Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

timharford.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 291 posts

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

#191

Post by ClumsyPilot »

anamax wrote: post #18
Syonyk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And having been "grad school broke" during that era, it absolutely destroyed a decade's worth of cheap "runs and drives" grade cars that I drove and most of my friends drove. $100 cars were suddenly $1000 cars in a few months, which was fine if you owned one, bad if you were looking for another backyard project you could limp home and work on for a while. "Destroying the long tail of cheap resources for political poi…

Eggs, comrade, eggs. Specifically your eggs. No, there won't be omelets. What are you, some sort of kulak?

“Cash for Clunkers” was a massive subsidy to the car industry.

Seems you motto is 'Communism for me, but not for thee'?

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

#192

Post by pandaman »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #187
KennyBlanken wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a rural area and 31 miles of range is enough to drive into the largest town where everything is, and back again, without the ICE coming on. That's not a "joke."

31 miles with a small/light/inexpensive battery and reasonably rapid charging would not be a joke, particularly if you also got some gas-only efficiency benefits. But the X5 has a relatively huge and heavy 24kWh battery pack - nearly 1/3 the size of a Model Y, a car that gets 10x the electric range. The result is a substantial cost increase over the gas-only X5, plus gas mileage that is actually worse. Moreover, the…

In the US, at least, 45e MSRP is 3700 more than 40i xdrive and 45e comes standard with air suspension, which is a 2K+ option on 40i (can't look it up now because it's not even available at this time). I would not call a ~2000 a substantial cost increase on a 60K+ vehicle. But there is more - you get 7500 tax credit from the feds and in some states you get the state credit too so it's actually cheaper than even rear-drive sdrive 40i with the fed credit alone.

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

#193

Post by ClumsyPilot »

anamax wrote: post #172
lucian1900 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Such automation wouldn’t be sustainable under capitalism because the rate of profit would drop even further, but it would be entirely possible under a socialist economy that produces for use instead of for profit.

> Such automation wouldn’t be sustainable under capitalism because the rate of profit would drop even further I get that you don't like profits (even though investment to do automation requires profits), but automation reduces costs which INCREASES profits and/or reduces prices.

"I get that you don't like profits (even though investment to do automation requires profits)"

That's literally opposite of how accounting works, if you reinvest everything, your profit is 0%. Profits are what's lefts after Cost of good sold, reinvesting, etc. which you then may distribute to shareholders.

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

#194

Post by numpad0 »

zbrozek wrote: post #154
chrisseaton wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What opportunity do you have for dramatic acceleration driving legally on a public road? 0-60 in 3s vs 20s how much time can that really add up to shaving off your drive?

I borrowed (actually traded; swapping with my truck) a ~2016 Prius for a month and hated driving it. Merging is slow; I ended up flooring it and only reaching ~50 mph by the end of the onramp. Bay area ramps are, however, very short. Try the SB 101 Rengstorff ramp in Mountain View, it's horrible. In fact, that very ramp is why I replaced my 2002 Saturn LW200 with a 2010 BMW 135i in 2012. The Prius also can't maintain…

The official spec sheet says ZVW30 Prius has a 73kW(99PS) engine and a 60kW(82PS) motor, so combined it's a 130kW(180PS) system if it was possible to do so. 130kW is about as much as a Caterham Seven and slightly less than fast motorcycles. Take a Porsche 918 and it does 0-60 in 3.2 and goes around the ring in 7 minutes... with a 450kW(600hp) + 210kW(280hp) hybrid drivetrain.

There is nothing in hybrid configuration that makes a car slow, if not faster, not just Tesla quickening but actually overall faster. It's definitely Prius product design problem that is creating an impression that hybrids are slow ugly cars.

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

#195

Post by ClumsyPilot »

HideousKojima wrote: post #76
lucian1900 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 envir…

">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"

There is this really interesting second order effect I heard about, very few people know about it - apparently masses of starving people might not just quietly watch their family succumb to famine, sometimes they start cutting off heads of whoever is in charge, or just is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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

#196

Post by jmeister »

HideousKojima wrote: post #76
lucian1900 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 envir…

This stuff should be history 101. It’s depressing to see someone here having to state the biggest lessons of the 20th century, learnt by the spilling of the blood of millions.

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

#197

Post by blorgle »

nojs wrote: post #179

> Each new person who joins a queue goes to the front, standing immediately behind the person being served. This is, of course, an outrage against reason, intuition and natural justice. It is also highly efficient. If you’re next in line to be served, but someone shows up and shoehorns herself into position in front of you, you walk away. The line is only going to get longer, and you’re always going to be at the back…

Yeah, seems dumb "economist" thinking. The idea that "if someone gives up and walks away, everyone behind them benefits" is a absurd on two fronts.The stall owner clearly doesn't benefit from a lost sale. Mulled wine, mince pies and hot chocolate are not fungible. Maybe you are allergic to chocolate. Maybe mince pies make you gag.

Also, optimising for queue length only makes any sense in the described scenario if all stalls are owned by a single entity.

I'm not even going to touch the "only add something to your todo list if you are going to do it immediately" stupidity.

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

#198

Post by bruce511 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To 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…

"To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most" We have a name for them - Bus Drivers! Why is all the discussion is focused on personal cars, they sit idle 90% of the time. First vehicles to go electric should be bussed, light delivery vans, taxis and all other service vehicles that are in motion over 10 hours a day, 365 days a week. Today 95% of all electric busses are in China…

I could not agree with you more, except for the small problem of range.

I'm not sure batteries will support vehicles being in motion 10 consecutive hours. And in some categories (busses, delivery bikes) it will be as lot more than 10 hours a day.

Maybe a 3 on, 1 off schedule would work (leaving it some time to charge) and that will have some capital implications (more actual vehicles in the fleet)

But I concur with the premise-work on reducing driven-miles not on "what percentage of vehicles" are electric.

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

#199

Post by mcphage »

boffinism wrote: post #22
barbazoo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not about increasing throughout, it's about increasing user satisfaction. A system where 60 customers are served an hour, and none of them has queued, is theoretically better than one where the same amount are served, but each has queued for 10 boring minutes. You achieve this by disincentivising queueing.

Another way to look at it: with the queuing system, you spend 10 minutes, and you get what you want. How many minutes will it take with the no-queue system? It’s not like the thoroughput has increased. And how likely will it be for you to get what you want after that time? Is it definite?

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

#200

Post by anamax »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #193
anamax wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such automation wouldn’t be sustainable under capitalism because the rate of profit would drop even further I get that you don't like profits (even though investment to do automation requires profits), but automation reduces costs which INCREASES profits and/or reduces prices.

"I get that you don't like profits (even though investment to do automation requires profits)" That's literally opposite of how accounting works, if you reinvest everything, your profit is 0%. Profits are what's lefts after Cost of good sold, reinvesting, etc. which you then may distribute to shareholders.

> That's literally opposite of how accounting works, if you reinvest everything, your profit is 0%.

Wrong - Profit is revenue minus costs.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_(accounting) and all of the other definitions on the web. Reinvesting affects cash flow but not profits.

Post reply on HN