You can say the same about people with Down's Syndrome. Do you also go around shouting "retard" at them ? If you did, would you be shocked and surprized when people complained ? Would you call it censorship when told you, you were not being nice and were, in fact, being a dick ?
Why is one genetic trait you consider negative worthy of your disrespectful, rudeness and another is worthy of your concern and pity ? Why not offer the same consideration and concern to both ?
I'm not sure why you would deem either an "evolutionary dead-end" since Down's sufferers and trans people alike can and often do have children.
Go look it up in an old dictionary. It HAS always been that way, that's WHY there are two different words.
They only got muddled in the last few decades - because of social conservatives who got upset at having to fill in the block on a form marked "sex" and so the form-makers started using "Gender" as the next closest one - and conflated the two concepts in the public mind. But they were ALWAYS two different things.
Hell, one of the heroes of the French Revolution was a trans-women who was also famously one of the best swordfighters that ever lived, Chevalier D'eon. One of the greatest pirates of all time was a women disguised as a man (Mary Reed) - most likely a trans man in reality (and by all accounts - a fierce warrior who with one other woman Anne Bonney held off the full might of the British navy for hours while Jack Rackham was passed out drunk in the hold).
No one "compelled" you to do anything, we just called you an asshole for acting like an asshole.
You can go shout n***** all you want in Harlem without committing a crime - but if the locals start complaining you don't get to say they are censoring you.
Telling you off for being a dick does not ammount to "compelling" anything. We asked you to respect her wishes, nobody FORCED you to.
Unless YOU have done a DNA check - you have absolutely no proof of what her DNA is.
There are more than two human chromosome setups. We are NOT all XX or XY and a great many trans people are different varieties such as XXY. So why, in every thread about Manning, do we have people confidently declare that they KNOW something which has never been tested or confirmed and which all the statistics say is almost certainly NOT true ?
You really shouldn't be caring about the shape of strangers genitalia so much... seriously, what the fuck does it have to do with you ?
The point where you can reasonably choose to politely enquire about the shape of somebody's genitals without being an asshole of the first order is when you are both seriously considering a sexual relationship in the extremely imminent future.
Now don't come with "free speech" bullshit, nowhere did I say it should be ILLEGAL for you to make such enquiries, but I sure as hell am NOT going to pretend it isn't creepy as fuck.
And I object to such people. Since those people have a habit of regularly beating up, raping or killing the people they object to - does that mean I get to beat up the people I object to ? It's less than THEY think they are allowed to do.
I'm not sure how true it is, but Obama has claimed he cannot pardon Snowden as "Pardon's are reserved for people who have acknowledged their crimes before a court". How that squares with Ford pardoning Nixon is a question the journalists covering said speech apparently did not think to ask - so the answer (or at least his answer) is apparently unknown.
But his position appears to be that if you run away before you can be charged, he can't pardon you.
One minor correction though - Manning was NOT pardoned, she had her sentence commuted. There are significant differences - both legal and philosophical between the two concepts. Commuting a sentence is merely an act of mercy "we forgive you for your crimes and consider your debt to society paid", you are still an ex-con, you still can't serve on juries or get a gun license etc. etc. A pardon is "we erase your crimes", somebody who is pardoned does not have a criminal record, can serve on a jury etc. etc. etc. The standard usage for a pardon is "your actions were illegal, but so justified that you should not be punished for them. The standard usage for a commuting is "your actions were crimes, but have significant mitigating circumstances, and there are real reasons to show mercy on you and not punish you further".
Basically - a presidential commute is akin to throwing yourself upon the mercy of the court and actually getting it (only belatedly).
After microsoft got away with a wristslap after some of the worst antitrust offenses in half a century - the justice department kind of gave up. The US courts had too many free market fundamentalists who tried to legislate their belief that antitrust laws are evil from the bench.
It wasn't always like that. Theodore Rooseveldt (a republican no less) was nicknamed "The Trustbuster" for his aggressive pursuit of antitrust cases - he went hard after them. He once ordered one of the richest men in America to the white house to formally inform him that the slightest breach will see the full might of the law. He made his position very clear: large trusts would be left alone only as long as they played by the rules, but break the antitrust rules and he would shut them the hell down. which was exactly what he did.
A sign of a bygone age - when even republicans understood that you cannot allow the rich to just run roughshod over the population. Both Rooseveldts should be remembered for having very good economic policies and approaches - despite being in different parties. FDR was the one who finally ended the travesty of "Horse and Sparrow" economics which had extended the depression by a decade and is reputed to have said of it "It's a brilliantly honest description of the republicans who pursue their policy, as it outright admits that in their view, the poor are expected to literally eat shit" (similar statement were made by several commentators at the time, including some well-known standup comics of the era, so it's uncertain if FDR ever actually said it himself and if he did he was probably quoting one of them).
Sadly, horse and sparrow economics just wouldn't die, and made it's comeback beginning with Nixon under a new moniker "Trickle down economics". Ironically nobody on the right will admit to believing in it. They point out that the phrase exists in no official policy statements or party platforms and the like... as if that means anything. Sure they don't practise something THEY call "Trickle down" - it's what leftists call the set of policies they practise, policies they most assuredly DO pursue. Unless their going to now start pretending that tax-cuts for the rich and austerity for everybody else is not a persistent republican policy (and the latest republican president-elect has taken that idea to a never-seen-before extreme). His taxplan makes the Bush taxcuts look miserly. Hey, who cares that these policies have NEVER had the predicted outcomes ANYWHERE in the world - have consistently made deficites worse, debts bigger and the people poorer, it MUST surely work THIS time, right ? If at fiftieth you don't succeed and all that...
So... you're predicting that Trump will take spectrum licensing from the only agency with any knowledge of what the word 'spectrum' means, the FCC - and give it to the FTC - whose role is to regulate trade, and take trade away from them to give to... somebody ?
You know, I would not be at all surprised if you're right.
So you've dismissed something as "false equivalency" and given no reason for it. Please explain why punishing companies under air quality laws are just - if a company is only liable for DIRECT deaths. EVERY death saved by air quality laws is indirect.
But I guess my point was - if economics is the biggest concern - then the biggest concern is based on something both unknown and unpredictable. It may turn out not to be an issue at all.
Right now - that certainly is the case. But I'm not so sure for two reasons you're leaving out. The first is, there was huge pay-offs from the Apollo program which were not foreseen (certainly not by the many, many naysayers who tried so very hard to prevent it happening). In fact, despite it's massive cost it was one of the most profitable investments the US ever made. The "beat the communists" was the foreseen one. The scientific and engineering advances made to do it - those made money, lots of money, lots more than the project cost.
The first difference then is, if you're trying to sell such a project a hundred or two hundred years from now, you have that learned lesson. You may not know what values will come out, but you can say with reasonable certainty that in the process of developing it there will huge advances which will directly benefit the people back home who get to use them for other purposes.
The second factor is - if these nearer, easier, colonies were done - a lot of lessons will have been learned, a lot of problems solved. Much of this will overlap - so you can reduce the total cost because some of it's already spent.
The third factor is - we have absolutely no idea what the world will look like in a hundred years. If you had asked anybody in the 15th century what they thought the 16th century would be like they would predict "pretty much the same, a few minor new technologies, a couple of governments changed, some countries destroyed and new ones formed"... and they would be right. Ask anybody born after the 19th the same question and they predict vast changes - because they've all seen vast changes in living memory and can reasonably expect that to keep happening. The world now changes rapidly and 200 years is a very, very long time.
We don't know what politics or economics will look like. Which powers will have the money, whether the concept of money itself will have been replaced by something better. What problems there will be to solve. For all we know we'll have built a world where all labour is done by automation and humans spend their lives in leisure - relying on the unquenchable thirst of creative people to create to provide their advances (this is not so far-fetched - we are right now not far from being technologically capable of such a world, even if politically it seems unlikely in the short term). There's no reason to assume the economic question would ever even be asked, we don't know if it will be a world where that question is still relevant.
>Bad form... that's called poisoning the well, and is a type of ad-hominem argument that is equivalent to a logical fallacy.
It is also, my sincere belief. The new car market is a tax on people who are financially ililterate. And that's the REAL cost of your extended warrantee - whatever you paid for it +25% of whatever you paid for the car.
>I buy a car to reliably and economically get me from place to place Choosing your second hand well gets you the same reliability, and much better economy. Why do you think I drive a BMW 3-Series diesel ? Because study after study have found they are, by far, the cheapest and most reliable car to drive - IF you buy them second-hand. The only cars that are cheaper to maintain are electrics and they aren't really available second-hand.
>This invariably happens much sooner with used cars than with new That can be a factor, it was exactly the point where I replaced my Audi with the BMW. But what you're forgetting is that you pay SO MUCH less for the second hand that even if you only get half as many useful years out of it, you can then buy the next one and you've STILL spent less than a new car over the same period. Based on the numbers in this thread. A new US car typically goes for around 32K, a good second hand for around 10K. Lets assume there is a 10-year period for a car where you can maintain it at a reasonable cost. That's a good thumbsuck, petrol can be a little lower - diesel is often significantly higher but it doesn't much matter to the outcome anyway. So you buy a new car at 32K - for that price, it's almost certainly a lower-end family-model type car. I buy a 5-year old petrol or 10-year old diesel for 10K. But I am driving a luxury car - with the full suite of safety features (which I care about because I don't want some drunk driver or an oil-slick kililng my child). In 5 years, I have to replace it. I buy another luxury car. Lets be ridiculous and assume an inflation rate for the US way above what it actually is - and say I pay 12K. At the end of 10 years. I need to buy a third car - lets make that 14K. But so do you - and you get the same inflation rate so the next one costs you about 40K.
So after 10 years, we each have a just-bought car. Mine will last 5 years, yours 10. Thus far I have spent 36K - you've spent 70K (and I've not added whatever you're spending above the sticker price on extended warranties - seeing as it's likely my services and such at least match that). I've been driving luxury model BMWs and Audis, you've been driving mid-range sedans like Nissans or Toyota. Sure my BMW is 10 years old. But it's a diesel engine - that thing is good for between twice and three times the kilos it's got on. Now the rest of the car will start falling appart before it gets to 20 or 30 years, but that won't affect me.
Throughout all this - I've been buying my cars cash, you've almost certainly been getting financing - so you've spent interest as well which I haven't. It's easy to save up 10K if you have 5 years to do it. It's a lot harder to save up 32K in 10 years.
Now I don't live in the US - I live in South Africa and the maths is DEFINITELY right for the prices here. I based these on the figures quoted throughout this discussion by Americans as typical prices, but I don't shop for cars there so they may be off by a bit. Nevertheless I believe the gap is huge enough that it won't change the outcome.
I rest my case.
> And somehow, my trying to be prudent with the money that I have at the moment makes me an idiot Because you're terrible at being prudent.
Your argument goes against everything the company has stated, and told their investors, they plan to do. Firstly - the gigafactory is meant to make batteries, cheaply, for any EV's - it's meant to make more money, not just be a cheap insourced supplier. Secondly - Tessla has committed to bringing their prices down - and would love to see other companies make cheap EVs - because teh bigger the EV market over all is, the better for them - it means more charging stations and infrastructure which benefits even their high end sales.
Now, of course, Tesla could change their plans or not do what they said - but if they do, they better have a damn good explanation of Musk will get sued by his own board of directors and the shareholders. They invested based on what the company said it intends to do and have a right to demand that Musk sticks to the plan. Failure to do so would be investor fraud.
It took a measly few years from the first commercially available automobiles before the Model-T made these former rich man's toys into a mainstream affordable product. Why on earth do you assume that EV's would NOT follow the same pattern ? Are they somehow isolated from economies of scale ? Is it magic ?
Awww you think you don't *pay* for the extended warrantee. That's sweet.
More-over those typically only apply to new purchases. Right now - the second hand market in EV's is still very tiny, but expect that to grow bigger and bigger over the next few years. Then the picture changes. Second hand buyers seriously consider maintenance costs - since it is a massive part of the TCO. And frankly only an idiot buys a new car. It's the worst investment in the world. Nothing else you can buy loses 25% of it's value the second you take posession ! I can buy a chocolate from a store, walk outside and sell it for barely less than I bought it for. Take it to the local school and I can turn a profit (I did exactly that for pocket money when I was in school. I bought juice packets from the supermarket, froze them and sold them as ice lollies at school for a significant markup in summer. I turned an initial R10 investment into R400 in a week - then the school forced me to stop because I was taking business away from the tuckshop). But a car ? You buy it - and sell it the same day you get 25% less than you paid for. I prefer to let other people be the idiots. I ONLY buy second hand.
>Economically, what's in it for the people left behind on Earth? Are the colonists themselves going to fully fund the expedition?
Economics is not mankind's only motivation. In this case - there is another rather good one: the survival of the species. Mankind cannot and will not survive if we are confined to one planet. No species can. It's simply physically impossible. Unless we colonize we are as doomed as the dinosaurs. Sooner or later the universe is going to throw a giant rock or a massive blast of radiation at us and wipe out just about every living thing except a few extremophile bacteria.
Life will (probably) survive, it's incredibly resilient. Evolution will start over from those bacteria... but there won't be any us.
The odds of two planets getting hit at once are exponentially lower, for every one we add - the chances of humanity existing in the long run gets better.
But lets start simple -lets get a colony on the moon. Even Mars can wait. No reason to hurry there - just being n the moon as well will already double our odds of surviving the next cataclysm since the moon colonists could repopulate earth after. But there's still plenty of things that could hit earth that would take out a moon colony right with it - so once we've solved the relatively easy task of making the moon livable - Mars awaits... after that, well there's really nothing else in this solar system which can feasibly be made suitable for human habitation. The only thing remotely close is Venus and frankly trying to terraform that atmosphere is so far beyond any technology we have that we can't even begin to imagine what processes may do so. We may never be able to... but if we can get to mars then the stars await. Not for us. Our grandchildren may make it as far as Mars... but their grandchildren - we could leave them a legacy like that. And we should - because if we don't, they may never exist. The most fundamental drive of every species is it's own propagation and survival - are you telling me that humans would not spend money to pursue our most fundamental drive ? No amount of laws and pressures and prices have ever stopped prostitution - because it taps into that drive.
Oh -and the argument you just made, was JUST as true in 1961 when a madman said - "Hey, lets commit to going to the moon this decade", that madman just happened to be sitting in the white house. The cost will never be a factor - what will be, is if we can get the right people in the right positions - to inspire the world to believe it's worth it.
The Gigafactory is never going to make any car whatsoever. It's a mass production facility for BATTERIES (you know the part in electric cars that make them expensive).
Should you really hold such strong opinions on a subject of which you are, apparently, entirely ignorant ?
Well if you are going to flat out deny the article you are commenting on you need to give evidence why its wrong. Just reiterating the current state is senseless. You think the gigafactory will take 30 years to come online ?
Problem is the energy trap. Here's what happens when oil actually becomes hard to find, if a renewable transition has not ALREADY HAPPENED (and why "the market will solve it when it gets rare" is a stupid argument: It costs energy to build renewable infrastructure, when energy is getting scarce and expensive- investing in that infrastructure means a bunch of people who are struggling, has to struggle a lot more. No government wants to do that. It could easily take as long to transition with manageable investments as the remaining oil lasts - and at each step for the first several years it means having less energy than you otherwise would have. By the time you start seeing returns on the investment you're in the next election cycle - so making the investment is always better left to somebody else... until there is no oil left, and then you CANNOT transition because there is no energy to transition with.
The best way to avoid the energy trap - is to transition while oil is still providing plentiful, cheap energy. It's a basic economic lesson so old that it is recorded in a book that is at least 4000 years old. How did Joseph manage the seven dry years ? By storing food during the 7 good ones. How did India avoid famines for thousands of years ? By storing food all the time it was plentiful so when the monsoon hit it's occasional long-drought cycle they had enough stored up to survive (until Britain dismantled that system - and they had 3 major famines leading to over 30 million deaths).
Invest in the sustainable option while the unsustainable supply is still plentiful, because when it isn't - you will not be able to convince suffering people to suffer more in order to fix the problem. Whether that's a decade away or a thousand years away doesn't matter. Invest in security now, because even if renewables seem more expensive (they aren't) that's a fallacious way of thinking. Human societies that survived in the long haul are the ones with the foresight to invest in alternative resources when the ones they rely on are still plentiful and it doesn't look like a justifiable expense ot make that investment.
The US is not a good example - 300 years is no time at all. If you want to be one of those societies that make it to a thousand or more, learn what the ones that did, did right.
You choose to live in some middle of nowhere hellhole - then that's your choice. It doesn't say anything about 66% of Americans who live in major cities.
>But realiistically, EV's are not going to be coming down in price that much in my lifetime
Unless you are in your 80's and reasonably expecting to be dead in 5 years then there is absolutely nothing "realistic" about that claim. Prices have already come down significantly and will come down a lot more in the near future. Battery ranges and prices are dropping like a stone (and battery price is the single biggest component of EV prices), competition is escalating as more and more car companies start offering EVs and startups enter the market - competition drives prices down.
Simply put - every expectation is that there will be a critical mass point THIS YEAR where EVs will simply overtake ICE in most of the world - which means a huge price plummet is all but guaranteed, simply because having a significant market growth allows for mass production with huge economy-of-scale benefits.
You can expect a significant drop in price even this year.
This is one reason why, though I could not afford one now, I bought a 12 year old diesel. The engine will probably outlive me (BMW diesels last for ever) but the rest of the car won't - I don't realistically expect to get more than 2, maybe 3 years service out of it (though I paid so little that's okay) - but that's all I need, in 2 years time every indication is that I WILL be able to afford to go EV. And I will buy the first EV I can afford.
Hell Hyundai has a small electric SUV - which can get 380Km on a charge and goes for about R90K - if only it was available here (that's only 20K more than I paid for the BMW - I WOULD have paid that if I could get it) and that's available in many countries right now. It's very popular in China, I'd be surprized if it wasn't at least available in the US.
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You can say the same about people with Down's Syndrome. Do you also go around shouting "retard" at them ? If you did, would you be shocked and surprized when people complained ? Would you call it censorship when told you, you were not being nice and were, in fact, being a dick ?
Why is one genetic trait you consider negative worthy of your disrespectful, rudeness and another is worthy of your concern and pity ? Why not offer the same consideration and concern to both ?
I'm not sure why you would deem either an "evolutionary dead-end" since Down's sufferers and trans people alike can and often do have children.
Go look it up in an old dictionary. It HAS always been that way, that's WHY there are two different words.
They only got muddled in the last few decades - because of social conservatives who got upset at having to fill in the block on a form marked "sex" and so the form-makers started using "Gender" as the next closest one - and conflated the two concepts in the public mind. But they were ALWAYS two different things.
Hell, one of the heroes of the French Revolution was a trans-women who was also famously one of the best swordfighters that ever lived, Chevalier D'eon. One of the greatest pirates of all time was a women disguised as a man (Mary Reed) - most likely a trans man in reality (and by all accounts - a fierce warrior who with one other woman Anne Bonney held off the full might of the British navy for hours while Jack Rackham was passed out drunk in the hold).
No one "compelled" you to do anything, we just called you an asshole for acting like an asshole.
You can go shout n***** all you want in Harlem without committing a crime - but if the locals start complaining you don't get to say they are censoring you.
Telling you off for being a dick does not ammount to "compelling" anything. We asked you to respect her wishes, nobody FORCED you to.
Unless YOU have done a DNA check - you have absolutely no proof of what her DNA is.
There are more than two human chromosome setups. We are NOT all XX or XY and a great many trans people are different varieties such as XXY. So why, in every thread about Manning, do we have people confidently declare that they KNOW something which has never been tested or confirmed and which all the statistics say is almost certainly NOT true ?
You really shouldn't be caring about the shape of strangers genitalia so much... seriously, what the fuck does it have to do with you ?
The point where you can reasonably choose to politely enquire about the shape of somebody's genitals without being an asshole of the first order is when you are both seriously considering a sexual relationship in the extremely imminent future.
Now don't come with "free speech" bullshit, nowhere did I say it should be ILLEGAL for you to make such enquiries, but I sure as hell am NOT going to pretend it isn't creepy as fuck.
And I object to such people. Since those people have a habit of regularly beating up, raping or killing the people they object to - does that mean I get to beat up the people I object to ? It's less than THEY think they are allowed to do.
>Snowdon seems the logical "other pardon".
I'm not sure how true it is, but Obama has claimed he cannot pardon Snowden as "Pardon's are reserved for people who have acknowledged their crimes before a court". How that squares with Ford pardoning Nixon is a question the journalists covering said speech apparently did not think to ask - so the answer (or at least his answer) is apparently unknown.
But his position appears to be that if you run away before you can be charged, he can't pardon you.
One minor correction though - Manning was NOT pardoned, she had her sentence commuted. There are significant differences - both legal and philosophical between the two concepts. Commuting a sentence is merely an act of mercy "we forgive you for your crimes and consider your debt to society paid", you are still an ex-con, you still can't serve on juries or get a gun license etc. etc. A pardon is "we erase your crimes", somebody who is pardoned does not have a criminal record, can serve on a jury etc. etc. etc.
The standard usage for a pardon is "your actions were illegal, but so justified that you should not be punished for them. The standard usage for a commuting is "your actions were crimes, but have significant mitigating circumstances, and there are real reasons to show mercy on you and not punish you further".
Basically - a presidential commute is akin to throwing yourself upon the mercy of the court and actually getting it (only belatedly).
Has everyone forgotten James Dean ?
After microsoft got away with a wristslap after some of the worst antitrust offenses in half a century - the justice department kind of gave up. The US courts had too many free market fundamentalists who tried to legislate their belief that antitrust laws are evil from the bench.
It wasn't always like that. Theodore Rooseveldt (a republican no less) was nicknamed "The Trustbuster" for his aggressive pursuit of antitrust cases - he went hard after them. He once ordered one of the richest men in America to the white house to formally inform him that the slightest breach will see the full might of the law. He made his position very clear: large trusts would be left alone only as long as they played by the rules, but break the antitrust rules and he would shut them the hell down. which was exactly what he did.
A sign of a bygone age - when even republicans understood that you cannot allow the rich to just run roughshod over the population. Both Rooseveldts should be remembered for having very good economic policies and approaches - despite being in different parties. FDR was the one who finally ended the travesty of "Horse and Sparrow" economics which had extended the depression by a decade and is reputed to have said of it "It's a brilliantly honest description of the republicans who pursue their policy, as it outright admits that in their view, the poor are expected to literally eat shit" (similar statement were made by several commentators at the time, including some well-known standup comics of the era, so it's uncertain if FDR ever actually said it himself and if he did he was probably quoting one of them).
Sadly, horse and sparrow economics just wouldn't die, and made it's comeback beginning with Nixon under a new moniker "Trickle down economics". Ironically nobody on the right will admit to believing in it. They point out that the phrase exists in no official policy statements or party platforms and the like... as if that means anything. Sure they don't practise something THEY call "Trickle down" - it's what leftists call the set of policies they practise, policies they most assuredly DO pursue. Unless their going to now start pretending that tax-cuts for the rich and austerity for everybody else is not a persistent republican policy (and the latest republican president-elect has taken that idea to a never-seen-before extreme). His taxplan makes the Bush taxcuts look miserly. Hey, who cares that these policies have NEVER had the predicted outcomes ANYWHERE in the world - have consistently made deficites worse, debts bigger and the people poorer, it MUST surely work THIS time, right ? If at fiftieth you don't succeed and all that...
So ... you're predicting that Trump will take spectrum licensing from the only agency with any knowledge of what the word 'spectrum' means, the FCC - and give it to the FTC - whose role is to regulate trade, and take trade away from them to give to... somebody ?
You know, I would not be at all surprised if you're right.
So you've dismissed something as "false equivalency" and given no reason for it. Please explain why punishing companies under air quality laws are just - if a company is only liable for DIRECT deaths. EVERY death saved by air quality laws is indirect.
It's one scenario, and certainly a pleasant one.
But I guess my point was - if economics is the biggest concern - then the biggest concern is based on something both unknown and unpredictable. It may turn out not to be an issue at all.
Right now - that certainly is the case. But I'm not so sure for two reasons you're leaving out. The first is, there was huge pay-offs from the Apollo program which were not foreseen (certainly not by the many, many naysayers who tried so very hard to prevent it happening). In fact, despite it's massive cost it was one of the most profitable investments the US ever made. The "beat the communists" was the foreseen one. The scientific and engineering advances made to do it - those made money, lots of money, lots more than the project cost.
The first difference then is, if you're trying to sell such a project a hundred or two hundred years from now, you have that learned lesson. You may not know what values will come out, but you can say with reasonable certainty that in the process of developing it there will huge advances which will directly benefit the people back home who get to use them for other purposes.
The second factor is - if these nearer, easier, colonies were done - a lot of lessons will have been learned, a lot of problems solved. Much of this will overlap - so you can reduce the total cost because some of it's already spent.
The third factor is - we have absolutely no idea what the world will look like in a hundred years. If you had asked anybody in the 15th century what they thought the 16th century would be like they would predict "pretty much the same, a few minor new technologies, a couple of governments changed, some countries destroyed and new ones formed"... and they would be right.
Ask anybody born after the 19th the same question and they predict vast changes - because they've all seen vast changes in living memory and can reasonably expect that to keep happening. The world now changes rapidly and 200 years is a very, very long time.
We don't know what politics or economics will look like. Which powers will have the money, whether the concept of money itself will have been replaced by something better. What problems there will be to solve. For all we know we'll have built a world where all labour is done by automation and humans spend their lives in leisure - relying on the unquenchable thirst of creative people to create to provide their advances (this is not so far-fetched - we are right now not far from being technologically capable of such a world, even if politically it seems unlikely in the short term). There's no reason to assume the economic question would ever even be asked, we don't know if it will be a world where that question is still relevant.
>Bad form... that's called poisoning the well, and is a type of ad-hominem argument that is equivalent to a logical fallacy.
It is also, my sincere belief. The new car market is a tax on people who are financially ililterate. And that's the REAL cost of your extended warrantee - whatever you paid for it +25% of whatever you paid for the car.
>I buy a car to reliably and economically get me from place to place
Choosing your second hand well gets you the same reliability, and much better economy. Why do you think I drive a BMW 3-Series diesel ? Because study after study have found they are, by far, the cheapest and most reliable car to drive - IF you buy them second-hand. The only cars that are cheaper to maintain are electrics and they aren't really available second-hand.
>This invariably happens much sooner with used cars than with new
That can be a factor, it was exactly the point where I replaced my Audi with the BMW. But what you're forgetting is that you pay SO MUCH less for the second hand that even if you only get half as many useful years out of it, you can then buy the next one and you've STILL spent less than a new car over the same period.
Based on the numbers in this thread. A new US car typically goes for around 32K, a good second hand for around 10K. Lets assume there is a 10-year period for a car where you can maintain it at a reasonable cost. That's a good thumbsuck, petrol can be a little lower - diesel is often significantly higher but it doesn't much matter to the outcome anyway.
So you buy a new car at 32K - for that price, it's almost certainly a lower-end family-model type car.
I buy a 5-year old petrol or 10-year old diesel for 10K. But I am driving a luxury car - with the full suite of safety features (which I care about because I don't want some drunk driver or an oil-slick kililng my child).
In 5 years, I have to replace it. I buy another luxury car. Lets be ridiculous and assume an inflation rate for the US way above what it actually is - and say I pay 12K. At the end of 10 years. I need to buy a third car - lets make that 14K.
But so do you - and you get the same inflation rate so the next one costs you about 40K.
So after 10 years, we each have a just-bought car. Mine will last 5 years, yours 10. Thus far I have spent 36K - you've spent 70K (and I've not added whatever you're spending above the sticker price on extended warranties - seeing as it's likely my services and such at least match that). I've been driving luxury model BMWs and Audis, you've been driving mid-range sedans like Nissans or Toyota. Sure my BMW is 10 years old. But it's a diesel engine - that thing is good for between twice and three times the kilos it's got on. Now the rest of the car will start falling appart before it gets to 20 or 30 years, but that won't affect me.
Throughout all this - I've been buying my cars cash, you've almost certainly been getting financing - so you've spent interest as well which I haven't. It's easy to save up 10K if you have 5 years to do it. It's a lot harder to save up 32K in 10 years.
Now I don't live in the US - I live in South Africa and the maths is DEFINITELY right for the prices here. I based these on the figures quoted throughout this discussion by Americans as typical prices, but I don't shop for cars there so they may be off by a bit. Nevertheless I believe the gap is huge enough that it won't change the outcome.
I rest my case.
> And somehow, my trying to be prudent with the money that I have at the moment makes me an idiot
Because you're terrible at being prudent.
Your argument goes against everything the company has stated, and told their investors, they plan to do.
Firstly - the gigafactory is meant to make batteries, cheaply, for any EV's - it's meant to make more money, not just be a cheap insourced supplier.
Secondly - Tessla has committed to bringing their prices down - and would love to see other companies make cheap EVs - because teh bigger the EV market over all is, the better for them - it means more charging stations and infrastructure which benefits even their high end sales.
Now, of course, Tesla could change their plans or not do what they said - but if they do, they better have a damn good explanation of Musk will get sued by his own board of directors and the shareholders. They invested based on what the company said it intends to do and have a right to demand that Musk sticks to the plan. Failure to do so would be investor fraud.
It took a measly few years from the first commercially available automobiles before the Model-T made these former rich man's toys into a mainstream affordable product. Why on earth do you assume that EV's would NOT follow the same pattern ? Are they somehow isolated from economies of scale ? Is it magic ?
Awww you think you don't *pay* for the extended warrantee. That's sweet.
More-over those typically only apply to new purchases. Right now - the second hand market in EV's is still very tiny, but expect that to grow bigger and bigger over the next few years. Then the picture changes. Second hand buyers seriously consider maintenance costs - since it is a massive part of the TCO. And frankly only an idiot buys a new car. It's the worst investment in the world. Nothing else you can buy loses 25% of it's value the second you take posession !
I can buy a chocolate from a store, walk outside and sell it for barely less than I bought it for. Take it to the local school and I can turn a profit (I did exactly that for pocket money when I was in school. I bought juice packets from the supermarket, froze them and sold them as ice lollies at school for a significant markup in summer. I turned an initial R10 investment into R400 in a week - then the school forced me to stop because I was taking business away from the tuckshop). But a car ? You buy it - and sell it the same day you get 25% less than you paid for.
I prefer to let other people be the idiots. I ONLY buy second hand.
>Economically, what's in it for the people left behind on Earth? Are the colonists themselves going to fully fund the expedition?
Economics is not mankind's only motivation. In this case - there is another rather good one: the survival of the species. Mankind cannot and will not survive if we are confined to one planet. No species can. It's simply physically impossible. Unless we colonize we are as doomed as the dinosaurs. Sooner or later the universe is going to throw a giant rock or a massive blast of radiation at us and wipe out just about every living thing except a few extremophile bacteria.
Life will (probably) survive, it's incredibly resilient. Evolution will start over from those bacteria... but there won't be any us.
The odds of two planets getting hit at once are exponentially lower, for every one we add - the chances of humanity existing in the long run gets better.
But lets start simple -lets get a colony on the moon. Even Mars can wait. No reason to hurry there - just being n the moon as well will already double our odds of surviving the next cataclysm since the moon colonists could repopulate earth after.
But there's still plenty of things that could hit earth that would take out a moon colony right with it - so once we've solved the relatively easy task of making the moon livable - Mars awaits... after that, well there's really nothing else in this solar system which can feasibly be made suitable for human habitation. The only thing remotely close is Venus and frankly trying to terraform that atmosphere is so far beyond any technology we have that we can't even begin to imagine what processes may do so. We may never be able to... but if we can get to mars then the stars await.
Not for us. Our grandchildren may make it as far as Mars... but their grandchildren - we could leave them a legacy like that. And we should - because if we don't, they may never exist.
The most fundamental drive of every species is it's own propagation and survival - are you telling me that humans would not spend money to pursue our most fundamental drive ? No amount of laws and pressures and prices have ever stopped prostitution - because it taps into that drive.
Oh -and the argument you just made, was JUST as true in 1961 when a madman said - "Hey, lets commit to going to the moon this decade", that madman just happened to be sitting in the white house.
The cost will never be a factor - what will be, is if we can get the right people in the right positions - to inspire the world to believe it's worth it.
The Gigafactory is never going to make any car whatsoever. It's a mass production facility for BATTERIES (you know the part in electric cars that make them expensive).
Should you really hold such strong opinions on a subject of which you are, apparently, entirely ignorant ?
Well if you are going to flat out deny the article you are commenting on you need to give evidence why its wrong. Just reiterating the current state is senseless. You think the gigafactory will take 30 years to come online ?
Problem is the energy trap. Here's what happens when oil actually becomes hard to find, if a renewable transition has not ALREADY HAPPENED (and why "the market will solve it when it gets rare" is a stupid argument:
It costs energy to build renewable infrastructure, when energy is getting scarce and expensive- investing in that infrastructure means a bunch of people who are struggling, has to struggle a lot more.
No government wants to do that. It could easily take as long to transition with manageable investments as the remaining oil lasts - and at each step for the first several years it means having less energy than you otherwise would have. By the time you start seeing returns on the investment you're in the next election cycle - so making the investment is always better left to somebody else... until there is no oil left, and then you CANNOT transition because there is no energy to transition with.
The best way to avoid the energy trap - is to transition while oil is still providing plentiful, cheap energy. It's a basic economic lesson so old that it is recorded in a book that is at least 4000 years old. How did Joseph manage the seven dry years ? By storing food during the 7 good ones.
How did India avoid famines for thousands of years ? By storing food all the time it was plentiful so when the monsoon hit it's occasional long-drought cycle they had enough stored up to survive (until Britain dismantled that system - and they had 3 major famines leading to over 30 million deaths).
Invest in the sustainable option while the unsustainable supply is still plentiful, because when it isn't - you will not be able to convince suffering people to suffer more in order to fix the problem. Whether that's a decade away or a thousand years away doesn't matter. Invest in security now, because even if renewables seem more expensive (they aren't) that's a fallacious way of thinking. Human societies that survived in the long haul are the ones with the foresight to invest in alternative resources when the ones they rely on are still plentiful and it doesn't look like a justifiable expense ot make that investment.
The US is not a good example - 300 years is no time at all. If you want to be one of those societies that make it to a thousand or more, learn what the ones that did, did right.
That for 20% of Americans EVs are probably entirely unsuitable. Next.
You choose to live in some middle of nowhere hellhole - then that's your choice. It doesn't say anything about 66% of Americans who live in major cities.
Good point... you could have charged your EV three times in the time you've spent telling me you don't have time to charge EVs.
>But realiistically, EV's are not going to be coming down in price that much in my lifetime
Unless you are in your 80's and reasonably expecting to be dead in 5 years then there is absolutely nothing "realistic" about that claim. Prices have already come down significantly and will come down a lot more in the near future. Battery ranges and prices are dropping like a stone (and battery price is the single biggest component of EV prices), competition is escalating as more and more car companies start offering EVs and startups enter the market - competition drives prices down.
Simply put - every expectation is that there will be a critical mass point THIS YEAR where EVs will simply overtake ICE in most of the world - which means a huge price plummet is all but guaranteed, simply because having a significant market growth allows for mass production with huge economy-of-scale benefits.
You can expect a significant drop in price even this year.
This is one reason why, though I could not afford one now, I bought a 12 year old diesel. The engine will probably outlive me (BMW diesels last for ever) but the rest of the car won't - I don't realistically expect to get more than 2, maybe 3 years service out of it (though I paid so little that's okay) - but that's all I need, in 2 years time every indication is that I WILL be able to afford to go EV. And I will buy the first EV I can afford.
Hell Hyundai has a small electric SUV - which can get 380Km on a charge and goes for about R90K - if only it was available here (that's only 20K more than I paid for the BMW - I WOULD have paid that if I could get it) and that's available in many countries right now. It's very popular in China, I'd be surprized if it wasn't at least available in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Lead Balloons are only impractical if you have insufficiently insane engineers.