I think it starts with the idea that one knows best usually combined with a ridiculously oversimplified model of how things work.

Why would I be predicting that? To claim that die-offs are necessary for prosperity is in my view a non sequitur, another sort of fallacy.

Correlation doesn't imply causation. And really, die offs are associated in Chinese history with chaotic periods which don't have prosperity.

That's a lot of vague talk. What are "many people"? What are "screw ups"? And what is "better" versus "lot worse"?

There we go. With a "short time" being anywhere from a short time to a very long time.

For the OECD, it's 35% (from countries like Mexico and Estonia) to 70% of the US's spending per GDP (France and Netherlands). It's considerably better than the absolute worst, but it's still a big and growing problem.

Or you can have both or neither. There are four states after all, depending on which bits you set. Note here that by definition, democratic republics decide a number of things by collective agreement.

And I'm sure there's some dumbshit in your country that I'd rather have running things.

My view is that the US has better things to do with itself than to heavily subsidize Chinese solar power manufacturers.

It could be a bit better I suppose. But really, what is stable about the current public spending schemes? There isn't a stable public pension fund out there in the developed world, for example. Medical care takes an increasing portion of the developed world's economies. Businesses become more and more risk clueless due to (often highly profitable) government nannying.

We all have mental reaction times measured in microseconds. As I understand it, the current expectation is that you can react to an accident in about half a second, which is only a half million microseconds. That's quite ample for vehicle control as we demonstrate every day.

And why wouldn't we continue to insure humans? It's far riskier now to insure people, what changes to make insurance not viable?

And there are the customers who will switch at the drop of a hat to a cheaper or better product. It's not one way.

All it takes is one state. And why would human drivers become uninsurable while automatic drivers somehow wouldn't? I'm sensing some ill-thought top-down behavior modification going on here.

We don't live in a deterministic world. It's not even a matter as sodul stated of being human. Having said that, it wouldn't be that hard to put in a standard package of items in such a vehicle (umbrellas, toothbrushes, toys, etc) and automatically bill the riders for any items they use or take. In fact, that's almost a no-brainer due to the profit potential.

There are several things to note about this alleged failure of markets to cater to niches. First, it doesn't happen in the real world. For example, in the auto world, there are plenty of niche automakers and not all of them make ludicrously expensive cars. And if there is a large unmet need, then there's a natural way via the usual manufacturing process to scale a niche automaker to mass production automakers. Most of the brand names in the industry that are more than a few decades old were originally businesses of this sort that underwent that very same transition.

Second, it's worth remembering here that there have long been substantial non-market obstacles to automakers. For example, in the US you have to destroy a few cars in order for them to be determined to be road-worthy.

Third, don't forget the used auto market. After all, we still see Model Ts on the road in the US. Old cars don't magically disappear. And the huge number of self-driving cars will lead to a vast used car market for these vehicles. It wouldn't be that hard to refurbish such a car, especially one which already has the capability in some form, to be human-drivable.

Fourth, don't forget the car manufacturers. By your numbers alone, we have the regular car market dropping to 2% of the current market, while the bitter clingers will be 5% of the current market. Guess which market is still two and a half times as large as the other by vehicle count? And as far as profits go, that larger, human-driver market will tend to be more profitable per vehicle since it has "options" (high profit add-ons like seat warming or fancy paint coatings). A lot of these businesses might go out of business due to the large reduction in market size (of roughly a factor of 15 by your numbers), but not everyone will. And the human-driver market is still bigger than the other both by number of vehicles and profit per vehicle.

I think we have an example right here with your flake out. It's not about my libertarian leanings or your willful ignorance of economics and history, but the fact that globally, we have been getting wealthier and better off. There are a number of ways we could screw that up and I think Ayn Rand, for all her flaws, did manage to find a few of the dysfunctional ways.

I already have noted that transportation is cheap enough that we routinely move enough people, just in the US, to keep up with sea level rise.

And the obvious rebuttal here is that we already know what happens because we see greater levels of migration today than would be imposed by climate change alone.

No, just pointing out the obvious.