Matt: Self-driving

There has been some lovely writing about self-driving this week, first in the New York Times where Jonathan Slotkin makes the medical case for autonomous vehicles. But I was really taken by The Economist’s look at how self-driving cars will transform urban economies. It’s behind a paywall. I enjoyed how they thought about the second-order effects of self-driving.

America is home to 1m taxi and bus drivers, as well as over 3m truck drivers—adding up to 3% of the working population. Other potential losers are less obvious. Without car accidents there will, for instance, be less demand for personal-injury lawyers. If people stop buying cars, dealers and used-car salesmen will go. 

It’s fascinating to think a few chess moves down the line, for example, fewer personal-injury lawyers funding politicians might lead to some form of Tort Reform, an area of society that, like gun control, has centrist changes most Americans would agree with, but has been captured by special interests.