[HN Gopher] How much do things really cost?
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How much do things really cost?
Author : hhs
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-04-02 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20220402193358/https://www.newyor...
|
| https://archive.ph/5qZDc
| Gunax wrote:
| I think it's good as a lesson or exercise, but I think a lot of
| this tallying must end up being dubious.
|
| How does one account for _underpayment of labour_ or the
| _inconvenience of roads_?
| fortran77 wrote:
| The "true cost" of food is made even more complex in countries
| like the U.S. where 66% of people are obese or overweight. The
| cost of obesity is tremendous, affecting everything from health
| care costs, to clothing costs (for every extra inch you are
| around the waist, you need several square feet of fabric), to
| transportation fuel costs (it costs more to move obese people
| around). So perhaps charging much more for food over 2,000
| kCal/day per person makes a lot of sense. There are externalities
| that we all end up paying for.
| [deleted]
| shrubble wrote:
| So what would happen to the water in the tomato, if the tomato
| was never grown? This whole concept seems prone to "imaginary
| dollars" being considered as real.
| toper-centage wrote:
| What is your point? Tomatoes are grown in sunny locations and
| usually watered artificially. So ungrown tomatoes are unwatered
| tomatoes.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Tomatoes grow really nicely in New Jersey with much less
| artificial irrigation. But New Jersey real estate is much
| more expensive than the California desert.
| forum_ghost wrote:
| imaginary accounting isn't bounded by the consensus reality.
|
| you could really paint the picture either way you like, given
| enough effort.
| 6510 wrote:
| A better question is to wonder how we can at least visualize
| externalities. On the one hand it is impossibly hard, on the
| other it is easy to improve over the current _lets not talk
| about them_ approach.
|
| I had pondered itemized bills so that we may at least make that
| data available but it wouldn't be very useful compared to what
| it costs to gather the data. It just wouldn't fit in our
| attention span. The shooting from the hip approach taken by De
| Aanzet is good enough to expand the attention all the way up to
| HN and beyond.
| matsemann wrote:
| In a similar vein, drivers don't realize just how much their car
| usage is subsidized. They feel they pay more than enough for
| their use, given petrol taxes and other fees, but it's not even
| remotely close to cover the cost impacted on society.
| WildGreenLeave wrote:
| Given the article talks about a company in The Netherlands, and
| that The Netherlands is the most expensive country to own a car
| within Europe [0], I truly wonder how far off we are. Not
| saying that we are (or should be) close, but genuinely
| interested how far off we are.
|
| [0]: https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/financial-
| models/europe/featu...
|
| Edit: added source
| thazework wrote:
| This article suggests about 5k euros in social costs per year
| for Germany
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092.
| ..
| rtlfe wrote:
| The link with the actual data is long dead, but the numbers in
| this image seem plausible.
|
| https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/801641590380851200
| gruez wrote:
| What numbers? It just asserts that society pays $9.20 for
| every $1 you spent driving. I don't see how that alone is
| plausible. A quick google says the annual TCO for a car (ie.
| how much "driving costs you") is $9,561[1]. If that figure is
| correct, then each car is costing society a whopping
| $87,961/year. Keep in mind, the US GDP per capita is only
| around $60-70k/year. Yes I know each person doesn't
| necessarily own a car, but it seems implausible that cars are
| actually costing a significant fraction of the GDP.
|
| [1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-
| loans/total-co...
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, if you take negative externalities into account, the
| GDP is actually negative :)
|
| ...
|
| :(
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > drivers don't realize just how much their car usage is
| subsidized.[...]it's not even remotely close to cover the cost
| impacted on society.
|
| Aren't car drivers, and their passengers, a very large portion
| of "society"? And even for those who never use a vehicle, don't
| they depend heavily on many other members of society who do,
| such as doctors, teachers, fire and police, food providers, and
| almost every other class of worker?
|
| Are you saying that somehow the vast legions of car
| drivers/passengers out there are not part of society and
| therefore are not paying the true cost?
| x3iv130f wrote:
| I had a recent vacation to Japan where the average person
| commutes by train instead of car.
|
| By your criteria the vast majority of that country wouldn't
| be classified as a "society".
|
| At least in the US, the government is paying vast and
| unsustainable sums of money to prop up a failing and
| inefficient form of transportation.
|
| That inefficiency was created at a time when the US was the
| only significant industrial power.
|
| We no longer have extra factory capacity from the second
| world war or armies of returning GIs to work in those
| factories or buy those products. We now have to compete on
| the world stage against other economies we're poorly matched
| to beat.
|
| It is time to move on to the 21st century and design our
| solutions to fit our current capabilities instead of what
| existed 70 years ago.
| rtlfe wrote:
| Driving a car is not a requirement for any of those
| professions.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| My comment had nothing to do with requirements. If I drive
| a car, and it causes pollution where I live, then aren't I,
| as part of society, paying the "true" cost? I say "where I
| live" because every car trip I take starts and ends at my
| front door.
|
| I simply can't understand how car users impose "true costs"
| on everyone else, but not themselves, which is what the GP
| was claiming.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| What they mean is that the vehicle-specific costs they
| incur aren't sufficient to cover the true costs to
| society, from pollution cleanup to road maintenance.
| Instead, those funds must be drawn from general sources
| like income taxes. Once you account for social ills like
| pollution, the costs end up falling disproportionately on
| the people who can least afford them and contribute the
| least to the problem.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > If I drive a car, and it causes pollution where I live,
| then aren't I, as part of society, paying the "true"
| cost?
|
| No, because part of the cost is the fact that pollution
| in that area affects everyone -- including non-drivers.
| You're paying _part_ of the cost, yes, but not the whole
| thing.
|
| Imagine if there was some mechanism such that non-drivers
| inhaled as much pollution as there'd be if there were no
| cars*, and drivers inhaled as much pollution as is
| proportional to however much pollution they themselves
| create (this would vary not just based on a binary do/do
| not drive, but on how much you drive and how polluting
| your vehicle is). Then each person would be paying the
| true cost.
|
| A true cost has to be proportional to the damage done,
| such that changing behavior results in changing cost
| paid.
|
| * leaving aside the impracticality of zero non-electric
| cars for the moment
| rtlfe wrote:
| > I simply can't understand how car users impose "true
| costs" on everyone else, but not themselves, which is
| what the GP was claiming.
|
| The point is that everybody pays the costs whether they
| drive or not. If the costs were more directly tied to how
| much each person drives, there would be a lot less
| driving overall.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| The conclusion is total bunk, and you can only reach it
| by selecting which externalities you want to measure, and
| which externalities you want to ignore. For instance the
| fact that a car owner can travel large distances to work
| or spend money any time they like is a massively
| beneficial externality. You also have to ignore the
| externalities that the non-car-owners benefit from. If
| somebody has managed to situate themselves in an ideal
| location for them specifically to live without a car,
| then they almost certainly only managed to do that by
| benefitting from the positive externalities created by
| car owners (unless they're living in the woods or
| something).
| rtlfe wrote:
| > For instance the fact that a car owner can travel large
| distances to work or spend money any time they like is a
| massively beneficial externality.
|
| You shouldn't have to travel long distances to do those
| things. This is only considered normal in the US because
| so much was built specifically for the convenience of
| drivers.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| It takes 10 minutes to drive 5 miles at 30mph, walking
| that same distance would take a typical person about 90
| minutes. 5 miles is a large distance and wanting to go
| somewhere that's 5 miles away is normal for any place in
| the world.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| You ignore bikes and usable public transport, which a lot
| of places in the world have.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > wanting to go somewhere that's 5 miles away is normal
| for any place in the world
|
| In pretty much any pre-car city you can get everything
| you need on a daily basis within a 10 minute walk from
| home, and if your job is farther you can ride a train.
|
| Edit - For people familiar with the NYC region, here's a
| 5 miles radius from midtown. https://imgur.com/a/cfIqOvo
| This is an enormous area, and my rough guess is that 4
| million people live in that circle.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| As I said:
|
| > If somebody has managed to situate themselves in an
| ideal location for them specifically to live without a
| car, then they almost certainly only managed to do that
| by benefitting from the positive externalities created by
| car owners
|
| I can, and frequently do, walk to my nearest supermarket.
| But I know for a fact that if cars disappeared for a day
| then it would be unable to open its doors. These small
| areas of hyper-convenience don't exist without cars.
|
| I live 9 miles away from my office though, so that would
| be a lot more difficult.
|
| > In pretty much any pre-car city you can get everything
| you need on a daily basis within a 10 minute walk from
| home
|
| I'm sure if you wanted to undo 80+ years of economic
| development, we'd be able to recreate that society...
| that economic development is of course one of the
| positive externalities you're choosing to ignore. So if
| this is your agenda, I'd suggest you try to figure out
| how catastrophically devastating that would be for the
| economy first.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > These small areas of hyper-convenience don't exist
| without cars.
|
| That's completely backward. Here are two different takes
| on how cities subsidize suburbs and rural areas.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-rural-america-
| needs-c...
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah those were terrible examples. But more proper ones
| would be: truck and van drivers for mail, food and other
| delivery to stores, bus drivers, taxi drivers, farmers,
| police, EMT, etc.
| rtlfe wrote:
| Those could all be less reliant on cars than they
| currently are too. For example:
|
| * UPS is trying "equad" bikes:
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/ups-tries-out-equad-
| elect...
|
| * London has bike paramedics:
| https://www.londonambulance.nhs.uk/calling-us/who-will-
| treat...
|
| * Most taxi rides in urban areas could easily be replaced
| with e-pedicabs
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| That's not how bike paramedics work. From your link:
|
| > They are able to reach patients quickly and start to
| give life-saving treatment while an ambulance is on the
| way.
|
| You still need an ambulance, because that person is going
| to need to go to hospital in nearly all cases except the
| most trivial "fell over while drunk" cases, and backies
| are impractical for the average person in need of a
| paramedic.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Many things are not a requirement for survival, but we
| still like to do them.
|
| Yes, driving a car to get from A to B in (usually) the
| fastest and most comfortable way wastes some energy and
| generates some pollution... but so does reading a book
| (wood for paper, ink, energy for lighting), eating any non-
| local food, eating meat, sex not for procreation, etc.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > some energy and generates some pollution... but so does
| .... sex not for procreation
|
| I think sex _for_ procreation is likely the one thing you
| could possibly do with the highest resulting pollution.
| teawrecks wrote:
| They're saying that fossils fuels don't price in the cost
| that everyone will have to pay in response to climate change,
| and that's the only reason they're still considered
| affordable and a viable source of energy. If we carbon taxed
| them proportional to the damage they do, it wouldn't even be
| close to renewables.
| rtlfe wrote:
| The impact of burning gas isn't the only hidden cost. There
| are big health effects from air pollution caused by brake
| dust, tires, and other car components. There are all the
| people who are disabled and killed in crashes. There's all
| the space that could be used for parks, flood mitigation,
| etc if it wasn't dedicated to driving and storing cars.
| There's noise pollution that has a tangible impact on sleep
| and stress.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Most of that can also be said for bars, restaurants,
| living rooms, gyms etc. If you have a kitchen at home,
| you don't need a bar and a restaurant. Soft drinks?
| Useless unhealthy pollution. Alcohol, even worse. Why
| have two rooms (bedroom+living room) if you can't be in
| both at once? And you're wasting space with then, and
| energy to heat and cool them.
|
| Looking at the causes of death in the developed world, I
| think food (fast, restaurant, processed and junk food +
| sugary drinks) kills way more people than cars, even when
| accounting for pollution, brake dust, etc.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > Looking at the causes of death in the developed world,
| I think food (fast, restaurant, processed and junk food +
| sugary drinks) kills way more people than cars, even when
| accounting for pollution, brake dust, etc.
|
| A big difference is that I can chose to eat healthy food
| as an individual, but it's basically impossible to escape
| the negative impact of cars without a major shift in how
| government allocates space and money.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > Soft drinks? Useless unhealthy pollution.
|
| Bit of a false comparison. I have no problem with you
| drinking soft drinks, and I can do it myself in the
| moderation that I choose. However, if I want to live near
| a train station, odds in Germany are basically 100% that
| there is also a well-traveled car street there with all
| the accompanying problems. It's more like smoking in
| someone else's apartment and less like drinking sugar in
| someone else's apartment.
|
| > Why have two rooms (bedroom+living room) if you can't
| be in both at once?
|
| I mean you clearly don't even believe this yourself. Not
| sure if there's a point trying to explain how this
| comparison doesn't make any sense, either. It has nothing
| to do with the aforementioned hidden cost of >1 ton metal
| box transportation with an occupancy rate of one point
| something.
| dijit wrote:
| > Are you saying that somehow the vast legions of car
| drivers/passengers out there are not part of society and
| therefore are not paying the true cost?
|
| I think the point here is that driving is subsidised and
| therefore more people that perhaps otherwise wouldn't drive.
|
| It's perhaps very easy to assume the consequence of decisions
| are obvious and inevitable, but it can be good to question
| that too.
|
| I guess this would be an immensely tangled argument, but I
| think the broader point that people don't understand the
| total cost of driving because it is so subsidised is a good
| one.
| cgb223 wrote:
| You could make the economic argument that the "subsidization"
| of car usage has economic benefits that outweighs the cost of
| subsidization.
|
| If more people can afford to get to work because of the
| subsidies then the net output of work done could be greater
| than the cost of the subsidy itself.
| newsclues wrote:
| You could argue that, but it would conflict with the fact
| that the auto industry dismantled public transportation
| networks to sell more gas, tires and cars.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con.
| ..
| ivanech wrote:
| sure but this frames it as if cars are the only way to get
| people to work. There are more efficient means that would
| require less subsidy and cause less waste (heavy rail
| transit, building places to live that don't require a car,
| bike roads, etc)
| anamax wrote:
| You're assuming that people live to work when most people
| work to live.
|
| The difference is that the latter would happily NOT work,
| or at least not work at what they do, if they could support
| their life. The former will happily change their life to
| make work easier.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I don't understand how building nice bicycle
| infrastructure instead of smokey stroads implies living
| to work rather than working to live.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| It's also hard to untangle from other things. For example, car
| drivers are subsidised heavily by road infrastructure being
| paid for by general taxation.
|
| However, those same roads also allow rapid and fine-grained
| transport of almost everything physical that anyone in society
| uses: food, clothes, furniture, building materials, most
| industrial materials, machinery and components all probably
| were moved on a truck at some point. Probably the only thing
| that likely didn't is water, and even then the treatment
| chemicals did. Even if goods moved from ports to regional hubs
| by train (which they probably should), you still need to move
| them by road from the hubs (and again if they are used to
| produce other goods). Much as I love trains, they're no good
| for delivering 1000kg to a specific urban building, and much as
| I love bicycles, neither are they.
|
| So, much of that road that counts for the cost of the car
| drivers would still exist even if the cars didn't. Even in the
| suburbs you will still need houses to be visited by vehicles
| sometimes, even if only for construction or emergency purposes.
|
| Moreover, because the vehicles that would be left are
| physically large and heavy (heavy goods vehicles, emergency
| vehicles, public transport and construction equipment), the
| cost of roads would not substantially decrease even if you
| deleted every car, since it's those vehicles that dictate
| minimum road strength and that wear roads most in the first
| place.
| mjevans wrote:
| Inclined to agree, but those giant noisy consumer trucks with
| multiple tires or the mini-monster truck tires seem likely to
| be heavy enough to matter.
|
| It would also be a generally good idea to break this "go to
| the office" mentality unless there is work that can only be
| done there. That's some low-hanging fruit to reduce our
| energy use.
| ta8645 wrote:
| Another way to express what you're saying is: only the rich
| should drive.
|
| IMHO, we should things the way they are, and spread the true
| costs of driving across all of society. The rich should pay
| higher taxes so that they pay more than the true cost of their
| car usage, to subsidize the driving of the less well off.
| elil17 wrote:
| Or to subsidize the construction of public transit
| infrastructure - long term, society will be wealthier
| rtlfe wrote:
| > only the rich should drive.
|
| Alternate ways of saying the same thing include "make driving
| optional" or "driving should be considered a luxury."
|
| I.e. we should structure our cities and towns so that most
| people are able to conveniently do most of their activities
| without driving.
| ivanech wrote:
| Yes, my ideal terminal state would be for driving to be
| predominantly done by professionals (like delivery drivers)
| or for leisure. Nobody in major metro would need to drive
| [deleted]
| hhs wrote:
| In the U.S., there is the Monroney sticker that provides some
| information about petrol/fuel economy and society impact (e.g.,
| the environment):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroney_sticker
| ascar wrote:
| I would really like to see a reference for that.
|
| Just to state one potential counter argument: as far as I know
| most road damage is caused by trucks (I don't remember exactly
| but IIRC there is a quadratic or even kubic relation between
| weight per wheel and applied force to the asphalt), so most
| road maintenance cost is not related to personal car usage.
| SECProto wrote:
| The depth of a road (thickness of asphalt and granular
| layers) is determined largely by the loading (i.e. how many
| big trucks will be travelling on it).
|
| The width of a road (# of lanes) is determined mostly by how
| many vehicles per hour are travelling on it, which means
| mostly cars.
|
| The width of a lane is determined by how many large vehicles
| per hour are travelling on it, which means buses and trucks.
|
| The grade of a road (how steep it is) is generally determined
| by the lowest weight-to-power ratio, i.e. fully loaded
| transports
|
| The grade of asphalt used is determined by annual average
| maximum and minimum temperatures, how many heavy vehicles
| will be using it, and how many vehicles total will be using
| it (lower grades of asphalt can be used on smaller streets,
| lower quality binder can used in areas with less temperature
| variation, and asphalt with higher quantity of coarse
| aggregate and larger compactive effort has to be used if it's
| a truck/bus route)
|
| The frequency a road is resurfaced is governed by a few
| things, frequency of heavy road users is a big one (but at
| least in my local area, the number of freeze-thaw cycles is
| more important)
|
| All that is to say: road damage is largely caused by trucks
| and freeze-thaw cycles, but cost of the road is largely
| governed by how many lanes of traffic there are, which is
| caused by cars. Remove all the cars from your street and a
| two lane non-divided highway with a passing lane every couple
| KM would suffice in most places.
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(page generated 2022-04-02 23:00 UTC)