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Nope, that's not the question. You asserted -- all of one post up -- that driverless cars are "bad medicine" that make life worse. If in fact they improve peo

Nope, that's not the question. You asserted -- all of one post up -- that driverless cars are "bad medicine" that make life worse. If in fact they improve people's lives, then great. And if people see a path to further improving their lives by, separately, changing other things about infrastructure or density or whatever, then that's fine too. Again these things are non-rival.

rglullis 4y ago
They are "bad medicine" if considered as a solution for the public transportation issues in North America, yes. It's not the technology that I am against, it's the fetishism that the tech will be so amazing that it can justify all the shit that people are putting up with now, and not looking at more important problems that if solved could eliminate the need for the tech in the first place > And if people see a path to further improving their lives by, separately, changing other things about infrastructure or density or whatever That's just a really twisted way of saying that you don't mind sacrificing the commons if it means you get to play with cool gadgets. It's a lot easier for one individual to go and buy a driverless Tesla and think "oh, at least my car does not stay in a parking lot after my ride is done" than it is to go and promote actual change in urban planning to avoid car dependency in the first place. But because you are (presumably) on the top of the pyramid, you don't actually care about it. > Again these things are non-rival. At the first order, it may seem like that. But after we see the interaction of these apparently-orthogonal policies (e.g, zoning laws and public infrastructure) and their inconsistent implementations the problems become very clear. It is hard to argue only with hypotheticals, but I could bet that if driverless cars became a reality tomorrow, cities would be worse in 10 years than they are today.
- aetherson 4y ago
  And you're back to fighting against a strawman. Nobody fetishized anything, except for you. Also, you have no idea what my positions are about zoning or land use or infrastructure, as I haven't mentioned them.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Thinking that overall quality of life can be improved just by some future technology is already a fetish, if you consider that there are low-tech ways that can achieve better results today. It's this apathy that my original comment wanted to point out, and it was not a personal attack against you.

rglullis 4y ago

They are "bad medicine" if considered as a solution for the public transportation issues in North America, yes. It's not the technology that I am against, it's the fetishism that the tech will be so amazing that it can justify all the shit that people are putting up with now, and not looking at more important problems that if solved could eliminate the need for the tech in the first place > And if people see a path to further improving their lives by, separately, changing other things about infrastructure or density or whatever That's just a really twisted way of saying that you don't mind sacrificing the commons if it means you get to play with cool gadgets. It's a lot easier for one individual to go and buy a driverless Tesla and think "oh, at least my car does not stay in a parking lot after my ride is done" than it is to go and promote actual change in urban planning to avoid car dependency in the first place. But because you are (presumably) on the top of the pyramid, you don't actually care about it. > Again these things are non-rival. At the first order, it may seem like that. But after we see the interaction of these apparently-orthogonal policies (e.g, zoning laws and public infrastructure) and their inconsistent implementations the problems become very clear. It is hard to argue only with hypotheticals, but I could bet that if driverless cars became a reality tomorrow, cities would be worse in 10 years than they are today.

aetherson 4y ago
And you're back to fighting against a strawman. Nobody fetishized anything, except for you. Also, you have no idea what my positions are about zoning or land use or infrastructure, as I haven't mentioned them.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Thinking that overall quality of life can be improved just by some future technology is already a fetish, if you consider that there are low-tech ways that can achieve better results today. It's this apathy that my original comment wanted to point out, and it was not a personal attack against you.