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

timharford.com

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

#241

Post by emodendroket »

iamthemonster wrote: post #238
blorgle wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course the position "only add something to your todo list if you are going to do it immediately" is ridiculous at face value. But if you are a bit more generous with its intentions, then there is something that really chimes with me about it. I work in engineering support to oil and gas operations (but I'm sure this is applicable to many industries), and we have quarterly workplans and pretty fixed budgets. Of cou…

I think sometimes a "black hole" is exactly what's needed for these requests. OK, sure, it's noted, and that's what we'll do if we somehow have nothing better to do.

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

#242

Post by ngc248 »

blorgle wrote: post #197
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…

Exactly, it does not make sense at all. The "queue" is not the main thing and "buying" is the main thing. The "economist" thinking here is akin to "Lets not make everyone rich, lets make everyone poor"

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

#243

Post by rocqua »

zeckalpha wrote: post #145
Retric wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug in batteries don’t last very long because they charge and discharge every day. Due to this they end up either costing several times as much manufacturing capacity as you’re assuming or they simply get driven as non plug in hybrids which makes them less efficient than EV’s. Further ramping up battery production isn’t any kind of long term barrier, so plug end hybrids just result in less investment in battery manu…

Better to use the batteries than hauling around mostly unused batteries all the time.

There is unused capacity, but all batteries in an EV are used slightly over a commute. That can lead to a much less damaging wear-pattern on the batteries, extending their life by a lot.

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

#244

Post by jillesvangurp »

human wrote: post #202

Sorry, but none of this works - although it’s a fun thought experiment. It’s very hard to predict human behaviour and it’s impossible to know how things will unfold over time. Closing coal mines without having an alternative power source would only create shortages and price hikes. Only 2-3% of new car sales are EVs. You not getting an EV to leave it to someone else is not going to get that number up. The line thing…

Coal price instability accelerates closures of coal plants. It basically pushes them to being unprofitable faster. The recent gas and coal shortages are a great example: it's accelerating closures in a few places. It's also scaring off investors seeing that promised life times of plants are worth nothing. Coal plants delivered last decade are already being closed. E.g. the Germans just opened a plant that will now close in 2030 (the new government is planning that). That's expensive. It's one of those things that happens more because it's happening more. Even in heavily pro-coal states in the US they are closing plants.

EV sales vary world wide. In Norway, it's >70%. The Netherlands has 32%. Germany is not far behind with 28%. The US is indeed lagging a bit. An interesting effect you are starting to see in the EU is people worrying about not being able to sell their ICE car second hand, being faced with additional fees and cost for fuel, or being denied access to cities and regions. Fear of these things is becoming a big driver. And there's quite a bit of FOMO as well.

Both with coal plants closing and EV adoption, fear is accelerating what was happening anyway.

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

#245

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

bobthepanda wrote: post #222
ip26 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a critical difference; convincing your local government to switch to electric buses is rather more difficult than choosing how to spend your own money.

If you're a local US government, you probably have trouble keeping the lights on, let alone justifying CapEx on more buses. King County in Seattle recently costed a transition to all-electric: the conclusion was that it would cost 41% more than sticking with the current hybrids, and would be equivalent to reducing service by 237,000 hours annually. https://seattletransitblog.com/2020/11/02/metros-fleet-all-e...

Have they included emissions and healthcare considerations in those cost estimates?

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

#246

Post by alliao »

mlyle wrote: post #229
dzhiurgis wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere PHEV users don’t really bother charging effectively making them even worse than gas guzzlers. Also that seems what Toyota is thinking with their anti-BEV lobbyism.

Hugely variable. I only burn about 20 gallons of gas per year. About one third of that is to avoid fuel spoiling, one third of that is for when I need longer trips, and one third when I screw up charging. Even so, I get about 40MPG, so much better than an average vehicle. It does sting to maintain an engine for 800 miles a year.

never thought about that, do the oil come out looking new?

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

#247

Post by jarofgreen »

mgrund wrote: post #4
bargle0 wrote: 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.

Yes! I feel this is the main point that is totally missed. The first time I read Tim Hartford years ago he was talking about this idea uncritically and I thought it was stupid then and I don't have much respect for him.

The thing we are trying to optimise is not length of que, but how long and how reliable it is to get served.

Under the old system you may have had to wait 10 minutes to get served BUT you knew before you started queuing it would be about 10 minutes (and thus could make an informed choice) and you can clearly see your progress in the queue and if you are patient you will be served.

Under the new system it now may take you 1 minute to get served or 1 hour. Or you will try multiple times and never get served. And you will have no indication before you start queing how successful you will be.

Any UX designer would easily tell you which of these systems is going to piss people off more.

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

#248

Post by vidarh »

fanick wrote: post #210
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

If we omit the batteries, there have been electric buses since forever - trolley buses. They come also in hybrid variants too to serve more distant bus stops.

You're can do trolley buses with batteries as well, which charge while passing through central parts of their lines with overhead power, and discharge during the rest of their journey.

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

#249

Post by NLips »

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…

Tim Hartford addresses this: “ the Landsburg rule can only be imposed in controlled environments such as a theme park, perhaps”

He’s using it to explain reverse logic, and then moves onto the more practical application in a todo list (discussed elsewhere in the comment tree).

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

#250

Post by cturner »

coliveira wrote: post #218
smt88 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I just ignorant? No. Economics academia is an "emperor's new clothes" field. They generate enormous amounts of dense, complex-sounding literature, and most if it is as you describe. It's never practical. Sometimes there are interesting models that help to understand things that happened in the past, but as a field, economics seems unable to predict anything that will happen in the future (even on a fundamental l…

It's like this because they start from postulates that are contrary to reality. The idea that elements in an economic systems act in a rational way, or that there is an "invisible hand" that drives the markets, or that the markets operate in equilibrium, these are all ad hoc ideas that have no basis in reality. I classify it more like a kind of economic theology.

The purpose of economics is to explain complex interaction between systems. Analogy is a powerful communication tool. Such phrases allow us to communicate and reason about systems.

The concepts raise the standard of policy development. Consider how much easier it is to discuss a proposal thanks to 'The Tragedy of the Commons'. Those few words serve as a shorthand for a dynamic. Without it you might need to spend half an hour stepping people through the dynamic each time you wanted to refer to it, and you would lose people along the way.

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