Letters to the Editor
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The WSJ gives Hummer owners the hummer they so demonstrably demand.
As per Leonard's allusion to Gandhi ("They can't be ignored, so they must be ridiculed"), we're halfway to winning.
Also, it's amusing to consider that someone would recommend driving a Hummer as a demonstration of anti-smugness (I guess that would be modesty). If not to demonstrate your smugness, why else would you voluntarily drive a Hummer? (Aside from misguided beliefs about the relative safety of various vehicles.)
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Smug Prius owners
As a smug Prius owner, I have to admit Jenkins has few points. We do pay a premium to have a “lifestyle” or “image” car. But nowhere near the premium that SUV owners pay for the same reason. SUV owners want a giant car that makes them look sexually available. Prius owners want to make a political statement with their cars, but make no mistake—the Prius is considered a sexy ride by many blue-staters.
Furthermore, most of us are quite aware that we are subsidizing Toyota. Sure, it allows them to sell more trucks, but we’ve also helped create a market for hybrids, with falling prices and rising production. We took one for the team, eyes wide open.
Will someone else use the oil? Of course. The oil is all going to be gone in a few decades (maybe a very few). But saying Prius owners are responsible for the oil being used faster is to blame us for other people’s behavior, which we oppose. That’s the trick of market rhetoric—it makes blame easy to move around. Markets give us freedom, or they make us utterly helpless; it all depends on the point the editorial writer is trying to make. It’s time to tell the truth, that market rhetoric is a shell game, and the WSJ editorial page is the shiftiest character on the corner.
One’s choice of a car is one of the very few ways an individual can make any sort of a difference. As long as we’re stuck in a country with Texas and Montana, we’re never going to have decent environmental laws. Owning a Prius (or four, as Leonardo Dicaprio once crowed, in a missing of the point that only the rich and out of touch could achieve) is nothing compared to not owning a car. Which is an impossibility for most of us. Would I have gotten a better deal on a Matrix? No question. But a Matrix says nothing.
Prius haters seem to think of my car as hippy-dippy. My image of it is more of a raised middle finger.
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Oil conservation isn't the biggest reason to drive a Prius
I drive a Prius and I'm not smug or preachy. In any case, saving gas isn't the biggest reason to drive a Prius. There are other, non-hybrid cars that get almost as good mileage. I chose a Prius for its low emissions. That's why I was willing to pay the extra money. By the way, as for "What Jesus would drive," I'm afraid the Bible clearly states, "And they all came in one Accord."
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As much as I hate to..
I have to agree with the WSJ here, although not exactly for the same reasons. It's called the Jarvon's Paradox. Search for it on Wikipedia.
And now, I must go cleanse myself.
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down and out in detroit
It really strikes me odd how the only choices are SUV's or Priuses.My neighbors are outta work because of this. He worked at at seat manufacturer and she worked at a plant that repackaged parts for DMX; his job closed because demand dropped off and hers because the parts she repacked are now made overseas. Many of the families in the hood are down to one bread winner(mostly the wifes).
All the American car companies make small and fuel efficient cars, but they are not hip nor expensive.
So I hope the Prius owner are happy, they have brought a family to the point of now owning two 10 year old cars. I helpped them fix the cars up, though one burns a quart of oil every other week. I also help my neighbor split wood for the winter so they can afford to heat thier house. The state supplies the healthcare for the kids, for now, and the school supplies a reduced priced lunch.
I still work, my factory hasn't closed yet.I hope every Toyota owner realizes how thier persuit to look cool and save the world is working.
Joe Bakaitis fujijuan@aol.com
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The war against Prius "smugmobiles"
There is a much simpler, pure economic argument against Jenkins: he ignores the fact that oil consumption is not subsidized by those who use less, but by the fact that the trus costs are externalized, i.e. consumers don't pay the costs of releasing greenhouse gases or, in most cases, other pollution caused by burning hydrocarbons. Thus, Jenkins' arguments are nonsense, provocative until you think about the real costs of using hydrocarbons are and who bears those costs.
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conservative evidence
I live in Utah - about as extremely conservative a state as exists in the union - and I see so many Priuses on the roads here that it can't just be our five resident liberals driving them...
Of course perhaps this isn't evidence of conservatism embracing hybrid technology - perhaps the Mormon church just endorses Toyota...
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The answer is simple.
The editorial policy of the WSJ is just a tad to the left of Louis XIV. If it's in any way not the wildest most aggressive over the top right wing rip-n-read from the RNC the WSJ finds a reason to lambast it. We've come to expect this on their Op-Ed pages at the back of section A for years and years. But now we're starting to see it throughout the paper, particularly on page A1 right side above the fold. The WSJ is slowly morphing into a hard right wing ideological religious screed who's only purpose is to promote an agenda. And I say this as a long time and current subscriber.
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The Jevons Paradox and the Prius
Just to clear it up, it's the Jevons Paradox, not Jarvon's Paradox. The Jevons Paradox is pretty easy to understand, actually, and therefore of little use in economics.
As I mentioned in a posting regarding solar power, Priuses (and the other hybrids out there) are wildly expensive. I don't know if they're smugmobiles but they're definitely good for showing off your relative wealth in a slightly different way than the Hummer. A Hummer says "I'm so rich I can drive a hugely wasteful, stupid, ugly car," while a Prius says "I'm so rich I can give Toyota my ten grand to invest while I wait to make it back in gas savings over the next ten years."
Lately I've been thinking that individual efforts to conserve resources and reduce waste are mostly pointless anyway. And not because of the Jevons Paradox -- which is a pretty dumb reason not to conserve -- but simply because of just how much damage is being done by business.
For example, in a recent issue of the New Yorker there's an article on long-haul trucking and the lives of truck drivers. According to the article -- I can't remember the author at the moment -- and its admittedly rough estimates, about SIX BILLION GALLONS of diesel fuel are burned per year by truckers idling their engines while they sleep, just to keep the heater or air conditioner running.
Now, there's a company trying to change this (in a wonderfully free-market way) by offering a through-the-window heating/cooling system at truck stops, which costs about half as much as running the engine (not even including increased maintenance).
But this is just one example. The vast inefficiencies across all industries in America -- in the world -- make individual human contributions appear microscopic. Even if I stopped driving an automobile permanently and never used another drop of gasoline, is that a remotely significant savings when the organic bananas I buy were transported by a diesel truck which spent 24 hours idly spewing hydrocarbons into the air?