With a week like this one, I asked myself: “What can I do?”
And the answer was: “Make sure I’m reading the right blogs!”
Okay, I know there must be a flaw in there somewhere - I’m always looking for a “learn more” solution, and it’s not all bad. To fully prepare myself to understand what’s going on in the financial sector would take so long that most of these developments would be long done. I’m never going to be a serious economist - or at least it’s going to take so long that I will inevitably change my mind and think of something else I want to be. I have enough trouble getting through a day still wanting the same things.
If you pay any attention to my steadily growing ‘blogroll’ over on the right, you’ll notice that I added more economics links. The ‘fast feeds’ are always tipping me off to important stories - and, Polymeme has become especially valuable to me. They noticed that the Main Stream Media (MSM)’s coverage of recent developments in the financial sector was lacking. That makes me angry - Or, at least it makes me angry some of the time.
I noticed The Big Picture had an article on how the SEC allowed those big banks that got into trouble to operate further out on the limb than anyone else.
Paul Krugman’s Blog at the New York Times suddenly seemed delightful - if you like graphs. He was fascinated by the reports of negative returns on some treasury bills.
And, it all took me back to “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown” that I read a few weeks back. That book has some pretty good history lessons as background to the crisis.
Kunstler has consistently complained about the financial sector being creatively removed from the economy of real things. How do you even know when you’ve crossed the line from providing industry’s opportunities to raiding the till? And, since it’s so very complicated in practice - not to mention backed up by so many impeccable suits - how is anybody else supposed to judge reputation. I was hoping it could be done by some other method than pointing out the colossal failures.
Also, shouldn’t you be thinking about the Ellsberg Paradox the next time you need to make a choice?
Posted in economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:40:00 GMT
I’ve been thinking a but about commerce, and economics in general, as analogous to thermodynamics.
It has something to do with reading “The Riddle Of The Modern World”, where I have passed through the section on Adam Smith and reached the one about Tocqueville. Smith’s impression of England and Tocqueville’s impression of America both feature an amazement at the pace of commerce - something Highland shepherds and French aristocrats would find puzzling or sordid.
I always just assumed that Economists ‘get it’ when it comes to emergent behavior in systems. But, that’s far fetched: Your typical economist is probably too specialized to consider what are only recently popular ideas about emergent behavior. They go about their own business and don’t realize that it has anything to do with them.
A large number of very distinct things happening at the microscopic level constitute the phenomena that we experience at the human level, and that includes everything we can observe, on up to clusters of galaxies. In Economics, they make the distinction between Micro and Macro. That doesn’t sound like a sure route to understanding how everything fits together. Individual transactions make up the smooth flow (or blockage) of money. The Nobel Prizes tend to go to the guys (sorry, ladies, but it’s mostly guys these days…) who help explain how ‘individuals’ perceive and participate in the larger system. At one point, the state of the art seemed to be ‘a system of tubes’. The truth is, we need models to explain it, because we have no easy way to talk about what all the individuals are doing - we need to be able to classify those atomic transactions and think only of the classes.
A Profit Motivated Entity Arrives In Your Neighborhood
I know that the following might be oversimplified, but I want to iron it out so I can see where to look for the missing pieces of the puzzle…
If I start a business in your community, what happens?
- I buy or start renting property
- I hire employees
- I buy equipment or stock to resell
- I set prices
Viola! Land, Labor, Capital, Commerce. But let’s back up for a second…
Where does the money go? Nearby or far away?
If I bought property, the old owner suddenly has a pile of money. Does he live in the community? Where does he spend/invest it? Nearby or far away?
If I rent property, the owner has new income, little piles of money every month. Does he live in the community? Where does he spend/invest it? Is he paying employees in the community? Is he patronizing other local businesses that may then pay their employees?
When I hire employees, are they local residents who live nearby? Or have I contracted out much of the tasks to service specialists in Kansas or India, minimizing the local impact of those paychecks?
When I set prices, am I facing competition sufficient to set them low? Can enough local people afford those prices? Or is there a niche unfilled here which allows me to charge more than anywhere else because I mainly provide convenience? If I am facing competition, do I have the resources and stamina to run similar businesses out?
Have I arrived with an ingenious method to extract profit? If I remove money from the local economy and send it somewhere else, who is putting money back in?
Maybe I will rent. That way it’ll be a lot easier to leave when I’ve squeezed the last drop.
Okay, so the first thing to remember is that these are not necessarily zero-sum games we are playing. Somewhere around here is room for ‘adding value’, but I must be really dim-witted, because I’m having trouble finding it. A business doesn’t have to be predatory, but what advantage do they get out of that? The profit margin can prefer quick profits then shutdown over long term investment with modest returns that eventually dwarf any quick profit to be made.
Maybe my point is that it is precisely this long term investment that promotes confidence and allows a peaceful environment where people are not so afraid to lose what they have, and can comfortably go about creating that extra value.
Some of that relates to size. A multinational corporation can pack up and leave any time they want. My whole bucket can be merely a drop in yours. While a smaller company is stuck there, in the community. Only cynicism can cause such rapid evacuation, and I believe there’s a lot of it to go around.
Posted in economics, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:50:00 GMT
I paused in my pursuit of Jean-Luc Godard to re-read Alan Macfarlane’s “The Riddle Of The Modern World”. It’s something I started a few years back and never finished.
There are four parts dedicated to Montisquieu, Adam Smith, De Tocqueville, and Ernest Gellner. I thought the book meshed well with some of the economics and history of technology that I’ve been reading lately. To some people it seems obvious that we would solve all our difficulty subsisting on Earth, but I disagree. We have plenty of chances to invent our way out of a mess, but one day we may not make the deadline. History just has that contingent quality. Sometimes it’s a matter of degrees. For instance, there doesn’t seem to have been an end to the bickering, but for all we know there has been enough of a proportional decline to tip the balance in our favor. An argument along those lines can be subtle: We have to look hard to see every factor involved in that balance - if there even was one.
In economics, you’ve got Malthus. A lot of people have been gloating about how wrong he was. Not me. He described a world pushed to the limit. He was only wrong about where the limits were. We’ve been very clever with techniques for pushing the envelope, and it often gave us much more room than we needed. But does that mean we will continue to expand that envelope forever? Heck, it might even collapse back on us a little - like when we can’t produce quite so much food anymore because we’ve overworked the land, or run out of cheap fertilizer. Just yesterday I was reading about Ocean ‘Dead Zones’ on CNN. What we’re got is a Malthusian Holiday. Who knows how long it will last? Our ingenuity will probably allow us to settle in to a new equilibrium. I just keep thinking of those cyclic graphs of Predator-Prey relationships.
So then, I like to focus in on the particulars of pushing that Malthusian envelope: The universe might very well be expanding, but that doesn’t mean more resources are being created out of the void. It’s all about how you use the resources you’ve got. We’re mostly stuck on this planet with its solar energy budget. Billions of years of stellar fusion has resulted in a variety of transformed matter. Squeezing every last drop is probably a bad idea, especially if you like to walk in the park or swim in the ocean. We scored big with technologies and processes that allow us better strategies and improved efficiency. We’re always better off wasting less. I think the history of technology is interesting as a source of forgotten ideas: We were in such a rush to implement new tricks that we easily skipped a lot that could still be put to good use. We often abandoned perfectly good methods simply because they were out of fashion, equating ‘new’ with ‘better’ when it isn’t necessarily so. Every application of technique must be sensitive to context and scale.
Reading about Montesquieu was not an obvious match. But, he wrote at a moment in history where a lot of new data was available on the course of different societies through history - Better scholarship on China and Ancient Rome. He takes a bold approach to the dynamics of society as a system, and he isn’t always right - in fact he seems overwhelmed at times - but his value is partly as an explorer: He didn’t assume that all his answers were right, but at least he found some good questions to ask.
And as I read Macfarlane’s book, I’ll be looking to tie it in to my other interests. It’s not easy text to follow when I’m tired.
Posted in books, economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:09:00 GMT
I noticed this James Surowiecki article in the New Yorker: The Permission Problem. Slashdot was discussing it yesterday. He discusses Michael Heller’s book “The Gridlock Economy”. I’m ready to gloat that I was already complaining about this issue, but Heller really cut right to it:
The Tragedy of the Anti-Commons.
It’s so simple after you hear it. Ownership needs to strike a balance, and the rules of patent and copyright are not helping: When ownership is vague, nobody cares. Why bother to take care of possessions that can be seized on a whim? But when ownership is too tightly controlled, nobody can invent without risk of violating the law. Ideas can’t be combined; Innovation is discouraged through overzealous licensing fees, or the threat of litigation.
It’s easy to see the tragedy of the commons because it exhausts a resource - Forests are clear-cut, the sea is over-fished - but it’s much more difficult, they say, to see what doesn’t happen because innovation was discouraged.
An Amount Close to the Full Value of the Venture
But one really interesting thing is Surowiecki’s mention of the research by Sven Vanneste and Ben Depoorter:
When something you own is necessary to the success of a venture, even if its contribution is small, you’ll tend to ask for an amount close to the full value of the venture. And since everyone in your position also thinks he deserves a huge sum, the venture quickly becomes unviable.
This is very close to the issues I am reading about in the book “CODE”: In some times and places, a group of people will cooperate to produce something without much economic incentive, but quite useful nonetheless. Some open source projects run on practically nothing but reputation. And it’s why I always thought (ever since I can remember worrying about it) that Intellectual Property law must be different, To the extent that I hadn’t even considered an ‘anti-commons’ for material goods.
It seems natural to me that people not familiar with cooperation are going to assume their contribution to a project was essential and that nobody else deserves any credit. But, it’s certainly a selfish way to look at the world - like rich people who don’t want to pay their share of taxes, or get really resentful of progressive tax that ‘punishes’ wealth. Some of these people would do well to remember that they couldn’t have contributed that effort or amassed that wealth without a liberal society that made their success possible.
Isn’t this what people mean when they talk about ‘giving back’?
We share this world, and we need to get used to that. I figure it would mitigate both the trgagedy of the commons and the tragedy of the anti-commons.
Posted in economics, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:14:00 GMT
Saturday, I also picked up a copy of Charles R. Morris’s “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown”. He supplies a short history lesson on monetary policy and finance markets, he describes what is involved in the current housing bubble, then he outlines what to watch for as the crisis unravels.
I had some idea of the problem, but I didn’t really know how far down the rabbit hole goes: Jim Kunstler warns about the irresponsibility of Wall Street on a weekly basis. Among other things, JHK complains about the suburbanization of America, and the preservation of a ‘happy motoring’ culture at all costs. And, he’s a ‘peak oil’ contender. But, above all I like him for his constant criticism of our ‘something for nothing’ culture. So, this is how I am primed to read the Morris book.
Morris reminded me of something that’s been staring me in the face for a while: The Agency Problem. Or, what we might just chalk up as a simple conflict of interest. In the world of sub-prime mortgages, you have a bunch of mortgage brokers who can figure out how to maximize their own fee, but won’t be around later when you find out your interest rate jumps to something approaching usury. The creativity of new financial instruments allows exotic bundling and distribution of risks. It also requires quite a nice computer to calculate the financial models. Like a lot of things in this world, benefit accrues from being able to go so far out on a limb. It is a simple matter to lead unsophisticated borrowers down the primrose path.
A second big theme in Morris’s book is demographics. In his history lesson, he remarks frequently on situations where public servants thought they had single-handedly saved the economy through just the right tax-cut or market-jiggering, but it just so happens that some of those activities had a minor effect when you consider what the baby-boomers were up to at that moment in history. And let’s not forget that policy lags behind the real world changing revolution of cheap and powerful computing. Politicians cling to the myth that they fixed things… but even the opposite is probably a myth. One president might make the crucial policy decision that doesn’t help until much later. Some of our leaders are even reviled for mistakes that probably didn’t really matter anyway.
All of this casts a light on something else I had been thinking about a lot lately: What is the right amount of socialism for our country?
The trend toward privatizing the actual providers doesn’t bother me all that much. If this really is a “Government of the People”, then we could be one big customer who demands a good price. When government spins off a service and tells me that I have to pay for it, then I start to wonder what happened to all that tax money. I thought I was paying for it. Municipal services are like this; Common carriers are like this - Why should big companies be able to bully us around as individuals when we could be one big customer that they must take seriously? Surely, some lobbying took place. It’s more profitable to divide and conquer your customer base, just as it’s more profitable to divide and conquer your labor.
Posted in economics, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:27:00 GMT
I was just reading this article: “Secrets of Book Publishing I Wish I Had Known” over at Good Experience. From what I’ve learned on a daily basis at a modest-sized independent bookstore chain, a lot of this information is exactly right.
And when you consider that the average reader doesn’t read all that much - heck, I can’t even read nearly as much as I want to - and there are so many books being published, it shouldn’t be too hard to see why 10-15 thousand copies is a successful book. And that’s 10-15 thousand dollars for the author. If we can assume a perfect market here, (I’ll get to that…) then the obvious message is: Stop writing so many books, there are too many as it is. Heck, if nobody ever wrote another new book, the publishers could keep cranking out the classics, and you still wouldn’t read them all.
And they wonder why the book is dying. It might be nice for books to be scarce enough to value them highly - but it doesn’t do much for society… Hold on - it may not even matter if people can get their ideas from the Internet.
Books are not all the same - you might have noticed. They are never going to be commodities “give me a bushel of paperbacks…”, except in the case of those “Books By The Foot” operations for decorating the homes of rich people who want a badge of literacy. What’s that kind of market called? I’ll have to go looking for it… Each book almost has its own market - but there is still some coupling among books that are not exactly substitutes. Deciding which book to buy involves substitutes if you just want to read. If you’re poor and want to read, you can pick up a used copy (sometimes from dumpsters, even), a remainder or a Dover thrift edition. If you absolutely have to have the latest book by your favorite author on the day it is released, or want it autographed, then you can’t just buy some other book. I’m tempted to say that you can buy any book, throw that in the dumpster, and claim “Sales are up by one book! All authors benefit incrementally!”
Posted in economics, books, media-studies | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:15:00 GMT
As I prepare myself for the possible jump to freelance self-employment, there are a number of… incongruities that are bothering me about where I work.
I get paid by the hour, but I’ve been doing two very different jobs at the same time: A state of perpetual readiness called Tech Support, and a craft based piecework called Web Maintenance. This suggests a contractual arrangement. I hate to say it, but I get paid to sit there. I’ve already developed a consulting mentality, which may serve me well in the future. I see myself as support staff.
The Marketing Director has been obsessing for years over how much time I spend doing what. Lately, that obsession has become more relevant. It would be nice to know. It would, however, be embarrassing to discover that there is about 30 hours “missing” from my week when nobody knows what I am doing. But big deal: If they want that to change, it means a lot more than they think it does. Solving problems is a lot more valuable when it takes less time. It sure would free up a lot of my time to do other things. I doubt very much that they know the market value of what I do.
But that’s part of what I mean when I talk about price as an ‘index’. You go to the market, you see the fresh melons, you see the price, you make a decision about how badly you want the damned melon. Vary rarely is cost no object when anybody wants anything. Cost goes into every calculation. In some markets you just have to keep looking. Prices vary in a rational way, whereas products and services are not so easily valued. This is why we seek benchmarks and standards for these things - an attempt to fix precise values. This is also why we lock into supplier relationships, which include social pressure to maintain mutually favorable conditions, even if it means ignoring cheaper alternatives.
The bookstore is a dilemma. I’m starting to know what I would do differently if I were in charge. What I don’t know is if it would actually work. Like most real world problems, it’s thorny when you reach in to pick the rose.
But on the other hand, as much as I feel a part of this place, I have never felt myself to be the voice of it. If more people above me left over the years, there is no doubt I would have grown into that role.
I just saw something weirdly relevant: Major delay looms for World Trade Center rebuilding.
It occurs to me - maybe because I was just thinking about it - that we suck at predicting how long it takes to do anything. This is profoundly disturbing only becuase we’ve never been more obsessed with how long every little thing takes. The fact that we can’t seem to scale that up should probably tell us something about the nature of reality. We all know about risk and uncertainty, right? They can’t be predicted. Except that we can predict they will be there in every future thing we do. Making unrealistic promises is one more way the the price on the melon at the market can deceive. When you can just buy a different melon, you’re in luck - but so many things we do in this market economy are no simple to take back.
Posted in employment, economics, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:18:00 GMT
This is what you would see at the end of my alley - where it emerges on Ontario Road between Columbia Road and Euclid Street. There used to be a photographer in one of the shops right there. I don’t think he’s still around, but I believe he was involved in the creation of this mural.
Ever since I read all those suggestions from people who want Olsson’s to open another bookstore in their favorite neighborhood, I’ve been thinking a lot more about the tide of gentrification, and the calculus of locating your business. I forgot, but was reminded recently, that there is a “Business Improvement District” called Adams Morgan. I used to see idealistic youths from an Americorps program cleaning up my street on Saturday mornings, and now there is a program called “Ready To Work” that supplies sweepers in blue jumpsuits. It makes me wonder - Where’s the City? Don’t we pay taxes to the City so that we can have city services? I don’t want to be too naive here, but look at the logo on that garbage can: It’s property of the District Of Columbia.
I know this has to do with the gradual privatization of all things. You will all draw your own personal lines on this issue, and I suppose that’s all for the best, but… I really want the City to do city stuff, not some mutant chamber of commerce thingy. While it may be nice to have someone come along and provide much-needed services, it leaves a weird vacuum of responsibility. One theory I haven’t verified is that the city agreed to this patchwork of corporate neighborhood boosting. That would make some sense. But if they can’t take care of those aspects of running a city, then what are they doing? A government has to be held accountable - and most governments are content to make back-room deals or create arrangements too complex to follow.
Before I go too far off on a tangent…
I looked. And, there really are empty store fronts available in the neighborhood. I’ve been marveling at how long some of them have remained vacant. There once was a Caribou Coffee on 18th, there is a space left empty for years right near the bank. A clothing shop next door to CVS closed recently, and there is the old Vina Fabrics further up Columbia toward 16th. That last one is fascinating - the front is at an angle. It’s two doors down from a bookstore/restaurant called the Potter’s House. The neighborhood seems nice enough to me because I’m used to it - and because it probably looks better now than it ever did.
The north side of Columbia between 16th and 17th is dominated by three big apartment buildings. Places with annoyingly high rent - not luxury, but not affordable either. Places filled with white-collar workers who you might expect to bring a neighborhood some class. It doesn’t seem to work that way, though. I don’t think most of those people contribute anything to their community. As I walk by, I see mystery boxes - an inscrutable cliff face. Some neighborhoods are dominated by front porches, not that I ever see many people wave hello from theirs on my walks around town.
There is no doubt in my mind that humans have become divided against themselves. I don’t know what to call it. I don’t expect people to be activists, out in the street, marching to take back their communities - something about that seems off. But, I’m not seeing enough of the subtle participation that goes along with what we keep calling a community. Maybe I should shoulder some of the blame - I’m alone in a room with a computer and an Internet connection.
It’s just that… I live where I do for an important reason: It is a town where I can go out and see people walking past on the street. Too many cars make a place dreadful I need to be able to bump into strangers, not cruise quickly past unseen by anyone. Within a few days of moving in, I bumped into someone I knew from work and it was like a new dawn: That can’t happen to people who emerge from their houses to get in their cars. The glue of life is being there. But where are you? out on the freeway. You aren’t there, I don’t see you. Our lives cannot intersect.
Much of my city is bedroom community. People travel to other places to work, to shop, or to eat. They are not moving through the world as I do. But this is a two-way street, because I miss much of the opportunities these people have.
Posted in photos, urban-studies, economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:41:00 GMT
Looking at this entry on Kottke.org about Amtrak (I still need to read the original article in the New York Times ), I suddenly wondered:
Why did the airlines stick to air travel?
So many businesses are concentrating on the wrong things. In bookselling, it’s “selling books”. For airlines, it’s “flying planes”. I would argue that this is the wrong way to look at things.
I suspect that there is some serious inertia involved. Not only is it “the way we’ve always done things”, but anti-trust laws probably come into play, too. But more likely, somebody with a senator in their pocket helped to shape how these laws were written - to prejudice certain kinds of combination without any sensible evaluation of the case.
Companies called ‘airlines’ would do better to think of themselves in the business of moving people where they need to be. Flying planes is incidental to this task. Flying on a plane may not even be the fastest or cheapest way to go.
It must have been an anti-trust issue that prevented airlines from investing in passenger rail. It’s hard to beat the speed of a non-stop flight, but if I’m going to have to layover in Houston for three hours on my way to San Antonio, the speed factor goes way down. Add in the wait at security. Airplanes are only fast when they’re flying. It doesn’t make much sense to spend 45 minutes in the air when you wait at least that long to board the plane.
Maybe if I ran an airline, I would have wanted to hedge my bets a little, and have a hand in other areas of transportation.
But one more way to look at it is: Companies are the atomic unit of business. They are called into existence to meet a particular need, and when that need evaporates, so should they. Assume enough entrepreneurial spirit to soak up the workers and everything is fine.
Or maybe things don’t really work that way.
You might also want to check out this book review for “Terminal Chaos” on Slashdot. It is hard for me to believe that any prescriptions in this book will be helpful if the whole industry is due for a shakeup, but I like when the reviewer says:
“Some of the suggestions would require significant financial outlays; others simply require all of the parties involved to play nicely together.”
Posted in economics, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:35:00 GMT
The more I read in the news media about what I’ll call the “Energy Crisis”, the more I wonder if people were paying attention in Physics class.
CNN: ‘Hypermilers’ test limits of fuel conservation
Reuters: U.S. drivers should think in gallons per mile
Wikipedia: Electric Car
If you want to think only in terms of money, then knowing your different forms of electricity, how much you use of each, how much you waste of each, and how much each costs can be helpful.
If you are mainly worried about polluting the environment, then you need to know the same things, but with an emphasis on the pollution each causes. That’s not easy in a world where energy suppliers are unwilling to share the details of their process.
Would you run your car on coal? Would you run your car on electricity? How about electricity generated in a coal-fired plant? Maybe the power plant takes advantages of economies of scale that aren’t available to a coal-fired automobile.
Maybe you should drive a hydrogen powered car. Where does the hydrogen come from? Maybe the plant separating the hydrogen uses electricity generated from solar cells, and maybe it uses electricity generated at a nuclear plant. And, maybe that nuclear plant is on the verge of a containment failure, which wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t use so much electricity and build exotic generating sources.
Every transformation of energy from one form to another is lossy. So increasing the number of transformations is usually a bad idea from an efficiency point of view. On the other hand, we have cars that run on gasoline. The same technology can be adapted to run on other flammable liquids. That might cause you to wonder if gasoline is the best way, but there were other concerns involved: Volatility (could have been worse), transportation, contamination, safety.
I was always suspicious of the reported MPG on automobiles. While you’re idling the engine in a parking lot or at a stoplight, you’re getting zero. The long-haul, cruising efficiency is going to be a lot higher than the average driver. YMMV. Did you ever ask how they came up with those numbers? When lawmakers debate things like the CAFE standards, do they just ignore the methodology? Like dubious accounting practices, I’m sure automakers could jigger the statistics in their favor. At least for a little while.
As with most things, the statistics are just a starting point. The real concern is total cost of ownership. Or maybe I should say ‘cost of operation’. As with every transaction, you give something to get something. Are you getting what you want? Are you giving too much? Can you even compare the alternatives? Are there hidden costs down the road to those do-it-yourself tweaks, like frequent engine replacement? The more complicated we make the calculations, the less anybody is willing to ask those questions.
The “Gallons Per Mile” discussion was priceless: It’s mainly an attempt to reframe the discussion in a different psychological light. Because people aren’t very good at dividing numbers; at thinking in ratios. But the point is well made: You can’t hope to get to 50MPG if you’re using your vehicle to ferry the soccer team, haul a ton of groceries up a mountain, or make frequent stops. And if that is what you hope to accomplish, then you ought to know the cost. And, small increases in efficiency make a big difference when you start low.
Did NASCAR ever think of running races with a fixed quantity of fuel for each driver? How much do those guys use in a race, anyway? If they burn it too fast, they will never reach the finish line: Efficiency matters, even at 200mph. That would emphasize for millions of people the importance of doing more with less, wouldn’t it?
When you store electricity in a battery, and use it to do work later, there is loss both coming and going. It is not necessarily the best way to store energy. The mere flowing of electricity causes some heat in the wires. The less it moves around, the better. Hybrid cars are a pretty good solution - most of the electricity is generated as it is needed. Even a gasoline powered vehicle has to store some energy a battery. A completely electric car can make you feel good because you never have to smell the gasoline fumes, but it isolates you from the site where that electricity is generated - and, some of the electricity is lost along the way. You could feel green, but cause some of the worst pollution of anybody - and when is someone going to come along and say “Soot and grime are good for global climate - it’s those odorless, colorless gases that are destroying the planet.”?
Anybody care to venture: What is the theoretical maximum efficiency for an automobile? Whose automobile? Are you considering the fabrication and maintenance costs? Usually, the price tag is supposed to incorporate those costs, but sometimes they’re waiting to surprise you later.
Posted in economics, media-studies | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:32:00 GMT
