Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#261

Post by jajko » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 11:30 AM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #132

jajko wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if you really optimize it to ad absurdum, everybody will pay according to damages they will cause, negating whole point of 'socialized' spread-across-variable-population insurance. End users shouldn't generally want insurance to run over-optimally, that benefits just shareholders of given insurance and not population overall. That I consider myself above-average driver changes absolutely nothing in this. And…

I'm not generally for hyper analyzed metrics gathering in this case (I don't like the privacy implications), but I'm generally for riskier drivers paying significantly more. Individuals should feel the costs of their driving more in the US IMO. I don't like heavily subsidizing people who drive so recklessly. Maybe then they'd realize overly building car dependent cities isn't that great in the end. Convincing risky d…

Some optimization yes, but this has been already achieved decades ago by simply using driving/accident history that insurances shared among themselves probably since they went digital. All the consistently bad drivers will easily fall into this.

What I talk about is anticipation/prediction, possibly wrong conclusions from data (since we all know data can be pretty bad or incorrectly analyzed), also no way to correct any incorrectly derived bad rating.

There are no consumers winning in this scenario, even if it may feel intuitively as such if you are a stellar safe driver. Also there are many second-order effects, ie poor risky people pushed out of insurances, still driving since in US you can't do anything without a car in rural places, still causing accidents but no way in hell to pay back, ever. So we move the losses from private corporations to random citizens caught in some bad luck.

I'd say keep the risk at those corporations, they anyhow still manage to earn billions annually, no need to make their life even easier.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#262

Post by vel0city » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 11:36 AM UTC

akoncius wrote: post #232

vel0city wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we get a stronger political will to no longer force car dependency on everyone when people actually start to understand the real costs of car-centric design. When the stores and restaurants where rich people shop can't get anyone to work there anymore without paying people the full costs of actually driving far away maybe there will be a will to change things. Lots of people around the world can go to work without…

yeah and do you realise what you are suggesting? your proposed change will take decades to rework cities to move away from car-centric city design, to introduce public transportation, to rework current districts, to move shopping malls/restaurants closer to living districts etc. all of this just because you wanted to make stricter insurance just to make it more (by how much?) efficient for insurers, so that they woul…

No, I'm suggesting it because I don't want to pay for Bob to smash several cars a year. I'm saying it because there's lots of people who have no business being out on the road. Having Bob drive when he's a bad driver makes everyone around less safe.

But I guess you'd have society pay for all the cars Bob ends up destroying. We'll subsidize him crashing cars over and over and hurting Alice but we just can't seem to find the money to add another bus line!

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#263

Post by vel0city » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 11:40 AM UTC

Draiken wrote: post #255

vel0city wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's expand that. Let's name your hypothetical person, Bob. He's living on the edge financially, and decides to go without insurance. Let's bring in another person, Alice. Alice is also not in great financial shape. But Alice is able to pay for insurance and follows all the rules. Alice has a small amount of savings, go Alice! One day, Bob hits Alice. It causes medical issues for Alice. Alice might have insurance, b…

That scenario is completely missing the point. Bob has to drive because of the lack of good public transportation and the fact that he can't afford a house near his work. Not to mention if he can't afford a car with insurance it's because his job simply doesn't pay enough. It's much more likely that external factors put him in that situation, rather than himself. Yet you propose we should punish him personally and pa…

I'm fully aware Bob is the victim. That's why I'm saying the solution is to make it so Bob didn't get in a car. He is a victim of car dependency. Subsidizing insurance to make sure Bob could always afford it isn't solving that. Ensuring he can always afford insurance just furthers his victimhood.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#264

Post by withinboredom » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 11:50 AM UTC

Draiken wrote: post #258

xyst wrote: post #199

If every state sues GM, GM might go bankrupt. Then the American tax payers will be footing another bailout. Thus earning GM the moniker, Government Motors (again).

What's the alternative? Let them keep breaking laws because they're too big to fail? That's what makes me so angry with this stupid economic model. Once these monopolies/oligopolies are inevitably formed (after all, competition breeds monopolies), they are essentially untouchable. I don't think there's a way to fix this within the current system.

> What's the alternative?

Let them go out of business and everyone learns a valuable lesson: "too big to fail" is a myth.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#265

Post by Draiken » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:23 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #264

Draiken wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative? Let them keep breaking laws because they're too big to fail? That's what makes me so angry with this stupid economic model. Once these monopolies/oligopolies are inevitably formed (after all, competition breeds monopolies), they are essentially untouchable. I don't think there's a way to fix this within the current system.

> What's the alternative? Let them go out of business and everyone learns a valuable lesson: "too big to fail" is a myth.

I agree with you, but this will never happen. You think anyone would like to be responsible for bankrupting GM? It's bad PR. All people will talk about is how many jobs will be lost.

Here in Brazil we have a somewhat similar problem where the auto industry has been completely subsidized for over 70 years. Our factories are extremely inefficient and customers pay exorbitant amounts of money for a car. But if they remove the subsidies and import restrictions all of these industries would inevitably go bankrupt. Even though this is a good thing (these industries would not exist without these unfair advantages) nobody will ever want to be the bad guy that caused all those job losses.

It's simply not solvable in my view.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#266

Post by Draiken » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:29 PM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #263

Draiken wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That scenario is completely missing the point. Bob has to drive because of the lack of good public transportation and the fact that he can't afford a house near his work. Not to mention if he can't afford a car with insurance it's because his job simply doesn't pay enough. It's much more likely that external factors put him in that situation, rather than himself. Yet you propose we should punish him personally and pa…

I'm fully aware Bob is the victim. That's why I'm saying the solution is to make it so Bob didn't get in a car. He is a victim of car dependency. Subsidizing insurance to make sure Bob could always afford it isn't solving that. Ensuring he can always afford insurance just furthers his victimhood.

I see your point now. Yeah, I agree.

But the only question that really matters in the end is: is that profitable?

If we really cared about safety many people would not be allowed to drive in the first place. Tests would be much more strict and rightly so. But it's way more profitable to let those people spend money on cars (and eventually kill people) than it is to provide good public transportation.

Especially with the auto industry, they have basically won the lobbying game. Most people can't even imagine a world where cars aren't in the center of it, so we keep moving the goalpost...

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#267

Post by hiatus » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:29 PM UTC

darby_nine wrote: post #257

EvanAnderson wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want to hurt the company and it's owners... The owners of big companies include lots of pension plans, index funds, etc. Hurting those owners, who didn't have any say in the bad decisions, is probably not what we want. Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of illegal activities sounds good to me.

Pension plans are nearly gone and the whole point of index funds is to weather volatility. We have unemployment to assist workers (or we would if workers had modern rights to begin with). meanwhile whole draw of market investment to everyone but the shareholders goes tits-up if failure is weathered by the market as a whole rather than the incompetent or malicious actors. I mean, people will put up with a lot, but eve…

> Pension plans are nearly gone

Pensions are a large part of public sector compensation.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#268

Post by AbrahamParangi » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:31 PM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #52

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an efficient market insurance premiums are essentially zero sum. The more that one person pays to offset their own risk, the less everyone else pays. Safe drivers subsidize unsafe drivers and this subsidy can and should be reduced when possible with better predictive information.

Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk. If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no longer fulfilling its social function. Secondly, you seem to be implying that only aggressive drivers are getting flagged by the data. But the computer doesn't know if you accelerate and brake hard because you're an aggressive driver, or if your circ…

Insurance spreads risk over outcomes. The social function of spreading risk over people (subsidizing risky behavior) is both incidental, accidental, and a clear moral hazard. Insurance would still be extremely useful even if we knew with perfect certainty the probability that you would have a car accident in the next 5 years.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#269

Post by Amezarak » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:34 PM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #132

jajko wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if you really optimize it to ad absurdum, everybody will pay according to damages they will cause, negating whole point of 'socialized' spread-across-variable-population insurance. End users shouldn't generally want insurance to run over-optimally, that benefits just shareholders of given insurance and not population overall. That I consider myself above-average driver changes absolutely nothing in this. And…

I'm not generally for hyper analyzed metrics gathering in this case (I don't like the privacy implications), but I'm generally for riskier drivers paying significantly more. Individuals should feel the costs of their driving more in the US IMO. I don't like heavily subsidizing people who drive so recklessly. Maybe then they'd realize overly building car dependent cities isn't that great in the end. Convincing risky d…

That just makes people drive without insurance. And yeah, you can fine them and take their license away. Then they drive without a license.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf]

#270

Post by AbrahamParangi » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 12:39 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #55

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an efficient market insurance premiums are essentially zero sum. The more that one person pays to offset their own risk, the less everyone else pays. Safe drivers subsidize unsafe drivers and this subsidy can and should be reduced when possible with better predictive information.

> Safe drivers subsidize unsafe drivers and this subsidy can and should be reduced when possible with better predictive information. Okay, that's an interesting perspective, let's explore. A policy that can be unilaterally cancelled at any time, and forces you to put cameras in your car, could be the most efficient insurance ever. As long they manage to predict that you'll be in an accident in time to electronically…

Car insurance companies are already generally legally required to give notice in writing 30 days before cancelling your policy, even for material changes in risk.

Let’s try to stick to the real world.