31–40 of 54 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> cheap Chinese crap It may rhyme but it remains offensive. Can you please change that? Maybe not for that post, as it is too late, but for your future posts?
But most of the stuff in a dollar store is cheap goods manufactured in China. Was it the word "crap"? Maybe "cheap Chinese goods" would be more palatable?
The media really seem to love pushing downright naive logistical assumptions trying to make online shopping a villain while expecting us to believe our own cars and brick and mortar store's logistics run on pixie farts. You never see them talking about the impact of junk mail. To be frank at this point it feels like they are trying to extort ad money to stop negative press coverage.
I drop off my kid at Main Street for dance. I pick up my laundry and drop off my USPS in the same plaza
I continue on to Costco, and if gas (I take whichever car is lowest on gas).
Costco has everything you could typically need, but on the way back there are very many stores I can stop at.
Pick up the kid, eat lunch at Main Street.
The whole circuit, round trip is 16mi, but I've done things I would have done anyways, COSTCO adding only 8 mi, but saving me (usually) having to go do groceries. So let's say an extra 4 mi.
Also, my car is far lighter than a utility van, not driving door-to-door so my mpg are much better. Double? So my Costco run is a 2 mi. equivalent.
But at Costco (and Target next door) I can get everything in one big shot. W/ Amazon I'll get very many deliverables.
Frankly, I just don't think it's that obvious picking stuff up myself isn't better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And the correct activity to tax is the delivery itself [...] Ideally taxed to the business doing the delivery Congratulations! You have discovered gas taxes ;-)
The pitfall is that gas taxes are apparently not strongly correlated to road wear. A gallon of gas in a passenger vehicle does dramatically less road damage than a gallon of gas in a delivery truck.
Besides, we should discourage passenger vehicle use anyway, so raise the gas tax until it covers per mile delivery vehicle road wear.
The media really seem to love pushing downright naive logistical assumptions trying to make online shopping a villain while expecting us to believe our own cars and brick and mortar store's logistics run on pixie farts. You never see them talking about the impact of junk mail. To be frank at this point it feels like they are trying to extort ad money to stop negative press coverage.
No, because a lot of the savings that door-to-door delivery supposedly achieves, I can achieve by simply optimizing for time. I drop off my kid at Main Street for dance. I pick up my laundry and drop off my USPS in the same plaza I continue on to Costco, and if gas (I take whichever car is lowest on gas). Costco has everything you could typically need, but on the way back there are very many stores I can stop at. Pic…
And it isn't that obvious that delivering stuff isn't better. Less demand for in store items could also reduce store sizes, saving on energy costs, and reduce staffing needs, reducing the staff's energy usage to travel to and from work, and so on and so forth. We can keep going and add on the waste and negative effects of huge parking lots around huge stores.
There are many incalculable effects, not to mention that you might happen to have a stretch of road with dance, laundry, USPS, Costco, and Target in close proximity. What about everyone that doesn't?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But most of the stuff in a dollar store is cheap goods manufactured in China. Was it the word "crap"? Maybe "cheap Chinese goods" would be more palatable?
Just that makes a world of difference to me.
The media really seem to love pushing downright naive logistical assumptions trying to make online shopping a villain while expecting us to believe our own cars and brick and mortar store's logistics run on pixie farts. You never see them talking about the impact of junk mail. To be frank at this point it feels like they are trying to extort ad money to stop negative press coverage.
No, because a lot of the savings that door-to-door delivery supposedly achieves, I can achieve by simply optimizing for time. I drop off my kid at Main Street for dance. I pick up my laundry and drop off my USPS in the same plaza I continue on to Costco, and if gas (I take whichever car is lowest on gas). Costco has everything you could typically need, but on the way back there are very many stores I can stop at. Pic…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure online shopping dramatically reduces use of public infrastructure, i.e. roads and parking. Every UPS truck that goes out with 100 packages means, what -- conservatively, maybe 50 separate car trips that it replaced? And so that much less traffic, congestion, pollution, gas used, etc.
I am going to venture the hypothesis that people will make the same number of car trips - just to other destinations. Similar to how building more or wider roads do not reduce congestions - more traffic takes its place.
And certainly some of those activities can involve driving, like going to visit friends. But many other activities will just be spending more time at home -- e.g. coming home straight from work instead of running errands, or staying home Saturday afternoon to read or play video games.
To your point: in areas where traffic congestion is already extreme, it may not make a difference because there's so much pent-up demand for car trips. But in most of the rest of the country (suburbs, rural, etc.) that doesn't suffer from congestion, I think package delivery would have to result in reducing traffic to some measurable degree.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pitfall is that gas taxes are apparently not strongly correlated to road wear. A gallon of gas in a passenger vehicle does dramatically less road damage than a gallon of gas in a delivery truck.
You're right, but it's somewhat offset that a delivery truck uses more gas per mile than a passenger vehicle. Besides, we should discourage passenger vehicle use anyway, so raise the gas tax until it covers per mile delivery vehicle road wear.
a 9ton big-rig does 410x the damage
https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And the correct activity to tax is the delivery itself [...] Ideally taxed to the business doing the delivery Congratulations! You have discovered gas taxes ;-)
The pitfall is that gas taxes are apparently not strongly correlated to road wear. A gallon of gas in a passenger vehicle does dramatically less road damage than a gallon of gas in a delivery truck.