Very High Speed Bus Transit

In my version of high speed Asphalt Rail, a complex of four cars in an articulated bus configuration will cruise up and down California at 140 MPH. It can do San Jose to LA in under three hours. They have their own asphalt speedway. Speedway buses cost a half million per car. Older asphalt can be refurbished and re-used. Within a few months we could be making trial runs between Fresno and Visalia.

The Very High Speed Bus Transit lanes would merge with the standard BRT lanes at major towns. Using diesel electric and all wheel drive shows nearly equivalent economies of scale to steel rail. Bus asphalt speedways cost minimum 2 million a mile to recover. So using old but under utilized roadways, costs drop.

In my area, the Fresno/Visalia metropolitan region, a speedway system could move a worker from Fresno to a Visalia job site in less than an hour, and save $75/day, payable to the worker. It would be built along the old 99 freeway, causing those businesses to update. We would use forward looking, stationary and mobile vision, add cross bars and warning lights, add digital lighting assist, and move on to certifying freight for the speedway.

A link to a post of mine

Just seeing how things work in web land.

A Post Modern Recovery?

Krugman, in this post, argues that a big G, and its deficits, might have saved the world from deep depressions. Then in this post argues:

"they’ve [post 80s recessions] proved hard to end (not officially, but in terms of employment), precisely because housing — which is the main thing that responds to monetary policy — has to rise above normal levels rather than recover from an interest-imposed slump."

So, my question is, Big G slows the downfall, but Big H slows the recovery. Is it not more likely that Big G going in and going out cause the same lack of response?

The recession is a slow restructuring because G slows down the restructuring process and also crowds out resources during the recovery. I would find it difficult to believe that bigness of G only affects the economy asymmetrically.

Is the stimulus working?

Kevin Drum would like to know. He quotes Josh Bivens the second quarter GDP growth:

"Federal government spending grew at an 11% rate in the quarter, adding roughly 0.8% to overall GDP."

Let make a multiplier formula. Total growth divided by government growth. The federal government consuming about 20 shares of the economy grew by 11%, annually; or grew by 2.2 shares of GDP. The overall GDP grew by .8 shares. Do I have to do the math for Kevin? If the overall economy grew .8 in the face of federal share growing by 2.2%, then we have a crowding out problem, the stimulus is actually shrinking the private sector. John Taylor is right, multipliers are very low.

One can see why Krugman never makes the multiplier argument that Brad DeLong makes, the multipliers are less than one, the economy is shrinking for every increment of federal government growth.

The problem is not the stimulus. The problem is that Obama is spending money specifically on programs not related to the cause of the recession, hence the low multipliers. Krugman is wrong, having a big G does not actually help at all, it makes thing worse as far as stimulus spending.

The Perfect Deliver Bot

I use Brad's term, Deliver Bot.

It is a four wheeled flat bed the size of a small car. With the help of an on-board robot arm it delivers standard boxes of goods to stationary mail boxes curbside. Deliver Bots cost abut $25000, but collect $100/day at $1/box of goods. The current auto delivery costs about $10/box, so we have returned $200 to the household for $20 in transportation costs per month.

Of the sales price, $15000 is hardware, the rest is software and digital devices, mainly vision systems.

The first community to adopt Deliver ots would see an sudden jump in retail activity, as well as the development of new retail formats.

Economists are cheating

Some anyway. They take their position as a license to moralize, then imply their moralizing is backed by economics.

Helping Caplan with the future

He posts a blog on the effects of the Internet and the new consumption model.

Let me see. One of the things we notice about the future of goods is that it follows the flow of information. Rail tracks and telegraph wires. International telegraph at our ports led to overhead electric power for street cars. Radio broadcasting recast the suburban neighborhood traffic flow, radio reach defined goods flow. In each case, the information technology moves the lightest weight good, information; and through that path the heavier goods follow by widening the route.

The Internet will behave the same. Goods will eventually flow with Internet assisted automation, goods will become packets and automation pushes commercial goods delivery right to the home. The empty strip malls become UPS and FedEx re-distribution stations, nodes on a factory floor of automated delivery. The chack out stand, the post office box become mobile; moving right to the edge of the home with Internet assisted automation.

My solution to the Healthcare crisis

Medical Bulbouts. A bulbout branches off the main route of a BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)on the street. Each medical clinic is a three car, specialty clinic, complete with healthcare professional. Clinics set up in medical bulbout to gain huge transportation efficiencies by minimizing the movements of their patients. Got this idea from DeLong, somewhere.

This savings in medical transportation costs goes directly into the income pool for the health professional. So we can have pharmacy mobiles, appearing every to often to fill out prescriptions near the center of people.

More innovative uses of intelligent traffic management compounds the efficiency gains.

Another example is the bike car, a car on a three car RBT. Built to allow the biker to roll into the car with his bike. Special variations, each low in cost, each gaining advantage from increasing road intelligence. Special freight bulbouts, another.

I recommend for manned space flight...

Focus on large telescopes constructed at the space station. Keep the shuttle form factor but greatly reduce weight and slow re-entry.

Regarding the shuttle; remove the requirement for polar orbit, reduce the requirement to return large cargoes, reduce net haulage. Then carry extra retro fuel reducing the return energy. Retro a much lighter shuttle to a much lower re-entry speed. The same solid rocket booster is OK for manned shuttle and automated cargo shuttle, separating risk and further reducing manned shuttle cargo weight.

At the station construct large mirrors, 20 metes in diameter, using the weightlessness of space and automation. Look to the noise limit of interstellar dust.

The Mystery of G.

G is the thing Kugman talks about in this post. His basic argument about G is that the bigger the G the bigger a deficit it can run during a restructuring. He claims the depression was big because G was small and could not absorb deficits. This is Money Illusion, not in the sense that Sumner used the term. If G is bigger today than yesterday is simply means that we have incorporated more functions in G than yesterday.

In other words, the bigger the monopoly, the bigger the stimulus effect. However the bigger the G the longer the time to adapt, I am not sure what we have gained by having a bigger G.