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Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

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

#151

Post by dzonga »

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…

thing is these a16z guys have money & try to build a narrative around that money.

they did the same in the crypto days - probably most of their narratives were taken down.

then when they finally dumb their investments on the stock market - the market within a year or 2 sees the ruse and stock goes tumbling down. they would've cashed out.

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

#152

Post by thaumasiotes »

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…

> Whereas if you take the extraordinarily difficult step of opening Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox), you understand the real paradox. Jevons observed that when steam engines get more efficient and individually use less coal, we end up deploying many more steam engines in many new industries and use cases, increasing coal consumption overall.

What difference do you see in this paragraph compared to the one before? Steam engines get more coal-efficient and that means there are more of them burning more coal. This is two observations:

- The cost of steam engines goes down, and the quantity sold goes up.

- The value of coal goes up (it produces more energy per ton), and the quantity sold goes up.

Those results are just as basic as "the cost of coal goes down, and the quantity sold goes up", which is the statement you open by criticizing. I agree there's nothing surprising about it. But there's nothing surprising about the other statements either. The paragraph two statements are both demand increases†, while paragraph 1 is a supply increase, but they all happen on the same X-shaped graph from economics 101. (Or rather, two of them happen on an X-shaped graph measuring supply and demand for coal, and one of them happens on an X-shaped graph measuring supply and demand for engines.)

† "The cost of steam engines goes down" might sound like a supply increase, but the cost that's dropping here is the operating cost and not the manufacturing cost, meaning that, at a given price, more people are willing to buy a steam engine than previously.

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

#153

Post by ZeroGravitas »

> 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.

I can't tell if that's the worst AI boosting analogy I ever heard or the most unwittingly accurate.

First of all, flat screen TV and plasterboard hole repair are in no way substitutable goods.

"Why is there a new TV behind the front door dear? The handle was bashing the drywall and it was cheaper than a handyman."

But okay, let's assume you accidentally but conveniently punched a hole right where you would want a TV. And you don't already have a TV there.

Who is going to wall mount this new TV in a home that can't do basic drywall repair?

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

#154

Post by pas »

helsinki8 wrote: post #146
nunez wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This also isn't true? It costs almost nothing to patch drywall. You can also do this yourself. Unless the point they're making is "TVs are so cheap, you can mount a TV inside of the…

I was curious so I did a quick check. I can buy a flat screen TV from Walmart for $74. A handyman to come to my house is a minimum of $150. So the parent comment is true, buying a TV is cheaper than hiring a handyman to fix the drywall.

but you need to put the TV on the wall

VESA mounts and installation are not cheap

it's really an apples and or ciders comparison

that said, now I realized I have a door with two pictures screwed to it, because we punched a hole through it more than a decade ago during a house party, and that specific door is out of production, and it's the door to the storage room so it was (and still is) the perfect solution :)

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

#155

Post by jonbiggums22 »

bickfordb wrote: post #83
s1gsegv wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was so lucrative, wouldn’t more people set up shop undercutting the current offerings? Why not become an HVAC installer and make millions, if you’re really able to make $15k profit on a job you can turn out in a day. The truth is probably more that the various money sinks in our society are starting to add up, things like healthcare, legal protection, licensure, compliance, rent (business or personal), even jus…

In my state (OR) it takes 4 years to become licensed to do the work for others but homeowners can do the work themselves. My experience is that it’s not generally well understood how simple it is to install mini splits. The supply companies won’t sell to you directly outside of d2c web companies like hvacdirect

My state has a program where they give you big rebates but only if you use some one on their list of approved installers and since there aren't many installers it creates a big backlog. Homeowners who could install them themselves miss out on the rebate.

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

#156

Post by jonbiggums22 »

KumaBear wrote: post #125
absurd1st wrote: post #120

> if you automate 99% of a job, that last 1% the human has to do is incredibly valuable because it’s bottlenecking everything else. The author is being (intentionally) naive here. History and current research suggest that when technology automates the vast majority of a complex job, it can lead to the "deskilling" of the human worker. This Lancet article (published Oct 2025) discovered that doctors were found to be l…

Yet prices of these tests will not go down. AI and the companies that perform the test will see the rewards of eliminating these skilled jobs. The consumer will not see the savings.

Why would they go down? Once all the existing workforce is deskilled or retired there's no going back so they can jack the service price up. If it was an open platform you might have competitors spring up as a relief valve to that but the space is so regulated I don't think there's any room for that kind of platform.

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

#157

Post by vel0city »

pas wrote: post #154
helsinki8 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious so I did a quick check. I can buy a flat screen TV from Walmart for $74. A handyman to come to my house is a minimum of $150. So the parent comment is true, buying a TV is cheaper than hiring a handyman to fix the drywall.

but you need to put the TV on the wall VESA mounts and installation are not cheap it's really an apples and or ciders comparison that said, now I realized I have a door with two pictures screwed to it, because we punched a hole through it more than a decade ago during a house party, and that specific door is out of production, and it's the door to the storage room so it was (and still is) the perfect solution :)

A TV wall mount can be had for $30, or even little less. They're extremely simple to install. All you need is a basic drill and 20 minutes.

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

#158

Post by vel0city »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #152
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…

> Whereas if you take the extraordinarily difficult step of opening Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox ), you understand the real paradox. Jevons observed that when steam engines get more efficient and individually use less coal, we end up deploying many more steam engines in many new industries and use cases, increasing coal consumption overall. What difference do you see in this paragraph comp…

> Steam engines get more coal-efficient and that means there are more of them burning more coal.

This misses the key part that actually makes it Jevons Paradox: the reduced cost of operating the machine opened up new industries and applications that massively grew which made overall usage increase.

Something could get more efficient and still have the same number of units in the end. Washing machines have gotten more efficient over time and yet it's not like we have tons more washing machines in the US.

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

#159

Post by tzs »

pas wrote: post #154
helsinki8 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious so I did a quick check. I can buy a flat screen TV from Walmart for $74. A handyman to come to my house is a minimum of $150. So the parent comment is true, buying a TV is cheaper than hiring a handyman to fix the drywall.

but you need to put the TV on the wall VESA mounts and installation are not cheap it's really an apples and or ciders comparison that said, now I realized I have a door with two pictures screwed to it, because we punched a hole through it more than a decade ago during a house party, and that specific door is out of production, and it's the door to the storage room so it was (and still is) the perfect solution :)

Walmart has $22 mounts that will work for that $74 TV, and Walmart has TV installation service for $79 (basic mounting of a customer supplied TV with a customer supplied mount).

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

#160

Post by piokoch »

otikik wrote: post #112
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…

> price per token, which has fallen. I think that statement is incomplete. It's cheaper because the AI providers are subsidizing the queries by burning cash in order to gain market share. So it's not a price , it's a subsidized and temporary price. Which will likely go up once burnable money runs out / the providers switch from "market acquisition" to "let's try to make this thing profitable at all".

This is already happening. Some time ago all models providers charged $20 a month. Now you still get $20 version, which is crippled, with limits. If you want "a real thing", you need to pay $200. And this might still be too little, as the algo that runs the show is quadratic with the size, which, as every algos books says, is highly inefficient.
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