Speaking from experience, both are necessary. Public childcare and afterschool programs aren't a replacement for quality time with grandparents. They also don't cover weekends or evenings like grandparents can do.
A professional usually needs a tool when they need it and can't rely on the vagaries of availability at a library. And it's easy to kick out someone who checks out a tool all year.
Most consumable parts can be excluded from lending. Batteries are trickier.
You're totally right! I agree that batteries are also trickier but we're working on fixing this. If you have any ideas or thoughts, feel free to contact me at julien@patio.so
I like tool libraries. I belong to one myself. But I also own some tools, like a car jack and and torque wrench, even though I use them exactly twice a year.
If I relied on the tool library for those, they'd be checked out all month when I most needed them to put on or remove winter tires.
Yeah, that makes sense — some tools are just worth owning if you know you’ll need them at specific high demands times. I think that tool libraries arent a full replacement for personal gear, especially for high demand and seasonal stuff. I see them more as a complement, great for one off jobs or trying things before buying.
Waymo works where it works and it's useful where it works. Can a Mumbai autorickshaw handle an American freeway? Does that make it a pointless vehicle?
some things in "Car-culture" that surprised me on my trips to india;
1. People do not as a matter of their daily complaints complain about bad traffic, bad drivers, dents, door dings etc.
2. There are less accidents per capita than US
3. Insurance is required, body shops work better than in US.
4. Electrification of tuk-tuk fleet is....impressive.
Waymo/Autonomos driving would drastically slow down most of transporation infrastructure in most of the world. I don't think waymo should spend billions figuirng out how to drive better than Indians.
“As automakers were profit maximizing during the supply chain crisis era, you are going to prioritize the bigger vehicles, the more expensive vehicles with their higher margins,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told me. “Now we just don’t have” these cheaper models.
You also leave out the emissions exceptions for vehicles above a certain size, which also incentivizes manufacturers to build and sell larger vehicles.
Look at fords lineup now. No sedan. Its straight up embarrasing if you are the first lemming to start burning furniture to save on heat. But if the entire industry has been doing just this since 2008 then you are the fool for not playing the game your investors expect from you. Never mind how you might fare 10 years from now. Quarterly thinking dominates.
They started long ago. Ford himself was doing that. However what makes for maximum profit has changed over time. As cars last longer more and more people are not buying new cars so they have to make cars for the people left. If you want me to buy a new car it needs to be cheap - my 25 year old truck is paid off and still runs fine.
They’ve done it for ages but there were market constraints. The pandemic broke that in two key ways: the first was the chip shortage they accidentally created by breaking their supply contracts early on but the second was because so many people stopped using transit. That created a demand spike at the same time supply was limited, which they capitalized on by prioritizing the most expensive models for production since they knew many buyers would feel they had no ability to negotiate.
Higher interest rates and other inflation caused by profit-taking in other industries drove this to a head since consumers couldn’t just soak it up, but none of the manufacturers wants to be the first to lower their margins.
This. Yep, automakers have deliberately gone after higher profit margins per vehicle. Huge-volume, lower-cost cars are slowly going away. Get one while you can, if that's your thing.
If that were true, you wouldn't be able to buy multiple vehicles for under $18,000, which would have been a $10,000 vehicle at the turn of the century. How many $10,000 cars do you remember from 2000? I was in the market for my 3rd car by then and I can tell you the answer was zero. Cars are actually cheaper today than they've ever been DESPITE the increased safety and emissions features and you are exactly wrong in your claim.
The fact that most cars are priced at $60K doesn't mean cars cost that much to make, it means that the US car makers have decided to stop caring about poor people, leaving them to the used market while they go luxury, chasing ever higher margins from a smaller and smaller but ever-wealthier consumer.
Again, if safety or emissions requirements drove up prices, how is it legal for Nissan, Mitsubishi, Kia/Hundai and others to sell cars that cost under $10K in 2000 dollars when you couldn't buy new in 2000 for anywhere close to that? Just because Ford and GM WONT compete there doesn't mean competing there is cost prohibitive.
It's the biggest purchase most people make in their lives (and on a regular basis to boot), aside from real estate. Not the worst thing to be passionate about.
> a $1M house bought with $100K down and $900K mortgage is a worse deal for the seller as compared to $500K down and $500K financed.
Do sellers in the US know how large your down payment is? AFAIK that's not a thing in Canada. Offers either have a financing condition, or don't. If the offer doesn't have a financing condition, the buyer might be paying cash. But they could just be trying to present an offer with better terms, gambling that they'll definitely find financing somewhere or the other.
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