Castanza

Have no problem with automated vehicles. Just don’t see the lack of ownership playing out in the US. Europeans seem to forget how big the US is and how systemically different it’s cities, highways, roads and urban sprawl is geographically structured compared to the dense mess of Europe. I very much look forward to being able to hop in MY car and choose to engage auto pilot on say a long commute to the office. Etc. What doesn’t make sense for 80% of the country is building warehouses with some specific number of vehicles and somehow have to account for all the intricacies of demand. The emergency situation was a single example. Grabbing an onion you forgot from the store is another. Sanjeev mentioned “just have it delivered in 30min to and hour!” Why? I can walk out my door, hop in my car and get be to the store and back in 10 minutes. I use grocery delivery and pickup and you have to schedule out usually more than an hour. It takes WAY more effort and seems way less economical to try to build out all this infrastructure just to eliminate vehicle ownership. And the cat beat you’re guessing at demand which will ultimately lead to poor service and disruptions. Better solution is vehicles continue to be self drivable and is able by individuals if they choose, but at the same time have an auto pilot “switch” should you want to take a nap on the way to work. It’s just way more practical, clean and simple. With kids it’s more simple too and you don’t have to deal with the germs and gross stuff of publicly shared things. I don’t really want to deal with whatever mess someone else left in the car before you got it. People often also have extra things stashed in their own cars for their kids or themselves. Anything from diaper bags, back cushions, gum, makeup, clothes, hats, snacks, tablets, car seat bases, etc etc. literally a million different things. Do you really want to have to grab all that stuff every time you need a ride to somewhere? Is there a use case for a fleet of autonomous vehicles owned by XYZ company that can be hailed with the push of a button? YES absolutely! Just not in most of the country. I live in a town of about 40k people about 35 minutes outside of a much larger city. When I pull up my Uber app there is exactly 3 available drivers in the whole area. There simply would be no demand for a fully autonomous fleet of any significant size here. edit: Can’t wait to take my automated Prius to deer camp in upstate New York or Middle of nowhere West Virginia, bag a buck the. Strap it to the hood for the ride back! The company is going to love that when it returns to the hub

Uber is working on autonomous vehicles because they would no longer have to pay humans. I disagree on the emergency aspect. If it’s better why aren’t ambulances and fire trucks the first to get automated? Even planes which can fly themselves require humans. Lots of things sound great on paper!

One thing to think about is contingencies for mid to smaller cities and towns. Where are these centers of autonomous vehicles? Do the economics make sense there? What happens in a power outage? Is their fail over? Is there enough bandwidth in the town? Is there the staff/knowledge to support these sites? Tbh not sure what the requirements are for something like this. But if it’s anything close to data centers then you’re really limiting where these centers or hubs can be placed. I mean in the US you have vast differences between states, and even cities within the same states! Move outside the US and a select few western nations and it’s basically impossible. How do the economics work in such a limited global market?

Melbourne is a big city . I mean you could say that about any futurism ideas. Lyft said in 2016 that half of their vehicles would be autonomous by 2021….now experts are yet again pushing back that timeline to 2035. The promise of autonomous cars was announced in 1939 and the New York Worlds Fair by General Morors. The timeline was 20 years LOL….here we are almost 100 years later and albeit much closer, still a long way to go. I mean GMs Cruze still can’t navigate “unexpected construction zones” and just pulls over in traffic causing jams. There is easily 20 years of regulatory red tape to deal with. Let alone proper connectivity and other key infrastructure. I mean you can go 1 hour outside of a lot of major cities in the US and find areas with dial up internet poor cell service and dirt roads. Same for Canada. Eventually! But just my opinion it will be a bit. Maybe AI accelerates it? Can’t help but think it’s more bark than bite at this point. Innovation usually happens in the areas people don’t discuss in the media.

Outside of North America cities are setup for this. Most cities in the US are not conducive for public transport. Especially true the further you get from the top 10 cities.

People don’t think of the minutiae. Even the emergency room visit….say you have to call an autonomous car. It takes 10minutes to show up. Ok someone is bleeding or your wife is pregnant and going into labor. Could be a major mess in the car. Let’s go further. Say you get stuck behind a slower vehicle on two lane road with double lines. The autonomous vehicle would just ride behind it where a human could make the judgement call to pass in a clear spot. Or say you pull up to the hospital. Where does the autonomous car go? There is ALWAYS something happening in front of the emergency entrance be it ambulance parked, traffic cones, blockage etc. does the autonomous vehicle know how to get you close and avoid those obstacles? Doubtful lol will probably stop 400 ft away and refuse to budge leaving you in a pickle. Now you have to get out of the vehicle, go flag someone down. But do you bring the person with you? Will the car leave with them in it if you get out? People forget how much nuance their is to driving and situations. It’s kind of amazing considering how often people do it. Perhaps this is why these theories mostly come from city centers where people just get in a cab and stare at their phone until they get to their location.

Exactly Autonomous cars might be good for planned activities, but for all the random gotta go now things they simply aren’t practical. Grocery delivery is great, but you often have to schedule it a few hours out. There is no, “shit I forgot the onion” orders one on app and it’s at your door 5 minutes later. If I had to use an autonomous car for every household project I do, I would be bankrupt from ride fees to and from the hardware store

Le Shrub Twitter account interview. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334?i=1000623286587

It’s a crazy tough situation for politicians tbh. Covid didn’t help as it naturally grew “monopolies” in some markets because certain companies were just natural beneficiaries that could better serve in the manner needed at the time vs smaller guys. But at the same time politicians also hurt a lot of small companies as well (maybe more local decision making). Regulation and antitrust has been interesting and again politicians are in a tough place. They target MSFT and ATVI deal which makes no sense to me. Then they talk a tough game against companies like Amazon with unions, but will that chicken ever come home to roost? What would happen to Amazon if all of a sudden they have a union and have to pay their logistics employees $47/hr with time and a half, plus better benefits? Likely wouldn’t be great for their logistics segment that desperately needs AWS funding. Maybe regulators go further and make Amazon separate AWS from logistics and quit the pass through funding. Also would be devastating. In short, the mega caps that are eating everyone’s lunch are also the same companies that provide a ton of economic and value add services to consumers. How do you regulate that and reign things in? S&P would crater if there was any serious regulation on FAANG forcing spin offs, manufacturing changes, wage increase etc. These companies were built during easy money times and their roots run deep. Todays economy coupled with the behemoth companies seems very much like a damned if I do damned if I don’t situation from a regulators perspective.

@mattee2264 thanks for your perspective on this topic as well. Something I’ve. Even thinking about as well. @Luca Yeah the subscription lifestyle has always been something that’s troubled me. Works well for both consumers and companies during good times. But throw in a scenario where consumers dump their subs in mass and you now have one hell of a rug pull for a lot of companies if it lingers. A lot could absorbs that without issue because they are diversified, but there are definitely some sectors and markets where this might not be the case. Big reason why I almost completely avoid investing in content. Any good books or podcasts you’ve listened to on the these topics (stagnant capitalism)? More and more it feels like the beer to foam ratio of capitalism is getting worse for the majority of people. Is this policy driven or a natural feature?

You’re not seriously considering the time involved here. Unless there are hundred vehicles queued in automated garages outside of every neighborhood then there is no way this is the same. If I call an Uber to my place right now it’s 20 min to wait. Most places in the country probably don’t have more than 5 Ubers etc. If I have an emergency, I’m going to grab my kid get in the car and drive. Takes 10 seconds. All you need in an emergency situation is an automated car with a flat tire that refuses to drive any further. A random construction zone or loss of signal that half’s the car. Or worse, a no car available situation. All the situations I described above would add 20+ minutes into every situation. Extrapolate these situations to millions of people and you need a massive pool of vehicles in extremely close locations. The automation you’re describing is a very different use case than what Ubers are being used for now for 90% of the population. Where are you going to put them all? Who’s going to own all the real estate and maintain those garages. Is the infrastructure sufficient? It’s going to be more of a struggle in cities than people think as well. ————— Try it out for a week! Commit to using Uber for everything for a week Parsad I do admire your commitment to looking forward on things though! I just think with vehicle automation, it’s been never ending promises since the 1920’s Worlds Fair

Not only that but it completely ignores simple things like: - Random emergency - Popping over to a friends/parents - Kids sporting events/practice - Random schedule changes - Forgot the avocado on taco Tuesday - Joy ride on a lazy afternoon evening - Helping a buddy move something The amount of random “I need a vehicle now” moments there are in life makes the planning and waiting aspect of this ride hailing dubious at best. Also zero chance I want to send my car out while I’m not using it to taxi random people around. People have no respect for others things. Have enough friend who did Uber that have enough stories of people kissing, throwing trash, smoking, getting to third base etc. all in their car. That only goes up with a driverless vehicle imo. No way I want that stuff in my “family car”. If there ever is a world where we don’t own vehicles (or other things as World Economic Forum/UN has said) I hope I and my children’s children are long dead by that time. People who come up with predictions like this seem to think the world is binary like a SIMS game. Ignores the nuance that makes life beautiful and human imo.

Enter stage left the digital yuan that has an expiration date

Also need a robust bond market for a reserve currency as well….which China doesn’t have.

Exactly right. The way I think about it is ok you downgrade the US….who’s taking that place as top dog? Nobody yet….so it’s a nothing burger. Unless the world order changes, credit ratings don’t matter as much as pecking order.

Word is almost every pdf version is being scrubbed from the net. Doubt it tho. Might want to list your copy $19,999

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Softwar_A Novel Theory on Power Projection.pdf

Are you getting this on IB? Can’t find it on Schwab

PDF version here “there”

Appreciate all the perspectives from the folks above1 COBF never disappoints

Throw in some Insurance and underlying commodity producers that back the other sectors like WFG and I agree whole heartedly.

What'd she say about the boat part? Agree 100% though.....quick trip over to WallStreetBets shows the opposite side of the coin. Dude Yoloing 10,20,30k sometimes 75-100k yearly and posting their loss porn. Always wonder what the rest of their portfolios look like. Or if they have a house, vehicle, student loans etc.

Timing and market conditions have a lot to do with it. I think what Greg and Changegonnacom allude to are soft benefits that you might not see initially on your bottom line. Which makes a lot of sense. But then you can look at things like appreciation of a house from 2009-2023 (200k -> 293k) vs SPY (200k -> 1.3m) over the same period. Lots of luck, time, and market conditions that go into that. But (and it's a big but) it's not as clear cut for people who actively play a role in their finances. I mean in Toronto you could just as easily buy a 2m house only to have the market tank and be stuck with a house with a market value of 1.6m. Then you've got variable rates on top of that.... All depends i guess.

LOL have to admit that is a gangster move to put that in there. I'll have to remember this for future use. @changegonnacome @Gregmal Agree that for 99% of people the mortgage mechanism is a great forced savings tool. Similar to 401k etc. Yeah I guess there could be better options, but sometimes good enough is best and removes the added stress of trying to eek out an additional 10% like Bluegolds alluded to above. Appreciate the thoughts.