I always thought a hybrid car would be good for using in traffic jams. If you are stuck in a evening rush-hour (at least in Summer), the energy per square foot of solar panel would be 200-300 watts. For a car that would be 4x8x200 watts or 6 kilowatts.
Good for traffic jams because the engine turns off when you're idling. Great for evacuations.
Wow, 'tens of millions of dollars'. I didn't know companies even had that much money.
Cameco Corporation (TSX: CCO, NYSE: CCJ) is the world's largest publicly traded uranium company, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is the world's largest uranium producer, accounting for 20% of world production....Revenue: â-$2.31 billion CAD (2007)
Do you realize how much money you'd save in fuel costs each year?
I haven't had any experience with Civics, but my brother and my dad drive standard a Corolla (new) and standard Tercel (old) and get 40-50 miles per gallon (they drive on the highway, mostly). At 45 miles per day (roughly what I drove before I moved to the bus-filled city), that's all 1 gallon = 4 dollars per day at current prices. So instead of buying almost 1 500USD of fuel per year, they'd be buying around 300USD, saving 1200USD/year, or 12 000USD over ten years--assuming gas prices average 4USD.
A NEW (and why buy new? Unlike the VW, there are used ones around.) Toyota Corolla costs about 15 000USD. Approximate total savings: 15 000 for the Corolla - 35 000 for the VW + 1 5000 for the Corolla's gas + 3000 for the VW's gas = NEGATIVE 8 000. They break even over ten years if it hits around 5.50USD/gallon average or they drive more. (Or the VW gets really good highway.)
Oh, I just realised the VW is diesel. Diesel recently increased in price because they took out the sulphur, right?
Do the same people think "Gee, he's too young" about someone younger?
They might if we let people under the age of thirty-five serve, but most of us don't see that as exceptionally young. However, many of them do, I'm sure, say 'Gee, he's too inexperienced'.
Slightly off-topic but it's amusing how "Don't be evil" or "Do no evil" gets touted as Google Inc.'s "core philosophy" or company motto.
When in reality it's chapter 6 of their Corporate Philosophy page, titled "You can make money without doing evil" -- outlining what kind of advertising you should use.
I'm pretty sure I've watched entire episodes on Hulu with only one commercial break (though probably there was one before the episode started as well), and since there's only one commercial per break, that makes 1-2 commercials in an episode. For many episodes, there is a commercial break for every spot where there was intended to be one when it was first broadcast--but again, only one commercial per break, which is a huge improvement.
I remember when people got upset because Voyager went from--as I recall--15 minutes to 17 minutes of commercials per hour-long episodes. That's over 25% of the time spent on ads. Hulu may not beat DVDs or Tivo, but it sure beats the broadcast I grew up with. I'm patient enough to survive a thirty-second interruption a couple times an hour.
Back in the Nineties, no one would have guessed that people nowadays would complain about 7% of their viewing time being advertisements. We seem pretty spoiled these days when you look at the numbers. If you want completely ad-free content, pay for it. Somebody has to.
Basically, he's the only Democrat who ISN'T caving right now. And that is a change...
Ummm...the only? The article you quoted has Reid saying he'd fight. Conyers fought it. Nadler fought it. Feingold fought it. Now that it's going to the Senate, Leahy and Dodd will likely lead the charge against it. (My not-paying-much-attention understanding is that Dodd's been pretty amazing about this stuff for some time now.)
There are a lot of Democrats putting up a decent fight. Just not enough. (And to be Fair and Balanced about it, there are some Republicans doing the right thing too, including our usually-hated Senator Arlen Specter.)
But when someone gives you money for advertising on a project like Wikipedia, they basically want something for that money. Now it would be nice to say that they only want their ad on the project. But it won't work like that. They'll most likely want editorial control also.
Personally, I think that's paranoia, and that Google wouldn't ever make such a demand--I haven't heard of them doing it before and it would be really bad publicity. When a magaznie, for example, is selling ads to a company whose projucts they review it's been an issue in the past, but just because they were using an advertising network? Seems doubtful to me. What's Adsense going to do? Refuse to serve them any more ads?
More importantly, though, if Google Adsense demands that Wikipedia promote Google, we can just go use Yahoo! Publisher Network, and if they do the same, we can go use Microsoft adCenter--yes, I said Microsoft. So long as there's real competition on the market, it's not a big problem. Maybe revenue will drop a couple percent, but if we're easily covering all our expenses, we'll accept that as a cost of maintaining neutrality. Right now you're suggesting we turn down what the article claims to be hundreds of millions of dollars for that reason, and we have for years. It's not a slippery slope, because we're not losing impartiality just by showing advertising.
$9 000 of fuel per second * 60 seconds per minute * 1440 minutes per day = $777 600 000 of fuel per day. Per plane.
One of these numbers has to be wrong.
Re:Pro-science can be bad too
on
Science Debate 2008
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If you go by a strictly scientific viewpoint, such actions are defensible.
The science of ethicstology?
Science is descriptive, not normative. You're claiming the a 'strictly scientific viewpoint' makes moral claims. It doesn't. Science doesn't say 'we should work on strengthening the gene pool'. It merely says that's what happens naturally, which some nutcases--not science--think means 'good'.
What about introducing spelling and grammatical errors? This would be difficult for a computer to interpret, but doable for a human.
Yeah, that would solve the problem until someone developed an automated program to check spelling and grammar, which I'm sure is near-imposible. (By the way, does anyone know why there's a red line under that last word? Is my screen screwed up?)
Um...because one is a simple 3-d shape and the other cannot exist in a normal three-space, in the same sense that 'these two parallel lines meet' just won't happen. Hey, I can cut a spiral out of paper, so I must be able to make a square circle too, right? How would that follow?
(I expect the reply to this to be 'whoosh', but it looks serious to me.)
Yes, yes, micro-evolution and macro-evolution are completely distinct theories. And macroscopic objects to not have to conform to the rules of quantum mechanics because they're not actually made up of sub-atomic parts, right? I ignored the distinction because it's a load of bull. It's one theory.
If you want to say 'Evolution is true, but our one species was magicked up the way the way we are now', fine, but I've never heard the distinction made that way. All I hear is 'Micro-evolution exists but somehow this doesn't result in macro-evolution/speciation at all', and that is pure nonsense.
If you can't accept someone disagreeing with you without declaring them utter sleaze bags and ignorant slimeballs, don't involve yourself in debates. You can avoid us ignorant slimeballs by becoming a bitter recluse. (Bitter recluses are cool. Trolls aren't. You like Ron Paul, right? How about Thoreau? Yay for Thoreau, everybody's favourite bitter recluse!)
You apparently don't understand what evolution is. It does effect us every day, especially in medicine. Any doctor who doesn't understand and accept how bacteria evolves is not qualified to take care of his own health, let alone anyone else's.
If you're not some shit-hole's dictator, then your business isn't really wanted
Uruguay (100 000 machines): Elected president (popular vote; 5-year terms), elected legislature (proportional representation; 5-year terms), and independent judiciary elected by the legislature (10-year terms). Dictator count: 0.
Birmingham, Alabama, USA (15,000 machines): Elected major, elected city council. Dictator count: 0.
Peru (260 000 machines): Elected president (popular vote; 5-year terms)
Mexico (190 000 machines by private investor): Elected president (6-year term).
Looks like none of the recipients so far are dictators. Planned recipients include Argentina (elected president), Brazil (elected president), Costa Rica (elected president), Cambodia (constitutional monarchy with elected legislature), Dominican Republic (elected president), Egypt (elected president, though it may be a bit of a joke to call it a democracy), Greece (president elected by parliament elected by the people), Libya (dictatorship claiming to be a democracy), Nigeria (elected president), Pakistan (bordering on dictatorship), Rwanda (elected president), Tunisia (elected president with essentially no opposing candidates), and the USA (elected president). Some of these elected presidents may be quite iffy, but it's certainly a far cry from your implication that OLPC only does business with dictators.
But who says Mr. Burns is going to use his money to offset his emissions?
These regulations, in that they result in an automobile industry that's desperately trying to get people to buy fewer low MPG cars and more high MPG cars so they don't get fined for missing the target average. (I wonder what happens if they miss it. It'd have to be a major fine to avoid being just written off as a minor cost of doing business.)
Except we don't. It's often made artificially cheap to be wasteful, so people aren't paying anywhere near the actual value of their waste. Hell, we even pay a premium for products that last a long time, and it's cheaper to buy disposable stuff. And that's what the economy encourages.
Indeed. That's what the regulations fix (or improve, at least), in one important area.
If we tax low-MPG cars, then when Mr. Burns buys his car, some money goes to the government. Then, if the government is good, that money is then sent back out by the government to help pay for my high-MPG car. But the government isn't good. It will take that tax revenue and spend it on something else entirely.
The fleet average, however, skips the step where the government gets the money. The car companies adjust the prices the same way taxes and subsidies would. This could be a good thing, because then the tax revenue is sure to go to the right place (higher-MPG cars), or a bad thing because the tax revenue can only go to higher-MPG cars, not public transportation or bike paths or other really nice things. But I think it's a better thing than a per-car minimum.
How would car makers know how many vehicles of each type they are going to sell, before they make them?
When producing and selling them in the numbers they do, I'm sure they can figure it out. You don't produce a hundred million dollars of cars without knowing that a high percentage of them will actually sell. This regulation results in them producing an average MPG of 35 (in 13 years). If they find they're selling out of low-MPG cars and have lots filled with unsold high-MPG cars, they raise the price for the former and lower the price on the latter.
They do this based on numbers produced already. They know it's better to liquidise their poorly-selling cars at a lower margin than to let them sit and rust, taking up space. All the fleet average (or production average, or whatever) does is make them consider average MPG, so they produce cars at the quantities required to hit the average MPG, and they do whatever pricing (and advertising) is needed to sell them all.
Owning gas guzzlers is the harmful thing. Do you also believe that the freedom to own nuclear and biological weapons is important?
Owning a gas guzzler is harmful because it increases gas consumption. I just described a system where the gas consumption is not increased by ownership of a gas guzzler. Freedom to do X is worthwhile if it harms no one.
Biological weapons are a different beast. Seems like offsetting the cost would have to be something like paying to save X lives in exchange for average expected deaths from your weapon ownership, and bartering lives is somewhat repugnant, in part because the people whose lives are being traded aren't getting to agree to the deal. With trading gas consumption for gas consumption, the only effected parties are me, Mr. Burns, and I guess the car manufacturer.
As for the Mr Burns example, I don't see how having money entitles anybody to be wasteful.
If you use that money to undo (or completely offset ahead of time) your waste, how could it not?
This is pretty much all we use money for. Rich people take first class and cheap people take the more efficient coach. Rich people buy expensive stuff that I consider wasteful and I buy cheaper stuff that the destitute consider wasteful. There's no non-arbitrary line for 'wasteful' v. 'no-wasteful', so we simply demand that people pay the appropriate price for their wastefulness. It's how the system works, and as distasteful as we find aspects of it (usually unfairness caused by bad luck or externalities), that's what the Congress has to work with: a capitalist system. Usually works as well as anything else that's been tried.
(Curse you for making me praise capitalism! Now I'm unclean.)
If you have a fixed number of miles driven, and you mandate a minimum of x mpg, this will result of an average of X>x mpg. This will burn the same amount of fuel as you would if you mandate a fleet average of X mpg.
No, it won't. Say my "fleet" consists of two cars - one a gas-guzzler that gets 10 MPG. The other is a small, unpopular car that gets 40 MPG. So, my "fleet average" is 25 MPG. But if the gas guzzler outsells the small car by a ratio of 100 to 1M
Ah, I see the issue. By my understanding "fleet average" is defined in terms of number of cars sold, not number of types of cars. In your example, this would make the fleet average (1*40+100*10)/101 = 10.2970297 MPG, not 25 MPG. By your definition, it is indeed almost entirely ineffective.
It took a bit to find anywhere actually defining the term but there is this: "(2) Fleet average fuel economy is - (A) the total number of passenger automobiles leased for at least 60 consecutive days or bought by executive agencies in a fiscal year (except automobiles designed for combat-related missions, law enforcement work, or emergency rescue work); divided by (B) the sum of the fractions obtained by dividing the number of automobiles of each model leased or bought by the fuel economy of that model." (Source) and a comment here runs some numbers using my definition.
Someone should go add the term to Wiktionary, 'cause it's not defined anywhere else.:-)
What harmful side effects are you talking about?
Loss of freedom to buy gas guzzlers, is one. So long as they're willing to pay for it (IE, pay extra in order to subsudise the cost of more efficient vehicles), I think we should let them.
I'm not sure why mandating better fuel consumption will necessarily change the price of cars. Or are you talking about something else?
With our new agreed upon(?) definition, you do, though, right?
Suppose the Guzzlebug gets 20MPG and costs $20 000. Foomobile gets 30MPG and costs $10 000. Barbug gets 40MPG and costs $15 000. I'm cheap, so I decide to go for the Foomobile instead of the Barbug. But then Mr. Burns says 'I want a Guzzlebug, but we have to average 30MPG or better, so I guess I'll have to go with a lousy Foomobile. But wait! I'll pay you $5 000 if you'll buy a Barbug instead of a Foomobile.' Obviously, Mr. Burns is happy with the trade or he wouldn't make it, and I'm happy (or at least neutral) with it or I won't take it. Result: our combined happiness (surplus) has increased, without lowering the average MPG.
This deal will be pre-made when car manufacturers realise they need to lower the average MPG of cars sold, not just their average MPG of cars for sale.
(Of course, it's possible Mr. Burns drives more than I do, but generally I'd expect more efficient cars to be favoured by people who drive a lot. Or maybe they're favoured by people who are mileage conscious and walk/bike/bus as much as possible.)
Show me the scientific study that demonstrates that mandating a "fleet average" fuel consumption results in less fuel being consumed than mandating that every vehicle must have a particular maximum?
Firstly, I said the same, not less. it can be more, the same, or less, depending on which numbers you use. The point is, for the same result, you get less harmful side-effects (where the waste goes; whether I can have my gas guzzler). As for studies, I haven't any. I merely have an understanding of basic economic theory. There could be bizarre side-effects due to the fact that people aren't rational (truth is, they're short-sighted, which I think is a point in favour of fleet average mandates), or any number of other iffy things--this is a social science, not math or physics--but according to the generally-accepted supply and demand theory, it works out.
It's fairly analogous (probably identical, but I don't feel like proving that) to taxation/incentives v. regulation. In one you mandate a change in quantity of X, resulting in a change in price of Y. In the other, you mandate a change in price of Y, resulting in a change in quantity of X. You have two methods of moving the equilibrium: whichever you choose, the market will adjust to the new equilibrium. The difference is where the new supplier surplus goes and which number you know (because it's the one you set.)
If I mandate that every vehicle must meet 50MPG or better - then obviously, less fuel will be consumed than if I mandate that the average fleet consumption must be 35MPG or better.
Absolutely, and a pound of gold isn't heavier than a pound of feathers. Therefore, gold and feathers weigh the same? (Show me a study that demonstrates that feathers are lighter than gold?)
If you have a fixed number of miles driven, and you mandate a minimum of x mpg, this will result of an average of X>x mpg. This will burn the same amount of fuel as you would if you mandate a fleet average of X mpg. You seem to be denying this, and telling me I'm not making any sense. (Number of miles driven isn't truly fixed, but that can obviously be accounted for by raising/lowering the mandated fleet average.)
It's only your opinion that it's the worst option.
No, that's science's opinion, when given the goal of increasing overall fuel efficiency, which to my knowledge is the only reason anyone wants to regulate mileage at all.
It allows manufacturers to make unpopular niche cars to bring up the average of the popular cars they actually sell.
If that increases fuel efficiency the same as the other option with less cost, why oh why would you not consider that the better option? Is the problem that I'll get teased for having an unpopular car--something I factor into my calculations when buying it--or what?
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Good for traffic jams because the engine turns off when you're idling. Great for evacuations.
Wow, 'tens of millions of dollars'. I didn't know companies even had that much money.
(Source: 'Cameco' on Wikipedia.)
On the other hand, that's a huge amount of money for Iraq, isn't it?. Makes the money the US government has spent there seem quite paltry.
I haven't had any experience with Civics, but my brother and my dad drive standard a Corolla (new) and standard Tercel (old) and get 40-50 miles per gallon (they drive on the highway, mostly). At 45 miles per day (roughly what I drove before I moved to the bus-filled city), that's all 1 gallon = 4 dollars per day at current prices. So instead of buying almost 1 500USD of fuel per year, they'd be buying around 300USD, saving 1200USD/year, or 12 000USD over ten years--assuming gas prices average 4USD.
A NEW (and why buy new? Unlike the VW, there are used ones around.) Toyota Corolla costs about 15 000USD. Approximate total savings: 15 000 for the Corolla - 35 000 for the VW + 1 5000 for the Corolla's gas + 3000 for the VW's gas = NEGATIVE 8 000. They break even over ten years if it hits around 5.50USD/gallon average or they drive more. (Or the VW gets really good highway.)
Oh, I just realised the VW is diesel. Diesel recently increased in price because they took out the sulphur, right?
They might if we let people under the age of thirty-five serve, but most of us don't see that as exceptionally young. However, many of them do, I'm sure, say 'Gee, he's too inexperienced'.
And the preface and conclusion of their code of conduct.
Details, details.
I'm pretty sure I've watched entire episodes on Hulu with only one commercial break (though probably there was one before the episode started as well), and since there's only one commercial per break, that makes 1-2 commercials in an episode. For many episodes, there is a commercial break for every spot where there was intended to be one when it was first broadcast--but again, only one commercial per break, which is a huge improvement.
I remember when people got upset because Voyager went from--as I recall--15 minutes to 17 minutes of commercials per hour-long episodes. That's over 25% of the time spent on ads. Hulu may not beat DVDs or Tivo, but it sure beats the broadcast I grew up with. I'm patient enough to survive a thirty-second interruption a couple times an hour.
Back in the Nineties, no one would have guessed that people nowadays would complain about 7% of their viewing time being advertisements. We seem pretty spoiled these days when you look at the numbers. If you want completely ad-free content, pay for it. Somebody has to.
Sure have. Apparently, we shouldn't grant immunity to the telecoms--no, wait, I mean we should grant immunity to the telecoms. Of course, the wiretapping was legal anyway, though on second thought maybe it wasn't.
So there you have it: John McCain's stance on wiretapping and telecom immunity. hope that cleared things up for you. :-)
Ummm...the only? The article you quoted has Reid saying he'd fight. Conyers fought it. Nadler fought it. Feingold fought it. Now that it's going to the Senate, Leahy and Dodd will likely lead the charge against it. (My not-paying-much-attention understanding is that Dodd's been pretty amazing about this stuff for some time now.)
There are a lot of Democrats putting up a decent fight. Just not enough. (And to be Fair and Balanced about it, there are some Republicans doing the right thing too, including our usually-hated Senator Arlen Specter.)
Pelosi, however, is made of fail.
Except the one for which they were trying to find a medium. :-)
Economy is about resources. Money is merely one storage medium, and an imperfect one at that.
Personally, I think that's paranoia, and that Google wouldn't ever make such a demand--I haven't heard of them doing it before and it would be really bad publicity. When a magaznie, for example, is selling ads to a company whose projucts they review it's been an issue in the past, but just because they were using an advertising network? Seems doubtful to me. What's Adsense going to do? Refuse to serve them any more ads?
More importantly, though, if Google Adsense demands that Wikipedia promote Google, we can just go use Yahoo! Publisher Network, and if they do the same, we can go use Microsoft adCenter--yes, I said Microsoft. So long as there's real competition on the market, it's not a big problem. Maybe revenue will drop a couple percent, but if we're easily covering all our expenses, we'll accept that as a cost of maintaining neutrality. Right now you're suggesting we turn down what the article claims to be hundreds of millions of dollars for that reason, and we have for years. It's not a slippery slope, because we're not losing impartiality just by showing advertising.
$9 000 of fuel per second * 60 seconds per minute * 1440 minutes per day = $777 600 000 of fuel per day. Per plane.
One of these numbers has to be wrong.
The science of ethicstology?
Science is descriptive, not normative. You're claiming the a 'strictly scientific viewpoint' makes moral claims. It doesn't. Science doesn't say 'we should work on strengthening the gene pool'. It merely says that's what happens naturally, which some nutcases--not science--think means 'good'.
Yeah, that would solve the problem until someone developed an automated program to check spelling and grammar, which I'm sure is near-imposible. (By the way, does anyone know why there's a red line under that last word? Is my screen screwed up?)
Um...because one is a simple 3-d shape and the other cannot exist in a normal three-space, in the same sense that 'these two parallel lines meet' just won't happen. Hey, I can cut a spiral out of paper, so I must be able to make a square circle too, right? How would that follow?
(I expect the reply to this to be 'whoosh', but it looks serious to me.)
No, they're being exploited by the people who downloaded those private photos and made them public.
I can understand you not reading the story, and even not reading the summary, but couldn't you have at least read the headline before commenting?
Yes, yes, micro-evolution and macro-evolution are completely distinct theories. And macroscopic objects to not have to conform to the rules of quantum mechanics because they're not actually made up of sub-atomic parts, right? I ignored the distinction because it's a load of bull. It's one theory.
If you want to say 'Evolution is true, but our one species was magicked up the way the way we are now', fine, but I've never heard the distinction made that way. All I hear is 'Micro-evolution exists but somehow this doesn't result in macro-evolution/speciation at all', and that is pure nonsense.
If you can't accept someone disagreeing with you without declaring them utter sleaze bags and ignorant slimeballs, don't involve yourself in debates. You can avoid us ignorant slimeballs by becoming a bitter recluse. (Bitter recluses are cool. Trolls aren't. You like Ron Paul, right? How about Thoreau? Yay for Thoreau, everybody's favourite bitter recluse!)
You apparently don't understand what evolution is. It does effect us every day, especially in medicine. Any doctor who doesn't understand and accept how bacteria evolves is not qualified to take care of his own health, let alone anyone else's.
Looks like none of the recipients so far are dictators. Planned recipients include Argentina (elected president), Brazil (elected president), Costa Rica (elected president), Cambodia (constitutional monarchy with elected legislature), Dominican Republic (elected president), Egypt (elected president, though it may be a bit of a joke to call it a democracy), Greece (president elected by parliament elected by the people), Libya (dictatorship claiming to be a democracy), Nigeria (elected president), Pakistan (bordering on dictatorship), Rwanda (elected president), Tunisia (elected president with essentially no opposing candidates), and the USA (elected president). Some of these elected presidents may be quite iffy, but it's certainly a far cry from your implication that OLPC only does business with dictators.
These regulations, in that they result in an automobile industry that's desperately trying to get people to buy fewer low MPG cars and more high MPG cars so they don't get fined for missing the target average. (I wonder what happens if they miss it. It'd have to be a major fine to avoid being just written off as a minor cost of doing business.)
Indeed. That's what the regulations fix (or improve, at least), in one important area.
If we tax low-MPG cars, then when Mr. Burns buys his car, some money goes to the government. Then, if the government is good, that money is then sent back out by the government to help pay for my high-MPG car. But the government isn't good. It will take that tax revenue and spend it on something else entirely.
The fleet average, however, skips the step where the government gets the money. The car companies adjust the prices the same way taxes and subsidies would. This could be a good thing, because then the tax revenue is sure to go to the right place (higher-MPG cars), or a bad thing because the tax revenue can only go to higher-MPG cars, not public transportation or bike paths or other really nice things. But I think it's a better thing than a per-car minimum.
I'm going a bit off-topic here, but isn't a Big Bang-based universe n light years across going to be n/2 years old?
When producing and selling them in the numbers they do, I'm sure they can figure it out. You don't produce a hundred million dollars of cars without knowing that a high percentage of them will actually sell. This regulation results in them producing an average MPG of 35 (in 13 years). If they find they're selling out of low-MPG cars and have lots filled with unsold high-MPG cars, they raise the price for the former and lower the price on the latter.
They do this based on numbers produced already. They know it's better to liquidise their poorly-selling cars at a lower margin than to let them sit and rust, taking up space. All the fleet average (or production average, or whatever) does is make them consider average MPG, so they produce cars at the quantities required to hit the average MPG, and they do whatever pricing (and advertising) is needed to sell them all.
Owning a gas guzzler is harmful because it increases gas consumption. I just described a system where the gas consumption is not increased by ownership of a gas guzzler. Freedom to do X is worthwhile if it harms no one.
Biological weapons are a different beast. Seems like offsetting the cost would have to be something like paying to save X lives in exchange for average expected deaths from your weapon ownership, and bartering lives is somewhat repugnant, in part because the people whose lives are being traded aren't getting to agree to the deal. With trading gas consumption for gas consumption, the only effected parties are me, Mr. Burns, and I guess the car manufacturer.
If you use that money to undo (or completely offset ahead of time) your waste, how could it not?
This is pretty much all we use money for. Rich people take first class and cheap people take the more efficient coach. Rich people buy expensive stuff that I consider wasteful and I buy cheaper stuff that the destitute consider wasteful. There's no non-arbitrary line for 'wasteful' v. 'no-wasteful', so we simply demand that people pay the appropriate price for their wastefulness. It's how the system works, and as distasteful as we find aspects of it (usually unfairness caused by bad luck or externalities), that's what the Congress has to work with: a capitalist system. Usually works as well as anything else that's been tried.
(Curse you for making me praise capitalism! Now I'm unclean.)
Ah, I see the issue. By my understanding "fleet average" is defined in terms of number of cars sold, not number of types of cars. In your example, this would make the fleet average (1*40+100*10)/101 = 10.2970297 MPG, not 25 MPG. By your definition, it is indeed almost entirely ineffective.
It took a bit to find anywhere actually defining the term but there is this: "(2) Fleet average fuel economy is - (A) the total number of passenger automobiles leased for at least 60 consecutive days or bought by executive agencies in a fiscal year (except automobiles designed for combat-related missions, law enforcement work, or emergency rescue work); divided by (B) the sum of the fractions obtained by dividing the number of automobiles of each model leased or bought by the fuel economy of that model." (Source) and a comment here runs some numbers using my definition.
Someone should go add the term to Wiktionary, 'cause it's not defined anywhere else. :-)
Loss of freedom to buy gas guzzlers, is one. So long as they're willing to pay for it (IE, pay extra in order to subsudise the cost of more efficient vehicles), I think we should let them.
With our new agreed upon(?) definition, you do, though, right?
Suppose the Guzzlebug gets 20MPG and costs $20 000. Foomobile gets 30MPG and costs $10 000. Barbug gets 40MPG and costs $15 000. I'm cheap, so I decide to go for the Foomobile instead of the Barbug. But then Mr. Burns says 'I want a Guzzlebug, but we have to average 30MPG or better, so I guess I'll have to go with a lousy Foomobile. But wait! I'll pay you $5 000 if you'll buy a Barbug instead of a Foomobile.' Obviously, Mr. Burns is happy with the trade or he wouldn't make it, and I'm happy (or at least neutral) with it or I won't take it. Result: our combined happiness (surplus) has increased, without lowering the average MPG.
This deal will be pre-made when car manufacturers realise they need to lower the average MPG of cars sold, not just their average MPG of cars for sale.
(Of course, it's possible Mr. Burns drives more than I do, but generally I'd expect more efficient cars to be favoured by people who drive a lot. Or maybe they're favoured by people who are mileage conscious and walk/bike/bus as much as possible.)
Firstly, I said the same, not less. it can be more, the same, or less, depending on which numbers you use. The point is, for the same result, you get less harmful side-effects (where the waste goes; whether I can have my gas guzzler). As for studies, I haven't any. I merely have an understanding of basic economic theory. There could be bizarre side-effects due to the fact that people aren't rational (truth is, they're short-sighted, which I think is a point in favour of fleet average mandates), or any number of other iffy things--this is a social science, not math or physics--but according to the generally-accepted supply and demand theory, it works out.
It's fairly analogous (probably identical, but I don't feel like proving that) to taxation/incentives v. regulation. In one you mandate a change in quantity of X, resulting in a change in price of Y. In the other, you mandate a change in price of Y, resulting in a change in quantity of X. You have two methods of moving the equilibrium: whichever you choose, the market will adjust to the new equilibrium. The difference is where the new supplier surplus goes and which number you know (because it's the one you set.)
Absolutely, and a pound of gold isn't heavier than a pound of feathers. Therefore, gold and feathers weigh the same? (Show me a study that demonstrates that feathers are lighter than gold?)
If you have a fixed number of miles driven, and you mandate a minimum of x mpg, this will result of an average of X>x mpg. This will burn the same amount of fuel as you would if you mandate a fleet average of X mpg. You seem to be denying this, and telling me I'm not making any sense. (Number of miles driven isn't truly fixed, but that can obviously be accounted for by raising/lowering the mandated fleet average.)
No, that's science's opinion, when given the goal of increasing overall fuel efficiency, which to my knowledge is the only reason anyone wants to regulate mileage at all.
If that increases fuel efficiency the same as the other option with less cost, why oh why would you not consider that the better option? Is the problem that I'll get teased for having an unpopular car--something I factor into my calculations when buying it--or what?