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Comment by TomMckenny | Hacker News Reader

>There are two important actors left out of this analysis: consumers and parts suppliers.

This is indeed plausible and has happened for other commodities but note: 1) since the model-T, inflation adjusted consumer prices for automobiles have never dropped and 2) car manufacturers have historically replicated or bought any serious profit centers in their supply chain.

>Evil

Shareholders act in their interest, employees act in theirs. Often everyone ends up fairly satisfied. Is that not how the system is supposed to work and is describing it plainly without effusive praise now automatically suspect?

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Would it still be legal to produce a model-T? I imagine it would run afoul of all sorts of quality and safety regulations.

That might be linked to the lack of price reductions. I selling a model-T were still legal it would be likely be laughably cheap.

A lot of technology improvements that would have reduced prices are eaten by increased government regulation. The consensus position is that that is a good outcome.

No, it would be unsalable. Emissions, safety, etc. Even if you made it by hand at an art-museum level of fabrication quality...no first-world government would allow its sale as a passenger vehicle.

> This is indeed plausible and has happened for other commodities but note: 1) since the model-T, inflation adjusted consumer prices for automobiles have never dropped and 2) car manufacturers have historically replicated or bought any serious profit centers in their supply chain.

While that may be true, the word 'car' is hiding all of the consumer surplus. Cars are not simply repackaged model Ts. Todays cars are orders of magnitude better in myriad ways than a model T. The fact that the price merely hasn't dropped in inflation adjusted terms really means nothing here. What consumers are getting for their money has increased dramatically.

Yes of course cars now are vastly superior. I was responding to the claim that the shift to electric will reduce gross revenue which reduce the sticker price and so explain any workforce reduction.

So we clearly agree, sticker price has not gone down since the assembly line. So to say it is happening now is not really justified. Especially since, far from say the Yugo approach, electric currently is very much billed as an improvement over petroleum (correctly imo). But while cost of ownership maybe less, nowhere is the sticker price pitched as a cheap alternative to petroleum. And this is what affects manufacturers and the point I was addressing.

>>Evil

> Shareholders act in their interest, employees act in theirs. Often everyone ends up fairly satisfied. Is that not how the system is supposed to work and is describing it plainly without effusive praise now automatically suspect?

Apologies, I think I mistakenly inserted an implied value judgement when reading your original post. Rereading your post I see that your words can be read with a neutral tone.

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