Re:Evergrande has defaulted on its debt, Fitch Ratings says
by kergonath on Thursday December 09, 2021 @11:57AM
(#29499814)
> I like how you say this like it's undoubtedly a good thing.
In Japan, old houses are rightfully considered depreciated as things like "severe regulations" and "low energy consumption" change over time as technology improves.
Not having to deal with earthquakes helps keeping buildings up for longer.
> Having a house built in the 1700s sure isn't going to be easy to solarize or insulate.
In terms of environmental impact, there is a compromise somewhere between using houses for 3 centuries and a decade. Rebuilding all the time is worse than the gains from better insulation and higher environmental standards. It is more expensive as well.
> So paying for 300+ years of that upfront seems pretty dumb.
It’s a good thing we don’t do that, then. Nobody in Europe expect a newly-built house to last for 300 years. However, plenty of them are more than 100 years old and perfectly fine. You can improve insulation both on the inside and the outside of the building, double or triple glazing and some rock wool under the roof go a long way.
> In Austria, are there severe regulations on the safety of building and energy consumption of cars?
Yes, there are.
> I take it that it's very common to see 60, 70, 80 year old cars on the road there and they're not just disposable cardboard quality things, right?
No, 60 years old cars are not common, and for several reasons: there were fewer of them initially, because they were more expensive; cars decay faster than houses due to things like accidents and corrosion; cars get more expensive to insure with time and older cars need more fuel, which makes them less economical to run. Again, there is a sweet spot somewhere between 3 and 30 years.
Not sure whether you are deliberately exaggerating, but you don’t really make any good point. They did not say that we should keep using the same things for millennia, just that re-using to some extent is better than re-building.
Not having to deal with earthquakes helps keeping buildings up for longer.
> Having a house built in the 1700s sure isn't going to be easy to solarize or insulate.
In terms of environmental impact, there is a compromise somewhere between using houses for 3 centuries and a decade. Rebuilding all the time is worse than the gains from better insulation and higher environmental standards. It is more expensive as well.
> So paying for 300+ years of that upfront seems pretty dumb.
It’s a good thing we don’t do that, then. Nobody in Europe expect a newly-built house to last for 300 years. However, plenty of them are more than 100 years old and perfectly fine. You can improve insulation both on the inside and the outside of the building, double or triple glazing and some rock wool under the roof go a long way.
> In Austria, are there severe regulations on the safety of building and energy consumption of cars?
Yes, there are.
> I take it that it's very common to see 60, 70, 80 year old cars on the road there and they're not just disposable cardboard quality things, right?
No, 60 years old cars are not common, and for several reasons: there were fewer of them initially, because they were more expensive; cars decay faster than houses due to things like accidents and corrosion; cars get more expensive to insure with time and older cars need more fuel, which makes them less economical to run. Again, there is a sweet spot somewhere between 3 and 30 years.
Not sure whether you are deliberately exaggerating, but you don’t really make any good point. They did not say that we should keep using the same things for millennia, just that re-using to some extent is better than re-building.