Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Hyperloops And Self Driving Cars

They don't stand at cross purposes. Hyperloops are for long distances, and self driving cars are inside the city transportation, so you need neither drivers nor parking space. The two compliment each other.

With the Hyperloop, you skip that whole thing about building roads. They seem to need such little land, that maybe you don't even need to do land acquisition.

So you take 45 minutes to go from LA to NYC, and then you hop out and get into a self driving car, and it takes another 45 minutes to get to your home in The Bronx. The Hyperloop is going to make the self driving car look antique.



Hyperloop



New York to Los Angeles in 45 minutes is mind blowing. That might be the most popular track.




It takes an Elon Musk to save America the embarrassment of China and Japan outdoing it on bullet trains.



The Hyperloop could actually be producing excess energy. If there are solar panels on the top everywhere, that is more energy than it needs. Good thing.




The Hyperloop would be a great way to connect India's four largest cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata. Why are they still talking bullet trains in India? The Hyperloop is cheaper. Much cheaper. Just like India skipped landlines, and went straight to mobile phones, it should skip bullet trains and go straight to the Hyperloop.

Elon Musk has a Head Of State status. He is totally making impact. This guy will soon qualify for a membership of the G7.




The Money Is Not Actually Moving

Economic Growth and the Production Possibility...
Economic Growth and the Production Possibility Curve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If all money is digital, and if M-Pesa is the future, not just in Kenya but also in the rich world, and if the blockchain technology does to money moving what the Internet did to information moving, as in bring the costs down to pretty much zero, then the money is not actually moving, is it? You are just managing accounts, you are adding and subtracting.

And that digitization allows for a potentially massive increase in the velocity of money. If the same dollar exchanges hands 200 times instead of 20, that is a ten times increase in economic activity and hence economic growth. Moving money should be instantaneous and free globally. Just like when you send email, there is no lag. In the old fashioned ways, it can take days for money to move. There is no reason why it should be that way. That "lag" is a tremendous drag on economic activity.