Average fleet age in EU looks to be around 13 years so when you say "most people", you're likely off by 10-15 years in terms of second hand purchases. Greece might be the only EU country that gets close to what you said. I get the point about affordability but it's good to base discussion on facts.
Also, EVs have been around for quite a few years now so it is no longer necessary to buy them new.
Thanks. Too late to edit. If anybody wants the actual link, Google can figure it out from my download path. :) The only PII in the link is also in my username. It also leaked that I'm probably a Linux user.
If you worry about such failure modes, you shouldn't drive a car at all.
And especially not one with an ICE.
The main batteries most often have a 8y/160,000km guarantee. (Some even more.)
There a enough affordable, used BEVs that are only a quarter through that milages and age.
ICE engines eat themselves in many more different kinds of weird ways: timing chains and belts, coolant leaks, any number of problems with valves and actuators. They're extraordinarily complex devices and it's a testament to engineering genius (and persistence) that we've made them this reliable. But they fail much more often than batteries or motors. They have many more moving parts. It's just the devil we know.
I've got two EVs. Basically zero problems. I've known one or two people who have had issues, but never with the drive train. Always something dumb like the "infotainment system" or (for a Tesla owning friend) stupid buzzing and vibration they couldn't make go away and stupid problems with door handles.
The Tesla weirdness is part of why I went with Nissans. They're 100% normal cars except for the electric drive train. All the other parts can be purchased at AutoZone and everything else can be worked on by a normal mechanic.
There's some mechanics in my area that have been learning how to do stuff with EVs like aftermarket battery upgrades on older models, but it's a bit expensive. Mine are 5 and 13 years old respectively and both batteries are fine. The 5yo one is the same as the day it was bought. The latter's lost some capacity but still very usable as a city car.
We picked up a used 2022 Leaf S+ a while back and it's been amazing.
Also just about the only shade tree mechanic EV. Even swapping a battery is doable by the typical car guy. Rebuilding one isn't much harder due to no cooling.
It's darkly amusing that while the author advises us not to let LLMs pick our words, their post includes this chunk of AI slop:
"Those rethinks are load-bearing parts of your voice. Readers won’t put their fingers on what’s wrong, but they’ll sense that you’ve become artificially-flavored."
The metaphor at the start is AI-like weirdness too: "without pasteurizing and jacking it with corn syrup." Pasteurising is good, corn syrup is bad - what the heck am I supposed to make of it? It's nonsense.
It may even have been handwritten by the author, but it's slop nonetheless.
You may be telling yourself that you're disciplined and you're just using the LLMs for review. But while you're reading their output, the slop makes its way directly into your brain anyway - and then it drips out into your writing.
I saw "load-bearing" there and instantly assumed Thomas was making a deliberate point that it's OK to use terms that LLMs have poisoned provided you use them effectively and in a way that adds to the piece.
I'm personally furious that "load-bearing" has become an LLM tell, it's a really useful metaphor!
I suspect the author was thinking "homogenizing" but his brain picked pasteurizing by accident. Pasteurizing and homogenizing are both things done to milk, but homogenizing has an additional meaning of making something uniform (and more loosely it's often used to imply that you've made something generic, bland, and boring).
"value creation for one's customers" - that is a "not even wrong" level of misunderstanding of the system dynamics of capitalism. The primary driver is generation of _profit_ for owners of the means of production. Many things fall out of that - the tendency to monopolise, for example.
It really doesn't have to be that way. The problem boils down to, as with practically all human systems, is human behavior. There is no system you can devise that is run by humans and not corruptible and exploitable by the worst of us. Or even just everyday people.
First: How do you know that every system is corruptible and exploitable?
And second: What if other systems are less corruptible and exploitable? How do you know whether all systems have the same potential for corruption and exploitation?
Capitalism is a system that explicitly rewards greed, and that gives the most power to the people with the most to gain from exploiting said power. Why is it unreasonable to believe that other systems are likely better on these fronts?
How do I know that a system maintained by people is exploitable by people? IDK, that's a real thinker, isn't it. That all systems are exploitable, in absence of human influence, isn't the argument I'm making. It's tautologically true that systems that humans design and implement and depend on the behavior of humans to continue to run would be exploitable by humans. You cannot design a system dependent on human action that is also immune to human nature.
As for the second, the more in control of the system humans are, the more they can exploit it. Your return on exploitation, which I think is really what you're getting at, is based on how diffuse the control and power is at the point that you exploit it. But the more diffuse control and power, the less responsive and effective the system is when working at full tilt. It's two sides of the same coin.
Capitalism is a system of decentralized resource allocation. Decentralized systems have their pros and cons, and other systems that would rely on centrally planned economies have pros and cons. Capitalism isn't the issue, unfettered capitalism is the issue.
After that opener I'm guessing this will be a waste of effort... yes, it might be a real thinker, because AFAICS the two statements don't form a tautology. Is this based on actual findings by research in game theory, or did you just decide that this must be the case?
Funnily enough, in my eyes it's obvious that capitalism in a globalized world must inevitably lead to unfettered capitalism, since the gravity effect of money along with competition between countries for their investments (with tax breaks etc. ) inevitably allows the capitalists to change the laws in their favor more and more. So I would ask for an objective measure of "how much in control humans are". I don't think it's a single dimension like you're implying, and I don't think capitalism is near any optimum due to the aforementioned effect.
Governments have power, not private companies. Private companies can influence the powerful, of course (as can you or I) but you're complaining about second order or third order power without caring about first order power.
Unfortunately this naive view breaks down as soon as lobbying is introduced, since it is a direct channel for private companies to influence governments.
> Unfortunately this naive view breaks down as soon as lobbying is introduced, since it is a direct channel for private companies to influence governments.
The naive view is to think that lobbying is automatically bad. Policymakers can choose who they talk to. If you're worried about corrupt policymakers, you've correctly identified where power resides: in government.
Is the alternative is to give the power directly to the powerful? Not only will they hold the guns, but they decide what the markets will bear - often-enough with food for the poor becoming optional, if history has any lessons.
Which non-capitalist system does not ultimately concentrate wealth and power even further? And, if nation-states are organisms, and survival of the fittest is a law, which of those systems can survive in the real world? Excepting perhaps those propped up by a disproportionate natural wealth and homogeneous culture, where it is easier for people to continue to believe in "our good" when hard times come.
Capitalism is the only system that pretends to respect human nature - gives us a lever that says, "want more stuff? provide more value." It gives the self-interested a healthy outlet that the other systems lack. It must be managed, though, by power, and when the two collude you get fascism. So, I guess maybe I share your view, that lobbying breaks the system.
Globally active/influential social systems are still very young. In the couple hundred years such systems have been able to form, we've only attempted a minority of realistically possible systems, and most of this data was collected under very specific sets of circumstances which most likely only cover a tiny subset of realistically possible circumstances.
IMO it's not possible to justify your claims without taking a whole tower of (IMO likely false) assumptions for granted. I'd love to go into detail on each assumption I see, but I've had similar comments regarding flaws of capitalist systems get derailed too many times by very angry commenters who insist that such thoughts are not worth discussing and MUST NOT be discussed.
You think that the liberty of capitalism enables selfish assholes to have influence, while under the constraints of communism the people with the influence are not selfish assholes.
> "value creation for one's customers" - that is a "not even wrong" level of misunderstanding of the system dynamics of capitalism. The primary driver is generation of _profit_ for owners of the means of production. Many things fall out of that - the tendency to monopolise, for example.
I don't see why you're talking like this. It's "not even wrong" in the sense that it's entirely correct. Monarchy and socialism grab money through taxes, and if you think monopolies are bad, wait til you're forced to use the state service that has no motivation to do well because there's no competition. It's not only a monopoly, it's a monopoly that takes your money by force.
Capitalism requires investment and risk and competition to drive value up for customers who can choose. So you need to produce value for your customers to survive, and produce a profit after costs and taxes.
It's where you're in a pen with rows of desks and you just have to use whichever desk is free, you don't have your own desk. If you have any stuff you need to work beyond what's on the desk (say, accessibility equipment), you might get a locker (these are often underprovisioned) and you have to cart your stuff to and from the locker every day. It is awful.
I think you're conflating intelligence with consciousness. The point of Blindsight is to lead us to the idea that intelligence doesn't require consciousness (and further, that consciousness might even act as a limiter on intelligence).
Also, EVs have been around for quite a few years now so it is no longer necessary to buy them new.
https://www.acea.auto/publication/report-vehicles-on-europea...