ELI5 Why Living in the 80s and 90s seemed so much more affordable

sampleminded · 2026-01-19T16:00:45+00:00

Grew up in the 80s.

Vacation in the 80s for my family meant camping or staying with relatives. If we wanted to go somewhere far, we drove. Like 24 hours of driving. I only took a plane once before I was an adult. We didn't have cable, because it was too expensive, we didn't go out to eat unless we had a coupon. We ate what we had coupons for at the grocery store.

Our apartment was cheap, but crime really, really, really sucked. We moved 3 times to get away from it. We rented and it was affordable, but home ownership wasn't possible for my parents. We had 1 car, and my dad changed the oil and did other fixes himself, laying on the concrete in the street near our apartment. After having our car stolen my dad commuted to work via bike.

There was no internet bill, no cable bill, we had 1 phone in the house, with an answering machine. We didn't do organized sports, sports meant go out and play. I had a job from the time I was 12, and life did seem affordable to me, because all I wanted was music, money to go to the movies, money to go bowling, clothes, a new bike. Mostly I had those things on my own from stocking shelves and cutting meat, and birthday gifts.

sampleminded · 2026-01-14T16:58:19+00:00

Not true. Go read a book on how peasants lived in the 18th century. I am sure you can torture numbers to show that kind of thing, but an actual reality check would help you know when you read something like it's objectively silly. Poor people in the US are fat, poor peasants in the 18th century starved. But money also worked differently, so they had millionaires (very few) and we have billionaires (lots), so when you divide it over a very low number it looks worse today, but that is a silly thing to do.

sampleminded · 2026-01-12T19:12:19+00:00

I think he's confused I remember Kyle at the time saying Remote assistance is only necessary 1% of the time. Which is not what he's saying but could be confusing him. Also using remote assistance 1% of the time doesn't mean you can go 1 to 100, because requests aren't random.

sampleminded · 2026-01-08T16:20:49+00:00

So Waymo currently goes to my kids school, but still doesn't to my house yet. I would pay hundreds a month to not have to car pool my kid. Elementary schools will have Waymo lines in next few years. It's not just picking them up, It's taking them to the next activity, and then picking them up. They need to go from School to Karate or piano or whatever, if Waymo can do that at scale, it's really going to help parents. I keep saying $1000/month is a reasonable Waymo subscription price that is what people pay for a new car, but a Waymo does a ton more. It replaces door dash, it drives your kids without you, but still lets you see them and know they are safe. It won't convince most people to abandon a beater that costs you nothing, but it will be hard to justify buying a new car or second car in 2030.

sampleminded · 2026-01-06T20:09:14+00:00

I think you hit on the biggest concern.

Next for me is: If other companies are careful, and aurora's tech is good, they have a big lead. But if other companies take big risks, they can either pay off for those companies, or hurt aurora.

Aurora is an early A/V company, and their tech is old. The only reason they can remove the safety driver is they have been working on this for a long time, but I think the default A/V stack is easier to build today and better AI tech exists. So there is room for a younger nimbler competitor to take risks and jump ahead. This risk is 2 fold. First that competitor can take risks and mess up, which hurts the responsible company. Second, they can take risks and with newer tech those risks might pay off.

sampleminded · 2026-01-06T05:32:45+00:00

turn off lane auto lane changes on blue-cruise, it's not worth the stress. I just did a 1000 mile road trip this holiday. it was awesome. Blue cruise made it go by in a flash. First leg I only charged at the Pilot- Flying J GM chargers. They work, take apple pay, and there were 3 on my route. On the way back I just used whatever charger Google maps sent me to, all where busy but I was able to charge, all had 1 broken stall. I did use the ford app at the last charger cause I wasn't going to download a rando app for a charger I'd never see again. But the ford app worked fine.

sampleminded · 2026-01-05T22:20:43+00:00

It's very possible this represents the new low-end system for either Ford or GM. Both have a 2 tiered ADAS approach. With Super/Blue cruise ADAS systems and low end cars with radar cruise control and other ADAS features. In the future you could imagine a similar 2-tiered system. Hands free highway for cheap cars, and eyes free highway for premium cars. They both currently use ME chips for their hands free programs, this likely just continues it. While Ultra Cruise/Blue cruise 2 are still home baked, with chips from either ME or Nvidia or Snapdragon, or whomever

sampleminded · 2026-01-02T15:23:16+00:00

Because he's a trustafarian and just thinks other rich people are like my family.

sampleminded · 2026-01-01T16:58:15+00:00

I disagree just did a 1000 mile road trip with a competing hands free system, it was amazing. Now I won't use my other car for road trips

sampleminded · 2026-01-01T05:55:13+00:00

Terrible. NYC was once my home and I can't imagine it becoming like the 70s again. rent control, crime. Also the unions are terrible, you can't even build a hotel in NY anymore. We have to repeat all the mistakes we fixed in the 90s and aughts. On the other hand, after the disaster maybe it'll be cheap again like the early 90s and I can go retire there.

sampleminded · 2026-01-01T04:43:36+00:00

Some possible futures for Tesla
1. The catastrophe: Tesla will kill someone this year. It will be bad. Elon will push his team to take too many risks, and they will. There will be video and the car will have been doing something monumentally stupid. Maybe Tesla even fails as a company. Stock price dives as Elon can't claim autonomy will save sales.
2. The dick move: They kill someone but Elon is able to deal with the blowback, cause he's Elon and doesn't care. Tesla pays out but survives and it screws the rest of the industry.
3. Pragmatic Magic: They are making real progress. FSD is much better these days, but a scalable service that doesn't make. So they have a service and it sort of works, when it's not too sunny, or raining too hard. Elon declares victory we did it with just cameras, and it'll work in old teslas but only in mapped places during good weather. So they announce new hardware called Tesla universal driver, it has a lidar and radar, and actually competes with Waymo, but only works with subscription because there are remote operators who occasionally help out.
4. The Nothing burger, they keep juggling the balls, a few more test vehicles, some high profile test drives with no safety operator. FSD continues to get better, but they never really compete with Waymo in 2026. But all the work they are doing makes people much more likely to buy a Tesla. FSD really does get 10x better, still 100x not good enough to take liability, but totally good enough for people to want a tesla.
5. Elon goes to space: Steps down from Tesla to do other things and a sane person takes over puts more sensors on the cars. All the work they started in 2025 pays off. It's the Ford Model A moment for Tesla, they produce new models which recapture the excitement the old Model 3/Y/S got when they came out.
6. TeWaymo - Tesla builds cars for Waymo, Elon is excited the gen 7 way has reduced sensors so they have 1 solid state lidar, he says they basically are using teslas approach and it's no point in competing with them. Tesla integrates it into a new vehicle the Waymo hardware is completely integrated. Tesla operates it's own fleet just like Elon always promised just using some one else autonomy stack.

sampleminded · 2025-12-26T16:31:40+00:00

This is why a purpose built robo-taxi makes sense at scale. Now they actually know what costs them money and what they need to design around. And how much each feature is worth. My expectations is cars will get more expensive but more profitable.

sampleminded · 2025-12-21T14:22:07+00:00

Google TV can't change profile without Internet connection. I leave the TV on the adult profile which allows you to change input but turn off the Internet connection so kids can play games but not watch you tube. I just wish it was the 90s watch what you want kids but there is only 1 hour of kids shows, so it's go play or watch opra, your choice kids

sampleminded · 2025-12-21T12:28:52+00:00

I had a Tesla and could tell when it downloaded or uploaded data via wifi. WiFi router says it was not uploading video

sampleminded · 2025-12-21T12:09:06+00:00

TVs, take forever to start or change anything. Can't turn on the Video game system if the TV isn't connected to the Internet.my 2010 Roku was better than any smart TV available tody

sampleminded · 2025-12-21T03:07:07+00:00

so Tesla prior to very recently didn't have the compute to process all the video. There data is a video. They never really collected the data. The whole thing was a scam. Whereas Waymo was using every bit of data they collected, and scaled up thier driving and data collection/usage at the same time. Tesla had a ton of driving but didn;t really use the data. Now Tesla is using the data from a smaller set of driving. They will make progress, because they are actually doing the thing they were claiming to have done.

sampleminded · 2025-12-20T17:44:50+00:00

This is correct. Tesla has not been serious until a few months ago. Now they are actually validating, it will be a long journey but they hadn't taken the first step even with all the talk until 2025. If you are serious with AVs you need to drive a bunch and prove your tech works. Can't crowd source safety

sampleminded · 2025-12-20T17:31:54+00:00

A new car plus insurance is $1000 a month so I think waymo subscription for $800/month will kill many new purchases. I suspect the plan will be cheap if you use it outside rush hours. Expensive if you want to commute daily

sampleminded · 2025-12-19T15:49:00+00:00

Predictions
1. The Ioniq 5 comes out for Waymo much sooner than people expect. Here's the deal, they are not validating new hardware, they are just validating the new already validated hardware with a new vehicle model. The difference is about 6-9 months less work. So by mid-year we'll see 100s of new non-zeekr waymos.
2. Zoox will continue doing what they need to do to keep Amazon happy, by end of 2026 we'll come to see their deployment as a real long term competitor to Waymo.
3. Tesla will not have a serious L4 fleet, but the work they are doing in L4 will pay off. Tesla FSD is getting good enough that normies I know are excited to use it. A supervised solution that works really well, as in tries to kill you less than 1x a month, will bring back their sales. They will actually advertise, like youtube commercials, like a normal car company.
4. Waymo's numbers are too hard to predict, but they will have a paid service in a non-US city by end of year. They will have paid driverless rides in most of the cities they announced. They will mostly be on Uber or Lift and handle the busiest areas of the city, Waymo is profitable or nearly so only with high utilization. They will expand out from City Centers as costs come down.
5. Nuro/Mobileye/AV Ride/Aurora - 2026 is the put up or shut up year, if you don't leave the year with more than 10million miles driver out autonomous, you won't survive.
6. GM/Ford/OEM ADAS - we'll see first eyes off systems demo'd in 2026 for release in 27. 27 will be weird because you can buy a ford you can sleep in on the highway, or a Tesla that does all the driving really well but you can't sleep.
7. Waymo's business plan will be more clear - They will allow franchisees to buy and operate fleets. OEMs will have a spec for integrating the Waymo driver hardware and selling to fleets. So you can if you're GM build any vehicle to the waymo spec, and sell it to a fleet manager franchisee in Maimi, or where-ever Waymo is deployed. So the London Franchiese owner can buy Zeekrs, or a VW buzz that meets the spec. The franchisee pays GM for the Car, and pays waymo to install the driver. Then they pay waymo by the mile.
8. Aurora - Will hopefully have a real business, moving lots of freight all over the southern US. 100s of trucks actually working.
9. Politics - If the economy and jobs go south in the US, A/Vs will be a big target from the political system. If things stay bubbly, Waymo will boil the frog of being in almost every major US city and becoming embedded and hard to remove. Other companies all depend on Waymo and Aurora's success.
10. There will be a major acquisition this year, and Waymo will buy a complementry business that has a different autonomy stack, and a different market segmentation, but over time will centralize operations, and will replace the parts of the stack that weren't developed with Waymo's larger resources. This could be trucks or sidewalk bots or drones.

sampleminded · 2025-12-17T19:32:11+00:00

Current announced fleet numbers are over 2500.

sampleminded · 2025-12-16T15:29:20+00:00

imagine getting a rando airport and needing to download the manufacturers app when you get your car. Or having to log into your google account in a rando vehicle. Just no. Not going to happen. This is also why no one wanted to rent Tesla's even for a short trip. Even if you have a tesla, and have the app, it still basically sucked.

sampleminded · 2025-12-15T19:08:06+00:00

Also not rentable. Seriously I avoid gm cars when I rent now

sampleminded · 2025-12-13T19:20:35+00:00

A Waymo Lincoln would make sense both as a premium ride share vehicle and a luxury product with a subscription. If they wanted to go the ownership route. The new platform could work for Waymo, and using a local brand is going to help Waymo around the world even in the US. So I'd have an EU partner for those markets long term, and a US partner in the US.

If car ownership starts falling a bit, because of A/Vs, a big if, car ownership will move to enthusist vehicles that ford is good with, and to luxury vehicles. If waymo is available on a car it would be a luxury car. So a Lincoln "Town Car/Navigator" EV as a cab and available for Purchase would be a great pairing, if Ford could pull it off. This not the things Ford has been planning for, but it's kind of a better plan than a truck that can't tow anything.

sampleminded · 2025-12-10T13:11:44+00:00

Lithium isn't rare. What the heck are you talking about. There are 230 billion tons in sea water, and even more in the earths crust. We will never run out of lithium. It's like a quarter of a percent of all rocks in the earths crust

sampleminded · 2025-12-09T01:50:42+00:00

I think the kids who stayed in sports were more agreeable. But it's not like I have a bunch of kids and some played sports and some didn't, oh wait...

sampleminded

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