Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

iTulip was around during tech bubble 1.0, and I recall many discussions here then that sounded like this.
I recall EJ talking about the amercan method. We identify a promising tech, like railroads or radio. Investers rush in and create a speculative mania, and most investers lose all their money ending up with nothing but worthless stock certificates for bankrupt railroad companies.

But the railroads were in fact built and built quickly, without waiting to understand exactly how they would be used by society or how they could make some money for the owners.
The discussion back then seemed to agree that the swift build-out of new technology was worth the widespread misery and ruin heaped upon the masses of failed investors.

Hucksters and con-artists inevitably join in the fray, and suckers are always duped. In 1881 the Detroit Free Press said "A mine is a hole in the ground. The discoverer of it is a natural liar. The hole in the ground and the liar combine and issue shares and trap fools." Silicon Valley tech schemes work better now but Theranos amounts to the same thing.

[Techdread]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

Meanwhile, everyone from Uber to Tesla to Apple to Google are all desperately in a race to develop what amounts to "advanced cruise control." Great. They're not making better braking systems. No better CV boots or struts. No improvements in engine design. Just a wheel that can turn itself...for the low-low option price of $10,000-$40,000. And of course the cheaper version kills people. So you might want to stick with the $40k sensor package. But even if they got it safe and down to $4k, so what? A $4k option is a pricy option. Most Americans buying a base model Camry or Civic or F-150 aren't going to want to pay an extra $4k for the luxury. And only the yuppies who rely on Zip Car and Uber now will want to give up car ownership for a monthly subscription service. I can't remember any technology that had so much private capital thrown at it with so little market potential as this. They are literally going to have to pass laws to force people to give up their cars before they'll agree to the crazy schemes they're cooking up. But look at any Silicon Valley white paper and they all agree that 95% of cars will be self driving in a decade. Totally ludicrous. And don't get me started on Tesla or the fact that there has not yet been a Model 3 that sold for less than $50,000, never mind a $35,000 model (which will never exist), or the fact Moody's just downgraded them to caa1 junk status with a negative outlook, but people keep pumping the stock up to over GM or Ford's valuation.

Really? Just imagine if inventors of the past applied your flawed logic to the humble car or aeroplane, we would have to walk everywhere as even horses and boats regularly result in human deaths.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

Really? Just imagine if inventors of the past applied your flawed logic to the humble car or aeroplane, we would have to walk everywhere as even horses and boats regularly result in human deaths.

Did you know that the automobile had little to no effect on horse ownership in the US?

It's true. The gas-powered car killed the electric streetcar for the most part. In 1900, there were 8,000 cars and 21,531,000 horses. In 1930 there were 23,035,000 cars and 18,886,000 horses. So over those 30 years, we added over 23 million cars and lost only about 1.5 million horses.

The gas car didn't make the horse obsolete. It performed a whole different function than the horse. Most working city folk never owned any sort of horse anyhow...but most also had been using streetcars and light rail to get round town and between cities. And before that, most used cable cars in cities and ships between. You have to go back to the 1700s to find a time when horse cars had any significant role getting people around town.

See what I mean?

So why, 30+ years after the Model A, 25+ years after the Model T came out, didn't the people who owned horses just march them all down to the glue factory? Because they were not market substitutes for horses. In fact, there are still over 10 million horses in the US today.

But the gas car did a real thing, if not "disrupt" horses. It made it easy to get get around town and solved much of the 'last mile' problem that streetcars had--now you could go directly to your destination, not simply close enough to walk to it. AND it had other perks over streetcars. You could own it. You weren't at the mercy of crowds or schedules. You didn't have to buy tickets or monthly passes and you weren't at the whim of price shifts. You didn't have to share it. You could go where you want when you wanted. You could use it to bring your pets to the vet, or to bring your trash to the dump or to pull a stump out of your yard. Can't do any of those things with an electric streetcar pass.

In a funny way, if you believe self-driving taxis are going to eliminate the privately owned car, you also believe that people will want to go back to the 1800s. You're saying people will be fine eliminating all of these ancillary benefits of car ownership.

And that's why it's a solution begging for a problem. I don't think anyone's problem with airplane flight is the pilots. I don't think anyone's problem with busses is the drivers. I don't think the hardest part of commuting is turning the steering wheel. And I think people would lose a lot of utility by giving up car ownership just for better cruise control. And I think those who do buy new cars don't always even spring for automatic transmissions or leather seats or sunroofs right now, so why would they spend thousands on this option? I do think it will be a cool luxury option for people with the money to blow. So notice, I'm not saying it can't be done technologically. I'm saying there's not the market for it you think there is.

So on the ownership side, like I said, maybe the top 5% most expensive cars 10 years from now could be equipped with an autodrive feature. Not a huge market, and the margins will slim with so much competition. Not a huge ROI.

So what about the subscription service where people give up ownership? I think generously maybe 5% to 20% tops of people would want to pay for a subscription racket like that. Probably much closer to 5%. These people probably consist mostly of wealthy, white suburban children with lots and lots of money who want rides to and from their dorms/apartments and the bar. Basically, your typical Uber user will be the No1 customer for these things. But regular Uber users are like maybe 2-3% of the population.

Why such a low number? Urban people already use busses and subways that are cheaper. Rural people need trucks. They just do. Most suburban adults will not want to rely on hopes and prayers and subscription services. Not if they have younger children that need carseats. Not when they might have to pick their kid up from school suddenly or bring your wife to the hospital when her water breaks or haul a hot water heater to the dump or get to your sister's house in an emergency, or just find out that the kids are both sleeping over somewhere else and taking off to the mountains for a few hours alone--a lot of people won't want to lose the independence of owning a car.


Then there are people who Uber already doesn't serve now. Most disabled people will not be able to use autocars like they can use busses--they won't be built with ramps or to kneel or have anyone to assist with strap in, etc. The elderly will be confused and baffled by complex subscription services and shun the monthly fees (they already do for everything else). Again, since you have to share them with people, children will not be allowed to ride in these things alone.


I mean, the range of people for whom these suckers are a good idea gets narrower and narrower the more you think about it.


And EVEN IF I'm way off. Say 50% of people to 70% of people just light their cars on fire and start paying Waymo $1,000 per month next year for shits and giggles. If even 10% to 20% of people left drive cars and are allowed to drive on the highway, autocars can't cluster-tailgate, and all of the theoretical efficiency gains from having them go away. So you'd have to ban cars from highways. But look how hard banning AR-15s is in America. You think it's gonna be easy to ban F-150s from the interstate? I sure as hell don't.


I'm sorry. But if you think you're going to see an all autocar future in the next decade or two, I think you're going to be sorely disappointed. That's just how I see it. I think there's a decent chance you'll get to ride in one as a hokey gimmick at a fair or on vacation once or twice or something. And if you've got the cash you want to dump on it, I could see it being an option in a new car you buy that you get board with over time and use occasionally (like cruise control). But for practical purposes, I think it's not going to matter one lick to most people.

Again, it is a solution. I'm not doubting that.

But what's the problem?

Take Richard Branson's automatic electric flying taxi you just posted. I mean, no way a 20 year old used Cessna 172 with a pilot is more expensive than this newfangled thing with a lidar array. So why? Why don't people take flying taxis today? Do they just hate pilots so much? Are people so environmentally conscious that they hate that the planes run on gasoline? Even then, why not just have piloted electric plane taxis? You know, just to try them out. But none of them exist either.

In fact, are there any electric planes at all? Not really. Wonder why? Check out the weight of a Model S compared to an F-150 and a civic, then you'll realize what's going on. The Model S ways as much as a truck twice its size because batteries are heavy. Lifting them into the air requires a lot of energy, making electric-battery powered flight relatively expensive. Note, I'm not saying impossible. I'm saying relatively expensive.

So, let's say that gets pricy. Then why not a pilotless gas plane? We already have autopilot. We've had it for a very long time. Surely we could adapt it to a cheap small plane. Commercial planes basically fly themselves. But pilots are there for the little things that might go wrong or adjustments that might have to be made. Failsafes. And even if they just make the plane not crash one time in a thousand, people like not dying in a fiery plane crash.

Then there's the last option...why not a pilotless vehicle that doesn't fly for a taxi? You rarely need to fly some pre-planned route unless you're going long distances and you want the speed. And this thing doesn't look like it's built for speed. So is it for island hopping? An luxury way to get past traffic? Maybe so. But how does it improve on a helicopter then? There are some pretty damned affordable helicopters out there. Why would you want a plane that requires the runway instead?

Like the more you think about it, the more it's unclear why anyone would combine an electric motor with an airplane with a pilotless system with a taxi service. Sure you could smash all four of these things together. But what will it cost and who's going to demand to take this thing? What problem is it solving?

Like juciero, which squeezed a juicebox into a glass for you, it sure did something. And it even kind of made sense after the smash hit of Keurig pods, right? But the difference? Coffee makers before were almost always at least 4 cup. You couldn't just make a fresh, hot, not plate-burned cup on demand. Keurig pods solved that problem, and Green Mountain Coffee got rich for it. All without a quarter billion dollars Silicon Valley VC. Meanwhile, juciero squeezes a juicebox out into a glass. But juiceboxes were already single-serve. And pouring them into a glass was never a problem people had. See what I mean? It sounds like a similar idea--and they built the product and it was sleek and it worked--and on paper you might get to thinking that this sucker with the right marketing will take off like Keurig brewers did. But it solved a problem nobody had. So Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures took an 11 figure bath each on it.

I still don't know what's so damned hard about turning a steering wheel. And I don't run into anyone in my daily life who complains a lot about it, unless their power steering goes out--now there was a good invention...

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

... I don't think anyone's problem with airplane flight is the pilots. I don't think anyone's problem with busses is the drivers. ...

The companies that pay pilots and bus drivers would love to be rid of them. Back when I did transit research, the most expensive part of a city bus was the driver.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

The companies that pay pilots and bus drivers would love to be rid of them. Back when I did transit research, the most expensive part of a city bus was the driver.

The companies that pay bus drivers think they want to get rid of them. But do you ride the city bus with any regularity? I take one for an hour each way about 3 days per week to save cash and milage (plus company pays for it). You must see the same things too where you are, I figure. People getting on the bus without money or a ticket. People who can't figure out how to pay. People who won't make room. People eating when they shouldn't. People making big messes. People blaring music. People getting into fights. Creepy old guys terrifying young girls.

Hell, one time some crazy lady came on with about 50 helium balloons, and I was in the back, and you know how helium works in a car, right? The bus moves forward, but the balloons don't move with it. So me and the 5 other people in back caught all these balloons in the face and had to deal with that nonsense until the bus driver told her to control them or get off. I've seen people bounced, restrained, arrested, cleaning vomit, and all manner of things. I've also seen them go a couple blocks off route to help out an old lady who was having trouble carrying her groceries and other positive things. A driverless bus sounds good on paper, but if it actually serves the masses with nobody in charge it's going to be mad max.

The upshot? The bus driver is as much a referee, security guard, and janitor as a driver. Sure, it saves the city a few bucks. So would taking bus monitors (the employees that don't drive) off of school buses. But they pay for them to keep order and make sure kids don't climb out the windows or do something else stupid. Plus when we stop to pick up someone elderly or in a wheelchair, they help them on and help them strap in. They also help cyclists secure their bicycles and tourists secure their luggage properly.

For the security/emergency reason alone, I doubt you'll see TSA leave cockpits empty. They'd get rid of flight attendants before pilots. And they haven't even figured out how to do that yet.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

I see your point dcarrigg. Plus thanks for the amazing and well-researched post above.

My only goal was to point out that there are in fact stakeholders who are motivated to have self driving airplanes and buses.
It may be a bad idea, but some parties may still find it attractive and chase it.

[vt]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

Facebook's business model is selling your data.

Google is a search engine that sells ads for revenue.

Direct mail beats Facebook and Google ads hands down on ROI. Advertisers are leaving the two in droves. FB has been found to fake views, time viewed and likes.

Check the Wall Street Journal January 12, 2018 article entitled "Digital Ad Trend Can't Slay Lowly Circulars". Direct mail done right with the correct message cannot be beat.

[touchring]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

The companies that pay bus drivers think they want to get rid of them. But do you ride the city bus with any regularity? I take one for an hour each way about 3 days per week to save cash and milage (plus company pays for it). You must see the same things too where you are, I figure. People getting on the bus without money or a ticket. People who can't figure out how to pay. People who won't make room. People eating when they shouldn't. People making big messes. People blaring music. People getting into fights. Creepy old guys terrifying young girls.

Hell, one time some crazy lady came on with about 50 helium balloons, and I was in the back, and you know how helium works in a car, right? The bus moves forward, but the balloons don't move with it. So me and the 5 other people in back caught all these balloons in the face and had to deal with that nonsense until the bus driver told her to control them or get off. I've seen people bounced, restrained, arrested, cleaning vomit, and all manner of things. I've also seen them go a couple blocks off route to help out an old lady who was having trouble carrying her groceries and other positive things. A driverless bus sounds good on paper, but if it actually serves the masses with nobody in charge it's going to be mad max.

The upshot? The bus driver is as much a referee, security guard, and janitor as a driver. Sure, it saves the city a few bucks. So would taking bus monitors (the employees that don't drive) off of school buses. But they pay for them to keep order and make sure kids don't climb out the windows or do something else stupid. Plus when we stop to pick up someone elderly or in a wheelchair, they help them on and help them strap in. They also help cyclists secure their bicycles and tourists secure their luggage properly.

For the security/emergency reason alone, I doubt you'll see TSA leave cockpits empty. They'd get rid of flight attendants before pilots. And they haven't even figured out how to do that yet.

It's difficult, but not impossible. Newer metro trains already don't come with drivers. They just have to create a totally redesigned bus that works like a metro train + station all in one.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

Yeah, I agree. Sorry if I came off harsh. Long-winded writing day, recovering from nasty cold.

[touchring]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

Yeah, I agree. Sorry if I came off harsh. Long-winded writing day, recovering from nasty cold.

No worries, the future is indeed scary. What happens if automation starts replacing all these jobs. Who is going to pay for the rent and grocery?

[bpr]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

Mmmm, lotsa good stuff here, thanks, folks.

I don't think tariffs against China are going to cause rampant inflation in the U.S. From a consumer's perspective, most of the things imported from China are shoddy garbage that are largely unnecessary.

The Wal-Mart and Alibaba junk isn't a concern, more the raw materials like steel.

The things that really feed into real inflation (not the CPI which we all know is rubbish) are things that are not affected by any sort of trade war with China: housing, health care, college tuitions, crude oil, and food.

Well, it's an indisputable point that healthcare and tuitions are already largely unaffordable/uneconomical.

China might be able to trigger high inflation in the U.S. by dumping all of their Treasuries.

I don't think China dumping is realistic because of their own economic problems. They need those Treasuries for their own next bailout.

Tariffs are interesting to watch. In the end of the day, they're probably not such a big deal, though. The media and the whitehouse are making a big deal about it. But there already were/are thousands of tariffs in place on all kinds of items. Here's a link to the book: https://hts.usitc.gov/current. 20% on green tea. 3% on dolomite. 4.2% on colostomy bags. 2.4% on buffalo hides. 3.7% on 35mm film. 4.9% on wooden dowels. 6.5% on umbrellas... you get the idea.

25% on steel is a bit different than 4% on colostomy bags. And now the KORUS agreement aims to restrict supply from Korea in exchange for no tariff:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbrinkley/2018/03/27/us-korea-fta-revision-is-full-of-holes/#31cbafad20a3

So far as brick and mortar retail go, it's not as dire as it seems. Online retail is still only 8% or so of market share. Toys R Us got raided by Private Equity, that's all. The seeds of retail destruction actually got sowed 5, 10, 15 years ago. A lot of debt is maturing and coming due and now they can't pay the piper even if revenues and profits rise. Good primer article on it is here.

Good point, private equity struck again.

I actually still don't see where the inflation's going to come from. Commodities remain reasonably cheap on the one hand, and wages are stuck near flat on the other. Something has to push the inflation train. Either materials or labor.

Assuming the status quo, you're right, but the government is intervening via tariffs and tax cuts, which are a sort of de facto wage increase. Take home pay is up, even with flat wages take home pay / disposable income whatever you want to call it is higher until these cuts expire, if they ever do.

And that goes double for corporations, who are sitting on boatloads of cash in every port from New York to old Jersey.

the u.s. gov't's $100trillion or so of off-balance sheet liabilities might be the source of inflation over the next couple of decades. the only way to keep medicare and social security going, at least in appearance, is for the fed to buy the treasury's issuance. lots of dollars will be streaming into the economy without corresponding increases in production of goods and services.

Inflationary, but question is, what economy will those dollars be streaming into? The likes of GS and JPM will put it into the hands of the VCs doing the self-driving-car thing, weaponry, or overseas methinks.

2. where would china's proceeds go? the money has to go somewhere. whatever asset they BOUGHT to replace the treasuries would rocket higher. gold? oil? other commodities?

Either their own economy, like they did in the 2015 bailout, or where every other country squanders its riches: weaponry. Or they could just shoot it into space.

Who's the buyer that China finds to allow them to dump their Treasuries?
I've never been able to answer that questions satisfactorily, which is why I continue to think China has few options.

I don't think China will dump for the reason noted above, but I doubt they'd have trouble finding buyers considering how much cash US companies are sitting on, and that's not even counting the banks.

There was a big fear of China dumping after they first started ramping up purchasing in the aughts, but I think that's unrealistic at this point because they have their own economic tightrope to walk and the Treasuries at least provide some stability and liquidity should they hit another snag. Also, we're only talking about a trillion dollars here. In 2006, when the richest person in the world was worth a mere $50 billion and China first crossed the trillion in Treasuries threshold, that was an unthinkable sum. It was one-eighth of our total debt. But now, it's less than 1/20th. Hell, Jeff Bezos could sign over his shares of AMZN to Alibaba/PRC and he could take 10% of the bill himself.

The way I see it, the tax cuts are real, and they're going to put more money in the hands of the class that can't afford to save it, and even more money in the class of entity that thrives on exploiting them. And the Treasury borrowing is also very real. And if these tariffs work the way TPTB want them to, then aren't we going to see raw material costs increase? How much can domestic production offset the increases directly from tariffs and supply restrictions? What kind of wholesale price increases and therefore distributor price increases and finally retail increases would result? None?

[bpr]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

The self-driving car topic was eerily along the lines of my thinking. I'm neither as articulate nor as hopeful as DC, but suffice it to say that my disagreement with his vision is over whether consumers will have a say in the matter.

Consumers didn't ask for computer systems in their cars with proprietary operating systems to coordinate all of the sensors, but they got them. Touchscreen dashboard controls? Whoever came up with that must have never driven. But they're ubiquitous now.

Corporations will buy them because they'll be cheaper than humans and cheaper to insure than humans (once they stop killing people). A self-driving truck fleet could be one-third lighter since we could ease restrictions on driving hours because there's no need for the driver to sleep.

And when we go to the dealership and ask for the model without the self-driving feature, the salesman will say he has to special order it. He'll call us two weeks later to say it's in and just as we're about to sign the invoice there it will be: self-driving module. "You know," he'll say, "they install that module at the factory."

[touchring]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

The Wal-Mart and Alibaba junk isn't a concern, more the raw materials like steel.

Too much brain washing from MSM. From my experience, almost all developing country have got more tariffs and trade restrictions than the West.

In China, a common question tourists will ask why are clothes and fashion in a departmental stall, most of which are made in China more than double or triple the price you find in a US Walmart?

Even if the stuff is made in China, they'll find a way to tax it or make it more expensive.

There are many non-monetary ways to block imports other than open tariffs and taxes.

1. Require a standards certification for all sorts of products that you need to get in order to sell it. Make the application procedure very complex and you need to renew the certificate every year.
2. Impose a purchase certificate that buyers need get in order to purchase a product from a foreign seller.
3. Make it difficult to remit funds over a certain amount by wire transfer.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

Assuming the status quo, you're right, but the government is intervening via tariffs and tax cuts, which are a sort of de facto wage increase. Take home pay is up, even with flat wages take home pay / disposable income whatever you want to call it is higher until these cuts expire, if they ever do.

We're not really going to know how big any effect there is until after the year is up and people do their taxes and get their tax returns. But I don't think it will be much for the real economy and most Americans. Even if take-home pay is up in the aggregate, doesn't mean it doesn't fall at the median--meaning the tax cuts are stimulus, you're 100% correct about that, but 90% of them are focused on corporations and very top income earners. I mean, say you do get a $1,000 tax cut as a working/middle class shmoe. That's not nothing. But I bet there's a damned good chance your health premiums and deductibles went up by more than that...ours got cancelled and replaced with a crappier one that covers less and has double the deductibles for $100 more per month or so. This is pretty normal news for everyone I talk to every year. Party on.

And that goes double for corporations, who are sitting on boatloads of cash in every port from New York to old Jersey.

They're also sitting on boatloads of debt. Private Equity we talked about earlier is a big part of that story, but not the only one. The corporate junk bond market has never been bigger. That's the biggest gift this tax cut actually may have given--it staved off a waterfall of corporate bankruptcies for another day. Lots of junk maturities into 2020 and 2022. A whole host of beloved brands are going to die in the next few years. It's a foregone conclusion. It's just a matter of time.

The way I see it, the tax cuts are real, and they're going to put more money in the hands of the class that can't afford to save it, and even more money in the class of entity that thrives on exploiting them. And the Treasury borrowing is also very real. And if these tariffs work the way TPTB want them to, then aren't we going to see raw material costs increase? How much can domestic production offset the increases directly from tariffs and supply restrictions? What kind of wholesale price increases and therefore distributor price increases and finally retail increases would result? None?

I think the tax cuts are real, but they're mostly corporate, only a tiny fraction on the income side, and even there, it's mostly top earners. A couple hundred bucks like the W Bush mini stimulus (remember that?) ain't going to have a big effect on disposable income or bottom line inflation. Especially not when healthcare keeps going up 10, 20, 30% per year.

I don't know about retail prices. How many years did Amazon operate at a loss? Does Wayfair have to make any profit between now and 2030? The problem with predicting retail prices is that they're unrelated to buying for a nickel and selling for a dime these days. VC fuels a cash burn and entire corporations become loss leaders to eat market share. Uber corporate lost about $1.46 per ride in 2017, or about 22.8¢/mile. And 30% of their drivers lost money too on top of that. So what does an Uber ride really cost? Not what prices say it does... Lots of new retail--especially if it's labeled 'tech'--prices things in a way that's detached from real costs.

The questions you ask about tariffs and wholesale prices are good. And I figure we're likely to see the same old 1, 2 or 3% inflation anyways.

But just keep in mind, there are two sides to the coin, right? I mean, there more variables other than just wage and input costs and money supply--product and the velocity of money is a factor too. And it's pretty easy if corporations start paying down debt or buying back a lot of equities with their newfound tax breaks to wipe a whole lot of money off the books very quickly...

[dcarrigg]

Re: Fed Raises and Now Tariffs? Have we been in ka--- for ten years?

The self-driving car topic was eerily along the lines of my thinking. I'm neither as articulate nor as hopeful as DC, but suffice it to say that my disagreement with his vision is over whether consumers will have a say in the matter.

Consumers didn't ask for computer systems in their cars with proprietary operating systems to coordinate all of the sensors, but they got them. Touchscreen dashboard controls? Whoever came up with that must have never driven. But they're ubiquitous now.

Corporations will buy them because they'll be cheaper than humans and cheaper to insure than humans (once they stop killing people). A self-driving truck fleet could be one-third lighter since we could ease restrictions on driving hours because there's no need for the driver to sleep.

And when we go to the dealership and ask for the model without the self-driving feature, the salesman will say he has to special order it. He'll call us two weeks later to say it's in and just as we're about to sign the invoice there it will be: self-driving module. "You know," he'll say, "they install that module at the factory."

You may be right on this too.

In fact, I think the only way it will ever take off and dominate the market is if it's forced on people.

So I consider your thinking at least a possibility. But even the most optimistic estimate I've seen by Waymo is $10k now. And if they get it down to $4k, it's still a 20% markup on a midsize sedan. They might force it on people, but that's a lot pricier of an option than a touchscreen (although I totally agree with you about how much those things suck).

So far as the truck fleet goes, I don't know. Someone still has to fuel them. Even if they're electric, they have to stop and charge. And someone still has to load and unload them. And someone has to deal with failures and break downs. Someone has to be liable somewhere in the chain. You're still putting mileage on them. Then there's the theft issue. Driverless beer truck pulls up to fuel...pretty tempting target for anyone with a pair of bolt cutters. Now put something actually valuable in there...

I guess maybe you could put one of those stupid little knightscope Robot Security things in it. But they're goofy as hell and can be defeated with a blanket or can of spray paint. They might work in Silicon Valley. Probably not so well in the Bronx...

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the tech's impossible, nor do I think there won't be some applications. Probably will replace Zip Car and certain truck transit and be a new fancy option for the BMW/Mercedes set. Maybe some bus routes. But I bet it's nowhere near all vehicle traffic in 10 or 20 years. I bet it's a much smaller minority than people think. And vehicle margins are already thin. It's a weird play for so many players to be hoisting untold billions at.

They may really be after the data. That's what I think, anyways. They might not care at all if only 5% of the market goes autocar. So long as 100% of that data is fed back to them 5% of the population is more than enough for fine-grain statistical sampling. They now have 24 hour universal national 3D visual and audio surveillance of everything at the street level. And that kind of data might be worth more than actually trying to revolutionize the transit market.

If my thinking's right, and that's the case, transforming the transit industry is just a side-show at best and a ruse at worst. They don't need better transit efficiency or universal or even majority adoption to get statistically significant data on everything they want to. They don't need a total census. They only need wide enough deployment to pull a sample.