Maintenance costs aren’t typically that severe though. It will be very difficult to survive on the difference between individual homeowner maintenance costs and what the landlord pays.
Differences in mortgage rates are more likely to be in favor of renting. If your renter has absolutely atrocious credit then they could end up paying a huge amount more in mortgage interest than a landlord with stellar credit. But that’s a somewhat narrow use case that won’t apply to many people.
The downside is that someone with terrible credit is probably not investing their money for the future so they lose out on owning a valuable asset when they retire.
If only! But there is a lot of cultural opposition to trains. Just look at Jerry Brown’s high speed rail. Not saying it’s well-intentioned, well-informed, or even good faith opposition, but it’s there.
Don’t know about that. I would say it didn’t bode well for aircraft if they are unwilling to progress beyond a certain point. Passenger aircraft were not supposed to have a SatNav in the cockpit except for some internal flights within Canada. This may have prevented some flights into mountains.
Autopilot is often used for landings, particularly when the visibility is low. You can usually recognize automatic landings by the smooth touchdown followed by rapid deceleration, but they don’t have to be like that.
I never have understood the American trainphobia. I mean, trains and railroads kind of defined America in the 19th and early 20th century, and they feature hugely in the Wild West imagery that’s still a major part of American cultural stage dressing.
Did it just happen naturally as air travel and cars became more prevalent, or was there something deliberate and more nefarious going on?
I agree wholeheartedly, with a few caveats - Like, for example, I think Cadilac’s Supercruise is an example of how it can be done right, with a strong eye toward safety. It only works in specific areas(highways, primarily), fails-safe rather than fails deadly, it’s strict about driver attention(to the point of including eye-tracking to ensure you’re still looking at the road), it’s “Intervention/attention required” alerts are frankly unmissable(like the seat buzz it gives, which is frankly like being goosed with one of those old handshake joke buzzers), and they don’t call it self driving or imply that it’s anything more than a driver assist like cruise control(unlike Tesla, who literally only removed that language from their page a week or two ago.)
But on the whole, you’re right. It breeds complacency, and complacency kills. Worse, on the road, it has a strong chance of not just killing you, but people around you. And if not strictly and carefully managed - again, looking back to those restrictions on SuperCruise, like Area restrictions and driver attention monitoring - it can be incredibly dangerous.
