Re: 50+ and affordable | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Brian Bartholomew (bbstat.ufl.edu) | |
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 01:19:16 -0700 (PDT) |
"Lisa Poley" <lpoley [at] vt.edu> writes: > more commonly higher prices are seen with new technologies and > innovations that have not yet been able to take advantage of the > cost savings that come from scaled up production. Right! Less economy of scale means more resources consumed to build each unit. > The higher 'resource' costs usually reflects higher priced labor > inputs and initial R&D and capital outlays Right! High-skill labor took a lot of resources (universities etc.) to produce. Non-reoccuring engineering costs lots of resources. Capital is or proxies for natural resources. The resource costs of initial R&D and factory construction are just as physically real as the costs of production after the product is designed. If a product can't pay back its initial design investment via income from sales, it is a net resource loss. ----- Social justice is an entirely separate topic from counting resource use. Slavery is an evil crime; the victims should be freed and the slavemasters punished. That said, I do not think Wal-Mart suppliers kill workers if they try to resign their jobs. If these jobs are uniformly so horrible, why would people take them? > Purchase of cheap goods imported from far away has significantly > negative environmental impacts that are not well accounted for in > the final price of the good because we don't currently internalize > costs of the environment of CO2 emissions from transportation into > the price of the goods we purchase. The true resource cost of ocean shipping may be close to negligible relative to the value of what's shipped: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.10/ports.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set= Today, transport costs account for about 1 percent of the final price of consumer goods, making country of origin largely an afterthought in purchasing decisions. True, that 1% doesn't count air pollution. But it's a big ocean and there may not be that much air pollution. How many harbors have a smog problem? Brian
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Re: 50+ and affordable Cindy T, June 29 2007
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Re: 50+ and affordable Marganne, June 30 2007
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Re: 50+ and affordable Brian Bartholomew, June 30 2007
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- Re: 50+ and affordable Brian Bartholomew, July 2 2007
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Re: 50+ and affordable Brian Bartholomew, June 30 2007
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Re: 50+ and affordable Marganne, June 30 2007
- Re: 50+ and affordable Ruthpoet, June 29 2007
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