The Market for Private Ownership in a Driverless World

Well, the automotive industry is freaking out. They're wondering how they can survive when nearly all transport goes driverless-Uber style. And so they should, because soon enough most (traditional) cars will go the way of the cathode ray tube - not even be worth the real estate that they consume.

However, there is hope for the private-ownership model still, I believe, but it will need to move more heavily into a recreational structure as opposed to the commuting structure.

The idea, is that in a driverless context people will want to travel a great deal more for general recreation, and the basic structure I suggest, to accommodate that demand, allows people to take holidays or short weekend trips at minimal cost, yet with excellent convenience.

I believe there will be great developing demand for this. Only private ownership can make a car "home", and again I believe this is where the demand for sustained private ownership will be.

The above included image gives my best guess, example, and structural suggestion. It's still a car, but a camper-car. You can sleep in it, and sleep well, yet unlike a campervan it's economical to run and buy, and as mobile as a car. Like a car you cannot walk or stand in it, though it still caters for the essential functions.

Note, the camper-car of tomorrow will be supported by complimentary facilities, like micro-cars that cheaply deliver meals. The driverless context will change how a campervan/car should be formed. The rationale for a full kitchen in a campervan for example, will not be there in the future.

Description:

The front section is like a fold-out double bed, though it also supports seats and a dining table. It will have block-out blinds, a small heater (integrated with a heat-exchanger for ventilation), and employ electronically-controlled temperature. It also has retractable mechanical stabilisers (see yellow on image) to remove all notable movements from wind gusts, and the stabilisers adjust to keep the vehicle near-perfectly horizontal on moderately variant terrain. All of this is meant to ensure that the vehicle can be well slept in, which is essential before anything else. On holiday you have plenty of time to fuss a little with trivial inconveniences, but a bad nights sleep can ruin your day.

The vehicle will have at least level-4 autonomy. The driver will take control, as needed, with only a motorcycle-structured steering system, with integrated twisting accelerator, and a hand-mounted brake (again, just like a motorcycle). No foot controls. There's no mechanical link for the over-ride controller - only electronics.

Note, manual override is only employed when necessary. 99% of the time the car will do all the driving.

The car will be electrically powered, with a modest battery pack, though employ a diesel-electric 20kw range-extender. Naturally it will be highly efficient.

Immediately behind the front seating is a very large storage space, for whatever.

At the rear of the vehicle (accessible when the pop-up door is open) is a small sink, microwave, and gas-cooker to the left. And to the right is a sit-in toilet, and also a shower hose which can be used with the fold-out tent. The rear door opens out and up, to form the frame and roof for the tent so it can be rapidly erected.

The result is a camper-car that's cheap and mobile enough to use wherever, and whenever, and of course it removes the cost of hotels. It can also function as a spare room for guests when stationed at home, as the sleeping section should prove to be excellent with the cars perfect climate control.

Because camper-cars built in this structure would be, presumably, anywhere from about NZD$30,000 - $100,000, they would be accessible to the mass-market. Remember also, the far-reaching impact of driverless cars will make the mass-market considerably more wealthy in its own right, which in turn impacts the nature of future demand.

Concluding:

By my perspective, if car manufacturers simply move closer to the direction of turning the humble car into a mobile extension of the home, they could well find themselves surviving and thriving in a (mostly) driverless commuter-taxi world.

The demand for recreation will naturally explode in a driverless world. Mass-market car manufacturers can take the opportunity to move with that demand.

                                           -Andrew Atkin

Democratic Immigration?

I think there are two fundamental parts to immigration.

The economic factor and the human factor.

Economic factor: 

If we opened the floodgates to immigration we would have high unemployment regardless of the rate of economic growth, because human-supply would race ahead of commercial expansion, no matter how aggressive the economic growth.

Because of this, I like the idea of engineering precise immigration control, that directly relates to the immediate employment climate. As unemployment goes up we should stoke immigration back - but not crudely.

Firstly, we sometimes have the outlook, at is seems, that people who do menial jobs are "not worth that much" as expressed by their low pay. But I would argue that their low pay is at least as much an expression of excessive worker supply as the inherent value of their work. (Like oxygen. Oxygen has huge inherent value, but its market value is zero due to its abundance).

Low pay is often engineered by deliberate worker over-supply via immigration. We do this in New Zealand by stacking our economy with an abundance of foreigners who have limited english literacy, and who therefore cannot compete for more professional jobs. The result is intelligent people stacking shelves in the supermarket and the like, for low pay. Probably lower than what is truly fair, relating to the inherent value of their labour.

But the way to solve this problem is not with high minimum wages, that cruelly stop people from selling their labour at the price it will be bought for (forcing them onto the dole), but by developing a responsive immigration system that ensures a respectably tight job market for those who are specifically dependant on non-professional employment.

Wages should be bidded up - not legislated up.

However, there should be an allowance to this. Where there is pressing demand for specific skills we should allow for more immigration, for those who have those skills. This will not increase unemployment. It will only facilitate faster commercial expansion within those areas of the economy that are pressing to grow.

Too much immigration too soon also dilutes domestic capital per-capita, and maybe to the point where high immigrations natural advantages of scale, competition and diversity, are overwhelmed.

For example, New Zealand could not ram a million poor-people from China into Auckland within a decade, and expect to not take an economic hit from it.

Human factor:

There is no such thing as a 4,000,000 population community. Communities are small-scale structures. New Zealand is a society made up of many communities.

So, as long as your society is strong on freedom-of-association and also freedom-of-disassociation, somewhat high immigration rates shouldn't be too much of a problem as people can (and will) assemble into their own idealised communities - be what they may.

People who don't want to have much to do with immigrants, for whatever reason, do not and should not have to.

But the health of New Zealand, as a society, is still of course dependant on the quality of the immigrants it grants residency to.

So how do we determine quality?

Currently the government makes all the decisions based on their technical criteria. There is a place for this. We need the government to screen out those who are clearly inappropriate for basic reasons, such as criminality, extremism, and age. But in my view the system of technical approval is too dehumanised. I think there is -- or could be -- a place for relating to immigrants like we relate to job applicants...

An employer makes a short-list based on the CV, but from there he makes a final decision based on an interview. In an employment context, we trust our ability to get a feel for someone and we trust our ability to measure qualities that cannot be technically accounted for.

So why don't we do this for immigration as well, and give the public the opportunity to perform a kind of interview?

The model I'm thinking of is a akin to a jury service, only it would be based on voluntary participation and be conducted over the Internet.

The government, after a basic screening, would video-record a 2-minute interview of any foreign applicant, which may be viewed and rated by as many as 100 New Zealand citizens, online.

Immigration approval will be based on the online ratings. You could find, say, that maybe 1 in 3 people have their residency accepted, based on the top percentage of the people's ratings.

The weighting of the interviews in decision-making would be determined by how strict the governments requisites are (for preliminary screening) at any given time.

The advantage of this system is it allows for human factors to be given weight. If someone comes off in an interview like a nasty, angry person, for example, or with seriously poor English pronunciation, then it would be good to have a system that can respond to the fact of it.

But also it has a psychological advantage. It allows New Zealanders to directly have some say on who they do and do not let through their own front door, and at their own discretion. As they should, I believe.

It's also good for the immigrants themselves, as they can feel more that they've been personally chosen by the New Zealand people, and on more personal grounds, as opposed to being chosen only by some abstract government policy - which opens up the threat of developing resentments.

My proposition would actually be an extremely welcoming system. It is truly inclusive.

                                            -Andrew Atkin