolute statements about the future with no evidence or argument.
vidarh 10y ago
The problem with this is that there are multiple competing needs and desires here. People may have a desire for that personal space, but many will sacrifice those when it helps them meet other needs. Yes, it's great to have personal space. But you know what? People sacrifice personal space for spending less money all the time. And for convenience. Consider e.g. London - a city awash with money, where a lot of even people who could afford to be driven around by a personal chaffeur will opt for public transport for convenience. As another example for London: People will opt to smell someones armpit on the train in the regular train carriages rather than pay a few pounds extra for a seat in the First Class carriages all the time. The value of personal space when travelling, as it turns out, is deemed by large parts of the public to be very low. People tend to opt for personal space mainly when the public transit options are unusably bad compared to driving. Places like London are perhaps the areas where this transition is most likely to start: Places where those who even own cars often own cars as a "contingency" for those times when the bus doesn't arrive or you're going somewhere odd that just doesn't work well with public transport currently. In those cases, for a lot of people, it'd be very attractive to e.g. pay a membership fee to guarantee a certain level of "contention" for cars to be able to just press a button and have one arrive "fast enough". Even more so with the ability to do that on either end of a train ride. For a lot of people this will make a car pointless. And in environments like this "personal space" is moot, as almost everyone are already used to using public transport some or most of the time. At the same time, it is somewhere where local authorities are clamouring for ways to reduce parking and make car ownership less desirable. Expect housing units to start coming without parking spaces or with very few parking spaces in high density areas as cost saving measures, or because they'll sell some of those parking spaces to ride share companies, or make residents who want them buy them separately. Expect planning rules to start reducing the maximum allowable number of parking spaces. Places with plenty of space, sprawl and a strong culture of cars as independence will certainly experience this change last. But consider e.g. the impact of a generation of youth who will eventually grow up with a situation where they may be able to rent a self-driving car on demand from before they are able to (afford to) buy one, and where e.g. parents may opt to just order a journey rather than driving them somewhere once old enough, and who will grow up increasingly likely to get used to some car taking them somewhere without needing to take the step to car ownership to get that freedom from parents driving them around. The "liberation" may become to be able to sign up for your own account so your parents can't see your every journey. I think that the whole culture where car ownership is seen as a rite of passage and signifier of liberation from your parents could change far faster than you think.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

criley2 10y ago

Conflating a home and a car is a bad argument. Homes have been required for hundreds of thousands of years. Shelter has been a human need since before humanity. Cars have not been. The earliest proto-human sought shelter from a storm. They did not seek personalized shelter during transportation. I don't like the argument at all, and I think it's a cop out, a slippery slope argument. >Do you AirBnB your bed (at hourly rates)? Do you AirPantsAndT your clothes? Most people don't. This is just a very feeble slippery slope that ignores the very real differences. Yes, clothing and shelter have been humans needs for far longer than civilization itself. Can you say the same for micro-space in a personal transport? Were humans owning personal space inside of pack animals 10,000 years ago? It's a bad argument. There's no slippery slope here. Homes and clothes are fundamentally different than cars. You cannot live a civilized life without a home and clothes. You can live a civilized modern life without a car. Obviously we approach higher order needs differently than lower order.

clock_tower 10y ago
> Conflating a home and a car is a bad argument. Homes have been required for hundreds of thousands of years. Shelter has been a human need since before humanity. > Cars have not been. The earliest proto-human sought shelter from a storm. They did not seek personalized shelter during transportation. Are you familiar with New World Economics' discussion of "really narrow streets"? One thing the author points out (in "Let's Take a Trip to an American Village") is that even in the 19th century, the US was very interested in what he calls "My Personal Means of Transportation" -- the fashionable thing to do was to have a carriage house, no matter how little you actually needed a carriage. I think you see less of this pattern elsewhere in the world (or else you just see less wealth; consider how "pedestrian" seldom has positive connotations and "equestrian" never has negative ones), but there's definitely an enthusiasm for personal transport in the US.
tomc1985 10y ago
> Conflating a home and a car is a bad argument. Homes have been required for hundreds of thousands of years. Shelter has been a human need since before humanity. The need for transportation is just as ancient as the need for shelter. Before cars, it was a horse, or camel, or a chariot, or something else on wheels. I think you underestimate the strength of car culture, and the value people place in personal space (at least in the US). And as with so many things, why can't these unnecessarily-competing worlds coexist? There are millions of overly confident entrepreneurs rationalizing millions of wacky, over-engineered money-grabs and only a few of those ideas have strength to be so culturally and socially transformative as the world you describe. Is the end of car ownership one of those lofty ideas? I am not so sure. Edit: and on a more personal level, I see ideas like that -- the end of ownership, whether it be cars, software, or land -- as an attack on individual ownership, so that moneyed interests can instead own everything and lease it to the peasants at their leisure (and profit). The world needs the opposite: to make ownership easier and less costly, and to restore the the increasingly-stratospheric costs of everything* down to levels that put ownership within reach of the common man. Not owning cars is just another step towards feudalism. * As for how, there could be much to gain simply by analyzing the cost structure of stuff and stripping out unnecessary middlemen, expenses, and materials. Adopting a more restrained form of capitalism, like what one sees in tight-knit economic communities or in idealized small-business environments, could perhaps foster a business culture centered around balancing customer, employee, and shareholder value. The current system of only maximizing shareholder value creates much of the turmoil, unnecessary innovation, and naked profiteering we see today.

qmr 10y ago

Self driving cars are the future, hardly a fad.

username223 10y ago
Human extinction is definitely the future, eventually. Beyond that, I find it hard to make absolute statements about the future with no evidence or argument.

vidarh 10y ago

The problem with this is that there are multiple competing needs and desires here. People may have a desire for that personal space, but many will sacrifice those when it helps them meet other needs. Yes, it's great to have personal space. But you know what? People sacrifice personal space for spending less money all the time. And for convenience. Consider e.g. London - a city awash with money, where a lot of even people who could afford to be driven around by a personal chaffeur will opt for public transport for convenience. As another example for London: People will opt to smell someones armpit on the train in the regular train carriages rather than pay a few pounds extra for a seat in the First Class carriages all the time. The value of personal space when travelling, as it turns out, is deemed by large parts of the public to be very low. People tend to opt for personal space mainly when the public transit options are unusably bad compared to driving. Places like London are perhaps the areas where this transition is most likely to start: Places where those who even own cars often own cars as a "contingency" for those times when the bus doesn't arrive or you're going somewhere odd that just doesn't work well with public transport currently. In those cases, for a lot of people, it'd be very attractive to e.g. pay a membership fee to guarantee a certain level of "contention" for cars to be able to just press a button and have one arrive "fast enough". Even more so with the ability to do that on either end of a train ride. For a lot of people this will make a car pointless. And in environments like this "personal space" is moot, as almost everyone are already used to using public transport some or most of the time. At the same time, it is somewhere where local authorities are clamouring for ways to reduce parking and make car ownership less desirable. Expect housing units to start coming without parking spaces or with very few parking spaces in high density areas as cost saving measures, or because they'll sell some of those parking spaces to ride share companies, or make residents who want them buy them separately. Expect planning rules to start reducing the maximum allowable number of parking spaces. Places with plenty of space, sprawl and a strong culture of cars as independence will certainly experience this change last. But consider e.g. the impact of a generation of youth who will eventually grow up with a situation where they may be able to rent a self-driving car on demand from before they are able to (afford to) buy one, and where e.g. parents may opt to just order a journey rather than driving them somewhere once old enough, and who will grow up increasingly likely to get used to some car taking them somewhere without needing to take the step to car ownership to get that freedom from parents driving them around. The "liberation" may become to be able to sign up for your own account so your parents can't see your every journey. I think that the whole culture where car ownership is seen as a rite of passage and signifier of liberation from your parents could change far faster than you think.