Comment by baxtr
2 days ago
> I’d take a Waymo in a heartbeat.
On a personal level I fully understand that.
On a societal level I’d say, maybe it’s helpful not to be completely segregated from a certain social class that seems to exist in your town and to be exposed to them, albeit briefly during a cab ride.
I don't think this is a social class issue, it's an issue where society is failing to address widespread anti social behavior and mental illness. We've kind of given up and just accepted racism, anger, belligerence, and all kinds of mental illnesses as inevitable societal land mines that normal people have to tiptoe around. And now that they're unchecked, they're taking over. I can't remember any time in my life where we've had so many people just out there living their lives, in desperate need of help.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/
I mean this earnestly, and not as some sort of comeback: what would “checking” this behavior look like? What is gone in society now that checked it in the past?
I’m sympathetic to this view but I can’t really make it a coherent theory in my head. When people talk about it on the internet it doesn’t seem to go very far beyond “something changed after Covid” and maybe “social media is to blame” but those two observations don’t make for much of a theory.
On a societal level, I think more “normal people” would take public transit if they could guarantee the removal of homeless people and people behaving antisocially
That would require everyone having a stable job. Something to think about.
No, it would require removing homeless or antisocial people from public transportation.
6 replies →
And function social welfare with healthcare, mental health care, housing and education provision.
It’s not an issue of social class. It’s an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards.
> an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards
They absolutely can. Uber just prizes availability above service while Lyft perplexingly fails to differentiate itself. To the extent Waymo is cracking the market, it’s not by being an AV provider. It’s by being higher quality.
New York had Juno and then Revel that similarly targeted quality. The former was bought by Uber and ruined. The latter switched from employed drivers to a gig model.
lol. Remember when Uber was cracking the market? Taxis where bad bad. Uber was cool cool. One "monopoly" got exchanged for another. Now Waymo is cool cool. In 10 years or so Waymo will be bad because they will play loud ads or some shit.
4 replies →
Oh no, where will I possibly find weird racist xenophobic takes if not during my taxi ride? It's too bad there's not a million social media sites where I could be exposed to them