Then again, all the maintenance created jobs which made the society a bit more equal. And the maintenance could be carried out by the owner if he / she was so inclined, because 'service' not about just swapping parts and using proprietary diagnostic tools; cars were much simpler too. It's even possible to get satisfaction from fixing things; see Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Of course people would mostly just accept the state of things, having no alternative really. Were people unhappier back then because they didn't have stereo sound system in their car?

Modern cars are safer for sure. But often the increased safety due to air ESC and ABS are countered by driving less safely. This is especially true for ESC, which hide the road conditions from the driver, and when the ESC then loses the ability to correct then it's game over. 6 inch nail pointing from the steering wheel might provide equal safety.

All in all I don't think it's so black and white.

Robot rebellion, possibly with nuclear weapons targeted to Sweden, comes to mind. We might very well be on thin ice with this experiment...

That problem could be solved by encrypting the photo only after a period of time; as a photographer I'm interested in the photo for about 1 minute anyway to be able to check it's not over / underexposed etc. Asynchronicity would also solve the problem of encrypting in real time.

Remember the quote from Stalin about elections? He said, and please forgive my inexactness, "The candidates on the ballot don't matter, what matters is who counts the votes." Even Stalin had elections.

It's actually: "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

Stalin has some other quotes too that fit. Scary.