Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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People may continue to pay for $4-5/gallon gas if they so choose. It is a free country, after all. Gas prices will not go back down so long as refinery capacity is constrained [1] [2] [3] (which it will be in perpetuity, as investment will not flow to it with fossil fuel phase outs in progress, and refinery lifecycles are measured in decades). Let the free hand of the market do its thing. People will figure it out [4], pricing signals and all that jazz [5].

You can lead a horse to water but drowning it does no good. Let it drink when it is sufficiently thirsty. Maybe gas prices prices have to go even higher, who knows! I am morbidly curious to see.

[1] https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...

[2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distill...

[3] https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-marg...

[4] https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-pr...

[5] https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-ch...

The best thing that can come from $5 gas is marginalization of people, such as yourself, who think that $5 gas, or any other high cost that broadly effects the entire economy and robs people of purchasing power is in any way good.

People don't are about where their energy comes from, what size cages the chickens that lay their eggs live in, how their plastic gets recycled, etc, etc, until they are economically comfortable enough to do so. $5 gas is shortsighted and counterproductive.

For all the low effort quipping about the virtues EV adoption $5 gas is going to make a hell of a lot of people dust off ye olde wood stove this winter and engage in all sorts of other behavior that is not good for the environment but helps them preserve their standard of living.

Spoken by someone with enough money to have owned multiple Tesla's IIRC.

The comment was focused on those who can afford an EV but choose not to get one, not those who cannot afford one. Nuance. Consider it in the context of the comment above it, complaining that it takes a bit longer to charge than fueling a combustion vehicle. Citation 5 in my above comment even shows EVs to be 3-6 times cheaper to operate.

We want to help the poor; enact a carbon tax and rebate scheme. Let wealthy carbon consumers buy low income folks EVs. They are unable to afford them on their own.

I have a great deal of compassion for genuine hardship. I do not have compassion for voluntary suboptimal economic decisions by people of means out of a minimal amount of convenience sacrificed.

> I do not have compassion for voluntary suboptimal economic decisions by people of means out of a minimal amount of convenience sacrificed

No, you have a lot of compassion for suboptimal economic decisions.

For example, you advocate for charging infrastructure that only charges one brand of EV even though that is clearly a suboptimal economic decision that builds dumb infrastructure with less utility.

Worse than that, you mock the low price of the Chevy Bolt even though it's a good hatchback with decent range for an EV.

If you genuinely want to help the poor then you want to advocate for infrastructure that can charge all EVs regardless of brand. That way when people eventually buy one of the low price EVs of the world it can be charged just as easily as a high priced EV.

Common infrastructure helps everyone, rich and poor alike. Brand exclusive infrastructure helps only the few.

> I have a great deal of compassion for genuine hardship.

The rapid increase in gas prices is causing a lot of genuine hardship. Not to mention the follow on effects of higher consumer prices for essentials like food.

That’s a very “let them eat cake” attitude that doesn’t serve anyone well. EVs are simply not an option for the majority of people in the world until their cost decreases and their range increases.

Fossil fuels need to be phased out but forcing gas prices up this fast is a very cruel way to do it.

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