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Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

timharford.com

1–10 of 291 posts

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#4
post #2

I don’t buy the queue argument. It would devolve in to a bunch of churn inevitably resulting in thrown hands and black eyes.

It’s a good lesson in the importance of picking the right things to measure/optimize for. Queue length is not a good thing to optimize for by itself.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#6
post #4
post #2

I don’t buy the queue argument. It would devolve in to a bunch of churn inevitably resulting in thrown hands and black eyes.

It’s a good lesson in the importance of picking the right things to measure/optimize for. Queue length is not a good thing to optimize for by itself.

Exactly, I don't get how that would increase throughput.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#7
I was curious to see if anyone had tried the coal mine bit. This is the closest I could find, a business plan to sell coal attached to carbon credits. Not sure what’s happened since 2016.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/business/energy-environme...

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#8
post #2

I don’t buy the queue argument. It would devolve in to a bunch of churn inevitably resulting in thrown hands and black eyes.

> Alas, the Landsburg rule can only be imposed in controlled environments such as a theme park, perhaps. But you might consider applying a dose of Landsburg’s logic to your own “to do” list: don’t add a new item to the list unless you’re willing to do it immediately.

I've got to ponder the to do list example though.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#9
If environmentalists made major impact shutting down mines, the price of coal would go up incentivizing new ones or at least to increase the output of existing ones - demand hasn’t changed. Just the same with buying gas stations and shutting them down, too.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#10
post #9

If environmentalists made major impact shutting down mines, the price of coal would go up incentivizing new ones or at least to increase the output of existing ones - demand hasn’t changed. Just the same with buying gas stations and shutting them down, too.

That’s not how it works. If the price of coal goes up, other generation technologies outcompete it (renewables and natural gas).

By disrupting the fossil fuel supply chain, you apply pressure to the point where coal generators are taken offline and demolished (lots of videos if you Google for coal plant demolition). This ensures you can’t go back, as the lead time is too long to build new coal and no one will finance it in the developed world. Natural gas is already marginal against renewables in many markets, and will face the same fate as coal as renewables build until they’re overbuilt.

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