This is a particularly evil form of rent-seeking
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Alex Tabarrok
@ATabarrok
Replying to @ahall_research and @MTSlive
You were correct. I was rage baited. share.google/UxQIHglSszP0cV
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This is completely unsurprising.
Insurers are excited by possible improvement. Others not so much. That said, tech still evolving. We will get there but not as fast as many in media portrayed 5-7 years ago.
Okay before you post that, are you SURE there is no specific clause in the legislation they are objecting to, not the underlying idea?
Every innovator wants a law saying “you can’t sue our thing” and sometimes lawyers think that is a bad idea.
Does that say the trial lawyers auto-industrial-legal-complex earns $180-220 BILLION litigating auto accidents a year?
Trial lawyers have great PR and lots of money to spend on media reps. With a name like "The American Association for Justice" how could they possibly be some of the most self-serving scum that blights the justice system on a regular basis.
Oof. 2025-2026 has been a golden age of rent seeking:
Private prison companies profiting from mass immigration detention. PBMs steering patients toward expensive insulin. Nursing home industry fighting mandatory minimum staffing. Algorithm-enabled coordination among large
This dynamic was on full display at last Mondays hearing on AV’s in the DC Council. They wanted the 5 million insurance coverage increased even more!
Sounds like they’re charging admission for a show they never actually performed. 
Rent seeking will change but disruptions will create a new set of rent seekers instead of the old ones.
Trial lawyers are opposing mandatory arbitration clauses for self driving, not self driving itself.
What is evil is categorizing people as evil based on 20 seconds of reading something on Twitter.
They've got a point. What they're really lobbying against is a kind of no-fault insurance legislation. Autonomous vehicle manufacturers and operators demand it, because otherwise the liability burden could crush them, if their product turns out to be unsafe.
AI putting the rest of us out of work is totally fine, "progress"...but God help them if they shake up the auto insurance industry
Honestly a really solid indicator that EVs trend towards much safer than human drivers. Though maybe it’s as much about proving liability as it is safety? Who knows.
the irony is wild, especially when you think about how many hoops we jump through to avoid the real issues
imagine the pr spin when they claim it's for safety while lining their pockets lmao
