Hacker News Reader

Comment by cevans01 | Hacker News Reader

Flying cars are interesting because they have the potential to partially make obsolete the natural monopoly of roads. Governments are heavily involved in natural monopolies (possibly for good reason) but I worry that that involvement may crowd out innovative private organizations that would otherwise have the incentive to bypass the natural monopoly. I wonder what other innovations are being stifled in the same way.

As far as flying cars go, they sure are loud. But cars are fairly noisy as well -- in cities the roads are often very close to apartment buildings.

View on HN

You run into the natural monopoly of airspace instead.

There's more room up there, but owners of the land beneath and users of other aircraft alike have a vested interest in the skies not being a free-for-all, and sure enough it's government agencies stepping into the air traffic control and regulation breach.

That’s pretty hard if traffic is not confined to roads and journeys don’t need to start at an airport.

Natural monopolies are physical monopolies. There's literally only so much room on the Earth's surface. So to the extent that anything is being stifled here, it's because two objects can't occupy the same space at once, not because governments have anything to do with it.

And the challenges airplanes face are very physical as well. It's not really the government's fault if no one proves ever capable of making flying cars safe enough for the airspace above cities to be full of them. At some point it's just an intractable engineering challenge and the limits of human ability.

Personally, I'm doubtful that flying cars will ever be a reality in our lifetime, but the only possible way I envision them ever working is if they're 100% autonomous and owned and operated as a fleet.

> But cars are fairly noisy as well -- in cities the roads are often very close to apartment buildings.

And that’s an actual issue that should be addressed (electric cars are awesome on this point, you also have different road material that can absorb more sound).

Adding more noisy vehicles is making the situation worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com