
The Fleet Can Withdraw - exolymph
https://www.exolymph.news/2017/03/13/fleet-can-withdraw/
======
falcolas
> With Netflix and streaming services, DVD ownership became obsolete. Spotify
> has made it unnecessary to own CDs and MP3s.

Funny, I still own quite a few DVDs. They're really nice, since I can watch
them at any time, and I don't have to worry about Netflix losing the license
to distribute that movie to watch it. I also don't have to worry about
distribution algorithms ensuring that I (as a loyal customer) am last in line
to watch new DVDs. There's also more than a few DVD's in my binder which
aren't available on any streaming or DVD sharing service.

The same value is provided by with CDs and MP3's. I listen to a lot of music
which isn't available on any streaming service. I also listen to it offline;
something which is only marginally available on streaming services.

Why would I ever want to do this with my car? How would I handle emergencies,
when the hospital is about 30 miles away (and an Ambulance is thus a 60 minute
trip)? How would I get to work on time on a daily basis? What happens when the
internet is out? What happens if/when the automated driving is not sufficient
to drive in the snowstorms that are regular occurrences in my part of the
country?

~~~
frandroid
You know, _some_ people already don't own cars do fine. :)

~~~
falcolas
Some, yes. If you live in a city with a good public transport system and
affordable housing within the reach of that transport system, you can probably
do it. Of course, you probably wouldn't own a car in the first place, so this
doesn't offer much in the form of practical benefits.

Would it work for the majority of (I'll go with US, since that's where I live
and work) the country? No. I know of a few people who attempt it in my city,
and they are all paying through the nose for the privilege of not owning a
car. Any savings they may have had by not having to buy or maintain a car have
been swallowed 3-4 times over by the increased housing costs.

Plus, they get to walk or bike through blizzards to get to work. Wheee!

------
Heliosmaster
I also find worrying that all these developments have on the horizon an
extreme individualistic view of society. Why nobody is considering the option
that you might have a self-driving car whose ownership is shared among
different family groups (e.g. all the people in the same apt block)?

~~~
nerdponx
I never even thought to consider it. But now that you mention it, it's a great
idea. In the United States at least, we have been indoctrinated into this idea
that cars are in individual possession, when really if you look at what our
car is and does that makes very little sense.

~~~
ghthor
We've also been indoctrinated that living out of our car is shameful or below
us, which is sad. With the current state of our tech we could build an
amazingly small moving vehicle that also could operate as a 2 person, bed,
kitchen, and food storage locker. Combine that with automation and a sane
wireless tech and you're now equipped a fully mobile human being.

~~~
nerdponx
The current doctrines are ideal for big business: make sure they buy a house
(support the Realtors), and make sure they buy a car (support the auto
industry).

~~~
nradov
The current doctrines are ideal for people who enjoy having some privacy,
space, and freedom to customize their environments.

------
bruceb
One could imagine a world where you get on a now fly list for all transit. The
door of a autonomous vehicle will not open as you have been banned.

~~~
VLM
Soon people will be "no platformed" off transit for political reasons.

~~~
bartread
Arguably this already happened for a while with Uber and Greyball.

------
Shivetya
I think the idea of not owning a car or other personal transportation is going
to take more time that the examples of DVDs/CDs/etc will.

Owning your own transportation imparts freedom or the sense of it and if you
look at former communist countries what exploded out the door when it was
available, automobile ownership.

So until driver less cars and the costs of using such transportation on a per
use basis becomes so cheap as to not matter personal ownership ain't going
anywhere.

if anything the advent of EV or FC cars with autonomous features will let even
more people own vehicles who can't or keep them longer.

~~~
pif
> I think the idea of not owning a car or other personal transportation is
> going to take more time that the examples of DVDs/CDs/etc will.

Especially because of the copy-ability of the songs/videos with respect to the
uniqueness of a car. In other words, a song can be sent to multiple listeners
in parallel, while a car, at a given instant, is either serving me of another
person. I'd hate having to trust a fleet of autonomous cars on Super Bowl
Sunday or Black Friday!

~~~
VLM
"Black Friday"

The fleet issue is critical to the failure of shared cars. The problem of the
rich young urbanite traveling a few blocks on a statistically random time
frame (bar hopping perhaps) is solved by car sharing services, yet they're a
vanishingly small fraction of the population. For example the kind of employer
that is so geologic in thinking that they don't allow remote work is going to
be so backwards as to forbid flex time hours, so two hundred 9-5 jobs implies
someone has to own two hundred individual cars, and if the employees don't
directly own the two hundred cars all you get is a useless middleman skimming
off profit. Public grade school isn't remote or flex time and observation
shows roughly one parent-car per kid. No matter how time flexible life is for
rich young adult urbanites, normie life isn't like that. Too much of normie
life involves hundreds to tens of thousands of people running on a tight fixed
schedule.

Back in the bad old days of limited long distance telecom bandwidth, you
couldn't financially provision to survive mothers day, for example, so on
mothers day people got fast busy signals sometimes. That also made it
extremely expensive and encouraged companies to set up their own LD routings.
In the long run this will happen with shared cars and after enough firings for
failure to get to work and enough CPS calls for failure to pick up little kids
people will get tired of the expense of shared cars and save a lot of money by
owning their own car.

------
a_imho
And when/if that happens we will complain _our_ streets have been stolen [1]

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13854367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13854367)

~~~
sevensor
We are terrifyingly close to a world in which cyclists and pedestrians are
forbidden to use the road network. As self-driving cars increase in
popularity, we'll see more thoroughfares from which we're banned for our own
safety.

~~~
lolc
I agree but I had a cynical chuckle there. Pedestrians and cyclists will not
be banned "for their own safety". They will be banned for holding up traffic.
Autonomous cars have to go slower whenever autonomous humans are nearby.
Unpredictable humans slow the flow of traffic.

------
squozzer
Going against my usual grain here on HN, I feel bullish about shared
automobiles. There's too much financial upside to renting one if we can iron
out the techincal and financial wrinkles.

And sure, the wealthy, or at least those who enjoy having a personal vehicle
enough to pay for maintenance, insurance, etc., will probably still be able to
own one.

The perfect plan -- in my mind anyway -- has the following aspects:

1) The autonomous cars have sufficient coordination among themselves to
eliminate certain aggravating characteristics of human-piloted cars, e.g. the
accordion/rubber-necking effect. This is not an essential feature, but might
help sell the cars to an understandably skeptic public.

2) Power source is electric batteries which can be easily swapped out.

3) Home bases to keep cars close to their customers -- a good re-use for
obsolete retail properties. Cars which have completed their rounds return to
their home base for battery swaps, cleaning, maintenance, etc.

4) Plans for different needs -- e.g. 5-day/week commuting plan, plus on-call
for weekends. Customers could craft plans to suit their needs.

5) Human-piloted cars might need certain restrictions such as limiting their
access during peak traffic times. My personal inclination would be to allow
unrestricted road access to nights and weekends.

6) Not all of the cars need to deliver humans -- others could deliver
packages.

That said, autonomous cars could be made obsolete themselves should society
decide to pursue and adopt somethings such as telepresence, but my money says
that those who write checks (i.e. bosses) will always be control freaks who
enjoy making their serfs miserable, so autonomous cars look more viable in the
near term.

------
tacon
Eventually the second amendment right to bear arms will become irrelevant if
you have no ability to move effectively. If nothing else, all the other self-
driving cars will be commandeered by the network to box in a rouge car driven
by a human. Many freedoms presume the ability to move effectively and
efficiently.

~~~
teddyh
I assume you meant “a _rogue_ car”.

------
d_theorist
>YOU AND LYFT MUTUALLY AGREE TO WAIVE OUR RESPECTIVE RIGHTS TO RESOLUTION OF
DISPUTES IN A COURT OF LAW BY A JUDGE OR JURY AND AGREE TO RESOLVE ANY DISPUTE
BY ARBITRATION

Is it actually possible to waive the right to resolution of disputes in a
court of law?

~~~
bonyt
Yes, it's called arbitration. You can contractually agree to settle disputes
arising out of a contract in arbitration - where an arbitrator decides instead
of a judge, the rules are abbreviated, and certain remedies (usually class
actions, for example) are unavailable.

It's a lot faster, and a great way for sophisticated parties to handle
disputes arising from their negotiated contracts, where they would otherwise
spend years litigating in court.

In the consumer context, it's a bit more worrying - it usually appears in
terms-of-service-type ageements that aren't negotiated (called adhesion
contracts) where one party has no say in the matter. There are concerns over
fairness - you don't have the same rights as you do in court, like you
generally can't allege a class action, so small but systematic abuses go
ignored because no one individual claimant can afford to sue for their
individual injury. The drafter of the contract may also pick where the
arbitration takes place, what the rules are, how the arbitrator is chosen.
There are concerns that, since the corporate side may send an arbitrator a lot
of work, the arbitrator may lean that way.

[http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/shopping/the-
arbitration-...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/shopping/the-arbitration-
clause-hidden-in-many-consumer-contracts)

[http://www.consumeradvocates.org/for-
consumers/arbitration](http://www.consumeradvocates.org/for-
consumers/arbitration)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act)

~~~
d_theorist
Thank you. Nicely explained.

------
mattmanser
There's nothing insightful in the quote from John Zimmer or this article. Not
owning what you use has been possible for centuries and technology hasn't
suddenly enabled it.

Renting houses has been done for millenia, Libraries has been around for
centuries, Radio has been around for a century and TV has allowed you to watch
films and videos for decades. Renting a car as you need it has been possible
for decades too. It's just inconvenient and expensive at the moment.

Why do people still buy houses? Why did they buy records? Why did they buy
books?

People like owning things, having control over them. Owning a car grants you
independence, a mobile base, that a self-drive rental can't grant. Are all
rented cars going to come with pre-setup kiddy seats? What about the dog cage
in the back?

I can see families using a self-drive rental for a secondary car, but not
their primary car.

And sharing has negatives, especially if automated. How long before shared
cars stink of McDonalds as the previous rider just bought one? Or skunk
because the last occupant was on a munchie run?

Cars aren't prohibitively expensive, owning one is a status statement, the
future of cars isn't going to be like Spotify without heavy penalties
happening for owning a car.

~~~
ghthor
I personally enjoy owning and taking care of things because it only takes one
lazy person to break something or one person that doesn't wash properly to
make something gross.

I'd see myself as a caretaker of equipment and belongings using my own
judgement to loan the right tool to the right person. Someone that shows care
and returns items in the condition they were given vs. someone who returns
items broken with excuses, consistently, over and over. Yeah, that second
person, they're getting the shit end of the share stick at my shop.

It's sort of terrifying this idea, that we'll share more, is breaching now. I
feel(anecdotal) that individuals in this society are becoming LESS responsible
and and giving less care to the items they are responsible for which is a bad
combination with a sharing model. Here is where I'd adopt a shared ownership
of large items with perhaps a web of trust(ala kernal development style) to
manage high quality time sharing of tools. But maybe this concern is moot once
recycling, manufacturing, and cleaning become sufficiently automated that
people can be lazy gross slobs that can't be bothered to clean and take care
of shared space.

Disclaimer, I'm incredibly cynical after watching the newly cleaned NYC subway
tunnels and tracks accumulate litter within hours. Also having troublesome
roommates that live like slobs, are having trouble with infections but don't
seem to understand that their living space needs to be cleaned...

~~~
donw
I feel much the same way, and will admit to finding myself... well, frustrated
isn't quite the right word, but it will have to do, with what feels like an
increasingly large number of people that treat the world as if everything in
it is disposable.

There's a certain joy in caring for things, and the added satisfaction of
knowing that well-maintained tools are something you can rely on.

And it's not like this really costs you extra time. Sure, it takes a small
degree of incremental effort to keep my kitchen organized and clean. But when
I cook, I don't need to spend time creating space to work or hunting down
ingredients, because everything is where it belongs.

This is maybe one of the things that I love about Japan, and also about
Germany. In both cultures, people seem to be somehow overall rather thorough
about caring for things.

Sure, it's not universal, but it's utterly wonderful to be around people that,
through habit, make the world around them a little bit better at a time.

------
edem
What if an artist pulls his stuff from Spotify? You have to bux his stuff if
you are interested. Spotify and its ilk are a leaky abstraction (sadly) and
you will end up missing stuff (or live with the fact that it is unavailable).
Note thet this _happened_ to me.

