That's kind of the point - government services are (should be) to the benefit of society as a whole, and since we all live together in society, we all reap the benefits even when it isn't immediately obvious. People without children may complain their taxes fund schools - but those schools allow them to live in a society where even the poor are educated enough to have decent prospects (instead of falling to desperation and crime), where employers can expect a decently educated workforce, etc. Even if you're a rich man driving a private limo everywhere (in the strict, immediate sense a non-user of public transport), public transportation reduces traffic for you, reduces pollution for you, and ensures that the poors who shine your $1000 shoes can get from home to their shoeshine stations.

That cost would come out in the wash. You conservatives and libertarians love to claim any rise in the minimum wage will translate to an equivalent rise in prices - as if a 25% wage increase would mean a 25% increase in prices. Anyone with half a brain knows this is bullshit FUD, because wages are only a fraction of a product's price. Raising Walmart employees' wages to $12.50/hr would result in price increases of 1.1% (or $12 per year for the average shopper). I'm pretty damn sure the bottom third would love to trade 1.1% higher pieces for a >1.1% wage increase.

What an idiotic statement. Was hatred of Standard Oil irrational? Allowing a monopoly to control a market has the potential to be efficient (at least in the short term) but ultimately consumers lose when choice and competition disappear.

Hey! I want my transporters, warp drives, and a galaxy full of humans-with-extra-bumps-embodying-a-particular-stereotype, and I want these things NOW!

Trusting strangers for help isn't remotely dangerous. 99.99% of people will do nothing to harm a random child (do you really think there's a pedophile on every street corner waiting for his opportunity to abduct a kid? Muggers ready to steal the large amounts of cash children carry?). But regardless all that, if we ignore that the majority of such situations will be short local rides (replacing that walking or biking to school/friend's house with an autonomous ride) any parent who sends their kid on a 3 hour drive somewhere alone should only do so if they know the child has the maturity level and experience to handle it, which is no different than the current situation of sending their kid alone anywhere on foot, on bike, or on public transport. And it's easy for a patent to ensure the kid has a way to communicate in case of a problem (cell phones are cheap, and I doubt any automated cars won't have a cell/data link). People used to let their kids roam all over town on their bikes without half the safety that modern technology and automated systems provide, and society did not collapse. If you don't trust your kid to handle it, don't send them.

If you're afraid of getting hit by automated cars, it's by definition irrelevant whether there's a kid in them or not - the kid isn't driving. Your statement as useful and relevant as saying you'd rather be hit by a kid on a bike than by a car driven by his dad.

I'm confused, because you brought up distance but you haven't explained why distance is relevant at all (we were discussing a kid getting into an accident without parents around... And even outside of that I don't see what it is relevant to).

Did you think we were discussing all the automated cars on the road right at this moment?

This is absurd. There is no 'fixing' the human. Driving was already incredibly risky before cellphones (humans are 'proven' to drive terribly, I mean really? Google's automated cars already have a far better record than the average human and the technology is still in its infancy). Humans do not have 360 degree vision or the mental capacity to focus specific attention on dozens of details and separately moving trajectories simultaneously - even if they ARE paying 100% of their attention to the road (which is obviously grossly optimistic).

What if the computer can't tell the difference between a bag and a rock? Then it assumes the highest-risk possibility and takes the appropriate mitigation action with reflexes so quick that it has probably begun before the meatbag in the car even takes note of the bag.

What happens when the perfect driver is checking his side view or rear view mirror right at the moment the rock rolls into the lane in front of him?

Automated systems are never going to be perfect, but I see no reason they can't be far, far more safe than a system guided by a human being.

We already allow kids alone on the streets on foot and on bicycles at parental discretion. As you say, a proper automated vehicle will be safer than a car piloted by an adult human, so it will be far, far safer than a bicycle piloted by a child. I don't see how there's even a question.

How old does a kid have to be before they can walk to school on their own? How would it be any different in an autonomous car? Leave it up to the parents to determine the independence/maturity level of their own children.

Given that least year's model sold out by June and they didn't raise the price at all between then and this year's model, I suspect you're wrong.

Pushing hard to increase demand and manufacturing is only one step. Another is to subsidize where necessary - ensuring the current tax credits continue (and hopefully making them a point-of-sale rebate) and considering making ZEV purchases sales-tax-free if necessary. There are a half dozen others. The governor's ZEV plan is two seconds of googling away: http://opr.ca.gov/docs/Governo...

No, he's saying the sunk costs must be a much larger than usual (in his words, "huge") portion of the cost of the vehicle. For a completely new power train and with limited production, that's not surprising. But it is interesting to point out, because as the proportion of the sunk costs rises, the statement "I can't keep selling because we're taking X loss" moves from true, to misleading, to an outright lie. Unfortunately without knowing the actual numbers we can't actually know where on the spectrum it is (my own gut feeling puts it in 'misleading' territory).

Edit (wish I could!): I forgot about closing the original document, which does add a step 4. Silly thing to forget, since that's the main reason I use Save As instead of Duplicate. I can only imagine some UI engineer thought this extra step would help dumb people realize they're making a second copy of their document (as opposed to renaming/moving it).