Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is quite that extreme of a slippery slope. For one, areas of unrest are already restricted by physical police and national guard barriers. For example, during the unrest in 2020, Chicago physically raised its drawbridges. Anyone who really wants to get somewhere difficult would probably choose a bicycle or legs, so you need physical police barriers in that case. Refusing to drive you to the gun sto…
Nah, I will continue to buy disconnected vehicles for as long as possible since I chose to live in a rural area of the country, and I expect my machine to start when I tell it to. People that live in Chicago or New York choose to give up their ability to travel without the need for the government that is their choice. And didn't the pandemic have a major impact on some public transit lines operation? Again I believe…
No government was involved here, just a private company, who has the freedom to do as they please with their property and the responsibility to protect their assets.
> People that live in Chicago or New York choose to give up their ability to travel without the need for the government that is their choice.
What you're implying here is that city dwellers are government-dependent babies, which is very condescending to them. Choosing to drive your car on the public roads of your suburb or rural town doesn't make you any less dependent on society or the government.
Yes, transit systems had cuts due to ridership and revenue issues, and shut down at certain stations during unrest. Do you think a bank should keep its doors unlocked when there's unrest going on outside? These city transit systems were exercising their personal responsibility to protect public property, right?
> Again I believe in personal responsibility and freedom, I choose not to have that level of reliance on others.
Like it or not, you rely on others. There is little choice involved. There is almost no way to end that relationship entirely.
You probably drink from water that was managed by a government, and your poop is taken away either in a public sewer or on a septic truck driving on a public road. Unless you literally live out in the woods off of the land and never leave, you are a part of society, and libertarian hyper-individualist rhetoric can't change that. "Freedom" doesn't mean you're just allowed to do whatever you want at all times regardless of how it affects other people, but a lot of Americans have misconstrued the concept of freedom to mean just that.
Freedom as in democratic freedom has a lot more to do with freedom of speech, press, and elections. It doesn't mean you're free to drive on a road that is closed.
I was very clear in stating that I believe we need laws to prevent technology from becoming dystopian, but also I don't believe technology reaching the most dystopian version of its theoretical capabilities is inevitable or even particularly common. We can blame the technology all we want but it is rules of society that protects us from its abuse, not "personal freedom and responsibility."
The irony of your messaging is that your belief in freedom and responsibility would have to be applied to corporations as well as individuals. If you're free to make any choice, so are companies. Again, Tesla is, allegedly, exercising its own freedom and responsibility to protect its asset by repossessing its car.
Self-driving, interconnected cars could be an incredible boon to public safety, as car crashes are one of the top causes of premature death. Cars that can talk to each other and basically never crash into each other would be a dream world. We can talk about how technology would turn that into a surveillance dystopia, or we can build systems, laws, and checks on power that would make that technology enhance everyone's lives without significant downside or encroachment on "freedom."
The fact that Tesla cars are connected to a central server isn't the cause of abuses, it's the present legality of their harmful business practices. A great example: the car dealer system that Tesla lobbies against was put in place to protect consumers against overbearing manufacturers. Has that worked? In some cases, yes, in some cases, no.
In our present and most definitely not-libertarian society, the government has at least curbed unchecked corporate power by enacting laws like HIPAA that protect consumer rights and enforce interoperability. We need similar legislation and enforcement for non-healthcare technology. We need our own GDPR, but better, more comprehensive, and better designed. That will be difficult to achieve given the corporate influence on politics, but I do think we'll eventually get something, because even the elites in our society need protection from companies who want to exercise their freedom.