Summary: Who wouldn’t want to improve the transportation status quo? But we’re looking at self-driving car safety in the wrong way. Self-driving cars will also lead to an increase in systemic risk, shifting some gains in safety. Over the next decade or so, there will be more serious discussions on autonomous vehicle implementations. Based on the way these companies have framed early public discussions I worry that people will look at risk in unhelpful ways.
The paper outlines studies estimating how much safer AVs need to be for the public to accept them. The authors estimate that AVs need to be perceived as 4 to 5 times safer to match the trust and comfort people have with human-driven vehicles.
I’m going to go through a few parts of the paper and tell you why I think the findings aren’t relevant to the AV discussion (though they are interesting). Continue reading “Self-Driving Safety and Systems”
Apart from the US presidential election, another well-funded campaign from 2020 was California ballot measure Proposition 22. If you live outside of California, you may have never heard of Prop 22, even though it could come to impact you.
Prop 22 was a California referendum that dealt with a question specifically addressed to rideshare and app delivery companies. Namely, should rideshare drivers legally be considered contractors or employees?
Now that attention to the presidential election and inauguration has past, let’s go back to look at Prop 22, its Yes vote, and how its implementation led to a system change.
The Fallout
Less than a month after Prop 22 came into effect, related companies took the following actions:
Political Action Committees have formed to bring Prop 22-style legal changes to New York, Illinois, and perhaps nationwide. And possibly globally.
This is just the beginning, but each of the above outcomes have been met with some amount of shock and outrage. Why now?
The Ballot
What Proposition 22 actually said on the voter guide:
“Prop 22: Exempts App-based Transportation And Delivery Companies From Providing Employee Benefits To Certain Drivers. Initiative Statute.
“Summary: Classifies app-based drivers as “independent contractors,” instead of “employees,” and provides independent-contractor drivers other compensation, unless certain criteria are met. Fiscal Impact: Minor increase in state income taxes paid by rideshare and delivery company drivers and investors.”
As with many ballot propositions, it took lengthy explanations to show what voters were actually choosing. Rather than list all the listed arguments and rebuttals here, see the lengthy voter guide for the full details voters received.
Set aside the reality that few voters may actually read propositions carefully. Also set aside the issue that common knowledge of Prop 22 probably came more from ad campaigns than language listed on the voter information guide. To me, the most noticeable information was the information missing from the information provided. How would rideshare and related systems change if Prop 22 received a Yes or No vote?
The Campaign
Prop 22 put the business models of rideshare and delivery companies at risk as well as threatening to change gig worker treatment. The risk for either side was in their relative change. What followed were ad campaigns in support of either side.
But a ballot initiative doesn’t require that both arguments would be heard equally or presented just as well. Rideshare and delivery companies (Uber, Lyft, Postmates, DoorDash, and Instacart) spent approximately $200 million promoting a Yes vote. The opposition spent only $20 million.
How should we judge spending on Prop 22? To compare, in the last couple decades, we’ve seen dramatic increases in fundraising for presidential campaigns. In 2000, Bush and Gore together raised around $450 million. Another contentious presidential campaign in 2004 saw the campaigns raise $1 billion for the first time. For the record-breaking 2020 campaign, Biden and Trump collectively raised $1.7 billion (counting all the other candidates would double that amount).
Of all the 2020 presidential campaign money, $288 million came from donors in California. That gives us some perspective.
So perhaps the $220 million spent on Prop 22 in California makes this single issue similarly important to a presidential campaign. The financial support is different though. Companies backing the proposition can model their own benefit to the point that they know what a win is worth. That’s harder to do with a presidential campaign.
App companies also had distribution on their side. That is, they already had a direct line to customers and gig workers and could push messages like this.
Is it possible that 72% of drivers supported Prop 22? With that majority, shouldn’t voters follow the drivers?
This is where you might use the phrase “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Uber drivers have different needs. Few regularly work over 15 hours a week just for Uber (the minimum needed to qualify for the Prop 22 benefits) while many work fewer hours and also split their time between other gig companies. Those in the second category would likely lose their ability to drive for Uber in the event of a No vote that classifies app workers as employees. That could explain why so many Uber drivers and delivery people supported the proposition.
The vote passed 58% in support of Proposition 22.
Comparisons
We need to back up a moment to an earlier bill. Prop 22 was itself a follow-up to Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), a 2019 bill which provided a three-part test to whether someone is an employee or a contractor.
“The person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact.
“The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.
“The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.”
AB 5 also granted numerous business-type exemptions, but not to app companies.
Exempted businesses were notably not individually well-funded or from Silicon Valley, though they may have held political sway with California legislators. These AB 5 business exceptions include doctors, dentists, lawyers, architects, engineers, accountants, commercial fishermen, designers, artists, barbers, and more.
They political sway was most allegorically seen in business awards a legislator bragged about for writing exemptions into AB 5.
I never imagined that my only “gold record” would be a thank you from the Recording Industry Association for working to right-size Dynamex & AB5 for musicians. But, I’ll take it! (Have you heard me on Karaoke though??) pic.twitter.com/OUfiDcPD4i
AB 5 threatened the gig economy business model where drivers, delivery people, and other workers did not receive employee benefits. That threat was bound to receive a response from the companies that had the most at risk.
“The ballot measure would require the companies to provide an hourly wage for time spent driving equal to 120% of either a local or statewide minimum wage. It would not pay drivers for the time they spend waiting for an assignment. It also requires that drivers receive a stipend for purchasing health insurance coverage when driving time averages at least 15 hours a week, a stipend that grows larger if average driving time rises to 25 hours a week.”
This is an example of where it’s difficult to assess outcomes from a quick read.
15 hours might sound like a low bar, but this is active driving time. Potentially double that amount of time to include driver wait time between fares. Also, the active driving time is tracked per company. That is, 10 hours driving for Uber and 5 hours driving for Lyft do not qualify as 15 hours. Just meeting that 15 hour minimum will prove difficult for many drivers.
Further, an earlier analysis of Prop 22 by the UC Berkeley Labor Center reassessed the 120% of minimum wage benchmark ($15.60) and claims that drivers with more than 15 active hours per week would actually earn only $5.64 per hour.
Why would drivers choose to work if their pay declines? There could be a number of reasons, including that they prefer driving to other work and can’t find other work. A distinction of gig economy work is that you typically don’t need to commit to a fixed schedule. In the case of driving for rideshare delivery businesses, gig workers can work just about any hours they want. That flexibility may make up for their ability to earn more doing something else.
Rideshare companies are famous for having basing their distribution model on moving into new municipalities in advance of any legal right to do so. Uber entered the New York City market without a license to operate as a transportation company. As a result, taxi drivers felt both their fares and medallion values fall and riders benefitted from lower fares and more supply.
A No vote on Prop 22 was supposed to challenge not the distribution part of rideshare businesses, but their cost structure.
But after the Yes vote, some fees have also been passed on to customers. For Uber and Lyft, the fees depend on location and range from $0.30 to $1.50 per ride. Postmates now charges a driver benefits fee of between $0.50 and $2.50, depending on location.
Prop 22 Paradox
Why did we see public shock and outrage in January when affected companies fired workers, changed policy, and added fees? Surely Proposition 22 voters would have expected some type of negative outcome, however they happened to vote.
It’s probably more likely that many Prop 22 voters didn’t really think about negative outcomes. Either because their chief concern was on what positive outcomes they would see, that they didn’t believe themselves negatively affected by potential changes. or they just didn’t have the habit of thinking about trade-offs.
A look at Prop 22 outcomes.
Yes (drivers classified as contractors). Rideshare companies start to provide some benefits. Drivers continue to set their own hours. Price increases passed on to customers.
Other potential outcomes: Slower driving? Drivers have an incentive to reach 20 hours of active driving time. That’s the point at which benefits kick in. If the value of the benefits is greater than that from driving fewer hours, then drivers may slow down or at least not speed.
No (drivers classified as employees). Drivers receive pay increases. Drivers have to work fixed hours. Driver supply falls. Fares rise. Ride demand falls. Rideshare companies have difficulty operating in California. Price increases passed on to customers.
In the case of a No vote, affected companies estimated needed price increases of 25% to over 100%. Outside researchers estimated 5% to 10%.
Alison Stein, Uber’s economist makes this series of public projections for price increases, trips lost, and work opportunities lost.
By Alison Stein, Economist at Uber (link to larger version above)
Given Stein’s role we perhaps need to take the projections as one perspective. Notably, price increases are most extreme in the less populated parts of California (more inactive driver time between rides). But these price increases also stand out because Uber had subsidized rides to become a less expensive option than legacy taxis.
Trying to present the way a system change could have other outcomes is not unattainable. Especially in something like Proposition 22, which is relatively straightforward. I say relatively because unlike say electing an individual to political office, who might say one thing and do entirely something different, Prop 22 was more limited in scope.
It’s also not to say that putting out that systems map might produce one single correct answer. People can still weigh different outcomes differently. I just don’t like shock and outrage after a legal change goes into effect and companies act. The shock and outrage should have happened with the outcome of the vote itself.
A couple years ago I wrote a piece on the WWI Armistice, titled Under a Spell.
The title came from a line in WWI journalist Philip Gibbs’ book Now It Can Be Told. Throughout, Gibbs quotes several people using that phrase — being under a spell — to describe how they went from normal life to the terror of the first modern war.
Because WWI was so different from previous wars, Gibbs’ book helped me think about the time of change we are in now. Not only the sudden change in the past weeks since the Capitol riot but also the buildup over the past few years and more. WWI itself was a break with the past and not just a larger version of earlier wars. Recent protests, riots, a pandemic, and more are different than earlier chaos.
We are under a spell now too.
But once cast, how do you break a spell?
A few scenes from Gibbs’ book stay with me. One takes place in a cafe in Cologne after the war’s end. English soldiers are having tea, served by a German waiter:
“I overheard a conversation between a young waiter and three of our cavalry officers. They had been in the same fight in the village of Noyelles, near Cambrai, a tiny place of ruin, where they had crouched under machine-gun fire. The waiter drew a diagram on the table-cloth. ‘I was just there.’ The three cavalry officers laughed. ‘Extraordinary! We were a few yards away.’ They chatted with the waiter as though he were an old acquaintance who had played against them in a famous football-match. They did not try to kill him with a table-knife. He did not put poison in the soup.”
Distant as that scene with its long-dead actors now seems, it is hopeful to know that it happened.
But where would that cafe be today? Physical cafes stopped being such places for us even before COVID shut them down. We give so much weight to user-generated content on social media and corporate-generated content on the news even though they often show our worst. Are those really our cafes? And what end is there to a war — if you can call it a war of beliefs or values or feelings — with opposing sides that happen to be in the same country, clumsily colored blue and red? And which are more isolated in the information they consume than where they live?
In the case of WWI, any good will on the part of the soldiers during the Armistice (a truce, but not technically “peace”) did not always transfer to the victors at home. As Gibbs also relayed:
“German music was banned in English drawing-rooms. Preachers and professors denied any quality of virtue or genius to German poets, philosophers, scientists, or scholars. A critical weighing of evidence was regarded as pro-Germanism and lack of patriotism. Truth was delivered bound to passion.”
This is the post-war scene I like least. However, the earlier hopeful exchange in the cafe was between soldiers who never wanted to be there. They both resented their politicians for sending them off. While they had killed each other, they hadn’t hated each other. But English soldiers returning home found different attitudes in their drawing-rooms, classrooms, and churches. Ironically, those with the least on the line felt the worst.
In our case, the US has become a country where family members repeat the wrong talking points and then start to hate each other. Where neighbors refuse to talk to each other because of front yard signs.
When WWI’s cannons cooled, Allied politicians heated up at Versailles in a much criticized peace treaty. The pandemic of that time, the 1918 flu, weakened some of those with milder views on how to pursue the peace, including the US president, who was too sick to continue to protest.
Old outcomes, whether intentional or not, can have long-term effects. People continued to fight for generations because of decisions made at Versailles. In the US, even today you may see that some still carry the flag from the losing side of a Civil War over 150 years ago.
A perfect conclusion to a war would leave no one ever wanting to carry an old flag and not because it was banned or because of what the neighbors would think. But I worry that many will still want to carry old flags.
To think about this mess we’re in, we can ask what was intentional, unintentional, and inevitable and what we could do now.
Intentional, Unintentional, Inevitable
Where does a mentally divided country go? When basic values shift enough so that most enemies are domestic, what then? Is there an Armistice?
Mobs in any of the protests or riots over the past year and more seem to be unintentional and inevitable. While large groups showing outrage might seem to emerge suddenly, they often have long windups. But large-scale top-down action seems to shock almost everyone with the potential for unintended consequences. Even many who hated Trump’s words leading up to the Capitol riot felt uncomfortable when companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Shopify, YouTube, and more deplatformed him.
On the intentional side, we have the desire to show outrage about whatever we are passionate about. It’s unintentional to lose control and go too far, but it always happens when a group grows. Enough people at the extremes start to dominate the group. Even “normal” people get swallowed up in the passion of the crowd. There are many examples of this over the past year. And it’s inevitable that this cycle happens eventually, given the supporting beliefs and feedback loops.
Tech and media business models that depend on engagement can also make downward spirals like the one we’re in inevitable.
When two sides separate and hold bad feelings against each other, there’s always a “what about.”
The construction is: “you may blame us for this thing, but what about that thing you did?” There is no end to it. People value different behavior differently. A rating of which is the better side only lasts so long until it flips. Keeping track takes brainpower better used elsewhere.
I was reminded of something else from history, a century before WWI. This account is from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. It’s a work of fiction, but one that captures cultural change and redemption like few others.
This is from the conversation between a dying member of the National Convention (the government after the French Revolution) and a bishop. The French Revolution is more apt than the WWI comparison because rather than a foreign enemy we’re in a time when many Americans reserve their most bitter hatred for other Americans.
Conventionary: “The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.”
Bishop: “You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a demolition complicated with wrath.”
Conventionary: “Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity.”
Bishop: “Yes? ’93!” [1793 was worst year of the reign of terror]
Conventionary: “Ah, there you go; ’93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.”
Onward
Only about 30 years come between the Reagan administration and the Trump administration. Yet the range of political tools grew dramatically in that time. A former good will between members of Congress dissolved. Also notably, the Reagan administration was the last one where Americans had a clear, multi-generation external enemy.
Politics became a sports season that never ends. We spend lots of effort talking and thinking about our feelings of injustice coming from the other side, whatever that side is. Not as much effort building things together.
Now, after a contested election, four years of ill will, another contested election, and on the eve of an inauguration where could we go? Should we let another cloud form and burst again?
Rather than waiting for the next storm, where could we focus on outcomes over intentions? What could we build? Of course unintended consequences can come from this work too, but I believe building something together is better than pulling ourselves apart.
Here is just a short list. I know you could add to it.
Education that enlightens students and doesn’t leave them with debt. Preventative healthcare that delivers better outcomes than better-compensated late-term procedures. Production of food that keeps people healthy. Affordable, vibrant neighborhoods rather than dull commuter towns. Protection of environmental resources. Creation of new businesses that serve a changing demographic. A better transportation system. Accurate, unbiased information in news and online….
Building the next society is difficult, but possibly more productive than arguing about the past one. Otherwise, what can we say about potential second-order effects of this time of ours?
Gibbs also wrote: “Or is war the law of human life? Is there something more powerful than kaisers and castes which drives masses of men against other masses in death-struggles which they do not understand?” He had no idea how his profession would change.
2020 was a year of many things. Healthcare politicization, data politicization, writers duped by fake news outlets, news outlets duped by fake writers, economic downs and ups, hacks, protests, an emerging disease people thought was just the flu, and much more.
People suffered from bad systems and had difficultly creating better ones. Often there was no thought to systems at all. But 2020 was representative of a normal year in a world more exposed to unintended consequences. Or you could say 2020 shifted the expectation of what normal could be.
Many recent actions will reach far into the future. I’ll explore some of them in coming articles, which will include more on COVID, the election, and social media censorship, as well as topics like self-driving cars, ecosystem interference, and education.
I take my readers as thoughtful, wanting deeper insights, and appreciating a different perspective than they see elsewhere.
That means that I try to leave readers more knowledgeable on important topics that should be more studied (but often aren’t).
Societies have long valued information control but methods of control have changed over time. What systems drive these changes? And where do undesirable outcomes occur?
Using any of these methods doesn’t imply bad intentions. In some cases, there are good reasons for wanting to control information. But if we’re thinking only of intentions, we’ll lose our focus on outcomes. Good intentions can lead us down bad pathways.
Four major types of control information are destruction, banning, debauching, and blocking.
These methods are applied to recorded information as well as what we carry in our memories and pass down verbally.
Hummingbirds and flowers co-adapted over millions of years. As with the shapes of the flowers they take nectar from, hummingbird beaks grew to different lengths, some straight, some curved.
Photo: Sonia Nadales
However, some bees learned that they could access the nectar within tubular flowers by chewing a hole at the base and robbing the nectar from there. When that happens, the flower loses its nectar without getting pollinated.
In an earlier post (Do We Create Shoplifters) we saw how a changed environment can change behavior.
That post focused on tech development with behavior change for the worse. In this post, rather than tech, I focus on good intentions that give no thought to second steps, or how a system may change. These good intentions backfire.
Let’s look at the unintended outcomes of otherwise well-meaning system changes in education, forest management, and hiring. Continue reading “Morals of the Moment”
Now that the US presidential election is over (well, probably) we’ve seen calls for unity (at least from Biden’s side). But what is unity? What do you need in order to have it? And if we don’t have it now, why not?
This story of unintended consequences starts with business models that benefit from division. Always look for incentives in designed systems and in systems that emerge.
Old News, New News
News of all types – real, fake, stressed, ignored, and biased – was a big part of the last four years. Let’s look at the general change in the media industry from pre-Internet days to today.
If we don’t have unity today, but maybe did in the past, is some of that due to changing news industry business models?
With decisions come opportunities for unintended consequences, especially when when success and failure are radically different. How do we make a decision in a high-risk environment? What advice do we take in, how do our desires affect us, and what happens if this is a one-time game versus a multi-time game?
Some systems look like one-way roads. Here I’ll call one-way system roads those which seem inclined to move in one direction, even if the endpoint is difficult to predict, and where it is difficult to return to the earlier state. In some cases an intervenor slows movement down the one-way road or lengthens the road itself.
Let’s look at depletion of forests to make charcoal, the search for oil, the possibility of world wars, opioid and social media addiction, and presidential election cycles.
