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Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

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Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#471

Post by ufocia »

acdha wrote: post #334
xeromal wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just worry if there are valuable trees on a piece of land. It would be unfortunate for someone to own, say, 10 acres of land with redwoods on them. If the wood is valued at a ton of money, that would encourage them to chop it down.

Yes - I think any such system should at least be restricted to urban areas (I’m not sure I’ve seen it proposed otherwise) and you’d need some careful work to have credits for functional ecosystems without having people try to scam it by claiming that the koi pond & tree on their mini golf course makes it a wildlife habit after a duck is spotted there.

I'm not sure why a tree would not be considered a functional ecosystem. Perhaps giving incentives to people growing even individual trees is the thing to do. Otherwise people without trees are just freeloading of someone else's property.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#472

Post by ufocia »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #380
thaumasiotes wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s no need to limit land value taxes based on density as that’s what’s giving land its value. That can't be the case; density is an amenity and is, by definition, not part of the value of the land.

The point of land value tax is to charge the same taxes on an empty lot as to a building close by on the same sized lot. Under regular property taxes a speculator might buy a building, tear it down, and sit on the vacant lot for years, as a vacant lot is worth less and so lowers their taxes. With a land value tax they pay the same money either way, which may be higher overall - the general expectation is denser citie…

You are assuming that all real estate owners are paying taxes.

Also, in blighted areas buying improved land may actually be discouraged by LVT because of demolition costs. Thus vacant land should be more valuable than improved land. Can you resolve the paradox?

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#473

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

brhsagain wrote: post #400
bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well This argument reminds of the argument googlers to explain why placing paid ads ahead of organic results is better for the user: they say thay if someone can pay more for an ad than means that can get more money from the user, and therefore the user likes it more. Lol No, profit is profit, it doesn't mean anything else.

What’s wrong with that argument? Doesn’t getting more money from the user mean that the user is choosing to pay more, which reveals their preference?

Do you always click in paid ads before the organic results? No? Oh because you personally don't prefer them? Oh you mean they're preferred by the minority that does click ads, over alternative paid ads?

Gee I wonder what's wrong with that argument.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#474

Post by hermitcrab »

milanhbs wrote: post #464
hermitcrab wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think generally it should not be allowed. A big component of soap is phosphates, which promote algae growth so you really don't want it in your rivers. Shouldn't we ban people showering under the same logic? I use about the same amount of soap to wash my car as I do in the shower, but I shower a lot more often.

Your driveway drains to a nearby body of water, most likely, while your bathroom trains into sewage which is treated.

I'm in the UK and our privatised water companies seem to mostly just pump stuff into the nearest river or coastline, untreated. Treating the sewage or building infrastructure would eat into their dividends and bonuses. Trebles all round!

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#475

Post by ufocia »

sushibowl wrote: post #435
thaumasiotes wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s no need to limit land value taxes based on density as that’s what’s giving land its value. That can't be the case; density is an amenity and is, by definition, not part of the value of the land.

That seems like a strange definition to me. It's clear that people are willing to pay higher prices for land with amenities nearby, so by definition the value of the land is increased.

But presumably at least some of the land owners are already paying more through paying for the presumably private amenities. Hence the fairness argument falls at least partially.

Taxation is not about fairness, it's about raising revenue for the rather discretionary spending of the government.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#476

Post by ufocia »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #299
_heimdall wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for all the details! Limiting a land value tax to densely populated areas is a great detail here. Sorry if I end up with a long list of follow-up questions here, this is really interesting. So my main concern related to destruction of natural land is that there is a disincentive to keep land natural if you have to pay the tax anyway. In dense areas that wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue, but it would stil…

On the parks/“natural land”: would you rather land exist as an empty razed dirt field for speculators to wait to sell, or given back to the city? Taxing the land value means there’s no incentive to own land that won’t be productive. The city or municipality can guarantee land it owns can have natural growth on it, whereas when private individuals own it the state can’t really stop the land from transforming into a pa…

> The city or municipality can guarantee land it owns can have natural growth on it

Only if the city/municipality has money to do so. A degenerate example is where the city/municipality own all of the land and thus has no real estate tax base. You may think that this is ridiculous, but check out some blighted areas around the US and you'll see plenty of local governments that have a very shallow real estate tax base reminiscent of the "ridiculous" argument.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#477

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #221
d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this article is referencing the common trend of drive through automated washes which would make sense if large investors are in the picture. The big automated ones are pushy with their subscriptions which the article also talks about. These big wash machines are typically staffed by only 2 or 3 people hence the complaints that they don't even create jobs. That being said, I wish there were more automated wash…

Not once has the local automated wash suggested a subscription, is that perhaps a regional thing or specific to certain brands?

It's likely just that they haven't done the legwork to properly support it yet, or don't want to be a whitelabel service. Even the little gas station washes by me push subscriptions now. My agency has built out a few of these services in the past and they aren't cheap, even the off-the-shelf ones.

As an aside, the entire experience is awful. "Pay $25/month and get as many $8 washes as you want!" ...but I only get a car wash every 2 months and since you're tracking my license plate, you already know that.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#478

Post by pjlegato »

fwip wrote: post #195
pjlegato wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While acknowledging the reality of those externalities, it's also fair to point out that empowering politicians to attempt to override the market and deliberately police the negative outcomes of those externalities in favor of supposed social goods (the determination of which is, in itself, problematic) has never, ever worked in the history of humanity -- though it has been tried over and over in disparate societies…

> has never, ever worked in the history of humanity. I think you'll find that the majority of humanity (those who aren't libertarians) actually agree that policing the negative externalities of business should be part of government's function. Stuff like "we're destroying the ozone layer," "L.A's air is mostly smog," and "this factory keeps tearing children limb from limb" were effectively solved by government polici…

It's a long way from "this factory keeps tearing children limb from limb" to "there are too many car washes in this town."

I specifically said externalities are real problems that bear addressing.

The problem is that once politicians are turned loose, they never stop. They cannot stop. They can't say, "well done, problem solved, let's pack up and go home." That would mean giving up their hard-won power -- and the concominant benefits to themselves and their friends that came with it.

So they must always seek yet another supposed outrage to feed their power. When they can't find one, they manufacture one, to increasingly absurd and implausible lengths, eventually wrecking the system.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#479

Post by hermitcrab »

milanhbs wrote: post #464
hermitcrab wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think generally it should not be allowed. A big component of soap is phosphates, which promote algae growth so you really don't want it in your rivers. Shouldn't we ban people showering under the same logic? I use about the same amount of soap to wash my car as I do in the shower, but I shower a lot more often.

Your driveway drains to a nearby body of water, most likely, while your bathroom trains into sewage which is treated.

It makes more sense if your run-off and sewage are treated separately - assuming the car washes get theirs treated.

My understanding is that the UK has a combined system where rainwater and waste go into the same system and is all treated the same. More because of history than because anyone now thinks that is a good idea. Maybe someone who knows more about this could confirm?

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#480

Post by NegativeK »

avidiax wrote: post #395
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #354

I don't understand why we can't just let the market decide which businesses make sense based on their revenue vs. leasing the land. Presumably if car washes are so profitable it's because consumers want to use them, so why are we artificially restricting their expansion? It also provides a free subsidy to existing car washes who get to charge higher prices than they would in a competitive market. Restrictions to ente…

Imagine, for a moment, an even freer market. Someone opens a car wash in a central area. They self-declare a tax value for the land and its improvements. We also allow that anyone can forcibly buy that land by paying that same self-declared tax value + X%. The sale can't be blocked. We've ended the monopoly of land ownership, and imposed a free market on land purchasing. Car washes that are a waste of the land they a…

Forcing the sale of private property to anyone who can fork up the cash sounds absolutely ripe for abuse.
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