We Wanted Flying Cars
“We wanted flying cars; instead we got 140 characters.” - Peter Thiel, 2011
The science fiction genre — Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, George Lucas — created a sense of wonder between the ‘50s and the ‘70s. Robots, flying cars, interstellar travel. I grew up in the ‘90s watching the Jetsons, which featured video conferencing, smart home technology, robots, and handheld digital devices. Additionally, I watched Luke Skywalker transform from a (somewhat annoying) rural farmer on Tatooine to a space-traveling heroic Jedi. And finally, The 6th Day starring Arnold Schwarzenegger featured self-driving cars! So where is all that technology that science fiction creatives have been obsessing over for decades? Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter and rename it to X, when he could be working on some real technological advancements? Well, while it’s still unknown to many, it looks like the technology is here. Apparently Elon has engaged in numerous simultaneous science projects. And so have others.
A Retrospective on Human Progress
Money — While we can argue very clearly that we have gone backward in terms of progress on the technology of money (government-issued fiat is the equivalent of toilet paper with an official stamp on it), we can indeed see plenty of progress from barter to the use of gold and bitcoin for commerce. In What Has Government Done to Our Money?, Murray Rothbard summarizes the complications of barter:
Yet, direct exchange of useful goods and services would barely suffice to keep an economy going above the primitive level. Such direct exchange—or barter—is hardly better than pure self-sufficiency. Why is this? For one thing, it is clear that very little production could be carried on. If Jones hires some laborers to build a house, with what will he pay them? With parts of the house, or with building materials they could not use?
So barter was used — exclusively — as far back as 6000 BC by the Mesopotamians, and as recently as 1,000 AD throughout Western Europe. There are still certain times and places in which barter is used in the developed world, but the development of money helped usher in the Commercial, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions. Rothbard again:
The emergence of money was a great boon to the human race. Without money—without a general medium of exchange—there could be no real specialization, no advancement of the economy above a bare, primitive level. With money, the problems of indivisibility and “coincidence of wants” that plagued the barter society all vanish. Now, Jones can hire laborers and pay them in... money.
The invention and progress of money truly humbles the student of ancient Greek and Roman history.
Abundance — Julian Simon, an economist known for his book The Ultimate Resource (published in 1981), wrote extensively on the topic of human abundance. People like Thomas Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, and Al Gore have promoted the idea of mass scarcity and population control for years. Simon, on the other hand, saw clearly that if people could pursue the accumulation of resources, uninhibited by government intervention, they’d find that resource scarcity is a myth. Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley, economists and authors of the book Superabundance, also maintain a popular website called Human Progress. Together they developed the Simon Abundance Index, with which they show that over time, resources are not just sufficient, but in fact are abundant.
The Simon Abundance Index (SAI) measures the relationship between resource abundance and population. It combines the per-person abundance of 50 basic commodities with the size of the world’s population into a single number. The index began in 1980 with a base value of 100. In 2025, the SAI stood at 636.4, indicating that resources have become 536.4 percent more abundant over the past 45 years. All 50 commodities in the dataset were more abundant in 2025 than they were in 1980. The global abundance of resources increased at a compound annual growth rate of 4.20 percent, thus doubling every 17 years.
Since 1980, we can see that, overall, humans are far better off today than they were 45 years ago. In free-market economics circles, comparisons are frequently made between the average human today versus King Luis XIV of France in the late 17th century. While Luis XIV had castles and commanded a large empire, he didn’t have access to electricity, the internet, or an iPhone. He didn’t have a car, either! While we tend to take it for granted, we have access to things and own things that Luis XIV couldn’t have ever imagined.
The advances being made are the stuff of science fiction. In fact, sci-fi has long been a much better predictor of the future than think tanks, futurists, or even the best scientists. I’ve often wondered why this is the case. As someone with solipsist tendencies, I’m partial to believing that anything you can conceive of can probably be done. And anything that can be done will be done. The transformation of reality itself is just a matter of having sufficient matter, energy, space, and time added to technology. When you see it that way, you have to be intensely optimistic. And I am. In fact, for the first time, advances in the real world are starting to outrun the imaginings of sci-fi. - Doug Casey
The Era of Autonomous Driving
I started investing as a ‘formal hobby’ when I started my career in the steel industry in 2014. I knew that fiat money sitting in some bank account earning some wimpy amount of interest was not a recipe for success, so I took what my dad had taught me about investing and started small with ETFs to ‘diversify.’ Over time, I became fascinated with how many different choices I had for investment. That led me to reading different kinds of financial newsletters over time: The Motley Fool, Stansberry Research, Bill Bonner’s Diary, Casey Research… and on and on and on. It opened my eyes to not just what my options were, but to many groundbreaking technologies that were on the horizon. I don’t remember when, but at some point I started reading about autonomous driving several years ago. Reading about the development of an upcoming technology can be exciting, but if you really dive in — going down the rabbit hole, per Lewis Carroll — you will find that progress on this kind of thing can take much longer than you’d expect, sometimes due to necessary research, sometimes due to government regulation, and often due to simply finding the right technological solutions.
Eventually, I understood that there were two technology “systems” that would be competing with one another in the autonomous driving space; those two technologies have been established by Tesla and Waymo. In short, Tesla uses 8 external cameras and a ‘neural network,’ while Waymo uses 29 cameras, 5 LiDAR sensors, and 6 radar units. On top of that, there are two sets of distinctions between both companies and cars today. Waymo operates as a fully autonomous car service — it retrofits Jaguars and takes you from point A to point B for a fee; this is done in the Uber app in Austin, but in its native Waymo app in Houston. Waymo is now deployed in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Tesla, on the other hand, has been manufacturing its own vehicles for over a decade. Its software now allows drivers to engage what it calls “Full Self-Driving,” or FSD. On top of that, Tesla is conservatively rolling out the Robotaxi and Cybercab in Houston. In addition to Houston, Tesla’ Robotaxi is available in Austin, Dallas, Miami, and San Francisco.
Safety
While the following information is provided by Tesla and Waymo, respectively, it’s pretty clear that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology is far safer than a human being with normal driving competence and reflexes.
The Year 2026
I went to Austin a few times in the last 12 months, including a trip at the beginning of June this year. Austin is far from my favorite city — lots of homeless people, lots of strange smells, and lots of colorful hair. However, there are a few reasons to visit on occasion. When I went almost a year ago to see the comedian Dave Smith perform at the Comedy Mothership, I got to experience Waymo for the first time. I’d heard that driverless cars were around, but I didn’t realize that my Uber app would give me the option to use it, just like that! Here’s a link to the video that I took during that first ride — it really changed how I view cars.
After having experienced autonomous driving in several Waymos in both Austin and Houston, as well as two Tesla Robotaxi rides in Austin, it was clear to me that car technology had reached an inflection point. No longer do we have to put ourselves on the road to be at the mercy of the whims of other drivers. Constant focus on the road ahead and our rearview mirrors can now be irrelevant factors of the past. Just last month, I made the decision to buy a Tesla Model Y.
As of today, over 12 billion miles have been driven using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving. In just over two weeks, I’ve driven almost 500 miles using Full Self-Driving. It has been incredible. I actually look forward to getting in the car now, knowing that I have an extremely safe and aware companion while I’m on the move.
Where do we go from here? In fact, I’m eagerly awaiting the deployment of the Tesla Cybercab in Houston. In the future, I’ll be able to purchase this 2-seat vehicle and allow it to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It will pick up commuters, visitors, and bar-hoppers to get them from place to place. What Uber and Lyft did to taxis, I expect these autonomous vehicles to do to the ride-share companies. And, theoretically, this will open up additional opportunities for not just current drivers of these companies, but also entrepreneurs and associated maintenance operations. Call me an optimist!
Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. - H.L. Mencken
"Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible... But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead.” - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Regards,
John