Technological Antisolutions: The Difference Between Public Transit and Self-Driving Cars:

In fact, most of the world’s richest man’s wealth has come from precisely this phenomenon. Investors and analysts have long puzzled over the wildly inflated valuations of his companies, noting that Tesla’s market cap has oftentimes exceeded the combined market cap of its five major competitors. It is because Elon Musk does not sell cars, or spaceships, or tunnelling equipment; he sells political apathy. He tells us he can solve our social problems by replacing them with cool sounding technology that he will never be able to deliver.

There is perhaps no better example of technological antisolution than the self-driving car. American transit is a political crisis on so many levels. The average American’s daily routine involves spending an inordinate amount of their day operating 4,000 lbs of heavy machinery that burns fossil fuels. Oftentimes, these machines capable of cruising safely at 70+mph are forced to sit in queues miles long because there are so many of them. This twice-daily society-wide masochistic ritual destroys the air quality in our cities, the psychological well-being of its participants, the physical spaces we inhabit, and the only wet rock capable of sustaining human life in an otherwise cold and unwelcoming universe.

Note - There’s no such things as “cruising safely at 70+mph” - Brakes, human reflexes, visual acuity and road conditions just don’t combine in a way that anything over 60 or so is acutally safe most of the time, much less all the time.