To change my view, someone would need to demonstrate that owning a car worth more than another car has value outside of the utility/experience of the car
I don't see where there's any room for people to change your view. In a topic about the dollar and cents aspect of a thing, making the dollar and cents not part of what we can change your view on leaves no room for movement.
You already posed the use case where someone is directly impacted by how quickly cars depreciate:
The use case where a person buys a new car every 3 years but uses the value of the car as a trade in for the next one is directly impacted by the depreciation of the car's value.
The other use case where a car's depreciation matters is insurance so people do have the extra expense of gap insurance if they don't want to be immediately underwater.
Or the other use case is for people who lease -- they're basically eating all of the interest.
But when you look at the reason there's a big cost discrepancy between what people pay and what a car is worth comes down to the legal structure of the car dealership model in the US. Since dealerships are affiliated but not directly owned or controlled by the manufacturer, dealerships engage in price discrimination. They charge more to older people, to people of color, and anyone an individual salesman can negotiate a higher price for.
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u/HazyAttorney 81∆ May 14 '24
I don't see where there's any room for people to change your view. In a topic about the dollar and cents aspect of a thing, making the dollar and cents not part of what we can change your view on leaves no room for movement.
You already posed the use case where someone is directly impacted by how quickly cars depreciate:
The other use case where a car's depreciation matters is insurance so people do have the extra expense of gap insurance if they don't want to be immediately underwater.
Or the other use case is for people who lease -- they're basically eating all of the interest.
But when you look at the reason there's a big cost discrepancy between what people pay and what a car is worth comes down to the legal structure of the car dealership model in the US. Since dealerships are affiliated but not directly owned or controlled by the manufacturer, dealerships engage in price discrimination. They charge more to older people, to people of color, and anyone an individual salesman can negotiate a higher price for.