Comment by pascalxus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pascalxus | Hacker News Reader

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>>You see it in transportation. Where are the supersonic aircraft? Where are the millions of delivery drones? Where are the high speed trains, the soaring monorails, the hyperloops, and yes, the flying cars?

>Because none of this stuff is economically or physically practical. He seems to want us to live in a science fiction fantasy world.

I'm pretty sure most of that stuff is highly illegal. Make things illegal, and they don't happen. It's that simple. I mean, just look at uber: it's just a glorified taxi company that was able to circumvent the taxi monopoly medallion system (yet, another system that made competition illegal). And, it took a huge army of lobbyists just to make that legal. Such a small innovation requires so much lobbying, it doesn't give hope for any other kind of innovation.

There was a start up in the bay area: all they wanted to do was put a few more buses on the street. It was rejected very quickly and made illegal. Turns out people would rather get buses off the road with all the pollution and traffic that would have saved, rather than allow workers to get to work a little easier.

Supersonic flight is inefficient and noisy. Drones are noisy, a hazard, and significantly more limited due to lithium density than electric cars. High-speed rail is not illegal, but requires huge capital. Uber may not be economically viable, and there are serious concerns about middle-men marketplace corps socializing the liability, benefits, and wage instability costs the gig economy brings with it.

Cars are noisy, a hazard, and in some ways significantly more limited than horses.

I actually agree with all your points but also recognize there’s a strong prior bias toward what “I know” works or doesn’t today that can preclude the future possibilities.

And cars were not economically viable for the masses for most of their early development. It took decades of technological advancements to produce the distant ancestor of the modern mass-market auto-manufacturing machine.

As for drones and supersonic aircraft, we're going to need much better batteries for the former and far more efficient engines for the latter to them to be more viable than present alternatives. That's not a "what I know bias", it's in hard math and numbers.

It's like how most ships in popular sci-fi are these futuristic, oblong shapes with wondrous curves, when in fact a more realistic approach would be using rectangles for everything but a few niche applications. For anything that humans are going to walk around in/actively use rectangular structures are simply far more efficient. It was true 10,000 years ago, it'll be true 10,000 years from now assuming we're not living in Musk's simulation.

Cars would also be much less useful in the USA without the insane amount of taxpayer-funded road infrastructure and lack of alternate public transportation options. Can you imagine if the people selling cars also had to pay for the infrastructure for cars, you know, like a fair competitive market?

Much of road infrastructure is funded via fuel taxes. Roads or "roads" with track laid are also needed for public transportation.

Much of road infrastructure is funded out of general funds ([1] is one example that can be found with an Internet search).

[1] https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/regulation/gas-ta...

That example suggests a significant amount is funded out of fuel taxes and toll fees, and seems to be kind of a mouthpiece for the energy industry to try to get rid of taxes on fuel.

There are niche scenarios where a horse is more useful(e.g. rough terrain), but for 99.9% of the scenarios of modern life, a car/motor is more powerful and reliable. Horses are also noisy(clop clop clop) and have been known to trample people.

Supersonic flight was tried with the Concorde and its profitability was iffy due to large subsidies involved in its development, and the handling of BA privatization in the late 80s. There are aerodynamic constraints that make supersonic flight inefficient. Unless we magically change physics, supersonic flight is always going to be significantly less efficient than subsonic flight.

Also the quickest way to make something that is starting to become viable(electric cars), less viable, is to make it have to fly(flying drones). You now have to fight gravity 24/7.

This isn't about dismissing the future, it's about people trying to implement these ideas for the last 70 years, and some spunky "disruptor" startup isn't going to magically change the laws of physics once we "git rid of that dang regulations!"

> Make things illegal, and they don't happen.

Well, as you said yourself, Uber happened. Why? Because it's investors saw a chance to make a huge profit, and so they _wanted_ to invest in that army of lobbyists.

However those same investors do not seem so excited to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to employment security, healthcare, etc, otherwise they would have _wanted_ Uber to have its drivers be employees, w/all the legal responsibilities entailed.

Thks, could not agree more. More Uber = more pollution and unbearable traffic. Slap a 50% tax on Uber and use that money for free public transportation. In a recession maybe we'll see more people getting on an electric bus/subway. And our lungs will be feel better.

>I'm pretty sure most of that stuff is highly illegal.

We have or had in commercial use monorails, supersonic aircraft, and high speed trains. It's not the law holding them back.

Delivery drones and flying cars exist but arent economical viable and impractical. It's not the law holding them back.

The hyperloop is science fiction and the only laws holding it back are the laws of physics.

Which bus venture was it?

The devil is in the detail with these things, and I think the point is that, while regulatory capture is a huge problem, there are often legitimate and/or competing interests calling for these regulations to be put in place. Builders don't necessarily like every code they have to adhere to, but that keeps houses from collapsing.

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