
The human-driven driverless car - libovness
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/technology-and-productivity
======
pak
What if driverless cars can call upon a network of remote human drivers that
can, in the case of computer confusion, take over and drive the car through
the troublesome area? Sort of like an on-demand remote pilot, drone style.

That's actually what I figured this article was about, based on the title.

~~~
jerf
"Problems that humans will have to assist with" aren't randomly & evenly
distributed. For instance, compared to what one good winter storm would do,
for most of the year your "emergency drivers" will be twiddling their thumbs.

Also, the distribution of the problems themselves are going to be very time
sensitive. When the car yells "Oh crap, I need a human!", you're looking at at
_least_ 5 seconds for a human to respond. Even ignoring the "take a number"
problem, which pushes that number arbitrarily high during times of high load.
Whatever problem resulted in the car yelling "I need a human!" is probably
resolved one way or another before the human gets there, because physics isn't
waiting. If the car persistently needs a human, the answer is not to remote-
drive the car but to stop driving entirely, so it's only the transient issues
that matter.

Basically, I'm not clear on what problem this solves.

------
Shivetya
Well a driver less car is certainly more expensive than the uber provided
driver if your ignore the costs of the drivers car, the costs of getting them
to the age the can drive, teaching them to drive, and on and on and on.

The issue I see is that driver less cars have to be better than the better
than average driver. Equal to an average driver is not sufficient. Even an
average driver can tell the difference between a cardboard box and a block of
concrete in the road, can follow detour signs, and more.

Driver less cars and public transportation may end up either competing or
playing off each other. Who knows. Though I would expect driver less buses and
semi trucks far sooner than individual cars - there is at least a market fo
those. Heck I see still drives on trains, I guess until we can end that
position how do we expect cars to go it alone? (and train drivers are
responsible for some major accidents both with people and cargo)

~~~
lucaspiller
> Heck I see still drives on trains, I guess until we can end that position
> how do we expect cars to go it alone? (and train drivers are responsible for
> some major accidents both with people and cargo)

I've always wondered why there hasn't been more progress on this front.
Driverless trains have been around for 50 years now [0]. Anyone care to
comment further?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation)

~~~
negativeview
At least here in Minneapolis, a good portion of the train operates down the
middle of public streets. It follows red lights and has to deal with people
pulling into intersections waiting on a turn signal, stupid pedestrians, etc.

Even WITH drivers two people (that I know of) have been hit in the last two
months. The train line wasn't set up with driverless uses in mind in the first
place, and the city is likely worried about liability and cost in switching
over. Even if the number of accidents goes down with full automation, cities
aren't likely to believe that until enough other places prove it for them.

~~~
aragot
Sure, but wouldn't automation provide something more? If people know it's
automatic, they're less enclined to assume the driver will stop; There is also
less risk that the computer-driver is at fault; and last but not least, the
video of the accident could be tweeted immediately so everyone is convinced
that the biker/pedestrian/car is at fault. As opposed to human drivers, who
are more reluctant to be filmed because it invades their privacy.

~~~
negativeview
All of those things are logical and make sense, but are unproven. Politicians
are notoriously risk adverse when it comes to those kinds of risks.

------
janesvilleseo
The argument being made here, while quite real and a possibility is
irrational. But I guess humans are irrational.

This reminds me of a recent decision that was made by a fellow parent. They
have 2 young kids. 1 in kindergarten and 1 in daycare. The oldest is a smart
young girl. In fact she often gets bored during class because she already
knows the material. Because of this she gets in a little trouble for goofing
around.

Her parents came to the decision that because she knows the material and is
goofing around, they are not going to work with their youngest as much as they
did with her. That way he will be ready for kindergarten.

I feel this irrational decision shares the same thought process as deciding to
pick cheaper manual labor over advanced technology. But I do understand that
we may eventually need some jobs to keep all us busy and active. But lets now
slow down our education to do so.

~~~
philbarr
I have a young daughter and have come to the same conclusion; not to teach her
too much before she starts school. My own parents, being teachers themselves,
taught me as much as they could before I attended school. I remember being
bored senseless in classes and, whilst doing great in tests, started to
harbour a deep resentment against education from a young age. "Like, why is
everyone forcing me to do this 100 times?! I get it already!" Gradually
realising that the other kids hate your for being too smart didn't help.

I don't think you can call this irrational, it's just accepting of human
behaviour.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How about, teach her at home, period? Then you don't have to stifle her just
so the state can have an easier time domesticating her. Home schooling is for
more than religious nuts these days.

~~~
gambiting
I am not trying to be offensive, but I have never ever understood how can home
schooling possibly work. The sheer amount of knowledge that is covered at
school seems like way too much for a parent or even two to teach. How can you
give your child expert knowledge of physics, mathematics, history, biology,
foreign language of choice and sports? Or do I understand how it all works
wrongly? Where I come from home schooling is incredibly rare(partially because
it's illegal, unless you have a disability).

~~~
innguest
Why do you expect parents to turn kids into experts in all these subjects,
when public school is not reaching anywhere near that goal?

And who said kids must know those exact topics and not others? Why do you
think when you have the liberty to teach your kids about the world at home,
that you still need to follow the government curriculum?

Open up your mind.

~~~
gambiting
Well I would expect my child to be taught biology by someone who has a higher
degree in that subject, a degree which I myself don't have so I don't feel
qualified to teach it. And I would like the government curriculum to be
applied because I pay for it in my taxes, so I equate home schooling with an
all out anarchism.

And I have my mind fully opened to the idea of home schooling - I just have
not seen a single compelling argument for it yet. If such is provided I will
support the idea fully - but for now for me it looks like it's just a waste of
time and money.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
There's little biology in elementary school (planting the seed in the cup).
The government curriculum is available to home-schoolers for free; your school
district is required to provide a copy to you if asked. So no problems there.

The money is a sunk cost, no getting that back. And the real waste; the real
cost to you is the education or lack of one that your child receives.

If you don't value your child over your tax bill, then maybe home-schooling
isn't for you. Just lob your kid into the public school and feel like you're
getting a bargain; I sure won't be there to stop you.

~~~
gambiting
Maybe it's just a difference in how things are done in different countries. In
mine private schools are almost non-existent, and those that exist have a
really bad reputation for basically giving out diplomas for money. There is a
broad selection of public schools, and where I grew up(city of only 15,000)
there were 10 different schools,and you could either go to a one which was bad
with education or one which was consistently in top 50 in the entire country.
Every single one of them free. That's what I mean when I say that I pay for
education in my taxes - every level of education over here is free, including
higher education(so colleges and universities too) - not using it and
resorting to home schooling seems borderline foolish.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Free is a temptation I'm sure. Education in America through College is 'free'
too, in the same sense.

But if you can afford the time and effort, then home-schooling is a whole
different process with a substantially different goal. Instead of babysitting
its about engaging your youth in lifelong learning. Its got the advantages of
personal attention and customized plans. The child is relieved of the risks of
institutionalization, while taking advantage of the facilities as needed.

Its not such a radical notion, to manage the education part of your child's
life in much the same way you provide food and housing. In America, home-
schooling before the modern age had a different name - it was called
'schooling'.

------
mrfusion
I guess a counter-argument against this idea would be all of the restrictions
on commercial drivers. I think truck drivers are only allowed to drive so many
hours per day.

Imagine self driving trucks could drive through the night, 24 hours per day.
That alone could make quite a difference.

~~~
incongruity
If the article is right and the cost of human labor really does fall, isn't it
conceivable that you'd see teams of drivers driving day and night in shifts?
(This would be much like pilots on long-haul flights).

~~~
gambiting
That already happens on long coach journeys - you have 2 or even 3 drivers and
they switch every 8 hours(maximum allowed in EU).

------
ColinDabritz
For me, the driverless car isn't about providing a chauffeur service that is
otherwise too expensive. That's a nice side benefit. To me, the main benefit
is safety, as automated systems can be more 'alert' at all times, and have
carefully tuned algorithms to know what the safe limits are, and keep enough
'slack' in the system to react etc etc. Automated cars are consistent drivers.

------
abruzzi
>At the same time firms like Uber are making the use of hired cars cheaper and
more convenient

More convenient maybe, but I was under the impression that Uber was
significantly more expensive than hailing a cab? (This is based on what I have
read, as I don't live or visit anywhere near where Uber has services.)

~~~
inigoesdr
It probably depends on where you are I imagine. In my area it's roughly the
same cost as a cab.

------
mrfusion
This is a great argument for a high minimum wage.

~~~
ethbro
How is this an argument for a high minimum wage, as opposed to a basic human
(non-employment-linked) wage?

~~~
innguest
What would be the good or service sold in order to generate the wealth to be
distributed to all humans as basic wage?

And who would be the generous folks doing all the work to produce those goods
and services, while being OK with sharing, with everyone, the goods (i.e.
money) that they trade their goods for?

I'm just trying to understand your suggestion.

~~~
zackmorris
In a lot of ways, money is a measure of inefficiency. For example, if everyone
had the education, experience and time to repair their own vehicles/homes etc,
they wouldn't have to pay someone else to do it. We would see the costs of
those services decrease, along with the income of people who would otherwise
provide them.

We're seeing this all over in the economy with Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, etc.
As better rapid prototyping, artificial general intelligence, and moneyless
transactions like BitCoin become mainstream, there will be less and less
exchange of money.

However, the overall wealth created in the economy will only increase. We're
rapidly approaching a point in time (well before the singularity) where human
labor can't compete with automation. We can stick with the current system of
capitalism where all of the gains go to a few at the top and everyone else is
in a race to the bottom to preserve their jobs. Or..

We can adopt a system that works to maximize the social good instead of
production, profits, influence, things that we might think of as 20th century
goals. My current favorite alternative is cooperativism, where the workers own
the means of production so there is no need for unions. One example is WinCo,
which simultaneously provides lower prices than Walmart and higher
wages/benefits to its employees because it doesn’t spend exorbitant amounts on
advertising or dividends (which tend to run 15-30% of a for-profit
corporation’s overhead, sometimes more).

Ironically one of the biggest problems with cooperativism is the lack of
community ownership. So a company like Valve can be regarded as the epitome of
cooperativism, where the workers can potentially make billions of dollars and
the community makes nothing other than taxes. In many cases even those are
waived, for example in Boise where I live, Micron and hp get enormous tax
waivers to attract them. Some cities even pay corporations bonuses to move
there.

So the only solution that I see is to raise taxes on businesses and to abandon
the idea of corporate profits so that high income individuals pay the tax
rates that the US enjoyed in its highest growth decades. That would mean a
readjustment of our tax brackets to match inflation since then. I would
suggest few or no taxes at or below the median individual income of roughly
$40,000 per year, and then use a logarithmic scale beyond that. If it was base
2, then to double one’s net income, they would need to make 4 times as much,
so $160,000 per year instead of $80,000. They would pay a tax of $80,000 on
that or 50%. To make 4 times median, they would have to make $640,000 per
year, and pay $480,000 in taxes or 75%. If base 2 seems too high, then society
would vote on which base is most fair, probably settling on something similar
to what we use today below $250,000 and eliminating the loopholes above that.
This is basically a flat tax in a nonlinear system.

That way we get the wage/innovation benefits of a cooperative and the social
benefit of a public income stream. As cooperatives become larger, they would
have a choice to pay their workers in innovation (providing free food and
benefits like Google) or pay society at large through taxes if they choose
cash. In other words, society gets a win-win, because non-cash innovation is
the stuff of Star Trek, and even cash is still cash.

The US GDP is $16 trillion, so spread over the 160 million workers, that’s
roughly $100,000 per person. The missing $60,000 reflects our wealth
inequality, which means we could switch to this system today and give everyone
a basic income of $40,000 and the rich would have $20,000 to spare. In other
words, tax policy alone could provide for everyone right now (the way they do
it in social democracies like Finland) but since the US seems averse to that,
I expect cooperativism to be the path of least resistance, meaning that
capitalism will eventually adopt it as the social ills of vast wealth
inequality become unpalatable and we seek a peaceful reconciliation (as
opposed to an uprising like the French Revolution).

To answer your original question: the endgame here is that our union (the
United States was originally a union after all) becomes a conglomerate of
cooperatives, and eventually a cooperative itself. So a person could join a
co-op and earn $40,000 above and beyond their state-provided basic income of
$40,000. But since wealth inequality already takes a larger share of income
than most people earn, I think we’ll find that people migrate toward a
renaissance in leisure. After all, if wages had kept up with inflation, the
minimum wage would be $22/hr today, and the median income would be twice as
much, or about $80,000. That’s more than most people need to live on, so we’d
see a lot of 4 day work weeks, 6 hour work days, 2 months off a year, and
people investing half their income and retiring at 30 anyway (essentially a
private basic income as opposed to a public one). That was supposed to be the
American dream, but we’ve been swindled out of it by 30 years of trickle down
economics. If this seems inflammatory, well, it is, and you’ll notice that you
never hear about this on the mainstream media. Please check my figures. I
stand by this premise and highly recommend learning about progressivism and
the history of labor since the Gilded Age, and the various ways in which the
country has backpedaled with things like the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, which
lowered regulations on wall street and led to the Dot Bomb, the Housing Bubble
and the Great Recession.

~~~
innguest
Your seeing money as a measure of inefficiency is based on flawed premises,
notwithstanding your pre-emptive "in a lot of ways" self-cut slack.

Money is just another product, and in that sense it isn't special. People sell
their money for goods and services when they deem it profitable to them. For
instance, I could build my own house, but the time required to learn and then
build it is more than the time it takes me to trade my (preferred) labor for
money, then use that money to trade for a housemaker's (preferred) labor,
because people are better (ie. more efficient) at what they prefer to do. The
housemaker accepts to trade their labor for money because they also want
things for which it is more profitable for the housemaker to build a house for
money and then trade that money for what they want. The process of trading
something with someone else for something you prefer results in what we call
profit.

This also means when you say "moneyless transactions like BitCoin", you're
mistaken; bitcoin is money. Money is any product for which there is a large
enough network of people willing to accept that product as payment for labor.
So the rise of BitCoin won't decrease the exchange rate of money, because
BitCoin will become money by definition, since it will be used by people to
arbitrage their time in a profitable way as explained in the previous
paragraph.

Then you say wealth will increase because machines can make things. But the
more you have of something, the more its value goes down. This is supply and
demand. So you don't get automatic wealth just because machines can produce,
for instance, a bunch of tires, and a bunch of cars, if there's not enough
people wanting those cars with tires to self-drive them around. That means
customers will assign less value to tires and cars, as the overabundance of
tires and cars drive their own prices down.

I haven't heard of WinCo, but if you're saying they're more profitable than
Walmart, then I should hope they drive Walmart out of business. I have no
hatred for Walmart, mind you; but I do have a love for better things, and
charging cheaper prices than competitors while making more money seems to me
like a win-win for everyone involved. If WinCo's business model really works,
and yet it hasn't displaced Walmart, and assuming what you say is true, then
I'm lead to believe other forces (likely regulatory) are keeping this outcome
from being brought about. I'd appreciate if you could educate me as to why
WinCo stores aren't popping up everywhere and displacing Walmart (or maybe
they are and I'm ignorant).

I'm still having trouble understanding how you got so quickly to the
conclusion that "the solution that I see is to raise taxes". I also find it
weird that you say things like "the community makes nothing other than taxes".
The community is constituted of people. People can make money by selling their
labor. Why do they expect Valve to work for them? I'm confused.

Also when you talk about US's high tax rates (70-90%) in its highest growth
decades (1950s and 60s), you should make sure to mention that they also had
more loopholes than we have today, which means in effect that companies in
general were paying nowhere near the official tax rate in taxes (they were
paying around 30%). See [1] for a page with links to the studies. This is one
of the most common economics history fallacy floating around today.

Your analysis of spreading over GDP to the population don't take into account
the change effect; that once you do that, people's behaviors change
unexpectedly in a way that you can't guarantee that the GDP will remain
anywhere close to what it is. Numbers look into the past, not the future. The
GDP now only means how much was produced given the variables in place. If the
variables were different (eg. more income distribution) then the outcome would
be different (either more or less, or the same for different reasons). But
because Economics fails to produce falsifiable and reproducible theories, we
can never know for sure. With that in mind, number gymnastics as you do it is
baseless.

[1] - [http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/21/krugmans-twinkie-
defense/](http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/21/krugmans-twinkie-defense/)

~~~
zackmorris
You make a lot of valid points and I’m not trying to argue against them,
because they do apply to today’s world. My main concern though is:

 _But the more you have of something, the more its value goes down. This is
supply and demand._

This is the foundation of modern economics, but remarkably it isn’t true. A
carrot is always worth the value of a carrot. Maybe we assign it a monetary
value based on scarcity, but I’m talking about the intrinsic value of stuff.
We make more and more stuff every year, but the average US citizen is not
seeing his or her wealth increase. The stuff is being hoarded in the hands of
a select few, which is the end result of free market capitalism if it isn’t
regulated to provide a fair playing field. This bothers progressives to no
end, but I think libertarians rather enjoy that outcome.

I don’t think the two ideologies will ever find common ground, so I’ve been
trying to look beyond all of this and find a path to a Star Trek economy.
We’re approaching full automation within 1 or 2 decades, and the singularity
no later than 3 or 4 (barring a global disaster or political interference).
Already today the US has perhaps 2-3 times more stuff than it needs. More
empty houses than homeless, for example. The cost of food is inverted, so that
resource-intensive products like meat cost less than vegetables. Automobiles
have an arbitrary value, depreciating 50% as they’re driven off a lot. We
basically waste more than most of the rest of the planet earns. We can analyze
the reasons behind this to no end, meanwhile 6 billion people are living a
subsistence lifestyle that would be like slavery to us.

Anyway, I don’t see WinCo ever toppling Walmart. It has more to do with
regulatory capture and monopoly than quality of service though. WinCo has a
rather narrow niche and isn’t willing to do the strong-arming to have a
presence in every city. They aren’t trying to maximize profits either. But I
do think employee ownership is the next big thing. The costs to form a
business are lower than ever, and the great failure of banks to provide seed
capital has caused attention to turn to pulling ourselves up by our
bootstraps. We just don’t need bosses anymore, or venture capital for that
matter, which means we don’t need investors or the burden of paying dividends.

But it worries me that all of this emphasis on self-actualization is promoting
selfishness. The “I’ve got mine” mentality is reminiscent of the Michael
Douglas Wall Street days and I find it distasteful. I don’t trust the majority
of people who’ve made it to do the right thing and give something back to the
community that got them there. So I prefer to leave it in the hands of the
people and just vote for increased pay by raising taxes. We could double taxes
tomorrow and pass a moratorium on government spending and raise everyone’s
income by $10,000 ($3 trillion divided by 300 million citizens) as a basic
income. In other words, most people would see an increase in income if taxes
were raised. This is counterintuitive, but what happened from roughly 1940 to
1980. Unfortunately a basic income was not in the picture, so most of the
wealth created was in the form of public works. Now those roads, bridges, dams
etc are crumbling because we’ve slashed government spending to unsustainable
levels.

I’ve heard all of the arguments about how if we give everyone more money,
inflation goes up. That turns out to be one of the great fallacies of all time
and an easy way to get people to vote against their own self-interest. I
worked at a business that charged $99/hr and paid the employees $15/hr.
Doubling everyone’s pay is more likely to mean taking $15 per employee out of
the boss’s pocket than doubling prices. This appears to be true across the
board in most industries today (wages as a percentage of business overhead are
lower than ever), and is an impetus behind the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Well, this has become completely political now and I’m probably just spinning
my wheels here. Paul Krugman is probably as divisive as, say, Milton Friedman,
so I would recommend to anyone reading this far to look at the writings of
someone like Noam Chomsky as a litmus test. If we’re talking about the future,
then it’s going to be more productive to think at a meta-level. There are very
basic measures of unfairness and prosperity that even a child can understand,
and I think he does a good job of exploring policy ramifications through
reductionism. I don’t think either liberalism or conservatism are compatible
with a post-scarcity future.

------
krmtl
What to do when the connection to the remote driver is broken?

------
DanielBMarkham
I wish the author the best in navigating this quagmire. Economics always
struck me as political wonks arguing policy using calculus instead of
rhetoric.

That said, this looks like a reply to Slate's recent article:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/google_self_driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.single.html)

What I immediately thought on reading the headline, without realizing we were
diving into "robots are taking our jobs!" was this: how about people sitting
at home driving our cars for us? If the packet was dropped or latency got
high, the car would slow/stop/switch-to-auto-cruise. Badda boom, badda bing,
you have the best of both worlds.

And it gets better. Since you're using real humans to drive, you can take the
sensor input and match it up with the real-world driving patterns to try to
tease out some edge case behaviors. It'd be like Uber with your own car.

~~~
peterjancelis
I like my human driver to share the incentive with me that a crash can have
fatal consequences.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
A reasonable impulse. Yet I have the feeling that an expert driver with some
emotional distance from the situation may do better than me in an emergency.

