6 ms·

The main problem with central planners (and I believe most transportation planner would classify as one) is that they believe they must know the answer to every

by henvic 8y ago

The main problem with central planners (and I believe most transportation planner would classify as one) is that they believe they must know the answer to everything from a centralized standing point. Indeed cruising for a little bit while the driver does a quick errant might be better than parking when it's pricey. We do that all times when there is more than a driver in the car. However, it feels arrogant to me to decide that when self-driving is a thing the cars will just clog the roads cruising while the drivers aren't there. This ignores a bunch of things. Here is an unexhaustive list: a. The risk of collisions is greater driving than parked. b. Autonomous ride-sharing services would probably be a thing in this scenario (be it running some errands while the owner is busy or just deployed full-time like this). c. There might cheaper denser far away garages that the vehicle could just immediately head to thanks to availability awareness. d. It is very unlikely that the auto sector would program vehicles to clog traffic like this on purpose (though someone hacking their car to keep running nearby might happen). e. Parking in San Francisco is very expensive. However, San Francisco is not the only city in the world and cities are vasty different from one another. Usually, for example, they are not islands and vehicles could drive, say, 10min to a parking lot on the nearest city (maybe giving a ride to someone else in the way). I'm not saying that we should not consider doom scenarios, but reality has shown it most central planners fear too many things that don't happen often. We all use the Internet today, and it is relatively easy to fire a few threatening messages to people around the power to terrorize them (and get away with it). However, it just barely happens if you count in statistics.

maxerickson 8y ago
Plus we can just tax empty vehicles that are driving around. (similar to how we charge a fee to leave an empty vehicle in a public space) It's bizarre how difficult we choose to make easy problems.
- henvic 8y ago
  Please don't. Taxing is evil and has unintended consequences. Just charge for road use instead. * For reference on unintended consequences of taxation I recommend Frédéric Bastiat's "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen" essay. Link: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html (you can just jump to 'Taxes' or - better - read the whole thing as it is very interesting and not that long). He's more recognized for the Broken window fallacy/parable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
  - bduerst 8y ago
    >Just charge for road use instead. They do, through taxes. Regional monopolies like inexpensive roads and transportation benefit everyone, even if you're not the one physically driving on it.
    - oftenwrong 8y ago
      But they do not benefit everyone equally. Everyone benefits from inexpensive food; should the government make food tax-funded? If I mainly eat lentils, I would prefer to pay for what I use. If I eat lots of beef steak, I would be very happy to have others subsidise me. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/2/a-thousand-hidden-subsidies https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/2/a-thousand-hidd... 1. The cost of a dead-end residential street mainly benefits the people that live there. Everybody else just pays for it. 2. A truck drives down the road hauling cases of beer. Part of the cost of this trip is paid for via general funds. Everybody contributes a small $X to the truck's journey. Person A drinks a case of beer, so they get 1 case of beer per $X. Person B doesn't drink beer, so they get nothing for their $X. 3. Person A commutes by car to their job every week day on Highway H. Person B walks to work and never drives. Both people pay $X for Highway H, but only one of them uses it directly. These costs are so diffused that people assume taxation is a fair way to slice it up. The real fair way: 1. The people that live on the dead-end street pay for the dead-end street. 2. The cost of the truck's journey gets factored into the price of the beer. Person A will have to pay the inclusive price to buy a case of beer. Person B pays nothing, giving them $X back to spend elsewhere. 3. Person A will have to pay to drive on Highway H. Person B saves $X. Person A thinks maybe it is smarter to not drive so much.
      - bduerst 8y ago
        >Everyone benefits from inexpensive food; should the government make food tax-funded? Yes, and they do. What do you think agricultural tax-subsidies are? Also the strawman problems you pose just to solve are a bit absurd, for reasons that I mentioned before about the nature of regional monopolies, and the fact that road costs are already covered at different levels of the government.
wmf 8y ago
It is very unlikely that the auto sector would program vehicles to clog traffic like this on purpose I think this is key. There may be a lot of autonomous cars in the future but they will come from a handful of companies who will face public pressure not to program them to allow grossly wasteful or antisocial behavior.
- r_klancer 8y ago
  > they will come from a handful of companies who will face public pressure not to program them to allow grossly wasteful or antisocial behavior. One hopes. But one could also say: they will come from a handful of companies that will endeavor to make it seem that _the things that are most profitable for them and convenient for their customers_ are one and the same as the public interest. There are already narratives at hand that will make this easier: "40,000 lives a year!", etc. I've gone from being kind of excited about robot cars to realizing that we will have to be very vigilant.
  - emiliobumachar 8y ago
    Being very vigilant is always good, but come on! "40,000 lives a year" is not something we were conditioned to believe is good because if fits someones agenda. It's unambiguously a very large public benefit by almost any moral standard.
    - r_klancer 8y ago
      Not to put too fine a point on it, but that existence (or, it should be said, the possibility) of that very large public benefit is exactly the thing that could be used to shield those companies' business decisions from any constructive criticism or regulation. "Last year, Senator McClellan caused 40,000 people to die by voting against the Make AV Companies Invulnerable Act"
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    There are already narratives at hand that will make this easier: "40,000 lives a year!", etc. That's not a concern, considering that the narrative right now is that self-driving cars are dangerous. Given the number of accidents and fatalities, the entire self-driving car industry would need to go an entire year without a single accident of any kind to even come close to claiming that they are as safe as a bad human driver.
yggda 8y ago
This is certainly something that happen already. I'm driving, SO needs to drop off a letter, or pick up coffee, or some other sub-5 minute task. You can bet I'm going to be circling the block, because making right turns orders of magnitude easier than thinking about looking for parking. I suppose you could do this most existing ride services' non-shared options, but there certainly isn't a 'real' way to do this. before self-driving cars take on this role, we might have to think about how something like this would be handled.

by henvic 8y ago

maxerickson 8y ago

Plus we can just tax empty vehicles that are driving around. (similar to how we charge a fee to leave an empty vehicle in a public space) It's bizarre how difficult we choose to make easy problems.

henvic 8y ago
Please don't. Taxing is evil and has unintended consequences. Just charge for road use instead. * For reference on unintended consequences of taxation I recommend Frédéric Bastiat's "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen" essay. Link: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html (you can just jump to 'Taxes' or - better - read the whole thing as it is very interesting and not that long). He's more recognized for the Broken window fallacy/parable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- bduerst 8y ago
  >Just charge for road use instead. They do, through taxes. Regional monopolies like inexpensive roads and transportation benefit everyone, even if you're not the one physically driving on it.
  - oftenwrong 8y ago
    But they do not benefit everyone equally. Everyone benefits from inexpensive food; should the government make food tax-funded? If I mainly eat lentils, I would prefer to pay for what I use. If I eat lots of beef steak, I would be very happy to have others subsidise me. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/2/a-thousand-hidden-subsidies https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/2/a-thousand-hidd... 1. The cost of a dead-end residential street mainly benefits the people that live there. Everybody else just pays for it. 2. A truck drives down the road hauling cases of beer. Part of the cost of this trip is paid for via general funds. Everybody contributes a small $X to the truck's journey. Person A drinks a case of beer, so they get 1 case of beer per $X. Person B doesn't drink beer, so they get nothing for their $X. 3. Person A commutes by car to their job every week day on Highway H. Person B walks to work and never drives. Both people pay $X for Highway H, but only one of them uses it directly. These costs are so diffused that people assume taxation is a fair way to slice it up. The real fair way: 1. The people that live on the dead-end street pay for the dead-end street. 2. The cost of the truck's journey gets factored into the price of the beer. Person A will have to pay the inclusive price to buy a case of beer. Person B pays nothing, giving them $X back to spend elsewhere. 3. Person A will have to pay to drive on Highway H. Person B saves $X. Person A thinks maybe it is smarter to not drive so much.
    - bduerst 8y ago
      >Everyone benefits from inexpensive food; should the government make food tax-funded? Yes, and they do. What do you think agricultural tax-subsidies are? Also the strawman problems you pose just to solve are a bit absurd, for reasons that I mentioned before about the nature of regional monopolies, and the fact that road costs are already covered at different levels of the government.

wmf 8y ago

It is very unlikely that the auto sector would program vehicles to clog traffic like this on purpose I think this is key. There may be a lot of autonomous cars in the future but they will come from a handful of companies who will face public pressure not to program them to allow grossly wasteful or antisocial behavior.

r_klancer 8y ago
> they will come from a handful of companies who will face public pressure not to program them to allow grossly wasteful or antisocial behavior. One hopes. But one could also say: they will come from a handful of companies that will endeavor to make it seem that _the things that are most profitable for them and convenient for their customers_ are one and the same as the public interest. There are already narratives at hand that will make this easier: "40,000 lives a year!", etc. I've gone from being kind of excited about robot cars to realizing that we will have to be very vigilant.
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  Being very vigilant is always good, but come on! "40,000 lives a year" is not something we were conditioned to believe is good because if fits someones agenda. It's unambiguously a very large public benefit by almost any moral standard.
  - r_klancer 8y ago
    Not to put too fine a point on it, but that existence (or, it should be said, the possibility) of that very large public benefit is exactly the thing that could be used to shield those companies' business decisions from any constructive criticism or regulation. "Last year, Senator McClellan caused 40,000 people to die by voting against the Make AV Companies Invulnerable Act"
- gamblor956 8y ago
  There are already narratives at hand that will make this easier: "40,000 lives a year!", etc. That's not a concern, considering that the narrative right now is that self-driving cars are dangerous. Given the number of accidents and fatalities, the entire self-driving car industry would need to go an entire year without a single accident of any kind to even come close to claiming that they are as safe as a bad human driver.

yggda 8y ago

This is certainly something that happen already. I'm driving, SO needs to drop off a letter, or pick up coffee, or some other sub-5 minute task. You can bet I'm going to be circling the block, because making right turns orders of magnitude easier than thinking about looking for parking. I suppose you could do this most existing ride services' non-shared options, but there certainly isn't a 'real' way to do this. before self-driving cars take on this role, we might have to think about how something like this would be handled.