Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

(Partially) Self-Driving Cars

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Christopher Mims had an article in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal that talked about the technology involved in controlling self-driving cars is slowing the introduction of production-ready self-driving cars.  Aspects of that technology are making their way into human-driven cars, obviating the need for computer-run cars.

I have some thoughts on that.  Because opinions are my jam.

Mims led off his piece with this about that technology in a more current car that remains fundamentally human-driven:

It will take over when it thinks you’re making a mistake.

No, it won’t. That’ll be among the first things I disable, right up there with any OnStar-like tracking. I remain smarter than both the average bear and any computer.

Mims then asked about the safety features for which we might look in our next car.  I’ll be looking for better 360 sensing.  My 2013 Fusion Hybrid had pretty good sensing, both to the front and to the rear.  It didn’t have “collision warnings,” but it did warn of obstacles.  Nor did it have automatic, preemptive breaking; that technology wasn’t readily available then.  Thank goodness.  Still, sensing always can get better. I also opted to not have forward sensing on my current Fusion; that has turned out to be suboptimal.  I miss the added data.

Mims also asked whether partial autonomy would be a requirement.  Far from it for me; that will be a deal-breaker, unless I can engage/disengage it at (my) will, like I can my cruise control—which is pretty much all the autonomy my car needs.

What I really want is better displays to facilitate my decision making.  I want a decent HUD that displays in a couple of lines across the bottom left half of my windshield such things as current speed, fuel, engine performance and status (if I’m driving another hybrid, I want battery charge state and per cent of maximum battery power at my current driving speed), and time and distance to my destination and next turn point if I’ve laid in a route on my Nav system.

I also want more flexibility in the organization of those displays remaining on my dashboard.  There’s no reason, in this age of digitized displays, that I can’t make my own choices on what to display on this or that display monitor and move displays (not the monitors hosting them) around to group them according to my preference.

In the end, my car works for me; I’m not along to validate the computer’s decisions, much less to be overridden by them.

Votes or Humans?

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Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposed legislation Friday that would allocate $7 billion in federal grants to help minority entrepreneurs start businesses.

This is just more of the soft bigotry of low expectations inherent in Progressive-Democrats. They simply don’t believe that minorities can compete without special treatment, so they regulate the hell out of our economy and then generate handouts to prop up those most damaged by their regulations.

On the other hand, it’s a way to keep minorities trapped in Progressive-Democrats’ welfare cages, because votes.

And in the end, that’s all Progressive-Democrats see minorities as.  Blacks, Hispanics, women, these aren’t actual human beings, they’re just votes to be harvested.

No Fair

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The United Auto Workers lost another attempt to “organize” Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, TN, factory; its latest move was voted down last Friday 833-776.  Tennessee is a right-to-work State, and those factory workers rudely exercised their right to work free of union interference.

Naturally, the UAW has its collective panties in a collective twist.  The loss is unfair, you see, because it’s always unfair when a union (or any faction of the Left, come to that) loses a contest. Brian Rothenberg, a UAW spokesman, made this nonsense plain:

Our labor laws are broken[.]

Well, they must be—they don’t guarantee a union victory.

Rothenberg went on:

Workers should not have to endure threats and intimidation in order to obtain the right to collectively bargain[.]

Certainly.  And they are, for the most part, free of threats and intimidation in Tennessee, as they are in every right-to-work State.  Workers also, though, should not have to endure threats and intimidation in order to maintain their right not to have a union “represent” them.

These workers have spoken, quite clearly, twice on this matter, now, and similarly situated workers throughout right-to-work States have been loud and clear with the same message to unions trying to interfere with their work environment: “Go away, and leave us alone.  Quit bothering us.”

Will the unions listen to the workers?  Do they ever?

Socialism

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It seems Amazon has teamed with another company to create and issue a credit card that would be issuable to Amazon’s Prime members. It doesn’t matter what the purpose and parameters of the card are—they’re legal under existing law.

But none of that matters.  Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and his trophy BFF, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY), object to the card because it doesn’t suit their requirements.  And since they object, they’ve vowed to destroy the card, should Sanders be elected President.

It doesn’t matter what their objections are; Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez intend to use Government power to destroy a private enterprise’s product because that product wouldn’t fit their government’s purpose for private enterprise products.

Sanders pretends his ideology, his policy, is democratic socialism.  No, this example of his is straight up socialism.  In particular, it’s the fascism subset of socialism, since Sanders would presume to have government impose its production policy on a private enterprise.

The sad—and dangerous—thing is, Sanders knows this distinction full well, even if Ocasio-Cortez might not.

Surprise Medical Billing

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The Wall Street Journal recounted one such example and a (partial, I say) solution in Benedic Ippolito’s (of the American Enterprise Institute) Tuesday op-ed.

The example was a man with a broken jaw who was transported, unconscious, to a hospital ER for treatment.  The hospital turned out to be in his medical insurance network, but the treating surgeon turned out not to be.  The latter’s bill was for $8,000, which the insurer refused to pay.  The man was unaware of that fee until after the treatment had been effected.

The solution described by Ippolito (one of three and the one favored by him; the other two were just price fixing in one form or another) is this:

[an] “in-network guarantee,” is a better solution. Hospitals would ensure that all providers treating insured patients are also considered in-network. Some already do this. Doctors at these facilities would have two options: come to an agreement with the insurer (as most already do) or receive payment directly from the hospital. This would eliminate the inflated surprise bills, reduce premiums and federal spending, and leave it to doctors, hospitals, and insurers to work out market prices.

While a good start, this option is incomplete.  All of those prices and fees need to be known to the patient and to the public at large beforehand.  Further, this needs to be the case for all the medical facilities in a region—hospitals, urgent care facilities, clinics.  Such prices and fees easily could be posted on each facility’s Web site, or on the facility’s entrance if it hasn’t joined the 20th century.

The patients and potential patients in the general public need to be in on the working out of market prices.