Then why did you fail to mention them in your argument that automated trucks would cost more than the drivers? If you know the drivers cost more than $50,000 a year, then you should acknowledge that lest we think the rest of what you said is equally, er, unburdened with valid facts.
I think I recall that you drive an Acura that’s less than 15 years old. Nice car. I’ve got one myself.
What’s your yearly IT bill for it? Because a 3rd gen TL has more lines of computer code controlling it than an F-22 Raptor fighter plane, and by your logic you should be paying so much maintenance money on it just to keep the computers going that keeping a Veyron on the road would look cheap by comparison.
In short, like @MikeInNH said, we don’t need legions of computer techs to maintain systems anymore. There are very few cars with computer systems that require any sort of IT professionals to maintain it (and that number shrinks to nearly, if not zero if you eliminate military vehicles and supersonic land speed cars). Self-driving cars aren’t going to be any more maintenance-intensive from an IT standpoint than normal cars. It’s gonna be computer hardware, and lines of code, just like we have now, only more powerful.
OK, whatever you say but excuse me if I wait for the final figures to come in. It’s kind of interesting that Minnesota paid $93 million to develop a new license system and need at least another $10 million to make it work. I understand that’s a small sum for major development work but there will also be an annual maintenance/upkeep/update cost not yet to be determined. This is not the first multi-million dollar flop I have seen.
Back to driving. In this town we have multiple churches, social services, United Fund, and so on. But when a family traveling through is discovered by the Police to be out of gas, out of food, out of lodging, and out of luck, the police give them a chit from the Salvation Army for emergency gas, food, and lodging. Its the only organization that does this-and nation-wide. I suggest you check your self-important claims of bigotry and acknowledge good that is done even if you don’t agree with all of their religious beliefs. In this country we accept folks with various religious beliefs without condemnation-so who is bigoted? Geez, I’ve got relatives who won’t eat ham or borrow money because of their religion but it doesn’t bother me at all.
Not to get off the track again, but there is a new book out dealing with how friends and family members of politicians have made millions and even billions knowing what the politicians will be doing or using their relationship with politicians. So as an industry is decimated through decisions or regulations, their friends and family pick off the businesses and sell again on the rebound. After trips to China and other countries sons happen to get billion dollar banking and investment deals. All generally legal but very disturbing. Both sides of the aisle and never reported by the media. Fire them all. I can only read a chapter at a time and there are pages of footnotes for reference.
Yes, it would be very interesting to know who was buying the decimated auto stocks and what ties they had to Congress and the Executive Office. Lots of times its hidden behind investment houses though. There is a whole lot of clean up in aisle five to be done.
Do you recall the Savings and Loan debacle? An in-law of mine had worked for a bank here in Mississippi for 30 years but had some political connections who put him in the federal clean up and when the dust settled he and some of his banking friends road home in 1st class to new homes on the Gulf Coast where they spent their days playing golf and their nights counting $100 bills.
Yep remember that. I want people squeaky clean and I don’t care what side of the aisle they are on or what business they are in. Same kinda crap went on with the great farm crisis in the midwest with bankers rubbing their hands with glee to get ahold of valuable foreclosed land. People shot themselves over that. I remember one desperate guy in the town where our cabin is got his tractor stuck in the heavy spring mud. He tried pulling it out with a dozer but pulled it in half. Gave up and went home and shot himself. Something wrong with people that try to take advantage of other people. People risked all that they had to try and make it one more year and some never did.
That farm rip-off went so deep so fast that that it cleaned out the accumulated wealth of farm families that went back generations in my neck of the woods. The ones worst hit were the young sons who wanted to get their parents farms back up and running profitably. The government promised them if they planted every acre from ditch bank to hillside there would be a market for their crops. A great many men my age financed new equipment and leased additional acres then the market went flat and everyone from the John Deere dealer to the Co-op and fuel distributor were left on the hook as the price of beans hit the bottom. Families lost their lifelong homes and everything they owned. A local bank VP spent 2 years in prison for some deals he pulled under the table and when the 2 years were up he came out and was a multi-millionaire in a few months.
Who bought the GM stock? The GM stock was made worthless in The bankruptcy and government bailout. The banks, unions, the feds and the stockholders sat down at the table and the feds got repaid , the banks got partially repaid, the unions came away with pension and health insurance money and the stockholders got nothing. Their shares were made worthless and today’s stock in GM has nothing to do with the old. GM stabbed it’s own salaried employees in the back and took away the health insurance they had promised them in retirement. The union employees kept retirement health insurance in a slightly reduced form.
But how are those who were on the old GM board of directors doing now? Maybe they emptied their portfolios before the bottom fell out or pulled some of the technical trades that turn loosing into winning for insiders. I can’t imagine that anyone on the old GM board went on food stamps when the court closed their books.
Yes, that’s great proof that capitalism is pretty good at providing consumer goods. It’s a shame capitalists can’t be trusted to run the prisons and provide other public services like healthcare without abusing their authority.
I bite my tongue but the kids that think other forms of economics are so great should talk to some of the folks in Eastern Europe that lived under communism and then were freed. Ya get a whole new view of how good we have it. Or take a look a the failures in Nicaragua and other S American countries to see how well socialism works for the public benefit. We have a right here to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which builds individualism and equal opportunity not necessarily equal outcomes.
I listened to a local Poli Sci college professor last night that had just returned from a trip to Lithuania. Knowing his background, the bells in his head never actually went off when he reported two things about the people he encountered. The first was they are very concerned about Russia trying to invade and have troops on the border and hoping NATO will remain strong. Then he said that weapons are pretty much non-existent there. Hello? Precisely why we have the constitution we do.
I don’t think anyone is advocating for communism. At most, I am advocating socialism for things that fit it best, such as healthcare and other market failures, such as federal prisons where there is a conflict of interest. I also advocate for capitalism for things it works well for, like garbage collection, electric power, cars, jeans, vegetables, and other consumer goods. I have conflicting views on whether mass transportation should be run publicly or privately. In the city where I live, the buses are run by the city, and they don’t charge a fare. It works pretty well.
Comparing capitalism to communism is a lazy way to change the subject when people are comparing capitalism to democratic socialism.
Politics these days is all about extremes and the sensible people are being sucked into one side or the other over the emotional issues. It’s a real shame that good sense is overwhelmed by extremist rhetoric from both sides.
Your point? You’re still thinking of capitalism applied to a system in which humans are compensated for work. Machines don’t care about money. Capitalism isn’t going to encourage the machines to be more efficient, or to make better products. And if the machines are doing most of the jobs, capitalism is going to be a detriment to the humans, because capitalism kind of relies on people being able to do work in exchange for money. If there’s no work, capitalism breaks down.
They got bonuses on the eve of bankruptcy. Many of the people who got wiped out were employees who bought GM stock to fund a better life for their retirement. The GM pensions sounded good because they could retire early with a decent pension but when they reached 62 their pension dropped by the amount of social security the could get at 62, even if they didn’t yake it at 62.
Can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.