Your talking about jeeps reveals that you're not actually talking about post office workers, but their hired contract delivery people
IE "star route" delivery. The USPS contracts out most of it's more rural delivery to these people in multiple-year contracts. I know because I have family who did/does them.
The reason why there's just now active research into tests is that federal law effectively prohibited conducting any research prior to legalization, especially if human subjects were involved.
Indeed. Research was allowed, even encouraged, but only if it fit into the Fed's party line. You were free to conduct studies into how bad marijuana use is, how to detect it's use over longer periods of time, etc... You weren't generally allowed to look into possible benefits, or things that the feds felt weren't necessary, like this.
If you use these seeds, you can't keep back seeds from your crops for next year's crops, a practice that is as old as agriculture itself.
1. Not true for all GMO crops. Golden Rice is patent free 2. Keeping back seed died on most farms in the USA quite some time before GMO became a thing. Buying new hybrid seed each year has been around for a while because it's more profitable.
Actually, figure that they're better at parking than the average human.
the car will have to drive around 20 mins away to find a spot.
That's "center of NYC" type timing. Don't forget that they can increase capacity by closing margins. That being said, automated taxis might help matters by being available to pick up a passenger once they drop one off.
After that, I'd boost pedestrian and biking options. I've proposed before having skywalks between buildings that have airport style slideways. The spread of small skateboard sized battery operated vehicles might change that up, but the goal was to double the average walking speed, doubling the range people can cover on foot. That would quadruple, on average, the 'walk zone' of the average person. With more places accessible on foot, they'd tend to walk more, and with walking more they'd be fitter, which would lead to an even bigger walk zone, while substantially reducing the need for vehicles.
You can stream NPR (and France Info, etc. it seems), so that's not a good response to the OP.
Except streaming consumes data cap.
Matter of fact, all the local radio stations I listen to(being the traditional sort) in the car offer streaming - they tell us so. Public, College, Commercial, all of them.
Still, while I don't come close to using my cap, I think that it's not a bad idea because it should also save power - no need for transmitting for all those packets, just the FM signal.
And (almost by definition) they are what the median family can afford. Three times as much as the median family could afford in the 1960s. Not coincidentally, the government numbers for real income and real disposable income show the same increase - 3 times as much income, 3 times as much disposable income, 3 times as much house compared to the 1960s.
Not quite. Interest rate differences make a much larger difference. People pay for their homes for longer (15 vs 30 year loans) and have lower interest rates.
In fact, compared to the 1960s, median home size is almost three times as large. Spending 20 times as much buying Starbucks coffee instead of making it at home is now common. Here's the big bottom line number, real disposable income since 1960:
Yes, the median home is 3X as large. They're also more than 3X as expensive, and due to housing tricks, it's actually HARD in many areas to find smaller, more affordable homes.
Starbucks coffee, well, I'm not going to dispute that we don't still have a problem with excessive consumerism, but I'm pretty sure a cup of starbucks coffee isn't actually that much more expensive than diner coffee back in the day. Oh, and those who are older had and have it better than the youngest generations.
To get back to my point - remember I said that we have 'haves' and 'have nots'. Remember, there's lots of trust-fund babies out there who got a leg up on the investment thing from their parents. I never said there aren't people who are well off. Hell, I'm not even saying that people can't still save and invest for a leg up later.
What I was getting at was that compared to back then, you need to save even more today than you did back then, for the same comparative advantage. That, on average, people do make less - and disposable income is something of a mixed bag when you consider that the youngest people are the ones having problems today with having to balance student loans along with the house,
And I say this as a guy who's putting together a replacement for his 6 year old computer - my policy has been to upgrade/replace it when it no longer does what I want. Primary factor for this upgrade was that it's getting jerky with some of my games and my video card went out of driver support last year.
Are we assuming that an automated car will be able parallel park in any space that a human could?
I don't see why not. Have you ever seen the videos of humans wildly failing to parallel park? Did you know that luxury cars are already coming with the ability to parallel park themselves?
Eventually you and I could be owners of companies like Apple and Google. Or if we want less risk, companies like Proctor & Gamble and General Mills.
We already can, except for the little problem that wages are, on average, too low for many to get in on the action. Retirement accounts are the biggest way most of us have, but even then most people don't have 'enough', and most of the time they have even less control because they're diversified through a mutual fund, and they divest their control of the individual companies to the manager of the fund.
Along paying us cash, employers could also pay us an extra amount which is shared ownership in a company.
Not all companies are of the sort where this makes sense, and to be honest, consider Enron, Worldcom, GM, etc... From a diversification standpoint, ownership of the business you work for(especially small-minority ownership like stock shares), is something to be wary of. Quite a few employees not only lost their jobs, but their retirement savings, because they were completely invested in their place of work.
Edit: Oops. You were trying for some sort of lesson, weren't you? Well, you can see from the above that I'm very familiar with the concept already, right?
I bet I could get rich that way (slowly), because in addition to the capital that my employer put into my capital account, I would also put in 10%-15% of my salary, as a kind of savings or investment. By "I would" I of course mean "I do". That's how most millionaires became millionaires - by socking away a lit bit each pay check into IRAs and 401Ks; very often owning mutual finds in those accounts.
Well yes. Good job on educating me on concepts that I already know, while completely failing to address my central point: Due to wage stagnation and reducing returns, workers have a harder time than ever amassing the capital necessary to live on the returns of said capital. Compared to somebody in the '60s, for example, their pay is likely less, their expenses more, so fewer than ever can manage that 10% - except that it needs to be closer to 20%.
I say this as somebody who saves 10% for my equivalent to the 401k(I'm actually under a different chapter), and maxes out my IRA every year.
Finally, a Millionaire isn't quite what it used to be.
Why should I? I mean, I mentioned union shenanigans AND that their target market has been in decline. I wasn't trying for an essay, so I didn't mention the other stuff like failure to adapt. Oh wait, I did that too.
Now think about what happens when your SDC breaks down in the desert. You fire up your app to contact the company, they send out a replacement, and your family is having burgers at Denny's while the car owner family is still trying to figure out how they will pay the huge bills.
That rather depends on what broke down, doesn't it? But yeah, a broken vehicle can easily ruin a vacation. If you're renting your vehicle, then it's the rental company's hassle and expense.
I'm not worried about getting stranded where there is cellphone reception. Worried about getting stranded where I'm looking at ham radio or sat based communications. I doubt the fleet cars will be putting in sat uplinks.
You might be surprised. The other issue is that they might just end up extending cell phone coverage over those areas, and keep in mind that the range of a car based cellular antenna can be a lot larger than for a handheld. Better position and more power behind it...
Either way, it is likely that it will be driving for a large amount of time relative to the stop whether it is driving to the outskirts for a spot or circling around looking for one suitable.
How long/far does it take to get out of the central core of the city?
In my experience, it generally takes very little time. I mean, 10 miles and you're generally out of even NYC.
Car insurance liability is unlimited in the UK and I believe most of Europe. It's still affordable, unless you are under 25 in which case it is insane for other reasons.
Last person I spoke to about it mentioned $1M(well Euro), in Germany, but he was a professional driver of some stripe.
Also, manufacturers won't accept liability after the first few years of high price vehicles being on the market. Once insurance companies are satisfied that they are safe, cheaper models will require the owner to insure them as normal.
I'm hesitant to say that they'd do this. You see, at least in the USA it's technically the driver of the vehicle that's liable, not the owner. Who's the driver of a self-driving car? I'd see the owner of a vehicle being required to purchase 'full coverage' - but the creator of the self-driving system to be liable for accidents caused by the system. Which is typically the most expensive part of the insurance, so insurance rates for self-driving cars should drop substantially.
I'm kind of shocked that you can get a policy that only covers the other party for $300k. That's not even enough for one person's medical bills, let along if you hit a bus...
You want crazy? There are states where, except that insurance companies won't write them, the statutory requirement is only $10k. "Underinsured" insurance is a thing - what that does is bring your insurance in to cover you if you're hit by somebody else and their insurance/money runs out. So let's say I'm hit by somebody with a 100/300 policy - $100k per individual, $300k per incident. My policy is $250k/$500k. My insurance would pick up the extra $150k for myself. After that my healthcare insurance would pick up(and it's unlimited).
Hitting a bus with a normal vehicle isn't actually all that likely to cost that much to other people... Most buses are built high and heavy enough that you're not getting into their passenger compartment unless you're in a commercial class vehicle yourself, in which cases the required insurance levels are generally higher.
They would move if someone tried to ticket them or a fire truck is coming.
Then what's the problem in the latter case? The idea with firelanes is to allow fire trucks access. If the cars are smart enough to give the fire trucks access if necessary, we no longer need to waste the space the other 99.9% of the time.
In the prior, well, the ticket agent can often just block the car in so it can't safely move out of the way. Or even just get a picture of the plates and fill out the rest of the paperwork to mail to the registered owner.
They'd bribe someone to make it legal to use handicap spots because the can move easily (in theory).
Again, parking ticket authority stops behind the vehicle, it's not moving. Bribing others for their handicapped stickers? That would trip conspiracy and RICO charges, I think. Too dangerous.
In whole, I find your ideas to be wild speculation.
Having 0 cases in a year doesn't mean the disease is "officially eradicated". It means there were 0 reported cases of the disease.
I never said it was. It's more like 0 reported cases for 10 years. That first zero just starts the clock.
Who have had a parent make a choice not to vaccinate them.
Doesn't mean that they aren't a threat. And not all parents CAN make that choice, as I mentioned. Some children the shot would be a risk because they're immune-compromised. For some the shot would be ineffective because of similar reasons. Some can't have it because they have an egg allergy. Some can't have it because they're still too young.
Like I said, in different words.
No, not like you said. I cannot twist my head enough to make what you said match that. You tried to make it sound like vaccines are either 100% or 0% effective, for everybody at once.
For example, you said "The reality is, an un-vaccinated child is no threat to others, because the others have been vaccinated to prevent them from contracting that disease." That implies an assumed 100% effectiveness for the vaccine.
"Either vaccinations protect people from getting a disease or they don't." - While a binary choice, it ignores that a vaccine, even if ineffective at preventing a disease, normally reduces the severity of it. Also, the use of plural forms implied to me that you were talking about the effectiveness of vaccines for everybody.
And since a VACCINATED child can still get the disease, you still have the threat to all of those who cannot be vaccinated without risk.
You're ignoring herd immunity. A vaccinated child is, roughly speaking, 99% likely to not be a risk. An unvaccinated child, depending, is roughly 1% likely to not be a risk. However, if you're vaccinating everybody short of those with a medical reason to not be vaccinated, you're likely to have good herd immunity, and effectively nobody is a risk, because the disease will generally burn itself out before spreading.
The problem is that if you stop vaccinating some of the eligible, it actually doesn't take a high percentage to lose the herd immunity and let the disease spread like wild-fire through the non-immune, which will include most of the voluntarily unvaccinated, the involuntarily unvaccinated, and a small percentage of the vaccinated.
Who benefits from the increased productivity? Quite possibly nobody, because there's the little matter of the mortgage payments on the $400,000 piece of equipment that's only used during harvest season.
Assuming that the harvester machine only takes a few thousand in maintenance a year and lasts a decade, you've given a highly profitable example. Let's say that we're down south and the machine is used 100 days a year. That's $135k/year. $40k goes to interest/maintenance/cost of capital. You're looking at paying off that harvester in only 4 years.
So, who profits? The owner of the harvester!
That's actually the problem many people see - It's the people with the capital to OWN the nation's means of production(factories and such) who get to see the increased profit from further automation, not the workers. With interest rates and returns at their lowest levels, you need more capital than ever to reach enough income to actually live on, and stagnating wages makes it harder than ever to reach those capital levels. Meanwhile you have a select portion of the population that either inherited the capital or achieved it through manipulation(see Mitt Romney, for example). These types end up with so much capital invested that they don't have much to do except let it pile up even more.
I'm guessing they meant Hostess? Which went bankrupt a few years ago do to Union shenanigans.
I'm not sure a relatively ancient snack-food company that specializes in food that's nearly pure fat & sugar in a time when people are looking for healthier, or at least fancier, snacks is a good comparison. We don't know if they kept up on the automation trend.
I don't live in a major center, but even here parking is $15 an hour.
And where I live there's maybe one parking lot you have to pay for.
The point is that there's free parking somewhere. You might not be familiar with the locations, because 'out of the way' is ideal for them, but there's generally something somewhere.
For example, while I pay an annual fee for it, it's only 5 miles to get from the airport to my university's main parking lot. I could tell it to go park there. Done.
The point with a self-driving car is that $30 parking right next to your building would probably go away in favor of your car driving OUT of the city and parking there.
For example, let's say there's a stadium with hundreds of spots that aren't used except for game days. When it's not a game day, they just park there.
but realy the last thing I want to make a long drive through the desert in is a fleet car. Thats basic traffic safety and lets not get stranded can not picture a fleet car with duct tape, bailing wire, and enough tools to limp back to civilization.
Except that currently pictured self driving cars are in continuous contact with a central authority, so if it breaks down you're sent another fleet car to finish taking you to your destination with an apology and probably a refund. Car reliability has gone through the roof compared to when I was a kid.
As for the rest of your list a duffel bag should hold all of it comfortably.
But yes, I think you'll see a lot of ownership for customization purposes.
And if Google's claims on self-driving cars prove to be true (And have we been given reason to believe otherwise?), the actuaries will update their tables, and premiums for manual-driving cars will skyrocket.
It's more likely that the premiums for self-driving cars will plummet. The factor that will cause them to skyrocket is that if every self-driving car is covered up to $10M(say) by the manufacturer, and they're proving to be that safe, is that society won't be satisfied with the $100k/300k, $250k/500k policies most people are running around with now, and require that private drivers carry $10M or so themselves (probably pausing at $1M, $5M, and such). While each subsequent dollar of coverage is cheaper than the first, so boosting liability to $1M won't double the cost over $500k, it will be a price increase, and you're looking that each dollar of insurance will be, say, around 10% the cost for a self-driver vs a person-operated. So it's a contest that the human driver can't win.
Especially for higher risk drivers. I figure known drunk drivers will very quickly find themselves in self-drivers. But what about new drivers? You'll see teenagers placed in self-drivers for the safety and insurance cut. Thing is, very few will subsequently become drivers. Because those high initial rates will always be waiting for them outside of some select occupations.
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Your talking about jeeps reveals that you're not actually talking about post office workers, but their hired contract delivery people
IE "star route" delivery. The USPS contracts out most of it's more rural delivery to these people in multiple-year contracts. I know because I have family who did/does them.
Lowest bidder wins.
The reason why there's just now active research into tests is that federal law effectively prohibited conducting any research prior to legalization, especially if human subjects were involved.
Indeed. Research was allowed, even encouraged, but only if it fit into the Fed's party line. You were free to conduct studies into how bad marijuana use is, how to detect it's use over longer periods of time, etc... You weren't generally allowed to look into possible benefits, or things that the feds felt weren't necessary, like this.
So why do the companies selling GMO seed need to prevent farmers from doing this then?
Force of habit and preventing any farmers from selling their crop AS seed rather then as food or whatever.
If you use these seeds, you can't keep back seeds from your crops for next year's crops, a practice that is as old as agriculture itself.
1. Not true for all GMO crops. Golden Rice is patent free
2. Keeping back seed died on most farms in the USA quite some time before GMO became a thing. Buying new hybrid seed each year has been around for a while because it's more profitable.
Assuming they park like an average human
Actually, figure that they're better at parking than the average human.
the car will have to drive around 20 mins away to find a spot.
That's "center of NYC" type timing. Don't forget that they can increase capacity by closing margins. That being said, automated taxis might help matters by being available to pick up a passenger once they drop one off.
After that, I'd boost pedestrian and biking options. I've proposed before having skywalks between buildings that have airport style slideways. The spread of small skateboard sized battery operated vehicles might change that up, but the goal was to double the average walking speed, doubling the range people can cover on foot. That would quadruple, on average, the 'walk zone' of the average person. With more places accessible on foot, they'd tend to walk more, and with walking more they'd be fitter, which would lead to an even bigger walk zone, while substantially reducing the need for vehicles.
You can stream NPR (and France Info, etc. it seems), so that's not a good response to the OP.
Except streaming consumes data cap.
Matter of fact, all the local radio stations I listen to(being the traditional sort) in the car offer streaming - they tell us so. Public, College, Commercial, all of them.
Still, while I don't come close to using my cap, I think that it's not a bad idea because it should also save power - no need for transmitting for all those packets, just the FM signal.
No, I was saying that they're better at parallel parking than humans. Well except for the crazy Chinese who were drifting into parking spots in Minis.
That was a contest though.
And (almost by definition) they are what the median family can afford. Three times as much as the median family could afford in the 1960s. Not coincidentally, the government numbers for real income and real disposable income show the same increase - 3 times as much income, 3 times as much disposable income, 3 times as much house compared to the 1960s.
Not quite. Interest rate differences make a much larger difference. People pay for their homes for longer (15 vs 30 year loans) and have lower interest rates.
In fact, compared to the 1960s, median home size is almost three times as large. Spending 20 times as much buying Starbucks coffee instead of making it at home is now common. Here's the big bottom line number, real disposable income since 1960:
Yes, the median home is 3X as large. They're also more than 3X as expensive, and due to housing tricks, it's actually HARD in many areas to find smaller, more affordable homes.
Starbucks coffee, well, I'm not going to dispute that we don't still have a problem with excessive consumerism, but I'm pretty sure a cup of starbucks coffee isn't actually that much more expensive than diner coffee back in the day. Oh, and those who are older had and have it better than the youngest generations.
To get back to my point - remember I said that we have 'haves' and 'have nots'. Remember, there's lots of trust-fund babies out there who got a leg up on the investment thing from their parents. I never said there aren't people who are well off. Hell, I'm not even saying that people can't still save and invest for a leg up later.
What I was getting at was that compared to back then, you need to save even more today than you did back then, for the same comparative advantage. That, on average, people do make less - and disposable income is something of a mixed bag when you consider that the youngest people are the ones having problems today with having to balance student loans along with the house,
And I say this as a guy who's putting together a replacement for his 6 year old computer - my policy has been to upgrade/replace it when it no longer does what I want. Primary factor for this upgrade was that it's getting jerky with some of my games and my video card went out of driver support last year.
Are we assuming that an automated car will be able parallel park in any space that a human could?
I don't see why not. Have you ever seen the videos of humans wildly failing to parallel park? Did you know that luxury cars are already coming with the ability to parallel park themselves?
Human fail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Computer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Eventually you and I could be owners of companies like Apple and Google. Or if we want less risk, companies like Proctor & Gamble and General Mills.
We already can, except for the little problem that wages are, on average, too low for many to get in on the action. Retirement accounts are the biggest way most of us have, but even then most people don't have 'enough', and most of the time they have even less control because they're diversified through a mutual fund, and they divest their control of the individual companies to the manager of the fund.
Along paying us cash, employers could also pay us an extra amount which is shared ownership in a company.
Not all companies are of the sort where this makes sense, and to be honest, consider Enron, Worldcom, GM, etc... From a diversification standpoint, ownership of the business you work for(especially small-minority ownership like stock shares), is something to be wary of. Quite a few employees not only lost their jobs, but their retirement savings, because they were completely invested in their place of work.
Edit: Oops. You were trying for some sort of lesson, weren't you? Well, you can see from the above that I'm very familiar with the concept already, right?
I bet I could get rich that way (slowly), because in addition to the capital that my employer put into my capital account, I would also put in 10%-15% of my salary, as a kind of savings or investment. By "I would" I of course mean "I do". That's how most millionaires became millionaires - by socking away a lit bit each pay check into IRAs and 401Ks; very often owning mutual finds in those accounts.
Well yes. Good job on educating me on concepts that I already know, while completely failing to address my central point: Due to wage stagnation and reducing returns, workers have a harder time than ever amassing the capital necessary to live on the returns of said capital. Compared to somebody in the '60s, for example, their pay is likely less, their expenses more, so fewer than ever can manage that 10% - except that it needs to be closer to 20%.
I say this as somebody who saves 10% for my equivalent to the 401k(I'm actually under a different chapter), and maxes out my IRA every year.
Finally, a Millionaire isn't quite what it used to be.
Read this and get back to me on that http://www.theatlantic.com/bus... [theatlantic.com]
Why should I? I mean, I mentioned union shenanigans AND that their target market has been in decline. I wasn't trying for an essay, so I didn't mention the other stuff like failure to adapt. Oh wait, I did that too.
That depends on the stadium, now doesn't it? I know of stadiums that are in use 2 days a month during a 6 month season and is otherwise empty.
It was just an example.
Now think about what happens when your SDC breaks down in the desert. You fire up your app to contact the company, they send out a replacement, and your family is having burgers at Denny's while the car owner family is still trying to figure out how they will pay the huge bills.
That rather depends on what broke down, doesn't it? But yeah, a broken vehicle can easily ruin a vacation. If you're renting your vehicle, then it's the rental company's hassle and expense.
I'm not worried about getting stranded where there is cellphone reception. Worried about getting stranded where I'm looking at ham radio or sat based communications. I doubt the fleet cars will be putting in sat uplinks.
You might be surprised. The other issue is that they might just end up extending cell phone coverage over those areas, and keep in mind that the range of a car based cellular antenna can be a lot larger than for a handheld. Better position and more power behind it...
Either way, it is likely that it will be driving for a large amount of time relative to the stop whether it is driving to the outskirts for a spot or circling around looking for one suitable.
How long/far does it take to get out of the central core of the city?
In my experience, it generally takes very little time. I mean, 10 miles and you're generally out of even NYC.
Car insurance liability is unlimited in the UK and I believe most of Europe. It's still affordable, unless you are under 25 in which case it is insane for other reasons.
Last person I spoke to about it mentioned $1M(well Euro), in Germany, but he was a professional driver of some stripe.
Also, manufacturers won't accept liability after the first few years of high price vehicles being on the market. Once insurance companies are satisfied that they are safe, cheaper models will require the owner to insure them as normal.
I'm hesitant to say that they'd do this. You see, at least in the USA it's technically the driver of the vehicle that's liable, not the owner. Who's the driver of a self-driving car? I'd see the owner of a vehicle being required to purchase 'full coverage' - but the creator of the self-driving system to be liable for accidents caused by the system. Which is typically the most expensive part of the insurance, so insurance rates for self-driving cars should drop substantially.
I'm kind of shocked that you can get a policy that only covers the other party for $300k. That's not even enough for one person's medical bills, let along if you hit a bus...
You want crazy? There are states where, except that insurance companies won't write them, the statutory requirement is only $10k. "Underinsured" insurance is a thing - what that does is bring your insurance in to cover you if you're hit by somebody else and their insurance/money runs out. So let's say I'm hit by somebody with a 100/300 policy - $100k per individual, $300k per incident. My policy is $250k/$500k. My insurance would pick up the extra $150k for myself. After that my healthcare insurance would pick up(and it's unlimited).
Hitting a bus with a normal vehicle isn't actually all that likely to cost that much to other people... Most buses are built high and heavy enough that you're not getting into their passenger compartment unless you're in a commercial class vehicle yourself, in which cases the required insurance levels are generally higher.
They would move if someone tried to ticket them or a fire truck is coming.
Then what's the problem in the latter case? The idea with firelanes is to allow fire trucks access. If the cars are smart enough to give the fire trucks access if necessary, we no longer need to waste the space the other 99.9% of the time.
In the prior, well, the ticket agent can often just block the car in so it can't safely move out of the way. Or even just get a picture of the plates and fill out the rest of the paperwork to mail to the registered owner.
They'd bribe someone to make it legal to use handicap spots because the can move easily (in theory).
Again, parking ticket authority stops behind the vehicle, it's not moving. Bribing others for their handicapped stickers? That would trip conspiracy and RICO charges, I think. Too dangerous.
In whole, I find your ideas to be wild speculation.
Having 0 cases in a year doesn't mean the disease is "officially eradicated". It means there were 0 reported cases of the disease.
I never said it was. It's more like 0 reported cases for 10 years. That first zero just starts the clock.
Who have had a parent make a choice not to vaccinate them.
Doesn't mean that they aren't a threat. And not all parents CAN make that choice, as I mentioned. Some children the shot would be a risk because they're immune-compromised. For some the shot would be ineffective because of similar reasons. Some can't have it because they have an egg allergy. Some can't have it because they're still too young.
Like I said, in different words.
No, not like you said. I cannot twist my head enough to make what you said match that. You tried to make it sound like vaccines are either 100% or 0% effective, for everybody at once.
For example, you said "The reality is, an un-vaccinated child is no threat to others, because the others have been vaccinated to prevent them from contracting that disease." That implies an assumed 100% effectiveness for the vaccine.
"Either vaccinations protect people from getting a disease or they don't." - While a binary choice, it ignores that a vaccine, even if ineffective at preventing a disease, normally reduces the severity of it. Also, the use of plural forms implied to me that you were talking about the effectiveness of vaccines for everybody.
And since a VACCINATED child can still get the disease, you still have the threat to all of those who cannot be vaccinated without risk.
You're ignoring herd immunity. A vaccinated child is, roughly speaking, 99% likely to not be a risk. An unvaccinated child, depending, is roughly 1% likely to not be a risk. However, if you're vaccinating everybody short of those with a medical reason to not be vaccinated, you're likely to have good herd immunity, and effectively nobody is a risk, because the disease will generally burn itself out before spreading.
The problem is that if you stop vaccinating some of the eligible, it actually doesn't take a high percentage to lose the herd immunity and let the disease spread like wild-fire through the non-immune, which will include most of the voluntarily unvaccinated, the involuntarily unvaccinated, and a small percentage of the vaccinated.
Who benefits from the increased productivity? Quite possibly nobody, because there's the little matter of the mortgage payments on the $400,000 piece of equipment that's only used during harvest season.
Assuming that the harvester machine only takes a few thousand in maintenance a year and lasts a decade, you've given a highly profitable example. Let's say that we're down south and the machine is used 100 days a year. That's $135k/year. $40k goes to interest/maintenance/cost of capital. You're looking at paying off that harvester in only 4 years.
So, who profits? The owner of the harvester!
That's actually the problem many people see - It's the people with the capital to OWN the nation's means of production(factories and such) who get to see the increased profit from further automation, not the workers. With interest rates and returns at their lowest levels, you need more capital than ever to reach enough income to actually live on, and stagnating wages makes it harder than ever to reach those capital levels. Meanwhile you have a select portion of the population that either inherited the capital or achieved it through manipulation(see Mitt Romney, for example). These types end up with so much capital invested that they don't have much to do except let it pile up even more.
I'm guessing they meant Hostess? Which went bankrupt a few years ago do to Union shenanigans.
I'm not sure a relatively ancient snack-food company that specializes in food that's nearly pure fat & sugar in a time when people are looking for healthier, or at least fancier, snacks is a good comparison. We don't know if they kept up on the automation trend.
I don't live in a major center, but even here parking is $15 an hour.
And where I live there's maybe one parking lot you have to pay for.
The point is that there's free parking somewhere. You might not be familiar with the locations, because 'out of the way' is ideal for them, but there's generally something somewhere.
For example, while I pay an annual fee for it, it's only 5 miles to get from the airport to my university's main parking lot. I could tell it to go park there. Done.
The point with a self-driving car is that $30 parking right next to your building would probably go away in favor of your car driving OUT of the city and parking there.
For example, let's say there's a stadium with hundreds of spots that aren't used except for game days. When it's not a game day, they just park there.
but realy the last thing I want to make a long drive through the desert in is a fleet car. Thats basic traffic safety and lets not get stranded can not picture a fleet car with duct tape, bailing wire, and enough tools to limp back to civilization.
Except that currently pictured self driving cars are in continuous contact with a central authority, so if it breaks down you're sent another fleet car to finish taking you to your destination with an apology and probably a refund. Car reliability has gone through the roof compared to when I was a kid.
As for the rest of your list a duffel bag should hold all of it comfortably.
But yes, I think you'll see a lot of ownership for customization purposes.
And if Google's claims on self-driving cars prove to be true (And have we been given reason to believe otherwise?), the actuaries will update their tables, and premiums for manual-driving cars will skyrocket.
It's more likely that the premiums for self-driving cars will plummet. The factor that will cause them to skyrocket is that if every self-driving car is covered up to $10M(say) by the manufacturer, and they're proving to be that safe, is that society won't be satisfied with the $100k/300k, $250k/500k policies most people are running around with now, and require that private drivers carry $10M or so themselves (probably pausing at $1M, $5M, and such). While each subsequent dollar of coverage is cheaper than the first, so boosting liability to $1M won't double the cost over $500k, it will be a price increase, and you're looking that each dollar of insurance will be, say, around 10% the cost for a self-driver vs a person-operated. So it's a contest that the human driver can't win.
Especially for higher risk drivers. I figure known drunk drivers will very quickly find themselves in self-drivers. But what about new drivers? You'll see teenagers placed in self-drivers for the safety and insurance cut. Thing is, very few will subsequently become drivers. Because those high initial rates will always be waiting for them outside of some select occupations.