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Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

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Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#171

Post by ErroneousBosh »

Tade0 wrote: post #156
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, it immediately costs more to buy an EV than it does to run my existing car. The monthly payment to buy an EV is more than I spend on fuel. Then I'd be paying roughly ten times as much for insurance, because it's a new and valuable car, and being "keyless" it cannot be secured in any meaningful way without locking it in a garage, which I don't have. Because I don't have a garage or a driveway I can't park right…

First time I hear that all EVs are keyless and have expensive insurance. What model were you considering and why only this one?

Pretty much everything is keyless these days, which makes them expensive to insure since you can steal them with a very small and inexpensive device. The problem is not just limited to EVs though.

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#172

Post by j16sdiz »

themafia wrote: post #92
asdff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is a government never needed technology to be authoritarian. The government today already has all the tools to ruin your life. It had them in 1940. It had them in 1840 and it had them in the year 40 as well. And that tool is known as the monopoly on violence. It can be wielded in many ways good and bad.

> It had them in 1940. It had them in 1840 Yea, and they were way more successful at it in 1940 than 1840. Are you accounting for all the times they tried to enforce their authority but ultimately failed? > And that tool is known as the monopoly on violence. No one has a monopoly on violence. What they really have is called "qualified immunity." In this particular instance, though, their violence is particularly enab…

"qualified immunity" is a legal concept on how government protect/"qualify" their employees from being sued.

"Monopoly on violence" is a political philosophy concept. What make a state a state.

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#173

Post by ErroneousBosh »

Schiendelman wrote: post #154
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, it immediately costs more to buy an EV than it does to run my existing car. The monthly payment to buy an EV is more than I spend on fuel. Then I'd be paying roughly ten times as much for insurance, because it's a new and valuable car, and being "keyless" it cannot be secured in any meaningful way without locking it in a garage, which I don't have. Because I don't have a garage or a driveway I can't park right…

Those are arguments, not math. Will you share your actual math?

Okay, for even a very basic EV I'd be paying £400 per month.

This is more than the £200-300 or so it costs to run my existing car.

Straight off, it's costing me more just to even own one - that's before it turns a wheel.

Tax on an EV is free just now, and about £300ish a year for the vehicle I have now, so that's got the difference down a little.

Insurance on even a fairly basic EV would be a couple of hundred quid a month, as opposed to a couple of hundred quid a year. This immediately makes running an EV uneconomic.

At the end of the five year lease (you can't buy them outright, without getting entirely ripped off) I'd have spent 24 grand to still not actually own a car. This is roughly 100 times as much as I spent to actually own a car. This too makes things uneconomic.

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#174

Post by ErroneousBosh »

pmg101 wrote: post #133
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, it immediately costs more to buy an EV than it does to run my existing car. The monthly payment to buy an EV is more than I spend on fuel. Then I'd be paying roughly ten times as much for insurance, because it's a new and valuable car, and being "keyless" it cannot be secured in any meaningful way without locking it in a garage, which I don't have. Because I don't have a garage or a driveway I can't park right…

My insurance went down not up when I switched. EV servicing is cheaper and I do it less often. I bought used. The monthly depreciation is less than my previous fuel bill. YMMV.

> EV servicing is cheaper and I do it less often.

Most EVs need serviced every year and it's about £300 to do so. This is a ridiculous amount.

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#175

Post by ErroneousBosh »

zigman1 wrote: post #130
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, it immediately costs more to buy an EV than it does to run my existing car. The monthly payment to buy an EV is more than I spend on fuel. Then I'd be paying roughly ten times as much for insurance, because it's a new and valuable car, and being "keyless" it cannot be secured in any meaningful way without locking it in a garage, which I don't have. Because I don't have a garage or a driveway I can't park right…

> among people who like me can charge at home OP said this, you clearly don't fall into this category. And if servicing an electric car costs more than servicing an old Landrover I will not eat for a week

At the dealer it costs about £300 to get a Kia Niro EV serviced, which needs done every year.

It just cost me £75 to service my car, of which nearly £15 was just the cabin air filters which have got bizarrely expensive since last year.

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#176

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

randusername wrote: post #150
pmg101 wrote: post #106

I'm not sure. Don't underestimate the power of inertia. I bought an EV last year and it's definitely been a "good idea" for me. Luxurious ride, fuel costs a tenth, doesn't stink. Seems such an obvious upgrade it slightly confuses me take-up hasn't been quicker among people who like me can charge at home.

EV marketing in the US is super dumb. We get these ads emphasizing the luxuriousness, the status, the high-tech, the exclusivity of EVs. Meanwhile... BYD. Surely it can't be entirely conspiracy to bludgeon the public with messaging that EVs are premium goods and ICEVs are for the mass market. Could it be that the maxim should really be something like "bullshit too often and too greedily and you forget how to sell som…

Perhaps you're just not used to US car advertising? Even the cheapest cars are always advertised as though they're cool luxurious status symbols. The Bolt and Leaf match the price point of the RAV4 they're competing with. (Genuinely budget-conscious buyers don't buy new cars at all in the US.)

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#177

Post by bluGill »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #152
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don’t. If you did, you would be subject to lock outs. The average rank and file employee at any BigTech company knows only a minuscule more than the general public. Amazon for instance has over 1 million employees. You know nothing about most of your coworkers or whether other teams are delivering featured

> The average rank and file employee at any BigTech company knows only a minuscule more than the general public. They know the clients, the contracts, hiring, cost cutting way before the general public does. The problem is that many BigTech is sum of many units which might not be correlated, but for say Nvidia or Apple I would assume the employees would be a good people to take the stock advice from.

In a tiny company this is true. In any medium (much less large) company you don't know much more than anyone else on the street - and the independent analysts who just watch public information closely usually know more than you do about all that. (it is their job to read the data from China and figure out what that means for the companies involved).

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#178

Post by jayd16 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #48
commandlinefan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stock options did become nearly universal in tech compensation Although I've noticed that options have been replaced more and more these days with RSU's (plain old grants) because options have a tendency to go "underwater", suggesting that they weren't all that great to begin with.

> options have been replaced more and more these days with RSU's (plain old grants) RSUs are also much-less liquid and tightly controllable by companies than actual stock. That has made them attractive to management and insiders.

What makes them more or less controllable? I know they can have specific triggers applied to them so as to delay vesting. Are options somehow immune to that or is it something else entirely?

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#179

Post by manwe150 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #105
pjc50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specific lie discussed was the idea that granting options was not somehow an "expense" and could be excluded from the accounts. (Google tells me this is a relevant summary of US GAAP https://carta.com/uk/en/learn/startups/equity-management/asc... )

> The specific lie discussed was the idea that granting options was not somehow an "expense" and could be excluded from the accounts. Stock options for the company's own stock are kind of weird because the company can issue its own stock, which puts them in a much different position than someone selling uncovered calls. An uncovered call is a potentially unbounded liability. If you issued someone options to buy 10,00…

The IRS rules on AMT for that transaction might have you thinking it was generally booked. Though any sensible accounting seems like it wouldn’t book it.

Re: Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)

#180

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jayd16 wrote: post #178
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> options have been replaced more and more these days with RSU's (plain old grants) RSUs are also much-less liquid and tightly controllable by companies than actual stock. That has made them attractive to management and insiders.

What makes them more or less controllable? I know they can have specific triggers applied to them so as to delay vesting. Are options somehow immune to that or is it something else entirely?

Note that I’m speaking more about private companies than public ones. But an RSU is basically only liquid if the company says it is. Shares, out of exercised options, have a lot more flexibility.
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