Self-driving car companies will have massive net positive externalities on the public, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year when fully deployed.
> The public spent a few million dollars on the Grand Challenge, while Waymo alone is worth 10's of billions of dollars.
False comparison. First of all DARPA has invested a lot more than that in all sorts of related AV technologies (e.g. LIDAR, AI, robotics). But the real question is when were those "few million dollars" invested. Seed investments generally are much smaller than what companies end up being worth.
In our high tech system, taxpayers generally take on the riskiest stage of very early development, where it takes billions of dollars in bets spread over a very large area over 10+ years. And you're right, there are some socialized benefits, but the statement stands that the costs are socialized as well.
Imagine if you told Google's earliest investor that their investment was a tiny percentage of what it's worth today, and they enjoy the benefit of using Google now, so it's fair that Google's later investors kept all the equity.
> First of all DARPA has invested a lot more than that in all sorts of related AV technologies
I was responding to your link about the Grand Challenge.
> Seed investments generally are much smaller than what companies end up being worth.
Of course. Are you really going to make someone else go point out the hundreds of millions in dollars of seed-level funding by Google, by Uber, etc., to demonstrate the obvious point that the DARPA Grand Challenge is terrible evidence for the claim "autonomous vehicle development was funded by taxpayers".
> so it's fair that Google's later investors kept all the equity.
People who invest in Google get to keep the equity they they purchase, but they don't get a claim to the equity of companies that exist because of Google's search product.
Likewise, when the government invests in public goods, they don't then get to claim everything that is built on top of the public good.
Indeed, the government provides the rule of law, without which almost no modern economic development could take place. But that obviously doesn't mean the government has claim to all economic value. Likewise, none of us could work without eating, but that doesn't mean we owe all our income to farmers.
DARPA is waaay before what's called "seed" level funding in the commercial sector. They are the pre-pre-pre-seed. Taxpayers fund a lot of military procurement for nascent technologies as well.
Again you make a false comparison. Nobody claimed that early stage investors are entitled to "all economic value". The statement stands that costs are socialized. Silicon Valley is greatly subsidized by early stage taxpayer investment.
> Are you really going to make someone else go point out the hundreds of millions in dollars of seed-level funding by Google, by Uber, etc., to demonstrate the obvious point that the DARPA Grand Challenge is terrible evidence for the claim "autonomous vehicle development was funded by taxpayers".
"Autonomous vehicle development was funded by taxpayers" is a factually correct statement. You again fundamentally misunderstand the distinction of when investments are made vs. quantity of investment. Earlier stage investments are riskier; Google et al did not start pouring money in until the technology started showing some promise after many years of taxpayer investment. As is commonly the case with our high tech system.
I guess we should credit Andrew Carnegie with pre^12-seed funding since he founded Carnegie-Mellon and a lot of relevant robotics research has taken place there.
Again, I am not discussing all of DARPA's activities, I am talking about the Grand Challenge you brought up, which I continue to maintain is minuscule compared to a million other sources and thus is terrible evidence that "autonomous vehicle development was funded by taxpayers" in any non-trivial sense.
> Nobody claimed that early stage investors are entitled to "all economic value".
You misinterpret my analogy. The point is that your approach, if taken seriously, would mean the government would have a claim on every single bit of economic value in the US, not that it would have full ownership of all of it.
> The statement stands that costs are socialized.
> "Autonomous vehicle development was funded by taxpayers" is a factually correct statement
Ha, yes, and we can also conclude that autonomous vehicle development was funded by Carnegie, Roomba, and my buddy Alex who runs a robotic delivery startup.
Once again you have confused the timing and thus risk of investment with quantity. Furthermore, and trivially, donations by private citizens such as Carnegie are not a socialization of costs.
The simple fact remains that taxpayers have made significant and critical investments in nurturing AV technology, like many other technologies that Silicon Valley has commercialized once they bore fruit. Your fundamental premise that investments that are "minuscule" in size are necessarily minuscule in significance is trivially wrong.
You've repeatedly attributed multiple claims to me I'm not making. I can't tell how much of that is willful, but either way I won't continue the discussion.
Even electric cars aren't pollution free, and there are still other negative externalities (like health costs associated with car-centric life styles).
The latest EPA Tier 3 gasoline vehicles have extremely low particulate emissions. If we're talking about building new vehicles anyway then your fatality estimate is way too high.
You have no reliable basis for quantifying the net positive impact. The technology looks promising but at this point we don't even know whether it can be made to work reliably outside of a few limited areas.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/23/alphabets-self-driving-waymo...
Self-driving car companies will have massive net positive externalities on the public, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year when fully deployed.