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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?

#481

Post by ufocia »

crooked-v wrote: post #349
_heimdall wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? That seems to be jumping to an extreme end, that someone owns an empty plot of land that has been cleared and destroyed to bare, dead dirt. My concern is that the same incentive pushing one to sell a pile of dirt would exist for someone owning an undeveloped, natural plot…

> That seems to be jumping to an extreme end If anything it's not extreme enough. Consider how much area in city downtowns is given over to paved-over parking lots that are just left to sit there rent-keeping for years. That's worse than just dirt fields, because at least the dirt fields can support life! > My concern is that the same incentive pushing one to sell a pile of dirt would exist for someone owning an unde…

I'm aware of areas where real estate taxes are high and large swaths of land are owned by private non-profit conservation organizations.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#482

Post by ufocia »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #381
hackerlight wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a clear way to guard this system from building higher and higher economic centers Sorry, is this a bad thing? On the social side: In the current system, poor people are forced to live in ghettos and spend 2 hours a day on a round-trip commute. It's too expensive to live near their work. If we had a land tax, the rich enclaves near the city are now financially incentivized to open up their public schools an…

So in other words, issue some bonds to make future tax revenue pay for the current expenditures to build the infrastructure.

I also thought this was bad until I gave it some thought recently. I'm not saying that I'm out of that camp completely because I think that the approach in some cases leads to overspending and may increase the overall cost in real, not just nominal, terms.

However, bonding out projects does spread the expenditure in time, more directly charging the future users for infrastructure they use. Sure you could recoup the costs through user fees, but then you're effectively borrowing money from the current tax base, so "bonds" by another name.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#483

Post by ufocia »

pyrale wrote: post #429
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they don’t do franchises and the financial statement says they’re paying rent not receiving it. https://ir.mistercarwash.com/company-information/faq

Who are they renting from, though? A company I previously worked for did rent 4-5 office buildings at ripoff prices, to a company belonging to one of the board members.

Maybe REITs?

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#484

Post by a_gnostic »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #181

I really hate sounding like a broken record but this is just another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses. The real business of car washes is real estate, it's profitable enough to get 3-4x leverage with a low interest loan. TBH I think real estate used to have high information asymmetry between local residents and large investors; low property…

> another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses.

How are other businesses excluded from low property taxes? This is clearly unfair, and could be easier addressed by removing barriers instead of erecting new ones.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#485

Post by a_gnostic »

kmacdough wrote: post #410
brhsagain wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

*In a healthy competitive market with a consumer-base that's well educated on potential consequences of their purchases. I do agree with the principle that a space-hogging marginally profitable business is detrimental to a community. Just that the opposite is not necessarily true; profitability does not imply beneficiality. Humans do not fit the model of "rational self-interested agent" commonly applied for economic…

> Humans do not fit the model of "rational self-interested agent

> Any rational group would pool resources and have a single org do the research and share it with everyone. Oops we've reinvented a government.

The firse quote precludes the second.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#486

Post by ufocia »

Retric wrote: post #453
_heimdall wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The farmland’s 40$/year in taxes isn’t pushing anyone to sell I don't think that's an easy assumption to make. Cost of living, average income, and average plot size are very different in rural areas. I don't know Idaho so I can't speak to land value there, but I can say farmable land in rural Alabama goes for between $1k and $6k per acre depending on the land. If you really want to farm it for anything more than a…

> what is the government's justification for taxing the value of land I own outright? In the 1970's a group of people decided to setup a micro nation on a small unclaimed island. A nearby country Tonga seeing they where not protected by another state invaded, so ended the micro nation. Ultimately it's the US governments providing a military and police force that causes a piece of paper to have any impact on who contr…

I'm not sure that it favors the land owners. Most of us presumably value our life over our worldly possessions.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#487

Post by a_gnostic »

ufocia wrote: post #457
OJFord wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space. If it's really such a prime desirable spot then that would drive up the value of the land to the point that the low value business wouldn't have been able to afford it?…

Low value is not synonymous with low profit. Also, the arguments made against car washes are the same as those made against bank branches which also generate relatively little sales tax. Anyway, if there is a surplus of car washes they will eventually dry up.

Bank branches can be replaced with technology. Maybe the problem of car washes has a similar solution, or maybe it ain't a problem.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#488

Post by avidiax »

NegativeK wrote: post #480
avidiax wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, real life is always more complicated.

It would be necessary to block sales of a personal or vindictive nature, so the local rich guy can't force their enemies out of their homes.

And have robust antitrust. And correct the perverse incentive towards poison pills, such as polluting the land to make it undesirable.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#489

Post by chaorace »

superhuzza wrote: post #423
rootusrootus wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm perfectly happy to let them have this, I was just curious why someone would deliberately neglect basic maintenance. It's kinda foreign to me, and frankly I'm towards the lazy end of the motivation scale. Fashion statement is actually a pretty good explanation, thank you.

I live in the UK, where it rains multiple times a week. I mostly drive on paved roads, not too much mud, roads are rarely salted. Whether I wash my car or not, it changes nothing - the car will get dusty and rained on over and over regardless of what I do. When I first got my car I would wash it sometimes, but it's inevitably going to rain in the next day or so and return to exactly the same state. Washing it once a…

> Why bother? I don't think it's actually "maintenance" if it doesn't maintain the car in any meaningful way.

As usual, it varies. Some outdoor environments can cause pollen/pinetar/birdpoop to accumulate and form a layer of weather-resistant plaque which slowly degrades the paint. Some indoor storage environments are open-air, which can lead to a stubborn buildup of oil/pollution/dust with a similarly negative impact.

Of course, there's also the general idea that, if you baby something, it'll last longer. Inspecting how the car looks on a semi-regular basis might lead one to noticing any number of issues -- a soft tire, a fluid leak, a faulty tail-light, etc. It's not a bad ritual to have if you rely on the good working function of such things.

With all of this being said, I don't exactly practice what I preach... Driving bores me and I'd rather pay someone else to do the associated maintenance even though I've been thoroughly taught how to do it myself. I very much belong to the "carwashes for thee and not for me" school of thought

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#490

Post by bdcravens »

nunez wrote: post #352
bdcravens wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to wash my car every few weeks, but with an unlimited model, I now wash it every few days. It literally takes 2 minutes to pull in and through the car wash.

this will ruin your paint over time

No doubt, and it seems the Kia EV6 has worse paint quality compared to prior cars I've owned. It's definitely in need of a paint correction. For now though, my water quality at home is terrible, so it's a lesser of two evils for me (due to health reasons, I really don't have the stamina to wash it the right way) The hard water not only makes it hard to wash without spots, but it's a double whammy when my sprinkler system hits my car and spots it up.
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