There was a hypothesis proposed a number of years ago that a mono-polar world is inherently unstable. A second great power keeps the other "honest" to a degree and limits the scope of corruption. It doesn't stop it entirely mind you, but it has to at least maintain the appearance of integrity or expose its vulnerability. Any world where only one great power exists, must eventually collapse under the weight of internal corruption.
Looks like the hypothesis had some merit.
It's the year of our lord 2026. Rule of Law is dead. The other Golden Rule is now supreme: He who has the gold, makes the rules.
It's more than just income protection. The Luddites were against the way the manufacturing capital was being used to effectively create wage slavery. They weren't against technology, they were against a specific use case that undermined worker rights and freedoms, not just incomes. The end result of their suppression was nearly a century of worker abuse and exploitation that ultimately produced the violent conflicts with the labour movement at the beginning of the 20th century.
It's currently looking like we're headed back into an era where the owner class is going to be leveraging government to mass-murder their own employees to maintain their dominion over the masses.
Hopefully it will reset public consciousness and at least reduce the insane hero worship we give the executive class. These people aren't geniuses, they tend to not even be particularly clever, just well connected. Maybe this will be the abject reminder people need that these idiots are generally still just idiots and are not in fact 10,000% more valuable than the guy who sweeps the floors and keeps the bathrooms clean.
I know. Wishful thinking. A guy can dream though.
Sure, I'm up right now. I don't expect to stay there. I'm a millennial. Money is fake, and it will be gone when you need it most.
As someone who watched their retirement go up in smoke once because of a global financial implosion, I promise it won't matter as much as you think it will where you stuff that cash.
Tell me how that works out for you when the AI bubble pops.
You say that like most of us are ever going to see a dime of that money.
There's downsides to most solutions. Over-the-air reporting is another possible answer, but then you get into massive risks to privacy and data harvesting. It's easier to mandate trickle chargers have Over-The-Air reporting than to have the car do it. Logistically there's going to be complications no matter how you assess the taxes.
See, annual inspections make it to visible. You get the bill for your road taxes all in one hit when you take your car in for maintenance, people are going to go a) Lose their minds at the price tag, b) Hit up black market solutions to "fix" their numbers. Being illegal is only a deterrence for getting caught breaking the law.
As far as the variety of efficiencies, I don't see that as a downside. That just incentivizes higher efficiency systems if you assume the median efficiency for tax purposes.
That said you do make a valid point about non-standard charging set ups. I'm not entirely opposed to the odometer method, I just find most proposals for implementing it a barrier to adoption.
Hypothetically, a relatively stationary (not doing a lot of accelerating and decelerating) "Space Datacenter" would be a perfect test bed for something like Curie point radiators. Might help with the size of radiator needed to produce the same effect, but that's probably the least difficult problem with that environment. The radiation shielding you would need would be... well astronomical.