Ask HN: Instead of Self-Owning Cars, Why Not Community-Owned Cars?

1 points by turtleofdeath 9 years ago | 6 comments

I've been discussing solutions to the potential future of significant job loss to automation. While I think Basic Income should be considered and piloted, I am trying to keep an open mind for alternatives.

I keep reading about cars that would own themselves and communicate with each other to essentially compete for customers.

However, why not have a fleet of community crowd sourced autonomous vehicles that pay out dividends? I feel like, modeled properly, it might work well in conjunction with a basic income of some sort.

Why would this fail?

Bonus: couldn't it be applied to other services that would benefit the community?

MildlySerious 9 years ago |

For the near future, company owned cars or even privately owned cars that service others seem reasonable. There's an incentive for profit and it seems like something that could compete with a normal commute and some other things. So I wouldn't be surprised if that happened.

A little after that, I wouldn't be surprised if these "on demand" cars could be part of public transportation. In a lot of places buses or even trains are hardly profitable, which I think would be a good market and a win-win for everyone involved.

The dividends thing.. I am not so sure of. If the cars were owned by the city, the revenue could be used the same way money from public transportation is used.

turtleofdeath 9 years ago | |

Good points. I guess if a service like Uber is barely profitable, it won't make sense. On the other hand, if there's a good profit margin to be made, I'd want to see how well it does (at least in a model. I suppose I can look this up myself somehow).

MildlySerious 9 years ago | | |

It would be a market with decreasing costs. The technology is still in its infancy, so there's a lot of progress to be made. Energy will get cheaper now that solar is on the rise (assuming none of these cars would use fossil fuels) - That leaves a lot of room for prices to move, and for cheaper/more attractive competition to emerge I would say.

No idea how to model this, but I can only imagine that driving prices and profit margins down.

Neliquat 9 years ago |

Because cleanliness varies. If you make cars public, people will trash them like they do all public transportation, mostly through disinterest. The investment into your own car is a reflection of yourself and something you can take pride in.

ezekg 9 years ago |

I've had roommates before. I just can't do that again.

eip 9 years ago |

Why not community owned laptops?