There’s no profit in converting to electric vehicles: a trillion dollars of electrical infrastructure upgrade costs would come due from corporate apartment holding companies, small-scale landlords, and parking garage owners having to deploy electric outlets of any wattage to every parking spot currently offered to renters (the majority of car owners) today. Just as with COVID and HVAC air exchange rates, the benefits of doing the work are outweighed by the inability to generate recurring corporate revenue from it. Rivian and Tesla have likely reached saturation with the wealthy homeowner market and none of their profits are being forcibly redirected to the unpaid infrastructure costs, so of course the U.S. is stalled on EVs: the U.S. is stalled on at-home EV charging.
You say “there’s no profit” and then describe the most tremendous business opportunity in a hundred years.
There’s no profit for the current oligarchy; but to say there is no profit to be made from electrifying a billion plus parking spots; to install and manage infrastructure for millions of small business partners, to build new power plants with ever increasing demand — it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream.
Of course to admit such would be to admit we are in a oligarchic structure that is antithetical to a supposed “free market” and so the capitalists must conjure stories about how electricity just is impossible to produce and electrical lines literally cannot be added to the American infrastructure or it will all suddenly topple over.
Differentiating this narrative from the expansion of high speed internet is difficult. Woe is me the oligarchic natural monopoly subsidized or wholly compensated by the taxpayer but unable to advance at all; change is impossible.
> it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream
Landlords would either have to give up profit to pay for these installations, and/or raise rent on their tenants to afford them.
Many tenants can neither inflation increases in rent, nor increases covering the capital expenditure of electrical outlets in rental parking spots. This share of tenants grows each year that inflation outpaces wages, independent of whether landlords bother with that capital expenditure (which, to date, they largely do not).
As this business opportunity is associated primarily with the worker class rather than any wealthy class, the opportunity only becomes profitable when those businesses that employ 'worker class' personnel — think Starbucks barista rather than SFBay A.I. engineer — are distributing profits to those personnel in the form of wage increases to a sufficient degree that the household's renting power is not decreasing. Any wage gap chart will show that, since the 1980s, non-wealthy households — including the former 'middle' class — have experienced a continuous reduction in purchasing power for several decades. One can reasonable assume this will continue barring non-free interventions in the market.
Given that any reasonable business would never voluntarily give up profits as wages unless compelled, we can assume that those footing the bill for the 'entrepreneur's wet dream' you describe would be landlords — there is, quite literally, no one else left to pay that bill. The state can't impose regulations requiring such upgrades and let the free market work it out because landlords will simply dump that cost into rent, sharply worsening the nationwide poverty and housing epidemic, which would reduce the total amount of revenue available from the rental market. Neither the state nor the landlords would benefit from that outcome.
If you have a different theory of free market that involves business voluntarily sharing revenue with workers without raising price, or landlords investing revenue in enhancements without raising rental costs — and especially without imposing 'non-free' regulatory or union pressures — then I'd love to hear more about that.
Landlords increasing rent totally sounds like part of a free market entrepreneurs wet dream to me! If I’m a free market entrepreneur the last thing I want is pesky rent controls limiting my ability to provide supply! Have you ever rented? Did they ever decrease your rent when the economy was looking down or do you acknowledge that they don’t actually care about the income of their tenants insofar as they can extract revenue from someone?
You must feel that a free market cares that some people will no longer be able to afford rent; I don’t believe the economic definition of a free market includes such an idea; I think it’s very happy to displace people from their homes in order to shuffle in those who are willing to pay higher rents; see also: gentrification
Your point hinges on the idea that rent for people making wages below “SFBay A.I. engineer” is not increasing or would not increase because of the inelasticity of these consumers to price increases; can you substantiate this claim in any way?
It’s also worth noting that there are lots of government grants going towards electrification of vehicles including installation of EV chargers, so even removing your idea about landlords refusing to raise rents because they are worried about their tenants (lol) there is still easy room for landlords to get grants to pay for the installation/maintenance of these chargers anyways.
This repeated and explicitly-sexual metaphor in a non-sexual context is rather wearisome.
> You must feel that a free market cares
A free market does not qualify for use the property of 'caring'. Neither emotions nor intentions are a property of a 'market', free or otherwise, and I categorically reject all statements, inferences, and/or implications to the contrary (such as "that a free market cares").
> can you substantiate this claim in any way?
I made a statement in public for all to hear, I am unable to defend the statements I make, and am simply unwilling to have a reasoned discussion. You have been unfailing polite, and I have been nothing but rude.
> This repeated and explicitly-sexual metaphor in a non-sexual context is rather wearisome.
Thanks for the English lit critique I guess but your opinion on various colloquialisms in the English language is not relevant to the conversation.
Your other points are similarly irrelevant to the convo, you use the idea of a market “caring” literally, claiming that of course a market doesn’t have emotions and can’t care which is plainly trying to deflect your suggestion that the market could never reach position x because it’s ultimately unprofitable for a landlord to engage in some behavior long term and you refused to materially respond to or acknowledge any of my points. Your post is abstracted from reality further than the idea that a market could “care” about something being taken literally. Obviously the market is not a human with wants, cares or needs.
> I made a statement in public for all to hear, I am unable to defend the statements I make
Well I’ve asked for you to defend them and this was your response so I assume you are being genuine instead of sarcastic here? Why respond at all I wonder.
If you can point to where I’m being impolite or offended you I’m happy to acknowledge this; I wasn’t planning to have a conversation with someone so sensitive that things like “I think your idea is bad” is a personal insult or impolite.
