dgpcolorado said:
GetOffYourGas said:
I agree. I think this is a bigger concern than congestion. The "all-you-can-eat" payment plan encourages waste. Think about it - how many people have eaten at a buffet restaurant, yet never come away feeling like they ate too much? I mean, after all, you have to get your money's worth...
Well, I did at a buffet-type restaurant two weeks ago; a little self-control isn't all that difficult.
So far as "waste" is concerned, I am not persuaded. I put in solar panels that weren't remotely cost-effective just because I wanted to and could. Is that a "waste" of resources? It certainly is from an economics point of view. My view is that people buy less useful toys than my solar panels, so I'm not going to wring my hands about it. Nor was my LEAF remotely cost-effective; it was a "waste" by any reasonable measure. I bought it because I had been wanting to drive on "sunpower" for many years and I could afford it.
Sure, you made choices that didn't make any economic sense, but you
knew they didn't make any economic sense, and that you were doing them because you wanted to. If there's one thing that's been established by centuries of social experiments from the individual scale up through utopian communes to entire countries, it's that if using more of something doesn't cost you anything, people will waste it.
To take one example, in the 1800s, there were a lot of experimental social communes in this country, generally falling into religious sects (cults, if you will), free-thinking/free-love or some hybrid of the two varieties (not much has changed in the interim). One of the latter was the Oneida Community (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community), which I had to do a report on long ago for some class, and which lead me to reading a book describing the rise and fall of it. It was fairly typical of the breed in that residents weren't charged for basic necessities, most of which were made on site, were bartered for commune-made products, or else bought for money from sale of commune products.
Anyway, after the commune had been in existence for some time, they found that they were losing money at a rapid rate, and that they needed to find ways to cut down on costs. One of the basic commodities that was provided for free was soap, and they were using inordinate quantities of same. You might say that this was due to some 'cleanliness is next to godliness' thing, but it had a much simpler explanation. The stuff was free, so they simply wasted it. Soap would be left in wet soap dishes where it liquified and would be thrown out. It was wasted in numerous other ways. After all, if they needed more, they just went to the storehouse and took as much as they wanted. Similar issues arose with other free commodities.
I forget the details, so don't remember whether they changed to a base allotment per family member per month and charged for any extra, or whether everyone had to pay for all the soap they now had to buy, but the results were instantaneous; even though the price of the soap was very low, it now had _value_, and soap use dropped by some ridiculous % (I don't recall the number, but think it was at least 50% and might have been something like 80%).
While individual human beings may be capable of self-limiting their waste even when there's no economic benefit to them, as a group, anything that's free is considered of no value, and will be wasted.
dgpcolorado said:
If you really want to talk about "waste" we shouldn't drive cars at all and should rely on GRA's bicycles and public transportation. That would mean that people couldn't live in my county, for the most part. Again, I'm not persuaded: I worked hard to be able to afford to retire young and live here. And I bicycle commuted for the previous 20+ years — more than 43,000 miles — so I figured I had paid my dues. And I still try to bicycle commute 800-900 miles per year here, despite a route that is very steep and challenging and weather that makes it unsafe or impractical much of the time.
So, if you drive a car you are part of the waste-of-resources problem; depends on where you draw the line. I paid rather dearly for my Supercharger access and I really enjoy using it. I'm also rather glad that we don't all have to become subsistence farmers to survive, as some — not necessarily anyone here — would prefer.
Agreed, you paid your dues, and you are also aware that there are costs to any lifestyle you choose. The average person isn't aware of that, and needs some external method of quantifying that. To date, no one has come up with one that has a wider influence than putting an economic value on something. I'm curious, if the price of your S60, which included either $2k or $2.5k for the SC fittings and access, had been less, say $100 and then pay as you go, would you still choose free for life? Even if it meant you couldn't afford the car as soon? What if free for life was raised to $10 or $20k, assuming that most people didn't opt for it? All I'm saying is that most people need a goad to think about what the true cost of using/doing more of something is.
One of the reasons (by no means the primary one; I'm saving over 50%/year now) I changed from conventional car insurance to Pay As You Drive is that it helped make clear to me just how much extra each mile I drive costs me. Before, I had a large yearly mileage allowance, and as long as I was under that there was no cost for driving more than I needed to. Now, I know what that per-mile cost is, and factor that in to my decision as to whether or not to drive, wait until I can combine trips, use some other method or decide that the trip isn't worth it.
I think it's fair to say that I'm more aware of external costs (environmental and other) than the average person, but even so I find my monthly car insurance bill (and daily on-line log that shows the distance of each trip) a very useful reminder of externalities. It's certainly stopped me on a few occasions from just hopping in the car and going, and caused me to bike/use transit instead. At other times I decide that the car's speed, convenience, weather protection etc. vs. other methods is worth the extra cost. I'm a big fan of car-sharing for the same reason: the explicit cost per mile or time is quantified.
Summing up, whether Tesla offers several annual kWh plans + overage charges, or straight per kWh charging, IMO is less important than making sure people pay at least something for each extra kWh they use, just to provide that mental reminder that there is a cost. And free-for-life doesn't do that.
