Would you accept any historical development that reduced demand for some kind of labor (or human interaction) as potentially positive? There are a lot of those.

(I'm happy to hear if the answer is "yes".)

For example, most kinds of shops were (like jewelry stores today) apparently historically not self-service, so you had to ask the shopkeeper for every item individually, and the shopkeeper would have to retrieve it for you.

Maybe a more direct analogy is that you once had to ask human operators to complete telephone calls for you, and gradually this was replaced with automated switches and direct-dial systems. That has benefits and drawbacks, but I think I appreciate it quite a bit. Do you think it would be better if that change hadn't happened?

This is not a reasonable comparison.

In Tesla's model, you buy a Tesla, and allow it to operate as a robotaxi when you're not using it. It generates income passively for you. The technology has introduced automation that might have displaced your job responsibility but not your means of generating income.

In Waymo's model, you have completely displaced both the job itself and the means of generating income. This is a strict lose-lose for everyone except Google, who reaps the profit.

Why is it not a reasonable comparison?

Automated telephone switching fits the latter pattern. The job and the income went away. So the question is valid, would you prefer automated telephone switching was never deployed?

Putting aside the fact that Tesla's robotaxi model will likely never actually ship, I don't see how you're not displacing a driver's job by operating your car as a robotaxi instead of letting it sit idle.

If the vast majority of the robotaxies are owned by normal households that have 1 or 2 of them, then that's the people owning the means of automated production. Ideally it would be the people that already own taxis getting them upgraded, but it's a lot better than corporate fleets for putting the revenue into the pockets of people.

It's real for us. We had a ride when the driver wouldn't stop talking and the baby was trying to sleep. Not all people are nice.

super bad take. by this logic nobody should be excited about any technology whatsoever

Many technologies enable some new cool things and in the process automate some stuff.

Here we are talking about paying extra pretty much solely to not have to deal with a human.

Waymos enable fewer families torn apart by car crashes.