No, the Government isn't ALWAYS the Problem.

It is the oldest complaint in the book. "If it weren't for the government, we would have (comparative adjective) (commodity)." For example, "if it weren't for government, we'd have cheaper gas," or "if it weren't for the government, we'd have cooler radio programming," or "if it weren't for the government, we'd have better schools."

In the five years, the really vogue statement has become "If it weren't for the government, we would have (cheaper/faster/more accessible/better/European-like/fairer/safer/free/unlimited) internet." Of course, all of these statements are almost universally false. Does anyone ever say "If it weren't for government, we'd have 100 Terabyte hard drives"? Not that I know of. Does anyone say "If it weren't for government, we'd have 10 gigahertz GPUs in every smartphone"? No. These things are not said because it is obvious that the development of those technologies is based on what the "market need" is, and not on what the "theoretical limit" is. For example, the average consumer desire for hard drive capacity has increased roughly 2-5% year/year since personal computers became available. Simply put: 100 Terabyte hard drives do not exist because virtually no one needs them. 10 gigahertz processors do not exist because virtually no one has software that could run on them...i.e. no one needs them.

The question of faster, cheaper broadband is actually surprisingly similar. The author of the above linked article, Rick Karr, points out that in the Netherlands "visited homes there that get 100 mbps service in both directions - they can upload as fast as they download." The question I have is this: what the crap do you need 100 mbps upload speed for? For those of you who don't know the internet term "mbps" it stands for "megabits per second." U.S. standard broadband plans typically vary from 0.5 to 18 mbps for homes. Those are just the download speeds, however. Upload speeds are generally about a quarter to a tenth the download speed.
It's a serious question, I am asking. What in God's name does a home consumer do on the internet that requires them to upload files at 100 mbps? Currently there is only one thing: illegally seeding movies and music for others. Even the most demanding games on Xbox or PS3 require only a tiny fraction of that bandwidth. Streaming HD movies off of Netflix? That's downloading, not uploading. Illegally sending your friends copies of an illegally obtained digital version of Captain America? Now that's uploading.

But let's get back to the topic of the American internet situation. And for the sake of argument, let's pretend like the whiners gamers who write articles about needing faster internet are actually correct and the current speed of broadband in America isn't sufficient.
Who's fault is it? Karr clearly thinks the blame falls on the government, because that's the title of his piece. But he never explains it. He just attacks AT&T and Verizon for being "afraid of competition." As though that's a corporate vice. What exactly does Karr think the government has done? Not forced American internet service providers to compete more and screw themselves? In almost the same breathless paragraph, Karr touts the free market competition in the UK and then praises the government for its direct intervention in that market.

Here in Kansas City, Google is planning to install a fiber optic network throughout the city. Pricing for this "1 gigabit" network is expected to be similar to local broadband costs. But now the question the city executives and local business owners are asking is "what the crap do we do with 1 gigabit internet?" According to some data, thats a pretty good question for Karr's fabled "100 mbps" Netherlands. The fastest, most connected city in the world, Seoul, only manages to burn through about 15 mbps per person (and that's download, not upload). Why does a Dutchman need 8 times that? Why does anyone?

The market for broadband will continue to strengthen. Don't get me wrong. A day will come where every teenage kid needs 100 mbps in his/her house to keep up with their peers. But today isn't that day. Neither is tomorrow. There is no home consumer market for it. And because there is no market for it, there is no U.S. company that provides it. This is not the fault of the government, it is simply the reality of American society in 2011. There is no law that says you cannot have 100 mbps internet at your house. There is no law that says AT&T can't set up a faster internet system. There's just no market for it.

A final thought on Karr's article: I hate to call him out as a blatant liar, but he claims that U.S.-equivalent broadband is available via TalkTalk for $6/month. That's true - for the first 6 months - then the price doubles to $12. Add in the mandatory monthly "line rental" at another $18/month (wow, I thought US fees were bad, try 300% in fees), add in taxes and you've got $35/month for internet. Certainly this is cheap. But its really not that much more than the basic DSL package from AT&T...which is only $15/month. In fact AT&T advertises blazing fast broadband for a mere $19.95 a month. I must be confused. It's almost like broadband via AT&T (Karr's fraidy cats) is actually just as cheap if not cheaper than the super-awesome "competitive market" broadband in Britain.

Karr's article, like so many others, is a classic in "the way they do (pseudo-public service) in (European country) is...somehow...better" that can be fairly easily demolished (and regularly is). American government is not the problem. American lack of demand for ultra-fast broadband is the problem.


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Michele Bachmann

Since when is "refusal to ever compromise" actually a good quality for a politician to have? Or a human being in general? Never needing to compromise implies that you are 100% right, on every issue, every time. Which is the opinion typically reserved for mentally unstable individuals.


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Home News

Last week I was named to Ingram's Magazine "20 in their twenties" list, which recognizes "a score of up-and-coming twenty-somethings who are flexing their entrepreneurial muscle and making their mark on the Kansas City business scene." In case that link dies, here's what they wrote about me:

When it comes to innovation, Alex Waller oozes entrepreneurial zeal: “If you want to step into the game, you have to be tireless, ambitious, and not afraid to stick your neck out and champion an innovative idea,” says the 29-year-old mechanical engineer at MRI Global, formerly the Midwest Research Institute. In his line of work there is vision, and there is road-kill: “I think the speed at which innovation is moving is what keeps most people out of it,” he says. Working for a high-profile research organization, Waller is exposed to a wide array of projects. Basically, if it moves, flows, blinks or breathes, Waller has in interest in measuring just how much. His expertise is in design, rapid prototyping and testing of devices for clients with national-defense interests. His achievements include development of an air-monitoring device used at the 2010 Winter Olympics, and he’s currently working as project manager or designer on such varied projects as a biological particle collector for Homeland Security, a portable water-purification system for use in developing nations, and tracking eye gaze using motion-capture cameras. And he brings a mature altruism to his work, as with the water system: “Profit,” he says, “doesn’t have to be the only measure of success for an innovative idea.”

The selection process was a two-fold one. One of my bosses wrote a nomination letter on my behalf (and without my knowledge). After making the first round of cuts, I received an application in which I answered questions in short essay form about "my vision" for entrepreneurship. I made that cut too, and got a few pretty pictures of myself taken for the magazine. And of course, now I'm sort of the wunderkind of my company. Which is fun, I'll admit. I've been trying to be humble about all this. I really have. But humility was never my strongest attribute.


This all may have been fortuitious; my annual review is this afternoon.




And no, the picture above was not intended to be serious.
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Cars That Drive Themselves, Ctd - Road Trains

Let me describe a form of transportation for you. Upon leaving the house and heading for work, a commuter find the nearest "terminal" and climb aboard the mass transit utility. This utility moves along a predetermined path (as do many other replicates of it) and at various points commuters get on and off as suits their personal commute. The mass transit utility is a large machine that is driven by a trained professional. If you get to a terminal and have missed the most recent mass transit utility, you simply wait for the next one and embark upon it.

What does this sound like to you? A bus system? A subway system? A train system? How about a car system? I admit from the get go that I have very mixed emotions about the road train system being proposed here:

When road train technology is commercialized, a driver equipped with platooning software could use an in-vehicle navigation screen to find the nearest platoon and drive to the end of it. At that point, the car could wirelessly connect to the platoon and take over braking, acceleration, and steering —and drivers could safety start texting or watching a movie.
Volvo imagines that professional drivers would lead each platoon, though there is no technical reason why regular drivers couldn't take over. But just as bus drivers are required to have special licenses, Coelingh believes that road train lead drivers should probably have special qualifications for the job. Employing professional drivers would also remove a lot of legal hurdles, since each road train would be led by a real, live human.

Long-time readers of this blog know that I am all-in when it comes to getting driving out of the hands of human drivers. But the reason I am so mixed on Road Trains is this: it will almost certainly increase congestion.
The designers make it sound so simple...just get on the highway and find the nearest road train to join. But what if it is in front of you? Do you speed up to catch it? That implies that either you break the speed limit (dangerous) or the road train is moving along below the speed limit (inefficient). Or do you slow down and let the road train behind you catch up and pass, then join it? That makes you a danger to people behind you, who have to get around.
The designers also seem to suggest that a huge, bulky vehicle lumbering down the highway, driven by a professional driver, would ease traffic. But it is my experience, here in reality, that tractor trailers (semis, big rigs, call them what you will) that are driven by professional drivers (isn't that what a CDL license is) do not mitigate traffic in any way, rather their slow acceleration only exacerbates areas of stop and go traffic.

I guess I just don't see the utility of this system. It seems like it would add another layer of complexity to traffic, and would although the time you spent lazily in autopilot in the road train would certainly relieve you of driving responsibilities (and by extension increase overall road safety) the perils of finding and joining a road train, much less the dangerous flux of cars in and out of a road train as they join or leave, would cause a net increase in danger on the roadways.

There is a utility for road trains, however. That utility would be on long drives to from city to city. Imagine leaving Kansas City, and instead of having to pay attention on the notoriously perilous Interstate 70 to St. Louis, you could join a scheduled road train for a small fee and just play scrabble until you got to StL. Over a long trip like that, the 15-20% increase in gas mileage accrued by being in the road train would be substantial and would justify the fee. The safety increase and the 4+ hours of free time you'd gain would also justify it. It'd be like...a greyhound bus system except at the end you have your car to tool around in.

But road trains for commutes...I'm not sold.


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Spam Filtering Reality

Here's a question for you: if "spam filters" are readily available (and increasingly effective) for email service, why is there no spam filter for snail mail? I think some people would probably be willing to pay a monthly fee for junk mail filtering. It could be a good revenue source for the cash-strapped USPS. People pay $5/month and the USPS automatically filters out any credit card applications or mass sent mail.

It would be easy to set up, too. When the USPS mail sorting system is scanning letters, if it sees several hundred parcels of mail with the exact same size, shape, and return address, it flags it as spam. Then, it cross-references that against a list of people on the "no junk" list. Whenever it gets a positive match, that spam goes right into the recycle bin. It'd be easy. Why don't they do it?


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How It All Ends, Ctd

Almost 2 years ago (!) I wrote a short entry titled "How It All Ends" in which I argued:

When we destroy this planet, I mean really tip it over the edge, it'll be because we wrecked the oceans. Life started with water, and life will end with it.

The problem is that people can see land-based pollution and ecological destruction quite well. Air-based destruction of the environment is a bit harder to see, and unsurprisingly air-based pollution regulation is near-impossible to get through Congress. But still, we are able to mildly regulate air pollution. But what about water based pollution regulation? Its nearly non-existent. Not to mention even the idea of water pollution regulation is new. Water-resource management, on the other hand, is a laugher. Take these recent images produced by David McCandless at Information is Beautiful

So what's to do? Fish are a much healthier alternative than livestock, and unlike most livestock, can feasibly be cultivated and then harvested from "the wild."
Or that's what we used to think. Everyone used to believe that the ocean was this vast, unquenchable source of life. And yet, the compelling evidence that we are destroying our environment regardless of whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring is growing larger and larger every day. Environmentalists need to come at this a different way. Instead of arguing whether global warming is real, they need to start asking "why aren't conservatives also conservationists?"
The answer is that human progress is incompatible with sustainability. In the case of ocean fish populations, we need to either accept that soon enough fish will not exist, or start genetically engineering fish to reproduce and grow faster.  We could all go vegetarian (and solve many of the nutritional/environmental problems of our age) but the idea of giving up meat completely is a tough pill to swallow for most of humanity, yours truly included.

My friend said to me yesterday "people need to learn to embrace change better." That may be true. It's also a fanciful notion.


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Friday Poetry Burst

Not all poetry is words.






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A Real Choice

Typically I have two themes on this blog when I write about environmental policy. The first theme is that humanity's continued growth is incompatible with a sustainable environment. Given that the majority of humans on Earth are still increasing their level of consumption, and are below the levels of consumption of America and western Europe, then the pace at which we are damaging the environment (if human progress continues) will only increase. The second theme I have is that given the above, I have to believe humanity has passed a "point of no return" in terms of the environment, and we need to acknowledge this, and really start doing what is best for the long term survival of our species, regardless of the outcome for other species.
Here's a perfect example: Bolivia. Turns out the nation in central South America, nestled against the Andes mountains, has one of the largest reserves of lithium on the planet:

Salar de Uyuni contains 9 million tonnes of lithium, more than a quarter of the world's known resources. This could rise to about 50 per cent if the lithium in more than 30 other salars and lagoons in south-western Bolivia is included. Lithium is increasingly required for the batteries that power phones, laptops, cordless tools and a range of hybrid and electric vehicles - so much so that there are fears that demand will soon outstrip supply. Talk that impoverished Bolivia could become "the Saudi Arabia of lithium" has encouraged its socialist president, Evo Morales, to keep this valuable resource under tight state control. The country has spent three years and more than $10 million on a pilot plant to extract the lithium.

But of course there is some rare/endangered/cute species that faces impending doom: the Chilean Flamingo. Concern about the nesting grounds being right in the middle of the lithium deposits has stirred controversy.
So there you have it, a real choice. 60% of Bolivians live below the poverty level. The price of lithium has gone up consistently, and tapping their vast resources in this extremely valuable mineral could pump valuable income into the country, especially if they can retain a controlling interest. Analysts suggest that the vast amount of lithium could make Bolivia "the Saudi Arabia of the Green World."
Or, we could protect the Flamingos.

And no one here is pretending like lithium mining is an environmentally clean operation. Mining that lithium would certainly displace or eliminate the rare Flamingos. It might cause water purity issues across the nation. And much of the lithium is underneath the fabled Salar de Uyuni, the massive salt flats that provides Bolivia with an important tourist-based income.

So here's your real choice:
1. Exploit the Earth in the name of human progress, be it betterment of poor Bolivians, access to lithium for electric car batteries and cleaner energy, and/or the continued development of human society as it has for 100 years based on the idea that natural resources for technology were unlimited.
2. Protect Flamingos and some pretty salt marshes. Humans continue to starve/live in poverty, lithium prices rise and the global economy is hindered by the lack of availability of the mineral resource.

Which would you choose?


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Dear Ava,

Dear Ava,


As I was sitting here at work, on my lunch break, I felt a knot build in my throat. Your mother and I had just been on the phone, discussing her cousin's wedding we will be taking you to in Joplin, MO on Saturday. Your mother, bless her kind soul, has volunteered to help her Aunt decorate and undecorate the church and reception area, which means that from about Saturday morning at 7:30 to until midnight, you and I will be together. As your mother described this to me, and I said "it will be fine, we'll go see the tornado damage or something" I must admit that in my head I was thinking what an intolerable nuisance you are. I began to think about last night, when I didn't have time for a bike ride because from supper until dark my life was dominated by putting away your laundry, helping you clean your room, helping you with your bath, getting you ready for bed, and reading you stories. I am now nearly 20 pounds overweight, and somehow that is your fault: before your birth I was 5 lbs. underweight. I began to think about how fun attending a wedding would be with just your mother, like your uncle's wedding we went to a few weeks ago where you grandparents took you home early so that your parents could be "free." I began thinking about what an incredible financial stress you are to me, because of your summer camps, your school, travel, food, toys, clothes... I made a mental tally, right here at work while chomping down a chicken breast, of the thousands of dollars I'd have in my checking account if it weren't for you.

And then, I stopped. Why was I doing this? How was it possible that I could consider my own child a nuisance? The answer filled me with such sorrow that I realized I must confess it. I take your love for granted. Since the first day of your short little life, you have been done nothing but love. You wake up in the morning and love breakfast: "this is the cereal of my life ever!" You play in the sprinkler like getting wet is all that matters. You love everyone you meet, even strangers (we'll need to talk about this eventually). You love food: "I love beef. I love potatoes. I love biscuits! I love milk!" (Dinner last night was beef & potatoes with biscuits and a glass of milk).
But perhaps worst of all is the fact that you unabashedly love your mother and father. No matter what happens, you love us. Unconditionally. Unfailingly.
Which means I can be a shitty father tonight and tomorrow you'll still love me. That kind of leeway is more than I deserve. That kind of leeway let's me cheat you.
Sometimes, in the evening, when we finish stories and I tuck you in to bed, I sing "The Johnny Appleseed Song" for you.
Oh the Lord's been good to me,
And so I thank the Lord-
For giving me the things I need:
The Sun, and the Rain, and the Appleseed.
The Lord's been good to me.

Child, you are my Appleseed. When I think of all the accomplishments of my life, the college degree, the graduate degree, the job, being published, being honored, being promoted, submitting my first patent, submitting my first major proposal...they all seem such tiny, inconsequential things in comparison with the simple existence of you, my daughter.

Last night, I snapped at you when you didn't want to finish your dinner. Then, when you were getting ready for your bath, I angrily sent you to time-out because you wanted more toys in the bath with you. How awful of you! Then, after I forced you to ask me nicely for the toys, I tossed them at you like a bully. Minutes later, I was grabbing your arm to hold you still so I could wash you. Then I laid out rules for spots in the tub where you were not allowed to use your bathtub soap-crayons. When you deviated even a little from that restricted zone, I confiscated them. When you wouldn't get out of the bathtub quickly enough (you were trying to perform some sort of song for me) I interrupted you and snapped at you to move faster. When you chose a long book as your first book of the night, I limited you to just that one book instead of your usual three or four...but it was mostly because I wanted to go be by myself and play on Facebook not because the book was overly long. Because apparently "me-time" is more important than teaching you to read. After you were in bed, I sat and talked to your mom about a "much needed" vacation we should take somewhere far away from you. Then I resented you for the guilt I felt about wanting an "adults-only" vacation.
This morning, I got ready as quietly as I could, because Heaven forbid I wake you up and have to see your smiling, loving face say goodbye to me as I leave for a long day at work.

And now, as I sit here at my cube, a strangling fear has filled me. How many more times will you tolerate this? How many times can I act like my little girl should be held to the same standards as a grown woman before you finally reject me?
I know this is a feeble attempt at contrition. If I said these things aloud to you, you would not possibly let me get through them all before your mind would wander and you'd move on. And even if you did let my speech go to its entirety, you wouldn't possibly understand. And that is because you are a little girl. A beautiful, sweet little girl with a gigantic heart the size of the Moon. The times you run up to me and bury me with a hug are proof enough of this. All too often, I visualize you as a grown woman, and expect things from you that you should not be expected to be able to do.

Tomorrow I'll be a better daddy. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will tell myself "she's only a little girl!" And I will love you, regardless.


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He Who Is Without Sin

I call b.s. on Ross's opin that Anthony Weiner needs to resign.

A confession is just words, so much sound and fury, without an act of contrition, and the act of contrition appropriate to Weiner’s offenses is the resignation of his office.

I'm trying really hard to imagine what offenses Ross is talking about. Certainly, if Representative Weiner has broken the law then he should resign. But if extra-marital shenanigans is the extent of Weiner's tomfoolery...well, if every politician who was guilty of the same or worse resigned...government would effectively shut down. Were his offenses his repeated lies to the press? If every politician who has lied to the press subsequently resigned...see above.
I'm not defending Rep. Weiner. Sending random twitter followers pictures of your weirdly hairless chest and pictures of your junk is really dumb. And the idiot is probably dealing with the consequences at home. He's probably facing a divorce, not to mention being immortalized for this on the internet. His career may have suddenly found a glass ceiling.
But it seems presumptuous and reactive to suggest the appropriate act of contrition is resignation. He's done nothing that politicians don't do every day already and America stands by.

Wheras Ross' proclamation for Vitter's resignation was predicated on the idea that Vitter had almost certainly committed an illegal act, in this case Ross has no illegal act to use as leverage. Just his gut feeling that a sleazy guy from New York should resign for turning out to be a sleazy guy from New York.


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Achievement

Normally I'd be at the front of the line to make fun of motivational posters, but I saw one on Sunday and it spoke to me, because of some things going on that I can't really divulge yet. Forgive my self indulgence.

"Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow."

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Adventures in Youthful Arrogance, Ctd

I think the reason this editorial by Dale Stephens rubbed me the wrong way is because it validates the accusations of Gen X and the Boomers' that my generation has a massive sense of entitlement.

The current recession has provided a unique opportunity to see just how painful life can be without a college. Unemployment is directly correlated to education level, as seen in the chart below from Calculated Risk. In fact, not getting educated is almost the worst thing you can do, other than be born poor and black.

Hideous is the fact that Mr. Stephens is throwing away a Stanford education to pursue his dream of "UnCollege," a place where self-motivated people can organize and teach themselves...everything that was already available at a college. He burns his bridges as he goes too, like a true thoughtless teenager:

I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.

Obviously no person expects to go crawling back on their hands and knees someday...but then again no one plans to fail. Yet, most of us do. So when, and if, Mr. Stephens fails at his startup, UnCollege, and his agent is no longer able to book speaking engagements for him (surprise!) and his book doesn't find a publisher (surprise!), he'll essentially be a penniless 19-year-old...just like the rest of the 19-year-olds in America. Except unlike them he's branded himself the spokesperson for anti-college.

But let's ignore his lack of foresight. Let's ignore the fact that he is probably giving really bad advice to young people. Let's ignore the fact that the number of CEO's in this country with an MBA is probably above 95% and assume Stephens is right: you can achieve your dreams of wealth with no formalized diploma on your wall. How are you going to do it? What product are you going to sell with no education? What investor will take an uneducated kid who thought he/she is too good for college and invest in them? Mr. Stephens just sounds like another rich kid impatient to be even richer.
What's really sickening here is that the content of the education he is hoping his rebellious peers will receive was developed on the backs of people with PhDs over centuries through long educations, the writing of theses, and the development of arduous research projects. The social networking aspect of Uncollege relies on access to the internet, a device built by a scientists including Lawrence Roberts, who had three degrees from MIT.

See, this is what I mean by entitlement. Stephens and his cohorts seem to have no gratitude for the diligent efforts of people who did go to college. He suggests college probably hampered these brains, and that the huge technical developments of past college-educated minds was actually less than ideal.
If only Wernher von Braun hadn't wasted his time at the Technical University of Berlin, maybe the Apollo program would have been a success. If only Newton had skipped Trinity College, he might have deduced the formulas of modern Calculus much sooner. Imagine if Watson and Crick hadn't gotten their PhDs. They might have discovered the structure of DNA sooner. If Alexander Fleming hadn't spent so much time in medical school, he might have discovered penicillin's antibacterial properties much sooner.
Obviously I say these things in jest. But that is because the idea that a college education hampers the human mind, rather than enables it, is such a ridiculous notion that we must categorically dismiss it.

Certainly, Stephens is right about two things: college is expensive and college is less than ideal. But the idea that self-guided learning is better is ludicrous.

Stephens has little nuggets, on his Uncollege website, which admits that you can't get a degree in nuclear engineering via Uncollege. "On the other hand, entrepreneurship is something that it’s definitely possible to accomplish outside of the classroom. Heck, some would say that paying thousands of dollars to study entrepreneurship is a very bad understanding of the field…"
Maybe that is true. Starting a company is pretty easy. Especially compared to actually doing science or engineering. Starting a company is definitely easier than showing patience and fortitude...two requirements to excel in college.


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Adventures in Youthful Arrogance

What 19-year-old doesn't think college is a waste of time? You know what really is a waste of time? Asking for serious domestic policy editorials from a teenager.

When I was 19, I had it all figured out too. Then I grew up.


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Why There is Almost Certainly No Life Currently on Mars

I think what a lot of people miss when they try to extrapolate extremophiles into the argument that life could exist on Mars or other seemingly hostile non-Earth planets is that the extremophiles did not originate in their current extreme environment.
Most paleobiologists agree that the reason life arose on Earth was that the "primordial soup" was perfectly suited for life. It was warm, wet, and complex organic molecules had become abundant. There was a high level of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Carbon in various forms. Hydrocarbons existed in plentiful but non-toxic supply.
There is no indication that Mars ever had this scenario. Though liquid water almost certainly existed on Mars in the distant past, it is most likely that it was highly sterile. So the problem isn't whether or not organisms exist that have the potential to survive somewhere on Mars, the problem is that Mars doesn't seem to have had a point in its history at which living organisms could arise.

"Life finds a way" Ian Malcolm mutters in the movie Jurassic Park. This may be true. But that is Life that is already here, not the genesis of Life itself.

My guess is, in the decades and centuries to come, as we discover more and more exoplanets that have terrestrial-like environments, or "Class M planets," we'll learn that only a tiny few had the necessary conditions for the arise of life. Most will be pleasant, but sterile. We will go there, or send our bacteria there, and we/they will thrive. But bacteria won't have ever arisen on those surprisingly habitable planets on their own. The conditions just weren't right.


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Cars That Drive Themselves, Ctd

I've written a bunch already about driverless cars. So when Tyler Cowen has a column in the New York Times about it, my interest was piqued. Cowen highlights the impediments to switching society to driverless cars:

Enabling the development of driverless cars will require squadrons of lawyers because a variety of state, local and federal laws presume that a human being is operating the automobiles on our roads. No state has anything close to a functioning system to inspect whether the computers in driverless cars are in good working order, much as we routinely test emissions and brake lights. Ordinary laws change only if legislators make those revisions a priority. Yet the mundane political issues of the day often appear quite pressing, not to mention politically safer than enabling a new product that is likely to engender controversy.

Then he makes another important point on his blog:

[I]t is an interesting question why there is no popular movement to encourage driverless cars. Commuting costs are very high and borne by many people. You can get people to hate plastic bags, or worry about a birth certificate, but they won’t send a “pro-driverless car” postcard to their representatives. The political movement has many potential beneficiaries but few natural constituencies.  (Why?  Does it fail to connect to an us vs. them struggle?) This is an underrated source of bias in political outcomes.

I think the answer to his question is that handing over the keys to a robot seems to humans like a loss of freedom. Right now, people feel complete empowerment when they climb into the driver's seat of a vehicle. No longer is their "body" a 100 kilo meatsack. It is now ten times as large, bristling with power and electronics. Invictus runs through their head: "I am master of my fate, I am captain of my soul." And off they go, their Id now including a 16 foot aluminum exoskeleton on wheels they are now wearing.
Climbing into a car and helplessly sitting there while it ferries you about isn't empowering at all.
All this is a shame, really, because the price we pay for our pride is 35,000 dead Americans every year.


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