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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6830 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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I very much agree. There are two great questions about the self-driving car era that we don't know the answer to yet:

  • Will self-driving cars be hired like taxis or will they be privately owned? Or in other words, will people still own a car once renting it on the spot market not longer adds the cost of a chauffeur.
  • What is the geometric constraint on cities in the world where self-driving cars are the main form of transit? (From Babylon to the Victorians, it was walking distance. In the private car era, it was parking scarcity first and carriageway scarcity for moving vehicles second)

Seems to me like the problem is rushhour -- everyone wants a self-driving car at the same time. If you can't convince people to get self-driving rideshares or even a bespoke self-driving programmable bus, then everyone wants their own car. And then you still need parking because otherwise empty cars returning home just produce twice as much traffic and exponential congestion.

To your first question, I think it is likely that we will see a progression over time. At first, self-driving cars will likely be sold privately to individual owners to appeal to the existing culture of private car ownership. Tesla has already begun this. However, I'd imagine that eventually, manufacturers will transition to larger and larger taxi-style fleets, as this seems to me a more profitable business model. They might even have a subscription model where you pay X amount for Y miles of travel per month. The question will be in how these fleets are administered. Will these fleets be controlled by municipalities? Will multiple fleets coexist or will there be a clear winner that later becomes impenetrable due to market dominance? How will rural or suburban areas be served? It is going to be an interesting few decades.

I'm not sure it'd ever fully replace ownership. Many people don't treat their cars as interchangeable parts today. If you have a work truck with tools in the back, you may not want to move those often. Or reinstall a bike rack every time you use it. I do think it could replace a lot of uses, but probably not all of them.

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