Comment by lotsofpulp
2 hours ago
>What we are seeing with some of these big tech companies is that they are transitioning from an exciting growth story into an extractive dividend story in a way that's becoming harmful to consumers.
Alphabet is rolling out autonomous driving vehicles in many cities around the USA, potentially getting rid of the need to drive a car in 90% of today's use cases.
How is this not still an exciting growth story? My kids might never need to drive a vehicle, even though we live in a car dependent suburb.
Some cute tech projects do not justify a massive monopoly. Google is financing Waymo using the ~300 billion dollar it extracts annually from consumers via ad spending. I would rather pay substantially less on anything I buy, and have the free market sort out self-driving cars.
A product/service that can drastically reduce the top cause of injury and death, as well as give safe mobility to so many who do not currently have it is not a "cute tech project".
>I would rather pay substantially less on anything I buy, and have the free market sort out self-driving cars.
Alphabet's entire revenue divided by the total amount of goods and services sold is miniscule, so I don't see how it could be mathematically possible to pay substantially less on anything you buy.
>and have the free market sort out self-driving cars.
This is the free market sorting out self-driving cars.
Google is one of many monopolies that are collectively bleeding society dry. Of course, the others should be broken up as well.
Waymo is currently financed by a monopolist and has negligible revenue itself, so it is not part of the free market.
Self-driving cars are an absurdly inefficient way to reduce traffic deaths that exists only because it makes substantially more money for shareholders than the alternatives. You are being witheld a good and cheap solution now for the promise of a worse and expensive solution some time in the future. All the while people keep dying.
Oh, and what's this "those who don't have it" bullshit? If anything, turning driving into a subscription service will mean mobility becomes harder for many people, as dirt-cheap used cars slowly stop being available. As for people who can't drive for whatever reason, they already have taxi apps. And don't think for a second that self-driving taxis will be cheaper in the long term than regular ones, only the margins will go up.
thing i dont like: extraction
thing i like: free market
i would rather people like you please stay silent instead of polluting the world with lazy thinking fit not even for dog