Submitted by nastratin t3_10vuq0g in Futurology
akmalhot t1_j7miux6 wrote
Reply to comment by pinkfootthegoose in New battery seems to offer it all: lithium-metal/lithium-air electrodes by nastratin
Haha pass savings on to consumer ?
mhornberger t1_j7mkz71 wrote
Only on Reddit has this never happened. Meanwhile LCD and plasma TVs were ~$10-20K in 2000 or so. Cost of long-distance and international calling has plummeted. Cost of lighting. Cost of computer storage. The list of things that got cheaper for the consumer is vast, and much longer than the list of things that haven't.
akmalhot t1_j7mml1f wrote
Have cars gotten cheaper in that time?
mhornberger t1_j7mndj3 wrote
They aren't making the same cars today they did in 1970. Far more safety features now, safer construction, more fuel-efficient, air conditioning is no longer an optional add-on, etc. But despite all that, yes, they're cheaper after adjusting for inflation.
- https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/planes-trains-and-automobiles/how-much-did-popular-cars-cost-every-year-since-1950-in-2020-dollars/
- https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1109174_have-cars-actually-gotten-more-expensive-over-time
Adjusting for inflation, the Ford Model T cost almost $25K. Do we have cars on the market today cheaper than that?
Bean_Juice_Brew t1_j7mqs11 wrote
AC was an add-on for some cars in the 2000s (looking at you, Honda Civic DX)
akmalhot t1_j7modyt wrote
I was talking about your 2000 timeline
TV's have vastly improved since then
Higher barriers to entry mean less cuts parity. How many companies make TV's now
mhornberger t1_j7mot4v wrote
> TV's have vastly improved since then
While also getting dramatically cheaper. This was the same point as with automobiles--they have gotten cheaper even while improving. I brought up the Model T just because it was so iconic, and has historical significance. It wasn't the only data point in those articles.
>How many companies make TV's now
Even TVs from the same companies are far cheaper. I'm not talking just about knock-off brands, but Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, etc.
TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qftex wrote
We went out and got a 65" t.v. - the thing looks like a movie theatre in our living room. Compare that to the little black & white bubble boxes i had as a kid.
If they could do something similar to the cost of housing, i would relax much easier.
mhornberger t1_j7qgjul wrote
Housing could never come down as much as TVs have. But the current housing crisis is mainly because of zoning and other regulations that reserve land for single-family detached homes. We've allowed homeowners to block the building of density, to protect the spiraling value of their asset.
Suburbia doesn't scale well. And unfortunately a century of culture changes, television, etc has linked "the American Dream" with owning a single-family detached home. Which entrenched sprawl and car dependence. Plus people now view housing, even their own home, as an investment. Housing can't both be affordable and a good investment. Those are conflicting goals.
TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qko3y wrote
It is both weird and ironic that Canada (2nd largest country in the world, tops for softwood production) seems to suffer from a space and materials shortage.
You are right though: this struggle is political-economic. There are no laws restricting the number of televisions nor where-how we can build them ('some of it might be toxic, maybe?'). Construction has been regulated since medieval times (well... not in Canada so much, but you see what i am agreeing with here).
Still, it saddens me to see technology bonk its head against human stubbornness. We have had amazingly cheap straw housing for decades. Now we can obviously print them. Heck, Sears made pre-fab homes back in the 1970s (just looked into it - apparently a pre-fab saves on 'time' but not much 'money' - they still exist now). Land is also a problem because most countries have weird 'dead zones'. The Canadian shield, for example, can't sustain much life (it is a large smooth rock with a few tragic weeds growing on it). Amazing place to build a house, tragically no one could live there.
It is a weird battle. It appears we are solving every aspect of living (heating, food, lighting, insulation, circulation of air and fluids, etc) and yet we still can't find a space to live. That's just upsetting.
mhornberger t1_j7qnnml wrote
Well our housing standards also went up. We could throw up dirt-floor tarpaper shacks with no electricity or plumbing tomorrow, but no one would consider that "real" housing. We used to have single-room occupancy housing, rooming houses, bunk-houses etc that did serve the poor. They've been banned by zoning and NIMBYs, which increases the housing crisis. But even when I advocate for these to be built, people say "that's not real housing!"
TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7sfmd7 wrote
This is a really nifty point. The houses went to a solid middle class standard but the wages went nowhere in four decades, effectively pricing people out of their own homes.
Well put, but i am surprised that i haven't seen this before.
mhornberger t1_j7shcyh wrote
Houses have also gotten much larger. If you compare price per square foot, the increase in price isn't as great. But our expectations have gone up, faster than our income.
- https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/
- https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-us/
- https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/todays-new-homes-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-the-living-space-per-person-has-doubled-over-last-40-years/
Per that last link:
>>On a per square foot basis using median home prices and median square footage, the inflation-adjusted price of new homes has been relatively stable since 1973
So our houses are larger, better insulated, etc. Our standards have gone up. But our income hasn't gone up nearly as much.
I think there's a similar issue with childcare, another big issue. When I was a kid, childcare was a random teenager. Plus I was frequently home by myself, at an age where that would be illegal today. But now childcare workers get paid more, are CPR trained, insured, etc. Plus we have more expectation that childcare be enriching, rather than the kid being dumped in front of the television.
TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7t9gmt wrote
This is wild: i cannot imagine ANY home in the Vancouver BC mainland area. They were horribly expensive decades ago and this went crazy. You are right though: there are houses that are considered 'heritage' and they are very much cottage sized.
Nifty take on childcare-inflation. That also goes along with eduction inflation - everyone is expected to have at least one degree to be a 'professional'. I wonder how else the workforce changed besides the elimination of most farmers and weird shifts in trades.
One of the things they mentioned in problems with pre-fab houses, they noticed that having a 'Big Room' was hard to build and ship in factories. So what they did was combination building: they would have all the small rooms pre-fab built and the large room would be built on-site by the trades.
I wonder if this is why pre-fab homes are less popular. It is just harder to build these mega homes ('made up entirely of large rooms') with pre-fab, so collectively people gave up on them.
Must get to bed... but lots of stuff to mull on. Thank you.
pinkfootthegoose t1_j7nk222 wrote
They are getting cheaper because you are the product.
mhornberger t1_j7nkg8h wrote
They were cheaper even before smart TVs. Computer monitors are also cheaper, higher resolution, and so on. And a TV going from $10K to $500 can't be made up by them selling your data.
pinkfootthegoose t1_j7njzs5 wrote
yes, a car made in the 1970s and earlier was lucky to make it to 100,00 miles and you have a lot more maintenance that added to the yearly cost.
TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qfgnt wrote
Not only does the durability of the Toyota-Honda group blow my mind, that pales in comparison to an electric car!
Except the battery of course. So many articles suggest that the bulk of an electric car is the battery that dies in less than ten years - and we are looking forward to a tsunami of car-sized bricks to recycle.
I honestly don't know what to believe at this time. It is nice that my 2003 Matrix still works though.
pinkfootthegoose t1_j7qg49e wrote
recycling should not be a problem. many old EV batteries can be repurposed as home batteries for a second life.
TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qktg3 wrote
I know, right?
Big things, unlike 'toy' batteries. Few elements. Just... melt them down and reuse the parts, yes? An engineer friend of mine suggests it is not so simple.
I do like the idea of using them as house-batteries. If we can find the space?
94746382926 t1_j7wj2nq wrote
Reddit assumes that any technical advancement is automatically gonna be in the hands of one super monopoly that never lowers prices for any reason.
In reality, there are plenty of competitors driving prices down for most industries.
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