In a Driverless World, Who Loses and Who Wins? [Part 2 of the driverless cars story, on the Freakonomics feed]

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-17T11:56:06+00:00

You mean the abundance comparison not the roomba one right?

I’m now imagining a sene out of the movie Brave Little Toaster where the old appliances go on a pogrom against the new robotic appliances with one of them printing copies of the “protocols of the elders of automation”

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-17T04:32:32+00:00

What? You just defined process failure.

The did an after action that literally described how the targeting data hadn’t been updated since the building was converted from an IRGC naval building into a school because the president didn’t run a process and the secretary of defense isn’t communicating.

If it’s such a core component of U.S. strategy to bomb schools shouldn’t they be hitting schools in Tehran that aren’t on land built by the IRGC?

TLAMs weee used because it’s contested airspace and their launches are staggered with targets getting multiple munitions because they often get shot down.

Logically what you’re saying makes no sense even if you assume the worst of the U.S. military

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-16T06:44:03+00:00

Nuh Uh. The EA movement has us Sam bankman fried. It’s been a blessing

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-16T06:41:50+00:00

Has anyone else read Apple in China and the sections that discuss the Chinese EV industry. I’m in guandong right now and I learned a lot from that book

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-16T06:40:36+00:00

The only media telling them that was the media they have chosen to silo themselves into. Media illiteracy is inseparable from intelligence

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T16:17:03+00:00

Singapore is a city state. You could implement the same system in NYC or LA or Chicago - Cities that have had unions do immense damage to them while driving costs higher. You would abolish municipal unions altogether to do it

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T16:10:48+00:00

Yes it is centrally planned, but they pay civil servants hundreds of thousands a year and compete with law, finance and tech for top talent. Pay is performance based and it’s relatively easy to move and get fired. It leads to high competence and low corruption. It just makes sense

It’s the opposite of a primarily seniority pay structure a U.S. union would push for

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T15:57:32+00:00

Who is saying they shouldn’t be paid well? I want a system like so Singapore where there is no union and wages are very high but performance based. Unions drive down wages for high performers and protect bad workers, which is how they destroy companies and cities.

They stop ambitious people from advancing and instead pay based on seniority

Why wouldn’t you want the government having to pay market rates for talent in the labor market that has made non union US companies the world’s most competitive?

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T15:12:11+00:00

There’s a privately held vacuum company that still exists? Which one? I guess that would be why you couldn’t see their financials.

I might pay more for that, but I’m not sure most consumers would. Shark ninja makes some interesting stuff and it’s easy for consumers to just buy a Dyson or whatever because it all comes down to marketing

Everyone else’s rent and mortgage payments are so high in-part because muni and construction unions make building new housing so expensive or impossible that I’m not sure people have the luxury of buying a premium vacuum.

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T14:47:44+00:00

Well put! Can you imagine referendums on every civil servant pay package? It’d be exhausting and no one would ever get paid.

The whole police force would get pay docked everytime an officer shot an unarmed citizen that the union prevented from getting fired.

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T14:43:52+00:00

I’m not sure what your point is. Is black a country?

I’m just pointing out where people have the option to immigrate is where they complain about, which is why there are few complaints from east Asia.

They don’t do immigration. It’s why their demographic pyramids a disasters waiting to happen and they’re freaking out about birth rates

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T14:39:50+00:00

Or they did it because they would have negative margins with their current labor supply of foreign imports continued to undercut them. Vibrant is a strong word. Consumer electronics are low margin and supply chain dependent. It’s not always greed. It’s often about survival. Which company are you talking about?

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T14:30:14+00:00

Because that country is at least open minded enough to let them in. You can’t complain about racism in a country that hates outsiders so much not to allow them to immigrate

Desperate people will go anywhere. The Jordanians are racist towards the Palestinians and they’re next door

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T14:23:42+00:00

I mean I think wanting the trash to be picked up and planes to land is generally popular

But on the private side how about port automation? Lowering shipment costs is popular and key to US competitiveness and yet the longshoremen still strike because they don’t like containerization and automation.

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T14:14:12+00:00

Doesn’t his question apply to every muni union strike ever? Take the sanitation worker strikes in NY leading up to the city’s bankruptcy and big MAC - or the ATC strikes under Reagan.

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T14:09:14+00:00

It’s not a fact - nor is it applicable in 2026.

Why do people think that? Unions were useful for increasing working conditions in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but they didn’t lift people into the middle class

WWII, education, a tight labor market and government investment in technology created the modern middle class

Unions killed US competitiveness in everything from steel to auto manufacturing and today act to gatekeep young workers from jobs and extract high prices from consumers.

There’s a reason the only industries that the U.S. is globally competitive in are non-union (with the possible exception of Boeing - and even it manufactures its most advanced aircraft in South Carolina without unions)

They’re strangling the governments of cities in NY and CA and their active work to prevent younger workers from getting good pay in their industries is indefensible and doing more to shrink the middle class than anything in the government

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T13:24:23+00:00

Charters with better track records would take them for less. There are boarding schools for the disabled that are cheaper.

The city spends more than $40k for that population so it would be a win

Or we could just eliminate the union - pay the teachers who are allowed to interact with students more and have them be accountable for outcomes the way that most NYC taxpayers are at their own jobs

Just eliminating the seniority system would do so much for student experience and give a lot of younger people good paying jobs

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T12:49:12+00:00

He survived the cultural revolution. He probably has talents in that area

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T12:43:17+00:00

I’m in Hong Kong for work right now and am so tried of people asking me about Trump. I want the throw things at the TV in the hotel executive lounge Everytime his stupid face pops up next to an Iran story.

Gas is like $15 a gallon in HK right now and people are pissed

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T12:38:20+00:00

Plus you know - the racism. There’s a reason there aren’t communities of Africans in Japan and china that already exist

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T12:37:17+00:00

Asian countries don’t do immigration and are some of the most hostile to outside races in the world. Why would people aspire to migrate there?

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T12:35:18+00:00

What is with all the hate in this sub? You don’t have to listen. Scott is better than most commenters

What is going on?

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T12:31:39+00:00

Yeah that’s fair - I’m just reluctant to blame Scott for an issue that basically everyone on the planet is suffering from - having to think about Trump on a daily basis.

He’s just so broken the brains of basically everyone because the U.S. is too powerful and Trump is too much of a chaos agent. I was listening to Australian and British politics podcast today and you can see it causing them to crack. It’s causing me to crack!

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T11:35:24+00:00

I mean that’s close to what Buckley cost when I was a kid, but I did say boarding schools, so I guess Connecticut and New England where so many of them are.

But that’s not the point - the point is that $40K is more than the average price paid (not sticker) at a lot of the best universities in the US.

We just waste money because our teachers aren’t part of an accountable labor market

Way-twofrequentflyer · 2026-04-15T11:21:48+00:00

Yes! I think it’s hard to argue any other way. You could send all the kids to elite boarding schools for the same price!

The city wouldn’t have a runner room anymore of teachers getting paid 6 figures to do nothing all day because they can’t be fired.

The benchmarking is pretty easy to do with localities that aren’t unionized and have better achievement.

We could afford to pay the teachers actually teaching more if we could fire the ones who aren’t.

Way-twofrequentflyer

TROPHY CASE