Political science assumes that all states are “rational actors.” My degree wasn’t in economics, but I hope that science doesn’t make the same assumption. Further to my thoughts on recouping investments in solar panels, Matthew Wald writes in today’s New York Times:
At a recent conference on energy efficiency and investment strategy, Pedro Haas, an energy expert at McKinsey & Company, said his consulting firm recently asked people worldwide what payback time they would find acceptable before investing money to save energy.
One fourth of them said they would never spend any money to improve energy efficiency; 50 percent said they wanted to earn back the investment in two years or less.
“That means about 75 percent of the public will require economics that are just not there,” Mr. Haas said.
Make back your investment in two years? It’s stunning that half of people would actually expect that. If you can get a 50% return on an investment every year, that’s basically a license to mint money. I’m not sure if this survey says more about people’s efficiency expectations or their financial inexperience.
150% of people don’t understand statistics.
We have ridiculous expectations, we Americans.
I don’t know why you’d single out Americans – it was a “worldwide” study.
I can only speak for Americans. I don’t live other places.
We have ridiculous expectations, we earthlings.
Las Vegas, and the state lotteries turned that simple truth into a business model long ago.
JS: I can’t speak for Sarabeth, but I thought the survey only included Americans, as so many of the surveys I hear about do. (Heck, many of them are conducted solely within a single city.) So, perhaps it was a simple misreading, and not a vast, left-wing conspiracy to besmirch our beloved country.
To paraphrase Heinlein: Assume error before malice.
Well, there’s your problem. :-P
Well, I didn’t think my tone (though I grant you that’s hard to determine in a forum like this) was hostile. I was merely pointing out that she was mistaken if she believed the results of the survey applied only to Americans. Perhaps you doth protest too much.
Judge, not bothered at all by your tone or comment, whatever it was.
Thank you for that, Sarabeth. And on a completely unrelated note, I read about your father on your blog. He sounds like a helluva guy. The kind of guy we would all be better for having met. I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you, Judge. He was a helluva guy.
Judge: I protested because of the phrase “single out”, which I interpreted as an overreaction. (And then, of course, I overreacted. >.<)