Tool Time
Jim Henley responds to my earlier comments on SUV's, along with a bunch of other people's remarks. He answers my "good libertarian" remark by tagging me a "typical liberal scientist," and accusing me of "imagining that he can calculate the "legitimate need" of someone who is not him with the precision that he might calculate the strength of a magnetic field."
Leaving aside the fact that I'm an experimentalist, and thus measure things more than I calculate them, this is kind of a funny remark, since one of my main points was that a similar calculation lies at the heart of Jim's original article, and it's done wrong. Jim's whole premise is that the occasional need to haul or tow something justifies owning an SUV, and as supporting evidence he cites the cost of renting SUV's. He quotes an email in the new post that makes a similar assumption, drawing an analogy between an SUV and a chain saw:
As you pointed out, one doesn't necessarily need to own an SUV (or a chain saw, or whatever), assuming that such an implement can be obtained and utilized when necessary. What's not considered, however, is the human cost associated with such actions. Your rent-the-SUV example leaves out the time and effort necessary to arrange for the rental, get someone to take you to to the rental place, pick it up, check it over to make sure the last user didn't trash something that will leave you stranded, return it when done, etc. While you're doing this, what else of equal or greater value doesn't get done?
The analogy fails because, as I said in my earlier post, it doesn't account for all the costs. Owning a chain saw that I never use costs me nothing (after the original purchase price), and thus is probably cheaper than hiring one a couple of times a year. Owning an SUV instead of a regular car incurs continuing operating costs that need to be weighed against the costs of obtaining the SUV benefits elsewhere.
This is the classic "Huge Sale, Big Savings" trap. In the same way that the comparison between full price and sale price is meaningless for items you weren't planning on buying, the comparison is not between "free" and "$400 a week rental fee." Yeah, that $400 lump sum looks awfully expensive, but it's got to be compared to the monthly extra cost of owning a bigger vehicle (extra gas, higher insurance rates, etc.). Likewise the occasional $40 delivery fee. (It should also be noted that Lowe's and Home Depot will (at least around here) rent you a truck for about $20/day if you need to haul stuff home.)
I'm not claiming that I know how to calculate someone else's "need" for an SUV (though I'll go out on a limb and say that $50,000 SUV's with no towing rig and leather upholstery probably weren't really bought because the owner needed off-road capability), so much as I'm claiming that most people who own SUV's are calculating their own need wrong. They're weighing occasional costs against the imaginary free use of an owned vehicle, not the continuing cost of operating a bigger vehicle.
In more general terms, my core objection to SUV's (other than the fact that they're unsafe and annoying on the road) is that they're a bad compromise being made for bad reasons. If you really want a vehicle with large cargo capacity and towing capability, you want either a pickup truck or a station wagon (or possibly a minivan), depending on whether you're hauling construction equipment or children. An SUV is a bastard cross between the two-- not as much cargo space or towing power as a truck, more expensive and less safe than a station wagon-- and not as good as either. People buy them because they're sold as being cooler than either, and manufacturers push them as a dodge around CAFE standards.
If you want a tool analogy, owning an SUV because you might eventually need to haul something is like using a chain saw to trim your hedges every week because you might someday need to cut down a tree.
Posted at 8:48 AM | link | follow-ups |