End-Stage Thinking
It is way past time to consider the total cost of ownership of progressive ideas.
To go with a willful ignorance of history, the American left exhibits something I have called “End-Stage Thinking”.
I’m sure it has a real name – but since end-stage is used in the medical world to describe the final phase of terminal diseases, it seemed appropriate to use such a term for a type of thinking that will eventually lead to the end of something in the same way terminal cancer ends a life.
A few examples:
Electric cars are clean, efficient, and environmentally friendly.
Lockdowns and forcing children to be masked in school are needed to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Massive government spending is needed now and has no further implications.
Eviction moratoriums, rent postponements, and student loan cancellation are good things.
Even though people believe those things without reservation, not even one of them is true. End Stage Thinking always begins with the end and never considers anything that comes before.
The easiest one of those to pick on is the idea the electric powered cars will save us from an environmental disaster, largely because the End State Thinker only focuses on carbon output, and refuses to compare the environmental cost mining the rare earth metals, copper, platinum and other metals necessary for the production for electric motors, wiring, computer chips and batteries.
Those of us who have been around business and industry for a while are no doubt familiar with the acronym "TCO".
TCO stands for Total Cost of Ownership, meaning that, when making decisions about acquisition and ownership of an asset or utilization of a service, the costs along the entire lifecycle and value chain of that equipment or service must be considered.
For example, when you are debating buying an electric car because you want to "save the environment", to get to the real costs/benefits of "saving the environment", you must include the costs to mine the raw materials, build the vehicle, generate, and deliver the electricity, and the cost to dispose of the asset.
We know they understand the concept because they can give you chapter and verse of how evil fossil fuels are and the environmental costs of every stage of the hydrocarbon production process. They know the true cost isn't always reflected in the purchase price of the asset, product, or service.
The true cost of a thing also includes what it costs to operate it.
With electric cars, we already know there is not enough electrical generation in the US to support a switch from internal combustion power to electricity. The California government has already asked people NOT to charge their cars to save stress on their grid. We also know that wind and solar can’t help in making up the deficits - and the iron law of supply and demand will apply - as electricity becomes scarce, scarcity will drive prices of electricity up.
Another consideration: electricity is a public utility, controlled not by private companies and the free market, but governed by governmental and quasi-governmental utility boards subject to public policy edicts and government control.
You can buy a gallon of gas without government interference - they can find ways to make it more expensive for you to do so, but they can shut your electricity off.
The loss of independence is a cost of going to electric transportation.
But End Stage Thinkers only look at one side of the ledger, they never take time to net out the debits and credits.
A while back, I mentioned that producers of alternative energy equipment and alternative energy driven consumer equipment (like cars) should be required to calculate the Total Human and Environmental Cost of Ownership - the THECO. THECO would include everything from the disposal of blades of windmills to mining for rare earth minerals needed for electric car batteries. It should also include the cost of environmental damage and the human cost - the fact is African cobalt mines often use slave and child labor (as young as 4 or 5 years old).
Hey, if they can have ESG, I can have THECO.
Given the status of the total environmental and human cost of producing and supporting electric cars, the purchase of one today is little more than a vanity project.
End-Stage thinkers, as long as they can feel emotionally smug, they are "saving the planet" by owning an electric car, don't care that the electricity was generated by the coal fired powerplant in the next state or that the cobalt in their Tesla battery was scraped out of an open pit mine in the Congo by the tiny fingers of a five-year-old African black child.
But electric cars are environmentally friendly, you see.
Plus, those bad thing happen over there, so we don’t need to think about the costs of the open pit mines or the acres and acres of lithium leach ponds needed to produce the battery for my electric vehicle.
I am getting carpal tunnel syndrome from always clicking the Heart icon after reading your essays, but I find them to be among the most informative and well-written entries on Substack.com. I often send them to friends. I just wish (in the "sharing" option) that Truth Social was an option.
A lefty politician in charge of a group of islands in BC was very concerned about rising house prices. He noticed some developers were buying large tracts of land and subdividing. He noticed too Prices were going up at the same time. He saw a 50 acre parcel sell for $1,000,000 and then saw a five acre parcel sold off the 50 sell for $250,000. Ergo the land increased in value from $1 mill to ten x $250,000 or $2.5 mill. He thought the developer making $1.5 mill was more than anyone should make. He told me he had a brilliant idea on how to curb excessive profits on real estate and thereby bring down the cost of housing! He was very excited. Stop allowing subdivisions of land for any parcel 50 acres and under. A 100 acre could be cut into two 50s. But anything smaller can’t be cut up. He thought he was BRILLIANT! His co politician implemented another brilliant plan to bring down housing costs. No one could build any home larger than 1800 square feet. Anything larger hurts the environment by using up too many resources. And smaller will be cheaper. This island has a string of multi million homes along the water. Big homes. They passed these two rules and every big home with a mortgage had their mortgages called. Why? Because their fire insurance was cancelled. Why? Because their fire insurance to build a 10,000 sf home was suddenly dropped to an amount enough to build an 1800 sf home. Two weeks later the rule was rescinded. By the area lawyer who had been threatened with lawsuits by about 50 millionaires and their banks. I said to the second pol ‘let me guess. Your house is 1800 sf, right?’ He looked defiant and said ‘yes, and no one needs anything bigger’. I said ‘what if you have three kids?’ He snorted and said ‘no one should be allowed to have three children’.