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Comment by pmiller2 | Hacker News Reader

I already commute an hour each way by public transportation. The only benefit a self-driving car could theoretically offer me is that I don't have to deal with other passengers.

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Which would be huge, at least for me. I'd love to be able to pull out my laptop and get rid of my "busywork" (e.g. emails, review daily reports, etc.), which would be a hell of a lot easier in a self driving car than, say, the BART.

Interesting subpoint here: people who are able to work remotely are going to add about an hour or perhaps a bit less to their productivity but those who cannot (let's say a hypothetical janitor/sales clerk) will not, further adding a layer of inequality to those who work with their minds versus those who work with their hands.

This is all things equal, and assuming that the advent of self-driving cars doesn't also bring a whole new economy/job market.

I wouldn't overdo the remote working. My experience is that it is terribly inefficient in my business. It's fine at small dose to help people cope with other obligation but I don't see that being the future of office work.

It depends on the person. Some people are amazingly productive while working from home (I have two such colleagues), while others (e.g. me) are clearly less productive and more easily distracted at home.

I think what you have in mind is jobs producing code. But when the job involves a lot of interactions with other employees, it becomes quite inefficient.

You can't just imagine that that change will occur to the job market and nothing else will react to it. All commuters already get a sort of averaged-out pay for their commute since they all have to make it. Rather than the market being permanently unfair, you will see over time some sort of wage adjustment occur to compensate for the work-on-commute advantage... and if I had to guess, it would be via a reduction in the wages of those who can work by the competition between the jobs that offer it as a perk with less salary vs. those that don't but have to pay more, whereas those who already must attend work will continue to be paid mostly the same.

I think this is fairly unlikely to stay a permanent source of inequality between classes of people. I also think it is very likely that people who don't notice the wage reactions will continue to complain about it indefinitely, though.

It's not like remote work is the only option with self driving cars. People can read a book, watch a movie, video chat with friends, or heck, just sleep. It would still help cut down on "wasted time" for everyone, regardless of how they choose to use it.

Yes, and the lack of an acrid urine smell in the air would be a fantastic quality of life increase.

I'd be happy to pay triple my current commute expense in return for two things:

1) A vehicle that picks me up on-demand from my home and which goes exactly where I'm headed, so I don't have to commute to and from BART.

2) A vehicle populated only by other paying customers, with a mechanism to eject bad actors from the system.

Or extra stops. Or aligning your schedule to the shared vehicles schedule.

I'm sure you can imagine other benefits. Flexibility for example.

Meh. I drive little enough that even factoring in non-commute driving, I still wouldn't get much extra flexibility from an autonomous vehicle.

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