[ExI] experiment regarding ethical behaviors vs status: was RE: Will robot cars be TOO good?

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Wed Mar 28 00:54:28 UTC 2012


On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 6:21 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>>... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson
>
> On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 1:34 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>>
>> >...  They have the choice of speeding ahead in the empty right lane up to
> the front of the line and stuffing their car
>> ahead of other patient drivers who are now well behind, but overall
>> wads up traffic, so it penalizes the cooperators twice.  These are the
> defectors.
>
>>... Perhaps the rich are in a hurry more often than the poor... :-)  --
> Kelly
>
>
> I think you hit it right on Kelly.  In my own analysis I missed an important
> point: the racy German cars were favored by companies who offered them as
> bait for the best executive talent.  They were likewise favored by those who
> wanted to appear to be one of those executives.  So racy German cars are
> favored by fast rising executives, whose time really is valuable as all get
> out.  Fines for driving crazy are flat rate, not a function of income.  So
> the penalty for a fast rising executive is an annoyance, but for the local
> taxi driver it is a crisis.

OK, I thought about this while peeling a bunch of potatoes, and now
I'm not feeling quite so conciliatory. We should thank the rich who
pay 90% of the cost of the highway by giving them their own carpool
lane. (In fact, the do this here, as you can buy your way into the
carpool lane, but that's double taxation, the subject of another rant)
We should allow them to travel at 140 MPH in those lanes. We should
bless them every time they blow past us. Why? Because they are paying
the damn bill to keep all that real estate paved!

The rich should cheat a little. We should be happy when they do. This
predates humanity. The lioness who is the best hunter gets the best
food first. Why? So she can hunt the gazelle so the whole pride is
more likely to eat again tomorrow!!

It is ludicrous that we vilify the rich in the first place. When they
do these little cheats to save a few minutes, we should be happy that
they are on the way to creating the future that WE ALL WANT. Hating
them for it is envy, and that's one of the seven deadly sins for a
DAMN FINE REASON.

So, I take it back. Bad science project, unless it's put into context,
and compute the economic benefit of all this cheating as part of the
project. I bet you would find that they are still disproportionally
NOT getting their fair share of use out of the road that they mostly
paid for.

Now, don't go saying Kelly justifies Bernie Madoff. He stole
disproportionately from people who could not afford it. I'm talking
about the little cheats. Going before they should at the 4 way stop...
that sort of thing. We should kiss their rich butts when they do this
sort of thing because that means our future will come to us all faster
than we otherwise would get it.

Spike, as a card carrying libertarian thinker, you should agree with
what I'm saying here. I forgive you because maybe you didn't think it
through all the way the first time... :-)  If you continue with this
class warfare... then I'll have to have you forfeit your libertarian
credentials for the rest of the afternoon. ;-)

Rant over. For now. Sorry, I feel better now.

-Kelly




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