3 ms·

Did you not read TFA? The outcome is not positive for any party. Bigger cars consume more gas, kill more people, etc, and people buy them because they can. That

by toxik 5y ago

Did you not read TFA? The outcome is not positive for any party. Bigger cars consume more gas, kill more people, etc, and people buy them because they can. That’s a failure of market forces to do the right thing.

sokoloff 5y ago
> The outcome is not positive for any party. The outcome for the buyers of those vehicles is estimated by those buyers to be positive. I don't know if it is or isn't, but it seems at least a little presumptuous to conclude that a third party (you or I) knows more about the buyer's preferences/value function than the buyer themself. If the outcome were known to be negative for everyone, it would be a lot less common.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Not sure the howls of pain at gas stations support your hypothesis.
  - fredophile 5y ago
    Do you think those buyers didn't know they'd get bad gas mileage or us it more likely that they care about other factors more? I hate the cup holder in my car. It pisses me off on a regular basis. I still think buying my car resulted in a net gain for me.
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      I think they fooled themselves into believing that low gas prices were a norm and that filling up a huge tank shouldn't be that expensive. I don't remember the details exactly because it didn't affect me, but I'm thinking back to a similar thing ~15 years ago where Hummers got super popular due to a combination of aesthetics and favorable tax treatment, but then the price of gas shot up following some reversal in the Middle East and lots of people decided the total cost of ownership wasn't that great after all.
    - spanktheuser 5y ago
      I'd argue that the buyers are getting a free ride by offloading the negative externalities of the purchase to others. So we have to consider the cost of climate change remediation, the cost of accidents etc. A study by the Technical University of Dresden(1) estimated a rough cost to society of €16,000 per new car sold. 40%-60% of that cost was due accidents, the single highest cost category. The costs will change from society to society, but given the mix of vehicles in the United States and the structure of our health care system I feel confident that A) the accident cost are higher here and B) those costs will be distributed in less equitable fashion. 1 https://stopclimatechange.net/fileadmin/content/documents/move-green/The_true_costs_of_cars_EN.pdf https://stopclimatechange.net/fileadmin/content/documents/mo...

by toxik 5y ago

sokoloff 5y ago

> The outcome is not positive for any party. The outcome for the buyers of those vehicles is estimated by those buyers to be positive. I don't know if it is or isn't, but it seems at least a little presumptuous to conclude that a third party (you or I) knows more about the buyer's preferences/value function than the buyer themself. If the outcome were known to be negative for everyone, it would be a lot less common.

anigbrowl 5y ago
Not sure the howls of pain at gas stations support your hypothesis.
- fredophile 5y ago
  Do you think those buyers didn't know they'd get bad gas mileage or us it more likely that they care about other factors more? I hate the cup holder in my car. It pisses me off on a regular basis. I still think buying my car resulted in a net gain for me.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    I think they fooled themselves into believing that low gas prices were a norm and that filling up a huge tank shouldn't be that expensive. I don't remember the details exactly because it didn't affect me, but I'm thinking back to a similar thing ~15 years ago where Hummers got super popular due to a combination of aesthetics and favorable tax treatment, but then the price of gas shot up following some reversal in the Middle East and lots of people decided the total cost of ownership wasn't that great after all.
  - spanktheuser 5y ago
    I'd argue that the buyers are getting a free ride by offloading the negative externalities of the purchase to others. So we have to consider the cost of climate change remediation, the cost of accidents etc. A study by the Technical University of Dresden(1) estimated a rough cost to society of €16,000 per new car sold. 40%-60% of that cost was due accidents, the single highest cost category. The costs will change from society to society, but given the mix of vehicles in the United States and the structure of our health care system I feel confident that A) the accident cost are higher here and B) those costs will be distributed in less equitable fashion. 1 https://stopclimatechange.net/fileadmin/content/documents/move-green/The_true_costs_of_cars_EN.pdf https://stopclimatechange.net/fileadmin/content/documents/mo...