Never been to US, so I won’t comment on the specific infra.

However, I have lived in multiple cities, and have seen multiple cities build their metro networks from scratch in 20 years. And they’ve been absolutely over and beyond what could’ve been achieved by any improvement in car infrastructure, apart from demolishing entire houses and shops to expand the roads on both sides.

Sequential sharing isn’t sharing. That’s how any cab operators functions.

The problems you’re mentioning aren’t problems with human drivers, but the problems with perfect allocation. Robo taxis won’t solve them.

I’m not sure what you mean here by Downtown.

But again, if all you’re looking for is a good transport system from one high population density area (airports almost always are) to another high population density area, you’ll be better served by having a reliable and decently fast metro train or the likes, than a cab, as long as people don’t mind walking for 5-10 minutes from their closest stop. If that distance is higher, by all means taxis are amazing for last mile connectivity. But expecting cars to solve public transport at large has always looked like a losing battle to me.

I’d argue against that.

The concept of robot taxi sounds nice, but it devolves into an unsustainable mess. Ride sharing isn’t simple, especially when we talk about uncertain way points. Meaningfully matching cases where people can share a robot car with completely random drop off is a logistical nightmare. I used to work at a Ride hailing company as an analyst, and people being unhappy with the duration of the shared ride was the biggest issue for that category (removing for generic cases like payment issues).

Additionally, I’m sure it’s going to be a safety factor. I’m unlikely to get into a car with a random stranger when there’s literally no one else in the car. Miss me with trusting some corporate with safety in such cases.

You could put the jar of peanut butter on the scale and measure what amount you’re taking out?

I’ll recommend reading up on the history of cannabis bans. There were multiple countries which were coersed into criminalising marijuana to open trade with America. Don’t remember if that was Raegan or Nixon.

LinkedIn is pretty useful fwiw

While the monopoly that YT has as a video platform is definitely an issue, the cost of maintaining the content has definitely risen now. 480p vs 4k videos have a ton of difference in bandwidth, no matter how much Internet speeds have evolved over the years.

I used Google Play Music (RIP) and moved into YT Music for my music streaming needs. The cost of YT premium was marginally higher so I switched for it.

The major issue with YT Premium is that they still collect the data from YT to show targeted ads, but I use also use uBlock, so that doesn’t really bother me as much.

Point is, video hosting services are expensive. The quantity (not quality) of content on YT is way higher than any othet streaming service, and maintaining that for free is pretty close to impossible. The only possible alternative would be a government backed video platform and that’s definitely worse.