ffdhghggg (u/ffdhghggg)

ffdhghggg commented on Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/con... · Posted by u/duck

ajmurmann · 4 years ago

Doesn't inflation affect wealthy people more, since any cash they have would go down in value? If it's true inflation income should go up with it.

ffdhghggg · 4 years ago

Wealthy people do not own much cash. Wealthy people own assets. The poor also do not have much cash, they consume goods to live.

Inflation increases the value of assets relative to consumption. Inflation increases the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

Deflation reduces the value of assets and makes consumption more affordable. Deflation reduces the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

ffdhghggg commented on We need to know the origin of Covid-19 desmoinesregister.com/sto... · Posted by u/RickJWagner

sschueller · 4 years ago

If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. For this reason I doubt we will ever find out what really happened as there is a lot of blame to go around.

Do we really need to know? Lab leaks are nothing new and regardless need to prevented at all cost. Maybe there needs to be an independent international regulatory setup that inspects these labs.

ffdhghggg · 4 years ago

The space shuttle was safe and saved money - until we had actual data regarding it's performance.

We need to understand the actual risk associated with these labs. One mitigation I can think of right now would be to build the labs in very remote locations, and require anyone leaving to isolate themselves for a month to check for disease. But no measures of that severity will be undertaken without evidence supporting the risks.

ffdhghggg commented on Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird thedrive.com/news/39427/h... · Posted by u/minding

Robotbeat · 4 years ago

It's interesting that "cost" is the reason given for why these vehicles aren't electric, but... how could that be? Batteries for electric carmakers are not that expensive any more, maybe $150/kWh.

LLVs are currently horrendously inefficient (fleet average of about 9mpg). They have a ~13 gallon tank for a range of about 120 miles. They drive about 18 miles a day on average (total fleet average, so some are idle and probably the typical route is 45 miles, but 18 miles is good for our purposes) and burn 2 gallons of gas. At $3/gallon, that's about $6 a day in fuel costs (and let's ignore brakes and oil changes). We could put a 75kWh battery in that thing, easily get 250 mile range (double the range of what the LLV is). For an efficiency of about 3.33 miles per kWh, and an average commercial electricity price of 11 cents per kWh, that's 59 cents per day in electricity cost. So every day, the electric one would save $5.40 in fuel costs (net).

Even with that generous 75kWh battery, you're talking just 6 years for it to pay for the electric battery to pay for itself in fuel costs vs the old vehicle. And these things are designed to last for multiple decades, plus this will drastically reduce oil changes and brake servicing costs. Are they really that cash strapped they'll ignore something that can save them that much? The US federal government definitely isn't strapped for cash. Does this really boil down to punitive fiscal requirements for the USPS put on by Congress and DeJoy? Because if so, that's inexcusable.

Or perhaps no one bid a competitively low price for an electric powertrain?

ffdhghggg · 4 years ago

People on HN are technical, so we're discussing technical reasons. However, that's not really how the government works.

USPS leadership had instructions to electrify the fleet. For whatever reason, they decided they didn't want to. Maybe they didn't want to deal with a risky change, maybe they thought it would hinder meeting their other obligations. Doesn't matter. They decided they didn't want to do it.

Their next step is then to write requirements in their rfp such that they can select a contractor that cannot meet the electric mandate. This allows them to legally pass the buck for the electric thing to their contractor, who will get paid big dollars to "develop" electric vehicles that their customer doesn't want.

Congress gets to brag about their environmental contributions, USPS gets the vehicles they want, and the contractor gets a sizable sum to do nothing. Win-win-win.