His education is as useless as a Women's Studies degree.

Obviously writing doesn't pay him much, or he wouldn't be advocating bankruptcy as a debt solution.

If you can afford rent, you can afford a mortgage. Hell, mortgages can be cheaper - it would cost over 200\mo more to rent my house than it costs to buy it.

Until they do, anyway.

Like cell phone carriers.

I would personally love to be the guy that takes that call:

"sir, you realize if we put an IR filter in, your night vision cameras won't have night vision anymore, right?"

Which is why the IR LED trick only works on cameras with night vision.

Here in Missouri we have "you fuck up, you pay," since the way we see it, it would be bullshit to expect society to cover the costs of individual negligence.

I do like the idea of everyone who actually uses the roads paying for medical expenses, though. if nothing else it's something to throw back at the dickhead cyclists who brag about using the roads without having to pay for their maintenance.

So in other words. giving every passenger a cudgel on the way to their seat and locking the damned cabin door would be a cheaper, more effective means of on-plane security.

Well, to be fair, it's not like they're edited before hitting the front page.

If I can build a rudimentary 3D scanner with decent resolution out of a cheap laser pointer, a wine glass, and a 480px resolution webcam, surely a fleet of expensive drones sporting modern, HD cameras could do the same thing a few orders of magnitude more efficiently.

Outside of weather causing damage to the external sensors, I don't really see why it would be hard to deal with from a programming standpoint. The proper way to deal with, say, hydroplaning (ease off throttle, do not apply brake, downshift if necessary), or skidding on ice (pretty much the same as hydroplaning, with the additional step of 'pray to the deity of your choosing'), is fairly consistent.

My brother did exactly that with credit card debt when he was 18-20, which is why he's almost 35 and just now able to apply for his first home loan.

If the government would be more reasonable about the repayment terms, I'd be OK with owing it for life.

I presume you've never filed bankruptcy.

FYI, payday loans and pawn tickets are not technically credit, in the sense that they don't go on your credit report.

That's not the same thing as "no-fault."

"no-fault" implies that regardless of how the collision occurred, everyone pays for their own stuff. Like in parking lots.

See, that works in parking lots because it's often hard to determine who screwed up, especially considering how poorly some lots are marked.

It does not work that way on public streets, for lots of reasons. Namely because innocent parties who are harmed by the negligence of others shouldn't, per our legal system, be required to bear the burden of that other person's mistake.

A "no-fault" world would mean that if you were crossing an intersection and got t-boned by a drunk driver who failed to stop at the red light, your family would pay for your medical expenses, funeral, etc, and Drunk Moron would only have to pay for the damage to his own vehicle.

Remember, I said "if you want to make auto-cars mandatory."

This implies that every single American household with automobiles would, within the next handful of years and pretty much simultaneously, be required to trade in their essentially worthless vehicles at a huge loss, since scrap steel is worth less than $150/ton. You, I, and everyone else with sense knows that neither auto dealers nor banks are going to be willing to purchase those now-useless, human operated vehicles for anything more than scrap value, which means my $25K+ Volkswagen would have a total trade in value of around $100, regardless of condition or mileage. How is anyone supposed to afford a brand new car with $100 of trade-in value? There's only one answer: government subsidies.

IMO, if a plan flat-out requires a taxpayer subsidy in order to function, it's a bad plan.

So... a subsidy, then.

Couldn't you have at least tried?

I appreciate the admission that while possible, that might not be a wise financial move, universally.

Another issue at hand, are there any plans for an automated pickup truck? I have large things to haul on a regular basis.