Perfect example of the kind of simplistic and wishful thinking which plagues modern economics. They assume that their model of the world will solve a problem without bothering to check if it does.
Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
71–80 of 291 posts
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#72If you want to cause tremendous inflationary pain to the working class and rolling blackouts through an energy transition this is how you do it.
We are not at the stage where we can bootstrap green yet. You still require fossil fuels to build a green economy. Sure, coal is bad as an energy source, but that EV you want has a ton of steel inside and that requires metallurgical coal. The copper required for a green economy needs to be mined, and the machines used in a mine require a portable, dense fuel source like oil.
To make matters worse, energy prices feed into other areas of the economy. Ammonia costs have skyrocketed due to the energy issues and that's causing the price of wheat and corn to skyrocket.
The proper policy is carbon credits and a measured transition unless you're ready to punish the working class and developing nations.
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#73This kind of strategy ignores second order effects. For example, by buying a gas guzzler and not using it much you might lower the emissions from that specific vehicle. But supply and demand rears its ugly head: you're contributing to the increase of similar gas guzzlers' value in the market, which means that other people are more likely to maintain those vehicles in working order and resell them, instead of scrappin…
Surely by that same argument scrapping or abandoning any automobile instead of reselling it is going to increase the value of new cars relative to used cars, which might be a net negative for the environment even if the newly manufactured car is a zero emission vehicle.
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#74To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…
>This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal. The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or Mercedes aren't interested in something with the performance of a geo metro. So, while on paper a PHEV solution might look better, in the real world it would result in those people just goin…
My Volt has 300lb/ft of torque and accelerates quite lovely. Sport mode is a fun drive. Much more pep than the VW diesel I used to have. And the car drives for 80-90km on battery without touching the ICE. I go months without filling. I drive 93% electric, only using gas for road trips. You've looked at the wrong PHEVs.
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#75I don’t buy the queue argument. It would devolve in to a bunch of churn inevitably resulting in thrown hands and black eyes.
I think I didn't really get the idea behind it. Wouldn't that be the same as just prohibiting of forming queues altogether? I.e. you're only allowed to order food of noone else is at the cashier?
Pretty much, yes.
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
>And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad. Destroying food during a famine is inhuman. Don't take people's property by force and not expect them to fight back. And especially don't use their fighting back as an excuse to oppress and slaughter them, that's what's truly inhuman. And the famine was caused by collectivization policies in the first place, you're just blameshifting your failed policies onto the vic…
When some starve and others hoard food, is property more important than hunger? The famines were environmental, for centuries. It was only collectivisation and industrialisation of agriculture that stopped the famines.
>When some starve and others hoard food, is property more important than hunger?
Yes, because destroying private property rights will lead to further famines. It's something called second-order effects, which Communists seem utterly incapable of understanding.
>The famines were environmental, for centuries.
None were ever on the scale of those caused by the Soviets, Mao, and others, so they clearly weren't just environmental.
>It was only collectivisation and industrialisation of agriculture that stopped the famines.
Industrialization is doing some Atlas-tier lifting for the rest of your argument in that sentence. Collectivization did nothing to stop famines unless you count causing millions to die and thereby having fewer mouths to feed in the following years. Reversing collectivization, on the other hand, increased food output six-fold in Xiaogang, China: http://www.china.org.cn/china/features/content_11778487_2.ht...
Edit: Note that the villagers of Xiaogang had to undo collectivization in secret because they risked literally life imprisonment and execution. They even made pacts with each other to care for the others' children until adulthood if any of them were caught and executed.
Edit2: Since HN won't let me reply to your response directly, here it is. I lived in the Czech Republic and befriended countless people rich and poor who suffered under the evils of Communism. Communism has led to political violence in every single country that has adopted it, without exception. For a good historical overview (since you implied I haven't read any boons on the matter) I would recommend From the Gulag to the Killing Fields, which contains excerpts of historical accounts from every single country that established Communist regimes. You support a Godless ideology of murder, oppression, and lies.
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#77Coal, and most resources like that that are part of the commons, if not developed you rightly would lose it.
For the queuing as they explain it, you would just leave the queue and rejoin it, and get to the front? It works well for negatives like firing people.
Reverse logic might be cooler if the article came with one example of where it worked IRL. But I guess if it works it's logic?
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#78To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…
Plug in electric hybrids strike me as insanely complex machines compared to Ev's. It strikes me as highly unlikely that from an environmental standpoint our (societies) time is better spent building them, than it is spent increasing the rate at which we can build batteries.
PHEVs are more complex, but arguably not more complex than having both a BEV and an ICE vehicle. If a BEV covers 95% of my driving needs, that sounds great, but it still means I need two cars if one is a BEV.
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#79Clearly anyone who is pushed back in the reverse queue (can i call it a stack?) can just rejoin at the front. You would end up with a spinning “musical chairs queue”.
The other examples seem pretty interesting and it has a freakinomics feel about it.
The queue solution is simple - using tech: use the buzzers they give you in some restaurants that tell you your meal is ready when you are next in the queue.
Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plug in electric hybrids strike me as insanely complex machines compared to Ev's. It strikes me as highly unlikely that from an environmental standpoint our (societies) time is better spent building them, than it is spent increasing the rate at which we can build batteries.
I'd expect EVs to be cheaper if they are actually simpler, last time I looked that wasn't really the case outside of cars produced in China that most western customers wouldn't buy.
Cost isn’t the same thing as complexity. EVs are probably more expensive because batteries are expensive.