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army1987 comments on It's the Same Five Dollars! - Less Wrong
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Am I the only person who is bothered by the US-centrism of assuming that the cost of fuel is negligible in calculations like those?
I don't think the cost of fuel is negligible in calculations like these even in the United States. At 3 USD/gallon, a ten- to fifteen-mile drive can cost enough to matter, especially if your car's gas mileage isn't great. Even the best-case likely scenario, a ten mile drive in a car that gets forty miles to the gallon, the gas price ends up being 0.75 USD, or an additional 16% cost. Worst-case examples could actually have somewhere between a quarter to a half of the true cost difference in fuel.
That's not as extreme as in other countries, where a twenty-minute drive could meet or exceed the time cost, true, but in many cases the distinction is rather extraneous. They're probably avoiding the fuel cost because it's far more complex to meaningfully calculate.
Don't forget depreciation on the car. Imagine that a car costs $20000 and lasts 100000 miles (it may last longer, but then you may have to pay to repair it, and 20000 is only a crude price estimate anyway, etc.) That's 20 cents a mile, and the ten mile drive adds another $2, which is 40% of the cost.
It seems pretty clear that the connotation of 'cost' in this instance is 'time cost' and not 'total cost.' Fuel cost is highly variable based on the price of fuel and the efficiency of your car.
And why should it be time cost rather than total cost that matters?
Of course the total cost matters. However, the time cost is the point of the post, and including fuel cost in the calculation would be needlessly complex and generally unhelpful.
A 20 minute drive costs $8.33 in time given $25/hour time valuation. Depending on roads, traffic, etc. that might be about 10-12 miles. My car gets 45mpg on average, and gas costs around $3.30. My fuel cost is about $0.73. If gas cost $8/gallon and I drove a 25mpg car, then my fuel cost is $3.84. This variability makes figuring the total cost highly individual to situation, and not entirely relevant to the point of equating time and money.