Thread by @doctorow

In my 2017 novel WALKAWAY, there's a scene where the protagonists get into a self-driving car owned by a ruthless plutocrat, only to discover that it moves faster than any other vehicle they've ever ridden.

craphound.com/category/walka…

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The plute explains that he's done an illegal mod that lets him override the lane-change safety margins and pay fines for it - an illustration of the principle that "a fine is a price."

It was meant as broad satire, not a suggestion.

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Specifically, it was meant to satire the idea that if you create "markets in everything" you'll get efficient allocations - some people REALLY want to change lanes and others only SORTA want to change lanes but the lane-change slots aren't allocated according to priority.

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There are so many flaws in this idea, but the biggest one is that some people are VERY rich and most people are VERY broke and so a willingness on the part of a rich person to pay $X may indicate a mild preference, but a poor person might be indicating a strong preference.

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If $X is 100% of a poor person's disposable income and 0.000001% of a rich person's disposable income, the rich person's whims trump the poor person's needs. This is going on around us, all the time.

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The richest parts of London have the lowest covid rates but also the most rapid testing:

bylinetimes.com/2020/12/04/wea…

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Remember when Homer charged a $1000 baldness cure that revolutionized his life to the company insurance and cost Mr Burns his ivory-handled back-scratcher?

Burns: I was going to buy that ivory back scratcher. How did he do it?

Smithers: He charged the company for Dimoxinil.

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Back to Walkaway. Cyberpunk has a funny relationship with capitalism's most ardent trufans: inevitably, the parts that are meant as warnings are read as suggestions.

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Which brings me to Ford's Patent 20200380860: "Smart Contract Formation, Handling and Fulfilment Between Vehicles."

trea.com/information/sm…

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It's written in the garbage legalese of all patent applications, but @patentdrop provides a handy translation: "imagine a car wants to merge... other vehicles would need to slow down, and in turn an inconvenience is created for them.

newzstack.com/newsletters/01…

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"Ford is proposing a system where the vehicles that need to slow down receive a payment for slowing down, while the vehicle that wants to do the slowing down, incurs a payment."

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But there's more! Are you using a private vehicle on a route served by public transit? You stand to be compensated!

"If a light changes prematurely to accommodate a bus, this could entitle all vehicles with a certain distance of the light to light to a certain payment."

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I would say "You can't make this shit up," except that I make this shit up for a living, but - and I can't repeat this often enough - as a warning, not a suggestion.

eof/

Read this thread on the web here: pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/req…