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Do you think that your post is a reasonable to a simple request asking for any sort of logic to support your assertions? So far as I can tell, your argument see

Do you think that your post is a reasonable to a simple request asking for any sort of logic to support your assertions? So far as I can tell, your argument seems to be a poorly elaborated upon appeal to taxis. Even giving you the benefit of the doubt there, I don't see how this makes sense. Removing the driver is a revolutionary shift in how the entire industry operates. It also completely shifts the margins for competition, and innovation. The vast majority of cost in a taxi is the human in it. That means that in order for taxi companies the most effective means of competition on fare pricing is seeing who can pay their drivers less. Shaving 10% off your operating cost due to scale is irrelevant when the human in the seat is 95% of your cost. Taxis in most areas are monopolized (making your choice of them as a foundation of your view even more perplexing), but Las Vegas is an exception there. There are a large amount of competitors and the net result of that was that taxi drivers just finally won a years long court case demanding they be paid at least minimum wage. That's quite silly, and sad. And something that a decade from now will be a relic of the past.

CPLX 9y ago
I don't care about taxis that much. But I do have a degree in economics and actually wrote a thesis, in part, on technological lock-in and naturally occurring monopolies. Most things don't become monopolies, so the burden of proof goes the other way. And there's nothing about self-driving taxis that makes them a monopoly. For the most part a natural technological lock-in has an insurmountable network effect, the canonical example is the design of the typewriter keyboard. In all contexts what happens is an environment where your decision to use a product makes it more valuable for all other users. Like a fax machine. Or Facebook. Taxis are literally the opposite of this. The more people using a taxi service the longer I have to wait for a cab. Yes, you will quickly point out that the bigger the service the more that service be available wherever I tend to go. But those two forces are in direct contradiction to each other and as such the network effects of taxi services are weak at best. Sure you can create a hypothetical world monopoly autonomous taxi company. I can always create another company, buy a dozen self-driving taxis, and post them outside giant sporting events or clubs at closing time with graphics on the side saying download this app to rent me, and someone will do it. There goes your monopoly. The whole freaking point of monopolies is that they happen when the switching costs are extremely high or when the supply is constrained and someone corners it. Switching costs will always be zero, and there's absolutely no chance whatsoever that one single company will permanently be the only one that creates a working autonomous vehicle. So as neither of those conditions apply, there's no obvious force towards a permanent monopoly. In fact the reason for the government created monopolies we do see is the fact that the market tends toward commoditization and a downward spiral in prices. The market for taxi services is unusually competitive. That's why we got to where we are in the first place.
- indubitable 9y ago
  As you seem to have acknowledge, it is untrue that the more people using a taxi service, the longer you have to wait for a cab for obvious reasons - namely cab rides end. Imagine in a city there is a cab service which services about 1 million people at a time. And there is a service which services about 100 people at a time. How likely is it that a cab is going to be concluding a ride near to your pick up point with both services? Which is more likely to have an idle cab near you? How long would you expect to have to wait for each service? Autonomous taxis also completely revolutionize the possibilities for scale. Cars mostly only deteriorate when in active use. Massively oversupply will likely be a thing in some areas opening up possibilities like your sports event thing. People aren't going to be going to the streets to try to find a ride. There will be hundreds outside the stadium - and the cool thing is anybody using the monopolized company should be able to hop into any cab and it'll auto sync to their destination and they'll be off, rapidly replaced by another cab from the monopolist ensuring 0 wait for other users. And then we get into cost, something you continue to inexplicably ignore. Right now there is no room for economy of scale to affect the price of taxis. I'm not going to repeat myself as I've gone into this above. Suffice to say, the biggest player is going to be the cheapest and by a wide margin. So your dozen taxis are going to be less reliable, more expensive, likely less well maintained, require people to install yet another app, and also face a trust issue. Self driving technology will likely be closed source and proprietary for some time. So on top of all of the above issues you'll require users jump into an unknown car, from an unknown brand, using who knows what software and security standards. And this isn't getting into the tertiary developments of self driving vehicles. We'll likely see the introduction of services (that hopefully can be disabled) that tie in the taxi to commercial agreements from the monopolist. For instance, you're passing by a coffee shop and the car offers to order a coffee for you for 50% off. You needn't pay anything (all charged through the monopolist's finance infrastructure) and a server will bring it out for you. Wait time - approximately 30 seconds. I'd assume things like that can be disabled, but on the other hand they'll be kind of nice when you're in the mood - you could also perhaps simply ask the car if there are any deals nearby on [---]. Ultimately self driving taxis will be a paradigm shift. Comparing them to current taxis (or even ride sharing services) will likely be as quaint a notion as considering there was a time when we classified automobiles as "horseless carriages."

CPLX 9y ago

I don't care about taxis that much. But I do have a degree in economics and actually wrote a thesis, in part, on technological lock-in and naturally occurring monopolies. Most things don't become monopolies, so the burden of proof goes the other way. And there's nothing about self-driving taxis that makes them a monopoly. For the most part a natural technological lock-in has an insurmountable network effect, the canonical example is the design of the typewriter keyboard. In all contexts what happens is an environment where your decision to use a product makes it more valuable for all other users. Like a fax machine. Or Facebook. Taxis are literally the opposite of this. The more people using a taxi service the longer I have to wait for a cab. Yes, you will quickly point out that the bigger the service the more that service be available wherever I tend to go. But those two forces are in direct contradiction to each other and as such the network effects of taxi services are weak at best. Sure you can create a hypothetical world monopoly autonomous taxi company. I can always create another company, buy a dozen self-driving taxis, and post them outside giant sporting events or clubs at closing time with graphics on the side saying download this app to rent me, and someone will do it. There goes your monopoly. The whole freaking point of monopolies is that they happen when the switching costs are extremely high or when the supply is constrained and someone corners it. Switching costs will always be zero, and there's absolutely no chance whatsoever that one single company will permanently be the only one that creates a working autonomous vehicle. So as neither of those conditions apply, there's no obvious force towards a permanent monopoly. In fact the reason for the government created monopolies we do see is the fact that the market tends toward commoditization and a downward spiral in prices. The market for taxi services is unusually competitive. That's why we got to where we are in the first place.

indubitable 9y ago
As you seem to have acknowledge, it is untrue that the more people using a taxi service, the longer you have to wait for a cab for obvious reasons - namely cab rides end. Imagine in a city there is a cab service which services about 1 million people at a time. And there is a service which services about 100 people at a time. How likely is it that a cab is going to be concluding a ride near to your pick up point with both services? Which is more likely to have an idle cab near you? How long would you expect to have to wait for each service? Autonomous taxis also completely revolutionize the possibilities for scale. Cars mostly only deteriorate when in active use. Massively oversupply will likely be a thing in some areas opening up possibilities like your sports event thing. People aren't going to be going to the streets to try to find a ride. There will be hundreds outside the stadium - and the cool thing is anybody using the monopolized company should be able to hop into any cab and it'll auto sync to their destination and they'll be off, rapidly replaced by another cab from the monopolist ensuring 0 wait for other users. And then we get into cost, something you continue to inexplicably ignore. Right now there is no room for economy of scale to affect the price of taxis. I'm not going to repeat myself as I've gone into this above. Suffice to say, the biggest player is going to be the cheapest and by a wide margin. So your dozen taxis are going to be less reliable, more expensive, likely less well maintained, require people to install yet another app, and also face a trust issue. Self driving technology will likely be closed source and proprietary for some time. So on top of all of the above issues you'll require users jump into an unknown car, from an unknown brand, using who knows what software and security standards. And this isn't getting into the tertiary developments of self driving vehicles. We'll likely see the introduction of services (that hopefully can be disabled) that tie in the taxi to commercial agreements from the monopolist. For instance, you're passing by a coffee shop and the car offers to order a coffee for you for 50% off. You needn't pay anything (all charged through the monopolist's finance infrastructure) and a server will bring it out for you. Wait time - approximately 30 seconds. I'd assume things like that can be disabled, but on the other hand they'll be kind of nice when you're in the mood - you could also perhaps simply ask the car if there are any deals nearby on [---]. Ultimately self driving taxis will be a paradigm shift. Comparing them to current taxis (or even ride sharing services) will likely be as quaint a notion as considering there was a time when we classified automobiles as "horseless carriages."