Special Interests and Autonomous Vehicles
How the turn tables
After a seven-month pilot program, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are no longer roaming the streets of New York. Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, had been testing eight autonomous vehicles around the five boroughs. Their permit to do so was granted under the Adams administration and has not been renewed with Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Going forward, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Transportation said, “Our top priority for AV testing is public safety and, as the mayor has made clear, any AV policy decisions will center workers and their well-being.”
Well, which is it? This is a great example of what Ezra Klein has called “everything-bagel liberalism”. This is where progressives try to accomplish many goals at once, to the detriment of the actual objective of a single project. In this case, the two goals are public safety and labor conditions. The City of New York is understandably concerned with both. But AVs present a case where the two conflict.
AVs are indisputably safer than cars being driven by humans. With millions of miles of testing and hundreds of rides taken every day by AVs, the differences are substantial. Detractors will moan that many of these studies come from the companies themselves, which is a fair critique, but the differences are massive. Some studies have found a 90% decrease in serious injury or fatal crashes. If the mayor’s office is concerned with public safety, then it should be embracing AVs with open arms. Given the nanny-state attitude the New York government often embraces, it could even go a step further. Perhaps AVs should be mandated, and human-driven cars banished from the city like the horse and carriage.
Unfortunately, this would not be good for workers.
Tens of thousands of New Yorkers make their living as drivers. There are around 180,000 people with active Taxi & Limousine Commission licenses. AVs represent an existential threat to their interests. Now, in a sensible world, people would recognize that this is just the price of progress. AVs will destroy many jobs, but so too has the self-checkout lane at the supermarket. The existence of a job in 2025 does guarantee the existence of a job in 2030 any more than the existence of a job in 1926 guarantees its existence in 2026. Economists have understood for decades that growth often comes through creative destruction, whereby cobblers become a thing of the past, and people now make a living designing cell phone apps.
This not being a sensible world, a government official can openly say they will not hesitate to prevent progress if it means protecting jobs. One is instantly reminded of the delightful story of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman visiting India in the 1960s. During his tour, he was taken to see a canal being built. To Friedman’s surprise, all the digging was being done by hand, despite the presence of at least rudimentary machinery nearby. When Friedman asked why the workers were using shovels instead of machines, he was told it was because the road was being built as part of a jobs program. Using machinery to build the road would mean fewer jobs. Thus, the workers used shovels. Friedman replied, “Oh, I see. I thought you were trying to build a canal. If you really want to create jobs, then by all means give these men spoons, not shovels.”
It isn’t surprising that the New York government would explicitly state that regulatory approval will take into account how many jobs a new technology would destroy, but it is disappointing.
Of course, the greatest irony is that the very people who are protesting AVs were themselves the object of protests a mere decade ago.
When UberX launched in 2012, it immediately prompted howls of protest from taxi drivers. They launched protests across the country, blocking access to various airports and harassing Uber drivers. At the time, many left-of-center Americans took their side. This never made any sense to me. Taxi drivers were the worst. Despite enormous restrictions keeping out competitors, taxi drivers around the country (and the world) were arguably the most dishonest profession. Taxi drivers were known for deliberately taking took a circuitous route to a destination or futzed with the meter. I remember trying to get a taxi to New Jersey from the Lower East Side in Manhattan late one night. The bars were letting out, and the streets were packed. Taxi drivers, in flagrant violation of their agreement with the city, would roll down their window and would only accept passengers going to a destination in an area where a lot of other people would be looking for cabs. It took forever to find a cabbie willing to drive us to Jersey City, and even then, he turned off the meter and we had to pay him an inflated rate in cash.
Yet despite the constant hassle and corruption, many supported the taxi drivers. They were against Uber, a model proven to be indisputably better, if for no other reason than its skyrocketing popularity. It made no sense. Protesting that Uber drivers will hasten the demise of taxi drivers is like protesting that Airbnb will end the market for time shares. These are good things! The reality was, of course, people are reflexively against all change and wanted to use the government to enforce the status quo.
Today, those very Uber drivers are trying to throw roadblocks in the way of AVs. In a mere decade, they have gone from the scrappy upstart trying to overthrow vested and corrupt interests to a corrupt interest themselves. What a turnaround. Of course AVs are bad for Uber drivers. Uber drivers were bad for taxi drivers. Taxi drivers were bad for the horse and carriage. If we ever get around to building highly walkable cities, those will be bad for AVs. This is how the system should work.
Instead, an instrument for change has become an instrument of stagnation. The disrupters have become the blockaders. It is likely they will lose in the end. But millions of dollars and countless years will be wasted in the process.