Who's Driving?

One key issue facing the makers of autonomous cars is who is responsible for accidents ... which are bound to happen ... computer algorithms can never be perfect. Fast forward a number of years until we have a large percentage of our auto fleet withou steering wheels and pedals ... just computer screens. What if both cars in these bumpers are self-driving? And what if the cars aren't even owned by their "drivers?" These problems are quite complex and confounding.

To evoke Occam's Razor to this dilemma, it would seem to this observer that, if and when the above scenerio takes place, that the simpler solution is that the responsible parties would and should be the computer algoriths' designers themselves ... even if one party in such an accident isn't automous. Therefore, the purchaser or renter of such transportation can not be responsible and needn't carry insurance. And, if in such a brave new world, automotive accidents are much rarer, the existing auto insurance industry will play a much diminished role.

This, of course, would be quite revolutionary. Again of course, if this brave new world comes to pass?

Will-o-the-Wisp

Mankind too often has a insidious way of pushing a program or an ideology … particularly in this day of the ever-increasing pace of technology and communications … be it social media, Internet publishing, congressional law-making, financial derivatives, climate change "science," etc. … and that is what I chose to call "convoluted complexity." By this I mean that the real truth of an issue lies below so many layers of required understandings that proponents can pull a fast one on the general public with misleading rhetoric which obscures their will-o-the-wisp hidden agendas.

This strategy has been exhibited with Jonathan Gruber’s slight of hand with Obamacare (see: Washington Post Article), the convoluted misreporting of the University of Virginia gang-rape allegations (see: Daily Caller Story ), Elizabeth Warren’s attack on Congress's continuing resolution to finance our government. She says that it is helping Wall Street banks (see: Powerline Blog) and so many other current dust-ups that set my head to spinning.

What to do? How does one uncover the actual truths in these contretemps? I have fallen back on a strategy to catch the snipe in many of these seemingly hopeless media mazes. And that is to discount anything said or written by someone who appears to be creating complexity for the sake of complexity. Once an issue requires me to get a graduate degree in a discipline in order to understand it, I discount these arguments and assume that I am being hoodwinked. (I also use this strategy with most arm-waving television ads these days … for example … "call 1-800-BAD-DRUG"). This device is not of my invention … William of Occam was one of the first to propose it … see: Science Explanation of Occam's Razor. 

It seems to work in most instances.

Occam's Razor

The tenet of Occam's Razor states that the simplest solution is always the best solution.  We are now mired in a world full of financial complexity that threatens to bring us all down.  As an example, please read and try to understand what happened to MF Global that caused it to go belly-up recently, see  Corzine's Monumental Flub and Another Take.  So, what is the simplest solution?  I believe we need to return to the basic accounting rules that have been established over the millennia where an asset really is an asset and a credit really is a credit. 

For a number of years the MBA geniuses in the financial community have been standing these accounting rules on their heads with a lot of hugger mugger that conceals and distorts the financial well-being of institutions.  Jon Corzine, when he was at Goldman Sachs, himself helped Enron turn liabilities into assets and consequently bring down this erstwhile staid firm. And even our own Federal Reserve Bank is now playing in this sullied sand box, see: Finger on the Scale.

How did this happen?  I blame the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the big accounting firms, and the accounting community in general ... who have earned their Street creds by dreaming up new ways of subverting our tried and true accounting principles.  And they have created financial instruments of greater and greater complexity (see the MF Global reference above) whereby even their creators don't fully understand all the possible consequences of a rapidly changing environment.

We need to return to accounting basics and strip out all the FASB rules that permit these financial shenanigans by creating reporting exceptions to reporting exceptions to reporting exceptions ... and permit multitudinous off-balance sheet transactions and fiscal slight-of-hand.  And Congress needs to pass stringent laws that disallow any financial instrument to be created and traded for which Joe Biden cannot comprehend and explain in one sentence.