That's a lot of economic theorizing, but to me, it doesn't seem to be substantiated all that well.
You can just as well argue that labor is getting more expensive in the West because of two non-market pressures. First, we have a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money. Second, you have consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive to, say, be a HVAC repairman. Educational requirements, permits, licensing, business insurance, waste disposal, etc.
On my neighborhood Facebook group, every time someone asks for recommendations for menial, minimally-skilled backyard labor, they always insist the person needs to be licensed, bonded, and insured. And then, they're surprised that it costs $10,000 to paint a fence.
> (...) a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, (...) consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive (...)
I don't think this opinion holds a rational basis.
Extreme poverty being a factor in low job demand is an argument for coercing people into performing certain tasks even though they are not economically viable just because it benefits you personally. This is not a valid argument, neither indentured servitude or slavery. Isn't the US supposed to be a free market economy where free Enterprise reigned?
Complaining about regulation, including waste disposal, is also dumbfounding. Being required to dispose of air filters in a landfill is not the reason why you can't afford a repair. This opinion is also comical as HVAC also covers air quality because otherwise you can be cool in a room but literally sick.
This sort of opinion sounds completely irrational and unsubstantiated, and extremely ideological.
The main factors driving repair cost are things like device longevity, unit price, speed and ease of repair, parts availability, etc. That's mainly it. When you call someone to your house to repair something, the price tag covers that person's cost of living for the fraction of the time it takes them to deal with your problems. On top of that, you need to pay whatever parts they need to buy to get your things back to work. That's where the money goes.
Regulation, for example occupational licensing of jobs, has become much more prevalent. 60 years ago, only 5% of the workforce was occupationally licensed, now it is 25%.* There is a bipartisan push to reduce occupational licensing, and recognize licenses across state lines. So not irrational, unsubstantiated, partisan, or ideological.
*https://documents.ncsl.org/wwwncsl/Labor/NCSL_DOL_Report_05_...
The ideological part comes in when you immediately choose to stop your analysis here. This is known as "playing stupid".
Why has licensure increased in the past 60 years? What were the motivations?
And, if we remove some licensing, how can we be sure the motivation does not come back? What is the ROOT CAUSE?
It's entirely possible that we can get rid of the regulation, have a bunch of bad things happen, pay stupid amounts of money to fix those bad things, and then re-implement the regulation - thereby spending more money than if we just did nothing at all and kept things as they are.
I agree, but it is equally idealogical to clean there is no rational basis for the idea that regulation increases costs. It is equally idealogical to stop at your analysis at "if we remove these regulations something bad will happen, so let's not remove any regulations".
> Complaining about regulation, [...] is also dumbfounding.
Regulation is often necessary, but it has a cost even though it's necessary.
If my country's regulations require nurseries to have one staff member for every three young children, there might be good safety reasons for that - but I'm going to have to spend a third of my salary to have one young child cared for.
I agree.
Given that as soon as cloud computing happened we stopped bothering to debug VMs and just started deleting them and rebuilding, I don't know why people find the idea this applies to other industries surprising.
Repair involves establishing where in a very large state space an item is, and finding a path back to optimal.
Whereas building a new item simply involves traversing an already known path to optimal.
While in understand your reasoning it is a limited view perspective: The rebuild cost of a VM to society as a whole is marginal at best, an entire hvac system has a lot more crap it needs to dump somewhere when it is replaced.
> Being required to dispose of air filters in a landfill is not the reason why you can't afford a repair.
It is for someone - the market price is pretty much always going to be around the point where a small increase causes a noticeable drop-off in customers (otherwise the only sensible thing for the seller to do is charge more). If something causes even a relatively small increase in price will mean someone can't afford the thing any more.
> It is for someone - the market price is pretty much always going to be around the point where a small increase causes a noticeable drop-off in customers (otherwise the only sensible thing for the seller to do is charge more).
I don't think this is realistic within the topic of air conditioning. No one is going to go without HVAC because of an hypothetical small increase in hypothetical trash handling fees, and definitely not the people in this thread complaining about regulation.
That seems to be a classic no-argument-no-evidence assertion. And you really need an argument for this one, because otherwise it requires disbelieving in supply and demand curves. If you concede the price goes up, you have to concede that the seller thinks they're going to have less customers. Ie, that people will indeed choose not to buy the thing if the price goes up even a little bit. Otherwise they would already have raised the price because it would be free money for them to do that.
And it is the case that people don't tend to save, ie, they spend everything they earn. In that environment if a price changes, even a little bit, they're going to have to do without something. The maths is pretty easy. I mean maybe they're going to eat less food or whatever because they bought an air conditioning, but there will be people who are literally facing that choice and choose food over comfort. Someone actually has to be quite wealthy before the price of something going up a little bit doesn't force them to make changes to their lifestyle. For some people on the margins that change will be the difference between having and not having air conditioning.
If you want to make an argument that the cost to the seller is small enough that the price won't go up then sure, that might be so. In fact it does happen sometimes. But the people in the thread aren't complaining about small hypothetical fees, you bought that up yourself. They're complaining about regulations that cause the price of air conditioning to go up and chemotaxis had quite a long list that, practically, will cause that to happen.
> Second, you have consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive to, say, be a HVAC repairman.
clarification: Of the things that make it expensive to run an HVAC repair company, consumer protection related expenses are super far down the list.
source: 2 decades (on/off) supporting a close friend's regional hvac biz, national geothermal interests.
A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state.
I understand large installs at businesses are a different problem, and granted I've only ever installed a mini split, but that was hardly rocket science. And home installs are likely what most people are thinking of here.
In Japan you can get minisplit's installed for $1k a unit, here you regularly find quotes over $10k. Something's gone wrong somewhere.
In Australia the going rate last time I got one installed when I was supplying the unit (this was back in 2019) was AU$540 (US$350) for a simple install (exterior wall of house etc.), because electricians just get an extra qualification and there’s a lot of competition.
I bought the 3.5KW unit online for $1080 including delivery (USD$702) so it was $1620 (US$1050) all up. I expect with the recent inflation it might cost more like $2000 (US$1300) installed for one that size and maybe $3500 (US$2275) for a bigger unit (8kW).
The splits themselves are mostly all Japanese brands that we have here (Mitsubishi Electric, Daiken, Panasonic, etc.) as well as some Korean (LG, Samsung), but Chinese ones are starting to appear in the market too. But they all seem very cheap compared to buying one in the US, before the installation there which just seems astronomically expensive to us.
> A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state.
A flat time mandate for HVAC tech certification seems really out of place. And a 4 year path of any sort seems excessive for a technician. I couldn't find anything like that. Most results I found were in the 6-12 mos range - which is often spent employed.
WV was an outlier with a 2000hr requirement. How I have seen (non-hvac) 2k requirements get satisfied are thru a HS VoTech (my son) or 18-24mos doing paid tech work toward the official certification (electrician techs do this).
I can't find a state that requires anything a like a 4yr college degree, where life is put on hold to focus on that. And then 4yrs of living and school expenses are investments that need to be earned back. Not for any trade tech.
"And a 4 year path of any sort seems excessive for a technician"
Its not excessive if the purpose is job protection.
See also any career that involves interning (law, accounting, …)
It’s a air-conditioning system. It’s dead simple you could learn it in an afternoon watching YouTube videos.
HVAC technicians do more than just install mini-splits.
Yeah, and they’re also not doing rocket science
> In Japan you can get minisplit's installed for $1k a unit, here you regularly find quotes over $10k.
How much does the unit cost? What work does it take to install it? How large does it need to be to support your home?
What are the energy needs of your typical home in Japan vs your home town?
Those are the key factors, not how many years someone spends in tradeschool.
Why would those be dramatically different anywhere? It's the same few choices of mini-splits from the same few Japanese/whatever conglomerates across the world, with known cooling abilites (measured in the same units, BTUs) and with known energy consumption (kwh) (and power in watts). The hotter the place you live in, the more power it's gonna draw, and the more BTUs you'll need. Also the bigger the room, the more BTU you'll need.
Fujitsu and Mitsubishi both have popular units that are basically the same the whole world over, with minor regional changes. There really isn't that much variation though. There are obvious differences, a mini-split in a hot part of the world is going to be working harder than a mini-split in a cooler part of the world. Humidity will differ as well.
It's a large home appliance. You need a pair of strong people to drive over to the customer's house, bring it in their house, locate the right place to install it, unbox it, support it, wire/pipe it up correctly, and then give it power. The Big Mac index gives the difference in price between Japan in the US to be $5.79 vs $3.11 in JP (in 2025), and meanwhile $1k vs $10 is, well, 10x.
There's something at work here, but it's not due to variations in the difficulty of unboxing a large metal thing, drilling holes, running some tubing and then powering it on.
The units themselves are not significantly more expensive nor any more difficult or time consuming to install.
> eliminate extreme poverty, so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money
One way to eliminate extreme poverty and increase skilled labour, is to ensure children have enough nutrition, health, schooling, and funds to pursue skilled worked in adult life, which usually involves making time outside of work, adequate health, some prerequisite education, and a sufficient financial buffer to actually upskill.
A second thing is Baumol's Cost Disease. If there are other industries that are more rewarding that require less effort, no-one is going to pursue those options. Why be a clever guy who makes a product (or becomes a HVAC repairer, electrician, etc.) when you can get a comfy job at a FAANG (or whatever the acronym is today). You could sub in benefits here, but I don't think people are thriving on benefits in the US. But I'm an outsider, so I wouldn't know.
But there's also a secret third thing that people don't often consider, which is the culture. If there's a culture that doesn't privilege working hard, or educational attainment, etc., people won't seek those things.
Cost of living goes up. Cost of services if they are not done more efficiently must as well go up. In the end cost of labour in my theory comes down to cost of housing and cost of health care. Cost of food and most other things should follow cost of labour. When both are profit generations or being inflated. Well there is no other options than to cost of labour go up.
Why do you think people insist someone needs to be licensed, bonded, and insured? It's not really a quality question, it's CYA, a direct response to the rise of ambulance-chasers and increasingly-ridiculous jury awards. Morgan and Morgan are probably doing as much economic damage here as Baumol.
The HVAC technician working on your home accidentally discharges the propane based coolant while working on your cooling coil in the furnace. The mechanical room fills with flammable gas and then the pilot light for the water heater kicks on, igniting the gas and blowing up your house.
It turns out the technician was working for a shady company that didn’t have liability insurance, now what? Before responding, please read what your homeowners insurance policy says about hiring people to work on your home, then tell me if you’re covered. People always assume it’s lawyers when it’s actually insurance companies mandating risk management.
> The HVAC technician working on your home accidentally discharges the propane based coolant
Millions of unskilled people work with and around propane on a daily basis. It's not even remotely a big deal if you have an IQ above room temperature.
It’s a possible scenario, google ‘exploding refrigerator’. [0]
Also, there wouldn’t be fire code [1] and insurance requirements for refrigerant detection systems in rooms containing mechanical equipment with refrigerant in them unless it was an actual danger. Building codes are written in blood, as they say.
[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/blew-across-home-appliance-expert...
[1] https://codes.iccsafe.org/s/IFC2021P1/chapter-6-building-ser...
Yikes! There are so many corner cases and pitfalls in construction, it would blow your mind! I did it for 2 months way back and concluded I would certainly die.
Paint a fence? Pay the neighbor kid. Patch a roof? eh ... what could go wrong.
They insist on that because if someone does work on your property they might destroy your property
Yeah it's CYA: the ass in question is yours. The guy who burns your house down without insurance will just file bankruptcy. You're the one left with the ashes.
Would your homeowners insurance not cover that? Mine would.
You might want to really do a careful read of your policy, because almost all of them have provisions about requiring work to be completed by licensed tradespeople.
I've heard people say this before, so a few years back I got all of my friends and family to send me a full copy of their insurance policies. 0% had any lines saying anything regarding work being performed by licensed tradespeople, or even that work must be done to building/etc codes. This was across multiple insurance companies in 3 provinces (Canada), for policies on condos, semi-detached, and detached homes.
I have my doubts that such a thing exists outside of extreme circumstances or internet commenters' imaginations.
Definitely not the case in Australia e.g. https://www.gio.com.au/know-more/insuring-your-home/things-t...
Insurance for damage due to building works is separate and required to be carried by the principal contractor for work over $20,000.
Which is to say, if I don't check they actually hold a policy, the residential insurance is not going to pay out.
I am extremely skeptical you have interpreted those policies accurately. For example, the one above doesn't require anything of anyone renovating stuff: but it also just won't pay for any associated damages.
> First, we have a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty,
Clarification: In some places we absolutely do. In others we absolutely do not.
> so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money.
I think is is better reflective: There is huge surplus of employers have that set up systems that insure they do not hire qualified people. Job portals that auto-trash applications from unwanted applicants (1st time, most minimal of crim rec, wrong zip codes) are one massive example.
source: me+kids spent a decade in red state, hunger-level poverty. kids who got zero replies during months/years of entry level job apps.
> You can just as well argue that labor is getting more expensive in the West because of two non-market pressures. First, we have a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money. Second, you have consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive to, say, be a HVAC repairman. Educational requirements, permits, licensing, business insurance, waste disposal, etc.
How's what you wrote substantiated at all?
To me it seems you are suggesting we let people starve so that labour you characterize as "minimally-skilled backyard" is cheap.
You also seem to be suggesting that consumer protection policies need to go as well. I assume we are going to trust the end consumer to do due diligence cause "they know whats better for them?"
If they get a quote of 10k and they cannot get a better one, they might as well start writing that check.
I don’t think that’s what they were saying, but instead, labor is expensive now because labor is scarce, which is true. And that regulation is expensive, which it is, but also necessary.
Perhaps the question is why wages are not high enough to support these prices (globalization, productivity wage gap over the last fifty years, etc). This will change over time due to structural demographics [1] making labor much more scarce (pushing up wages), we’re still in the early days. Software is not going to eat the trades and HVAC repair.
[1] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
I didn't see anything in their comment where they added "and therefore we ought return to rampant extreme poverty", did I miss it? They don't appear to be suggesting anything you say they are, just describing the effects of what exist.
It can be true that consumer protection laws raise the price floor for certain goods and services without "and therefore consumer protection laws are bad".
> I didn't see anything in their comment where they added "and therefore we ought return to rampant extreme poverty", did I miss it?
The US is already experiencing rampant extreme poverty. There are people in the US holding multiple jobs and still can't afford to eat, let alone healthcare.
Again, this argument that things are expensive because the poor can't work and regulation somehow is suffocating businesses is purely ideological and not supported by facts.
> this argument that things are expensive because the poor can't work and regulation somehow is suffocating businesses is purely ideological and not supported by facts.
"This argument" is also theoretical, or a straw man. I'm not making that argument, the original comment on the thread isn't making that argument, the person I replied to created the idea of the argument whole cloth to argue against.
It's a big leap from "some regulations raise the price floors on some goods" to "businesses are being suffocated by no longer allowing near-slavery, thus near-slavery should be permitted."
Yes, because if you get a leak in your air conditioner, instead of just patching the hole and refilling it with coolant, you have to replace your entire system in places like California because they require a more green, less gas, in the name of science, and still completely ignoring the simple fact that it doesn’t make a damn difference because we all live in the same globe.
The amount of waste that is generated is 1000 times that of just refilling the coolant. When will people realize that you can use an existential threat that you can’t prove to justify anything? What could be more important than our existence?
If the same scientist came out with a study that said if you don’t pay me $1 million by tomorrow, we are gonna get hit by an asteroid. Would you believe them and pay me? Or has this become a political issue we’re no longer thinking rationally
> Yes, because if you get a leak in your air conditioner, instead of just patching the hole and refilling it with coolant, you have to replace your entire system in places like California because they require a more green, less gas, in the name of science, and still completely ignoring the simple fact that it doesn’t make a damn difference because we all live in the same globe.
I don't think you are holding an informed opinion. Ozone layer depletion was tied primarily with CFC emissions used in air conditioning units, and since the production of CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals were banned in the late 1980s the ozone layer started to regenerate. In practical terms this means lower incidence of health issues such as skin cancer or cataracts. That sounds pretty neat.
But being able to use a 40+ year air conditioning unit is worth it?
Do you know what correlation versus causation is? How do you know that ozone holes don’t appear naturally? But let’s say we did cause it, then you acknowledge that humans also have the capability to fix it when we realize there’s a big enough problem. So the climate apocalypse scaremongering is never going to be a scenario anybody’s ever gonna have to deal with.
It’s either we can fix the problem or we cant. If we can’t fix the problem, then no solution that we’re doing now makes any sense. If we can fix this problem, again, no solution that we’re doing now. Makes any sense because the technology of tomorrow will be much better adapted when the problem gets worse enough to warrant spending $93 trillion a non-probable existential crisis that also conveniently can’t be disproven either. I feel like too many people don’t see that the average person is willing to steal cheat and lie to get ahead.
A lot of refrigerants have a very high gwp.
OK, but you use very little amounts of the refrigerant. 1 pound of refrigerant that’s in a closed loop is the same as 1 ton of CO2, which is about the equivalent of burning one tree over 20 year period and that’s assuming it leaks out which it’s not supposed to.
Which existential threat are you referring to here?
Global warming / climate change
People vastly overestimate science’s ability to predict the future, especially when they often can’t get the weather right, right now.
But it’s more than that. People who study the climate change don’t get funding if there’s no problem for them to study. Their job necessitates there being a problem. It’s a conflict of interest.
it's not surprising that you've picked up some unsubstantiated protestant dogma disguised as economic theory, if you are hanging out on facebook neighborhood groups