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Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

a16z.substack.com

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Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#101

Post by ta20240528 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #78
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state. I understand large installs at businesses are a different problem, and granted I've only ever installed a mini split, but that was hardly rocket science. And home installs are likely what most people are thinking of here. In Japan you can get minisplit's installed for $1k a unit, here you regularly find quotes over $10k. Somet…

> A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state. A flat time mandate for HVAC tech certification seems really out of place. And a 4 year path of any sort seems excessive for a technician. I couldn't find anything like that. Most results I found were in the 6-12 mos range - which is often spent employed. WV was an outlier with a 2000hr requirement. How I have seen (non-hvac…

"And a 4 year path of any sort seems excessive for a technician"

Its not excessive if the purpose is job protection.

See also any career that involves interning (law, accounting, …)

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#102

Post by big-and-small »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #40
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #34

I'm not sure why everyone picks on radiology as the 'obvious' field that will get automated. So far it has been the opposite: > In 2025, American diagnostic radiology residency programs offered a record 1,208 positions across all radiology specialties, a four percent increase from 2024, and the field’s vacancy rates are at all-time highs. In 2025, radiology was the second-highest-paid medical specialty in the country…

In a similar vein, studies have found that software engineers spend only ~30% of their time coding on average. Yet we're similarly meant to believe that AI is going to replace human engineers? Ironically this belief is often held by software engineers themselves, as if they don't realize that they do so much more than generate characters. Bizarre.

With this attitude you'll never get investments...

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#103

Post by LtWorf »

esperent wrote: post #35
magicalhippo wrote: post #10

Just had our minisplit develop a leak after 7 years. The shop recommended replacing it, as just the refrigerant is half the price of a new one if most has to be replaced, due to environmental taxes. Basically a repair is guaranteed to be at least 50% of new price of NOK 23k ($2.3k) installed and can quickly approach 80+% if the guy has to spend time on it. That made me wonder how on earth they make money on selling t…

Here in Vietnam nearly all ACs are these minisplit type. It costs about 500,000VND ($19) to get one serviced, including replacement coolant. It's cheap enough that I get it done at least once or twice a year for all units (the coolant doesn't always need replacing but I get it cleaned and serviced). I know the US and Vietnamese economies are very different, but something doesn't add up there.

I wonder if they just let super polluting gas free

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#104

Post by WillPostForFood »

locknitpicker wrote: post #64
chemotaxis wrote: post #7

That's a lot of economic theorizing, but to me, it doesn't seem to be substantiated all that well. You can just as well argue that labor is getting more expensive in the West because of two non-market pressures. First, we have a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money. Second, you have consumer protection polici…

> (...) a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, (...) consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive (...) I don't think this opinion holds a rational basis. Extreme poverty being a factor in low job demand is an argument for coercing people into performing certain tasks even though they are not economically viable just because it benefits you personally. This is not…

Regulation, for example occupational licensing of jobs, has become much more prevalent. 60 years ago, only 5% of the workforce was occupationally licensed, now it is 25%.* There is a bipartisan push to reduce occupational licensing, and recognize licenses across state lines. So not irrational, unsubstantiated, partisan, or ideological.

*https://documents.ncsl.org/wwwncsl/Labor/NCSL_DOL_Report_05_...

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#105

Post by pinkmuffinere »

dig1 wrote: post #94
testdelacc1 wrote: post #52

The author makes an error while explaining Jevons’ Paradox. They say “the cheaper and faster we got at producing coal, the more coal we ended up using”. But that’s not paradoxical at all. That’s basic supply and demand curve from economics 101. It’s exactly what you’d expect. Whereas if you take the extraordinarily difficult step of opening Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox ), you understand th…

a16z is heavily long on AI, so this article sounds very biased. From the article: If you live in the United States today, and you accidentally knock a hole in your wall, it’s probably cheaper to buy a flatscreen TV and stick it in front of the hole, compared to hiring a handyman to fix your drywall. Probably because the US has been focused on services for years rather than physical goods production. Everything else i…

Also the initial claim is just false — “if you live in the United States today, and you accidentally knock a hole in your wall, it’s probably cheaper to buy a flatscreen TV and stick it in front of the hole, compared to hiring a handyman to fix your drywall“. I can tell you that this isn’t true in San Diego. Unless they’re using flatscreen tvs that cost less than $300? Or perhaps making extremely difficult-to-patch holes somehow

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#106

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #34

I'm not sure why everyone picks on radiology as the 'obvious' field that will get automated. So far it has been the opposite: > In 2025, American diagnostic radiology residency programs offered a record 1,208 positions across all radiology specialties, a four percent increase from 2024, and the field’s vacancy rates are at all-time highs. In 2025, radiology was the second-highest-paid medical specialty in the country…

Radiology seems like a good field for AI because it's easier to see what automation would look like in practice, since an MRI, CT-Scan directly produces data and which can be fed to an AI. How well this actually works, I have no idea.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#107

Post by Havoc »

mysterypie wrote: post #81

> With widespread AI adoption we plausibly could consume 10x or more of the service: Legal services, for example, plausibly fit this bill. A ten-fold productivity gain in legal services sounds simply awful for society. Imagine the time and money sink if everyone can sue you for every frivolous thing because AI can prepare and file the paperwork instantly without needing a lawyer. You'll need your own AI to defend aga…

Id blame the complexity of tax returns more on lobbying. Everyone wants their own industry custom exemption and that in turn creates holes that need to be patched etc

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#108

Post by jmb99 »

XorNot wrote: post #75
landl0rd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think people insist someone needs to be licensed, bonded, and insured? It's not really a quality question, it's CYA, a direct response to the rise of ambulance-chasers and increasingly-ridiculous jury awards. Morgan and Morgan are probably doing as much economic damage here as Baumol.

They insist on that because if someone does work on your property they might destroy your property Yeah it's CYA: the ass in question is yours. The guy who burns your house down without insurance will just file bankruptcy. You're the one left with the ashes.

Would your homeowners insurance not cover that? Mine would.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#109

Post by kanwisher »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #105
dig1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a16z is heavily long on AI, so this article sounds very biased. From the article: If you live in the United States today, and you accidentally knock a hole in your wall, it’s probably cheaper to buy a flatscreen TV and stick it in front of the hole, compared to hiring a handyman to fix your drywall. Probably because the US has been focused on services for years rather than physical goods production. Everything else i…

Also the initial claim is just false — “if you live in the United States today, and you accidentally knock a hole in your wall, it’s probably cheaper to buy a flatscreen TV and stick it in front of the hole, compared to hiring a handyman to fix your drywall“. I can tell you that this isn’t true in San Diego. Unless they’re using flatscreen tvs that cost less than $300? Or perhaps making extremely difficult-to-patch h…

50" tv for $239 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4P176B8

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#110

Post by torginus »

testdelacc1 wrote: post #52

The author makes an error while explaining Jevons’ Paradox. They say “the cheaper and faster we got at producing coal, the more coal we ended up using”. But that’s not paradoxical at all. That’s basic supply and demand curve from economics 101. It’s exactly what you’d expect. Whereas if you take the extraordinarily difficult step of opening Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox ), you understand th…

Honestly I feel like Jevons Paradox is a distinctly unhelpful way of phrasing phenomena, designed to create a feeling of novelty where there's none.

It's completely obvious that if you need energy, and you have energy source A and B (lets say natural gas and oil), people will use the one that is cheaper.

Oil became cheaper because a new supplier entered the market, and people started using more of it! Jevons Paradox!

The other explanation is that people have an outsize demand for a resource, and are actively making efforts to make it cheaper so they can use more of it, then when it gets cheaper, they use more of it.

Transistors got cheaper and we are using more of them! Jevons Paradox!

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