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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

You're not accounting for the size of the portion. The nickel bottle of Coca-Cola was 6oz. Today's standard vending machine bottle is 20oz.

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Which gives us 480,000 ounces of coke in 1950 vs 505,000 ounces of coke in 2015. A 5.2% increase in the amount of coke you can buy for a year's salary. (I'm actually kinda surprised the price is that stable.)

It's easier to sell one bigger package than several smaller.

I would not be surprised, if the 505,000 ounces in 20oz packages cost less to produce in 1950 prices, than 480,000 ounces in 6oz packages. (Just one physical package, not three separate).

It's a set of tradeoffs. The 6oz bottles were (I think) returnable. Even better than recycling, they only needed to be washed/sterilized to re-use. I'm old enough to remember Coke and other brands in returnable bottles up to 16oz.

They were heavy. The transportation costs savings with the lighter plastic bottles (combined with maybe the raw materials savings, and savings not having to transport, handle, wash, and sterilize the emptys) made plastic more economical than returnable glass.

Manufacturing cost for glass bottles almost certainly higher than plastic. You have to melt either sand or recycled crushed glass which takes a lot of energy.

Some jurisdictions do have returnable plastic bottles. They are much heavier than the disposable ones but still lighter than glass.

Interestingly for some reason beer in plastic bottles has never caught on, it's mostly sold in glass bottles and cans.

And then neither has canned water caught on, despite all the hand-wringing about waste from water bottles.

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/06/banning-bottled-water-increa...

What I love about that study is that it's confirmation of what should be common sense. People purchase disposable bottles because of the convenience.

This is just my opinion but I don't believe that the first step should be trying to regulate people into better behavior, you have to educate them.

At Islanders hockey games, beer is sold in plastic bottles with the cap taken off.

This has been a growing trend in many arenas and stadiums in Florida too. I've seen them in at least 5 different venues across the state now.

This is pretty standard for bottled water at music festivals as well.

Plastic bottles instead of glass bottles probably also help. You don't have to be nearly as careful when you handle plastic bottles.

(I /think/ they are also cheaper to produce.)

And considerably lighter. Good for logistics.

I wouldn't be shocked if they make sure it's always about as affordable as it used to be, since they do want everyone drinking it (as opposed to companies like Apple going for status/luxury bucks).

Lesser quality ingredients are also used. Additionally, Coca-cola is mostly water, which means its price will largely be driven by the price of water, which hopefully means that everyone will still be able to drink it.

This thread is damn good economics.

Your standard 2010s American is also roughly 3x as large as the typical 1950s American, though.

Sounds like you're suggesting that instead of doing a headcount for population growth, we should be looking at biomass. Interesting. This would mace sense for big mac economics and the newly founded field of coke economics.

Yes. GDP per capita is a meaningless statistic - what we want to know is GDP per kilogram. Likewise, American productivity as measured per worker is a meaningless statistic, but the productivity of the American worker-kilogram will determine our global competitiveness.

It makes sense when you think about it. Measuring things at the level of an individual implies some sort of "consciousness", but we're learning in neuroscience/philosophy class that consciousness is mostly an illusion. I mean, our brains are made of meat. How can meat be conscious?

Never mind how! If meat can be conscious.. lets just say it can for the moment.. than it stands to reason that more meat can be more conscious. They're growing more, bigger meat all the time! Maybe if their meatbodies get big enough... Nevermind, this is stupid.. yep, you're right... meat can't be conscious... I know I know. I got carried away.

relevant: THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT <http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html>

Besides, we could solve the world's energy problems by burning idiots - they are renewable, and often contain lots of fat.

This solves the matrix plot hole!

Your typo ("this would mace sense") is actually quite topical, because MACE stands for "major adverse cardiac events".

Did they sell 2-liters in 1940? A 2-liter costs less than a 20oz bottle in many cases.

And you're not accounting for the price of the bottle relative to the cost of the water/syrup.

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