Justifiable restrictions make sense, because putting rules into law means that those tasked with enforcing them are then allowed to take action - it clears away a hurdle.
Such laws also give corrupt institutions and governments a justification for bullying and oppressing others. And when it comes to international treaties, they make citizens of sovereign nations subject to the whims of international institutions that they have no democratic control over.
The cost of enacting laws is a high one, much higher than you seem to imagine.
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By which to say you mean an economist living and working for a British conservative think-tank in London, cherry picking quotes from the late nineties (news flash, economy is better than it was then, not worse),
Yes, as she points out: the economy has improved as Sweden has reduced its implementation of Third Way economics.
That's the problem with economics not being a science after all. There are too many people with an agenda that find their home there, and reality be damned.
Reality is that Sweden is not a socialist country and wasn't a socialist country in the 1990s. Reality is also that Swedes are doing financially significantly worse than Americans.
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex...Reality is also that Sweden is a small country that became wealthy for a few decades and now is facing massive social and economic problems, and whose future is quite uncertain. It is certainly not a country that the US can look to as something to emulate.
researchers found that women tend to have their pull requests accepted at a higher rate than men, across a variety of programming languages. This, despite the finding that their pull requests are larger and less likely to serve an immediate project need. At the same time, when the gender of the women is identifiable (as opposed to hidden), their pull requests are accepted less often than men's.
What the study actually says is:
For outsiders, we see evidence for gender bias: women’s acceptance rates are 71.8% when
they use gender neutral profiles, but drop to 62.5% when their gender is identifiable. There is
a similar drop for men, but the effect is not as strong. Women have a higher acceptance rate
of pull requests overall (as we reported earlier), but when they’re outsiders and their gender is
identifiable, they have a lower acceptance rate than men.
Now, when you actually look at the bar chart in Figure 5, you'll see that even at the 95% significance level (already a weak measure), there are no significant differences between male and female acceptance rates for "outsider" submitters. The only statistically significant difference in the graph actually is for insiders. And for insiders, the conclusion is the opposite: gender-neutral submissions are accepted at a equal rate, while women are favored when the gender of the submitter is known. Therefore, the only actual statistical evidence of gender bias is a bias in favor of accepting submission by women who are project insiders; but even that evidence is weak and the difference is tiny.
The biggest difference Figure 5 shows is in the acceptance rate between gender-neutral outside submitters and gendered outside submitters, and that difference is huge compared to all the other differences. That observation alone invalidates all the other conclusions of the paper, because it shows that the "gender-neutral" population is very different from the "gendered" population. Given that those populations are so different, even if there were statistically significant differences between the genders within those two populations, you couldn't conclude anything from them since the populations themselves are different in unknown ways.
Overall, the paper does not support the conclusion that there is gender bias against women. In fact, the paper doesn't show gender bias in favor of submissions by women either. Most likely, women (on average) simply have slightly different interaction styles and submission strategies, just like women (on average) have slightly different interaction styles and behaviors in other contexts.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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Why don't you read the study? They describe their methodology carefully and address just this question.
In reading the study, you should also keep in mind that the majority of Americans end up in the to 20% during their lifetime.
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By the way, if you want to get the story from a Swedish economist instead of an ignorant and senile Senator from Vermont, you can find a detailed analysis of the Swedish economic model here:
http://capx.co/scandinavian-un...
Third way economics has been tried multiple times before throughout history and has always been a colossal failure.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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No, they are countries that Bernie Sanders incorrectly calls "socialist". That's because Bernie is an idiot and a liar, not me. From Wikipedia:
The Nordic model (also called Nordic capitalism[1] or Nordic social democracy)[2][3] refers to the economic and social policies common to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden). This includes a combination of free market capitalism with a comprehensive welfare state and collective bargaining at the national level.
Now, you can pose the question whether we want to emulate the Nordic model. I think we couldn't even if we wanted to, because the Nordic model depends on the kinds of culture and societies that exist in the Nordic countries, something that does not exist in the US. But even if we could emulate it, I don't think that is a good idea either.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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I suppose that depends on
I'm sorry, what actually is supposed to depend on what?
whether maintaining the society that allows the top 20% to earn their massive incomes should count as a benefit.
Given that the majority of Americans end up in the top 20% during their lives, I'm not sure what exactly you are upset about.
Studies like this (especially from organizations called "The Tax Foundation" or something similar) are generally run with the intention of showing how the rich are taxed way too much for the benefit of "those lazy poor people" while ignoring the fact that the very same people they spit on the ones who generate all of the wealth that the rich are accumulating.
Do you have any substantive criticism of their data, methodology, or conclusions?
The change that's being going on since the 70s is that corporations have been systematically underpaying their employees for the work they do and transferring that wealth to the owners.
No, what corporations have been doing is paying the people responsible for the increases in productivity. That's not the workers (who generally work less than they used to), but the people who engage in "unproductive" labor like inventing stuff and creating markets.
Furthermore, the same or worse wage stagnation has happened in European nations, where inequality is much less. Therefore, the idea that wage stagnation is due to US style capitalism is clearly wrong.
I think that in general, Americans overvalue ownership and undervalue productive work and I suspect it's the inevitable end result of the worship of capitalism.
Congratulations, you have just stated the core tenet of fascist economic theory.
Well, I control a regular car, a yard. That's why people have to leash their dogs. So they control them. If I had a gun, I would control that too. If it went off without my control then I sue the gun company. I don't control how my house was built. but that's what building standards are for, so the builder is liable for that part. I control everything in it,
OK, so you live under the delusion that if anything goes wrong with anything you own, you're just going to sue and recover from the manufacturer. Good luck with that.
Any sane person has insurance coverage to cover these cases, and the insurance company will simply pay out to the injured party and not sue the manufacturer (except in cases of gross negligence).
because no one is going to pay the vehicle costs with insurance premiums on top.
Those insurance premiums are likely going to be lower. But given your gross errors in estimating risk ("if there is a 0.0001% chance"), it's not surprising that you have these misconceptions about insurance and premiums.
I predict, though, once these cars are out, you'll just buy one, like everybody else.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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None of those countries are socialist. They are Nordic welfare states.
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Wage stagnation for the lower 2 quintiles, while a massive increase for the already wealthy.
Assuming that analysis were true, how would "wage stagnation for the lower two quintiles" translate into a "redistribution from the poor and middle class to the wealthy"? Wage stagnation means that people are getting the same income as before; nothing has been "redistributed" at the level of wages all.
But the premise itself is actually wrong in many ways. Note that the analysis is in terms of household incomes. But household demographics have changed over the years, so has the labor pool and labor participation; the comparison of household wages over time is apples-to-oranges. In addition, there are technical problems with those analyses; for example, a large portion of the "increase" at high income levels is because how those incomes have been reported over time in IRS statistics, not any actual change in income.
The chart about productivity is also nonsensical. To the degree that nominal output per worker has risen and hourly compensation has stagnated since the 1970s, the reason is automation and better technology. Calling output per worker "worker productivity" is misleading because it falsely suggests that the increases are due to the worker.
You also need to realize that the discussions about low and high income groups don't refer to static groups. The vast majority of Americans will make a middle class income during part of their life. The majority of Americans will be in the top 10%, 39% will be in the top 5%, and 12% of the population will be in the top 1%. "The 1%" for the most part aren't ultra-rich scrooges, they are successful middle class professionals towards the end of their careers: doctors, lawyers, engineers, software developers.
There is a host of other problems with the analysis, but the EPI statements are basically a web of misrepresentations and politically motivated nonsense.
And yes, the tax burden has shifted. [...] Government redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to, yes you guessed it, the already wealthy.
In what way do shifts in taxation alone amount to "redistribution"? Assume there are two people and I take $15 from one person and $5 from the other person; have I "redistributed" anything? No. Now I give $20 to the person I took $15 from and nothing to the person I took $5 from. Have I redistributed anything? Of course I have, namely from the person with the "lower tax burden" to the person with the "higher tax burden", contradicting your taxation only analysis of redistribution.
Redistribution is about taking money from some people and giving it to other people. And once you analyze both sides of the equation, you find a very different picture, namely that, looked at by income quintile, only the top quintile pays substantially more than they receive in benefits (link in my previous posting).
What really hurts people about redistribution, however, is redistribution within groups. In particular, within the middle class, there are many winners and many losers, even if redistribution balances out overall for middle income groups.
and certainly neither of them refute what is obvious to pretty much anyone who's been alive since before the 80's (and is actually old enough to remember them)
I have no doubt that that reflects your experience and that that makes you angry. But if your parents could afford a house in a nice neighborhood, it's not surprising that you can't. A good middle class income isn't a birthright you inherit, it's something you need to have the skills to obtain and maintain for yourself, and those skills are lost over a couple of generations: from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. For people like you, who are doing worse than their parents, there are many other people who are doing better. My parents grew up dirt poor and worked their way up, a
If I'm paying for insurance, then I am accepting liability..
No, you are transferring that liability.
I'm not paying a dime to protect myself from that
Well, then don't buy a self-driving car. Better don't buy a regular car, a house, a yard, or a dog either, because owning any of them involves risks that you have no control over at all.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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The actual sociopaths running the show and funding their party do not have that belief and do not care beyond the fact that they still need to sell it to the people who'll be harmed by their policies.
The actual sociopaths are the kind of politicians you support. And, no, I don't "feel sorry for you": your stupidity and ignorance harms everybody.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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For the past 35+ years we've been having a government redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to those who are already wealthy.
We do have a massive problem with crony capitalism in the US, where companies that are in bed with the government and politicians benefit massively. But that's a separate issue from inequality and income distribution.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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Turns out, I also don't want many people dying of hunger or huge increases in homeless people in the streets and poverty-induced crime.
Too bad, then, that minimum wage laws exacerbate those problems.
So my current favorite solution is to satisfy both: direct government wealth redistribution from the richest to fund food, shelter, clothing, and other essentials for the poorest, combined with removing the minimum wage in order to increase employment and hence reinstate labor competition.
The only "redistribution" we really need is in terms of abolishing stupid government regulations that cause the price of housing, food, clothing, and other essential to be many times as high as they need to be, and that cause people to be unemployable. After getting rid of those regulations, the tiny number of people who still have problems would more than be taken care of by private charity.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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Of course it doesn't. But if you're a libertarian and prioritize social issues, you might hold your nose and accept Sanders' economic policy rather than accept the Dominionist totalitarianism that the rest of the Republican candidates want.
It's logically impossible to be simultaneously libertarian/liberal on social issues and socialist on economic issues. In the short term, socialists may appear to help oppressed minorities, but ultimately, their societies invariably turn totalitarian. Take it from someone who has experienced it first hand.
accept the Dominionist totalitarianism that the rest of the Republican candidates want.
Conservative Christian nuts are in the minority in the Republican party. And I'll take a Christian totalitarian state over a socialist totalitarian state any day.
If I am buying liability insurance for a autonomous object then the rationale like car insurance must be such the vehicles are so likely to be in an accident that I need a method of paying off other individuals before I can recoup my losses from google.
No, it doesn't mean that at all. It simply means that Google sold you the car without assuming liability. Maybe you're just a student and don't own much, but as people get older, they tend to own more "autonomous objects" that can cause injury to others. That's why many people get umbrella liability policies. Unless you're dirt poor, it's a good idea to have something like that.
This is akin to needing public transit insurance to pay off people hit by a city bus I was ridding.
You are paying for the insurance of that bus, both through your ticket and through your taxes. And you're likely paying a lot more for insurance that way than if you paid for it on a case-by-case basis.
Well if there is a 0.0001% change of me dying in the car from a mistake the car could make then I do care about that
Why? Your lifetime risk of dying in a car accident is about 1.2%. A 0.0001% chance of you dying from a mistake the car could make would be completely negligible.
Also, I have a problem accepting liability for an accident I may not be able to do anything about.
You don't accept liability, your insurance company does. Furthermore, if you drive, you already do the same thing: you pay insurance to cover you and your passengers for the mistakes of other people, like when an uninsured motorist plows into your car.
First of all, you are conflating sexual assault and sexual harassment. Sexual assault is a violent criminal act and should be treated as such. The crime there is in the violence, not in the sexual part.
Sexual harassment is unwanted sexual attention. It doesn't make sense to say that you receive unwanted sexual attention when you dress in revealing clothes.
Why would youcare what the risk is as long as someone is willing to insure it for you cheaply enough? Your insurance for a self-driving car is likely going to be lower than for a regular car.
This bizarre model in which the car drives, except when it doesn't, and with no clear demarcation between is damned near impossible to make sense of.
There is no "this model"; people just don't know yet what form self-driving cars will take. There may well be several different classes, depending on speed, kind of AI, and kind of driver.
There can't be a gray area between who is in charge and who isn't. And paying for liability insurance when the computer is in charge sounds moronic to me, why would you do that? Are you accepting liability on behalf of the computer or something?
In that regard, a self-driving car seems no different from a horse or a dog to me: you are using it for some purpose, but you aren't fully in charge of it since it can act autonomously, and you are liable for any damage it causes. Unlike dogs or horses, self-driving cars at least have a track record (by brand).
I don't pay liability insurance on a bus, train or taxi... why the hell would I pay it when something created by Google is in charge of driving it?
If there is a risk from self-driving cars that needs to be insured, you are going to pay for it one way or another. If you don't buy your own insurance, Google will simply have to add it to the purchase price.
It's similar to malpractice insurance: you may think you force your doctor to pay for it, but they just add it back to your bill.
In the end, it's you who wants to operate the product, the companies providing it aren't charities, so you end up paying for everything: material, labor, and risk of operating it.
Oh, wait, what... Google is going to make you pay to insure their product from defects?
Google isn't "making you pay" anything. It's your choice to buy or not buy a self-driving car from them and purchase the necessary insurance for it. If you impose liability on Google, they buy their own insurance and add it to the purchase price of the car. Then it's still your choice whether to buy the car or not.
It's the same when you buy a Ferrari: nobody is "making" you buy the car or insure it, but if you choose to buy it, you have to get the required insurance, which may be different than for regular cars.
I suspect pretty soon, the risk from self-driving cars is going to be judged lower than the risk from human driving, meaning that your insurance rates are likely to be lower if you buy a self-driving car. That's going to be even more so for people with prior accidents or who are under 25. So it makes sense to actually price and purchase insurance separately from the car.
If you're the kind of person who can't control yourself well enough to avoid touching and/or making sexual remarks about students then perhaps you shouldn't be in a position with authority around students?
Perhaps the real problem is that our educational institutions are authoritarian to begin with? That students are indoctrinated into believing that the world we live in is one in which people are elevated to positions of "authority figures" and the way to become one yourself is through politics and lobbying? The fact that people are taught that they are so worthless and replaceable that students leaving because their supervisors behaved inappropriately towards them just isn't a big loss?
I thought we'd gotten beyond "slut shaming" / victim blaming women for wearing something more attractive than a hazmat suit but it seems that was naively optimistic.
Wearing "attractive" clothing in a professional environment should be unacceptable for both men and women, not because of any risk of sexual harassment, but because it is manipulative. Conservative hairstyle, dress, and behavior should be the norm for both sexes and both supervisors and employees.
Why does the area of academic research matter?... if he was an electrician would we care
Electricians tend not to behave inappropriately towards their customers because they lose business and because people will report any illegal conduct to the police. That is why politicians have to be extra nice to their customers.
The fact that it is academia matters because academics are exempted from such mechanisms. Merely being elevated to the position of a tenured professor gives people massive power and influence, and it means that the person in question doesn't have to worry much anymore about whether their "customers" (students) like them. And it's worse in soft fields like anthropology than in engineering and the sciences.
Because one of the big questions about the science and technology fields are why women are so under-represented.
That question has largely been answered, it's just that feminists don't like the answers: women statistically are less concerned with status and high income, and women have babies and biological clocks.
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Such laws also give corrupt institutions and governments a justification for bullying and oppressing others. And when it comes to international treaties, they make citizens of sovereign nations subject to the whims of international institutions that they have no democratic control over.
The cost of enacting laws is a high one, much higher than you seem to imagine.
Yes, as she points out: the economy has improved as Sweden has reduced its implementation of Third Way economics.
Reality is that Sweden is not a socialist country and wasn't a socialist country in the 1990s. Reality is also that Swedes are doing financially significantly worse than Americans. http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex... Reality is also that Sweden is a small country that became wealthy for a few decades and now is facing massive social and economic problems, and whose future is quite uncertain. It is certainly not a country that the US can look to as something to emulate.
What the study actually says is:
Now, when you actually look at the bar chart in Figure 5, you'll see that even at the 95% significance level (already a weak measure), there are no significant differences between male and female acceptance rates for "outsider" submitters. The only statistically significant difference in the graph actually is for insiders. And for insiders, the conclusion is the opposite: gender-neutral submissions are accepted at a equal rate, while women are favored when the gender of the submitter is known. Therefore, the only actual statistical evidence of gender bias is a bias in favor of accepting submission by women who are project insiders; but even that evidence is weak and the difference is tiny.
The biggest difference Figure 5 shows is in the acceptance rate between gender-neutral outside submitters and gendered outside submitters, and that difference is huge compared to all the other differences. That observation alone invalidates all the other conclusions of the paper, because it shows that the "gender-neutral" population is very different from the "gendered" population. Given that those populations are so different, even if there were statistically significant differences between the genders within those two populations, you couldn't conclude anything from them since the populations themselves are different in unknown ways.
Overall, the paper does not support the conclusion that there is gender bias against women. In fact, the paper doesn't show gender bias in favor of submissions by women either. Most likely, women (on average) simply have slightly different interaction styles and submission strategies, just like women (on average) have slightly different interaction styles and behaviors in other contexts.
In reading the study, you should also keep in mind that the majority of Americans end up in the to 20% during their lifetime.
By the way, if you want to get the story from a Swedish economist instead of an ignorant and senile Senator from Vermont, you can find a detailed analysis of the Swedish economic model here: http://capx.co/scandinavian-un... Third way economics has been tried multiple times before throughout history and has always been a colossal failure.
Now, you can pose the question whether we want to emulate the Nordic model. I think we couldn't even if we wanted to, because the Nordic model depends on the kinds of culture and societies that exist in the Nordic countries, something that does not exist in the US. But even if we could emulate it, I don't think that is a good idea either.
I'm sorry, what actually is supposed to depend on what?
Given that the majority of Americans end up in the top 20% during their lives, I'm not sure what exactly you are upset about.
Do you have any substantive criticism of their data, methodology, or conclusions?
No, what corporations have been doing is paying the people responsible for the increases in productivity. That's not the workers (who generally work less than they used to), but the people who engage in "unproductive" labor like inventing stuff and creating markets.
Furthermore, the same or worse wage stagnation has happened in European nations, where inequality is much less. Therefore, the idea that wage stagnation is due to US style capitalism is clearly wrong.
Congratulations, you have just stated the core tenet of fascist economic theory.
OK, so you live under the delusion that if anything goes wrong with anything you own, you're just going to sue and recover from the manufacturer. Good luck with that.
Any sane person has insurance coverage to cover these cases, and the insurance company will simply pay out to the injured party and not sue the manufacturer (except in cases of gross negligence).
Those insurance premiums are likely going to be lower. But given your gross errors in estimating risk ("if there is a 0.0001% chance"), it's not surprising that you have these misconceptions about insurance and premiums.
I predict, though, once these cars are out, you'll just buy one, like everybody else.
None of those countries are socialist. They are Nordic welfare states.
Assuming that analysis were true, how would "wage stagnation for the lower two quintiles" translate into a "redistribution from the poor and middle class to the wealthy"? Wage stagnation means that people are getting the same income as before; nothing has been "redistributed" at the level of wages all.
But the premise itself is actually wrong in many ways. Note that the analysis is in terms of household incomes. But household demographics have changed over the years, so has the labor pool and labor participation; the comparison of household wages over time is apples-to-oranges. In addition, there are technical problems with those analyses; for example, a large portion of the "increase" at high income levels is because how those incomes have been reported over time in IRS statistics, not any actual change in income.
The chart about productivity is also nonsensical. To the degree that nominal output per worker has risen and hourly compensation has stagnated since the 1970s, the reason is automation and better technology. Calling output per worker "worker productivity" is misleading because it falsely suggests that the increases are due to the worker.
You also need to realize that the discussions about low and high income groups don't refer to static groups. The vast majority of Americans will make a middle class income during part of their life. The majority of Americans will be in the top 10%, 39% will be in the top 5%, and 12% of the population will be in the top 1%. "The 1%" for the most part aren't ultra-rich scrooges, they are successful middle class professionals towards the end of their careers: doctors, lawyers, engineers, software developers.
There is a host of other problems with the analysis, but the EPI statements are basically a web of misrepresentations and politically motivated nonsense.
In what way do shifts in taxation alone amount to "redistribution"? Assume there are two people and I take $15 from one person and $5 from the other person; have I "redistributed" anything? No. Now I give $20 to the person I took $15 from and nothing to the person I took $5 from. Have I redistributed anything? Of course I have, namely from the person with the "lower tax burden" to the person with the "higher tax burden", contradicting your taxation only analysis of redistribution.
Redistribution is about taking money from some people and giving it to other people. And once you analyze both sides of the equation, you find a very different picture, namely that, looked at by income quintile, only the top quintile pays substantially more than they receive in benefits (link in my previous posting).
What really hurts people about redistribution, however, is redistribution within groups. In particular, within the middle class, there are many winners and many losers, even if redistribution balances out overall for middle income groups.
I have no doubt that that reflects your experience and that that makes you angry. But if your parents could afford a house in a nice neighborhood, it's not surprising that you can't. A good middle class income isn't a birthright you inherit, it's something you need to have the skills to obtain and maintain for yourself, and those skills are lost over a couple of generations: from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. For people like you, who are doing worse than their parents, there are many other people who are doing better. My parents grew up dirt poor and worked their way up, a
No, you are transferring that liability.
Well, then don't buy a self-driving car. Better don't buy a regular car, a house, a yard, or a dog either, because owning any of them involves risks that you have no control over at all.
The actual sociopaths are the kind of politicians you support. And, no, I don't "feel sorry for you": your stupidity and ignorance harms everybody.
That's just not true. People are uniformly better off today than they were 35 years ago. What has happened is that tax burdens have shifted somewhat. And if you look at government taxation and spending, you'll find that the only income group that pays substantially more than they receive in government benefits is the top 20%.
We do have a massive problem with crony capitalism in the US, where companies that are in bed with the government and politicians benefit massively. But that's a separate issue from inequality and income distribution.
Too bad, then, that minimum wage laws exacerbate those problems.
The only "redistribution" we really need is in terms of abolishing stupid government regulations that cause the price of housing, food, clothing, and other essential to be many times as high as they need to be, and that cause people to be unemployable. After getting rid of those regulations, the tiny number of people who still have problems would more than be taken care of by private charity.
It's logically impossible to be simultaneously libertarian/liberal on social issues and socialist on economic issues. In the short term, socialists may appear to help oppressed minorities, but ultimately, their societies invariably turn totalitarian. Take it from someone who has experienced it first hand.
Conservative Christian nuts are in the minority in the Republican party. And I'll take a Christian totalitarian state over a socialist totalitarian state any day.
No, it doesn't mean that at all. It simply means that Google sold you the car without assuming liability. Maybe you're just a student and don't own much, but as people get older, they tend to own more "autonomous objects" that can cause injury to others. That's why many people get umbrella liability policies. Unless you're dirt poor, it's a good idea to have something like that.
You are paying for the insurance of that bus, both through your ticket and through your taxes. And you're likely paying a lot more for insurance that way than if you paid for it on a case-by-case basis.
Why? Your lifetime risk of dying in a car accident is about 1.2%. A 0.0001% chance of you dying from a mistake the car could make would be completely negligible.
You don't accept liability, your insurance company does. Furthermore, if you drive, you already do the same thing: you pay insurance to cover you and your passengers for the mistakes of other people, like when an uninsured motorist plows into your car.
Sexual harassment is unwanted sexual attention. It doesn't make sense to say that you receive unwanted sexual attention when you dress in revealing clothes.
Why would youcare what the risk is as long as someone is willing to insure it for you cheaply enough? Your insurance for a self-driving car is likely going to be lower than for a regular car.
There is no "this model"; people just don't know yet what form self-driving cars will take. There may well be several different classes, depending on speed, kind of AI, and kind of driver.
In that regard, a self-driving car seems no different from a horse or a dog to me: you are using it for some purpose, but you aren't fully in charge of it since it can act autonomously, and you are liable for any damage it causes. Unlike dogs or horses, self-driving cars at least have a track record (by brand).
If there is a risk from self-driving cars that needs to be insured, you are going to pay for it one way or another. If you don't buy your own insurance, Google will simply have to add it to the purchase price.
It's similar to malpractice insurance: you may think you force your doctor to pay for it, but they just add it back to your bill.
In the end, it's you who wants to operate the product, the companies providing it aren't charities, so you end up paying for everything: material, labor, and risk of operating it.
Google isn't "making you pay" anything. It's your choice to buy or not buy a self-driving car from them and purchase the necessary insurance for it. If you impose liability on Google, they buy their own insurance and add it to the purchase price of the car. Then it's still your choice whether to buy the car or not.
It's the same when you buy a Ferrari: nobody is "making" you buy the car or insure it, but if you choose to buy it, you have to get the required insurance, which may be different than for regular cars.
I suspect pretty soon, the risk from self-driving cars is going to be judged lower than the risk from human driving, meaning that your insurance rates are likely to be lower if you buy a self-driving car. That's going to be even more so for people with prior accidents or who are under 25. So it makes sense to actually price and purchase insurance separately from the car.
Perhaps the real problem is that our educational institutions are authoritarian to begin with? That students are indoctrinated into believing that the world we live in is one in which people are elevated to positions of "authority figures" and the way to become one yourself is through politics and lobbying? The fact that people are taught that they are so worthless and replaceable that students leaving because their supervisors behaved inappropriately towards them just isn't a big loss?
Wearing "attractive" clothing in a professional environment should be unacceptable for both men and women, not because of any risk of sexual harassment, but because it is manipulative. Conservative hairstyle, dress, and behavior should be the norm for both sexes and both supervisors and employees.
Electricians tend not to behave inappropriately towards their customers because they lose business and because people will report any illegal conduct to the police. That is why politicians have to be extra nice to their customers.
The fact that it is academia matters because academics are exempted from such mechanisms. Merely being elevated to the position of a tenured professor gives people massive power and influence, and it means that the person in question doesn't have to worry much anymore about whether their "customers" (students) like them. And it's worse in soft fields like anthropology than in engineering and the sciences.
That question has largely been answered, it's just that feminists don't like the answers: women statistically are less concerned with status and high income, and women have babies and biological clocks.