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Does this also include the labor to find/mine/refine/ship the fuel and the labor to mine/refine/shape/assemble/maintain both the factory machines and the farm e

by daly 4y ago

Does this also include the labor to find/mine/refine/ship the fuel and the labor to mine/refine/shape/assemble/maintain both the factory machines and the farm equipment?

melony 4y ago
That's a mostly fixed cost.
dragontamer 4y ago
Grain was transported by horse back then. We switched to automobiles because fuel is far denser. One semi-truck full of gasoline can provide thousands-of-trips and carry tons-and-tons of product. Ex: 1-ton of gasoline carries hundreds-of-tons of product. In contrast, 10-tons of horse feed will only feed enough horses to carry maybe 10-tons of actual product, depending on distance. I forget the math exactly, but there's a reason why the horse-to-automobile tranformation only took a decade. The difference between horse-feed and gasoline is completely massive and almost an unfathomable increase in efficiency, due to the ratio of "fuel-per-ton" (ie: horse bread in the 1800s vs gasoline in the modern day).
- hyperman1 4y ago
  I read somewhere how automobiles were the environmental cleanup of their times. We first had horses producing far more manure than a city could handle, with all kinds of hygiene/smell/viability consequenses. People complained how cities became unliveable. Cars fixed all that. No more feed, no more manure, no more raising and keeping alive the animals. All replaced with a very energy dense fuel, a machine you can just leave on the street, and some very clean minimal exhaust. Then we all got cars.
  - chii 4y ago
    > People complained how cities became unliveable. so by extrapolation, would we need the world to become unliveable before cars gets replaced?
    - rightbyte 4y ago
      You can do city planning with a car uncentric approach without making the city unlivable first though.
MerelyMortal 4y ago
And all of the supporting infrastructure including everything it takes to maintain the governments that write and enforce trade treaties, improve the roads, launch the satellites that makes communication for efficient allocation of resources possible, etc.

by daly 4y ago

Does this also include the labor to find/mine/refine/ship the fuel and the labor to mine/refine/shape/assemble/maintain both the factory machines and the farm equipment?

melony 4y ago

That's a mostly fixed cost.

dragontamer 4y ago

Grain was transported by horse back then. We switched to automobiles because fuel is far denser. One semi-truck full of gasoline can provide thousands-of-trips and carry tons-and-tons of product. Ex: 1-ton of gasoline carries hundreds-of-tons of product. In contrast, 10-tons of horse feed will only feed enough horses to carry maybe 10-tons of actual product, depending on distance. I forget the math exactly, but there's a reason why the horse-to-automobile tranformation only took a decade. The difference between horse-feed and gasoline is completely massive and almost an unfathomable increase in efficiency, due to the ratio of "fuel-per-ton" (ie: horse bread in the 1800s vs gasoline in the modern day).

hyperman1 4y ago
I read somewhere how automobiles were the environmental cleanup of their times. We first had horses producing far more manure than a city could handle, with all kinds of hygiene/smell/viability consequenses. People complained how cities became unliveable. Cars fixed all that. No more feed, no more manure, no more raising and keeping alive the animals. All replaced with a very energy dense fuel, a machine you can just leave on the street, and some very clean minimal exhaust. Then we all got cars.
- chii 4y ago
  > People complained how cities became unliveable. so by extrapolation, would we need the world to become unliveable before cars gets replaced?
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    You can do city planning with a car uncentric approach without making the city unlivable first though.

MerelyMortal 4y ago

And all of the supporting infrastructure including everything it takes to maintain the governments that write and enforce trade treaties, improve the roads, launch the satellites that makes communication for efficient allocation of resources possible, etc.