U.S. Presidential race - Democrat Discussion

[Deleted]

That's not what you said but ok whatever. This is getting dumb.

You're obviously seeking your own interpretations of my posts.

[Wells]

Not sure how many ways to interpret:

For running a bridge, the major costs is in the building and maintaince. The amount of people that use the bridge has very little impact on these costs.

---------- Post added 2012-04-10 at 08:01 AM ----------

I mean how can you say that traffic causes road damage but the cost to repair it doesn't go up when you have more traffic?

[Deleted]

Not sure how many ways to interpret:

Like I said, the marginal cost of each driver is vanishingly small compared to the fixed costs (building an maintainance).

Marginal cost = The cost to the bridge owner for every person that uses the bridge
Fixed costs = Costs that will come up regardless of how many people use the bridge

[Wells]

You didn't say fixed. You said major costs are building and repair. Then said that the number of people who use the bridge do not effect repair costs. While also saying that increased traffic increases repair costs.

[Deleted]

You didn't say fixed. You said major costs are building and repair. Then said that the number of people who use the bridge do not effect repair costs. While also saying that increased traffic increases repair costs.

And I clarify it in post #991 because you didn't understand the point...

The whole point is that the amount of people that uses the bridge is not very relevant to the overall cost.

[Wells]

My brain is going to explode.

[BLCalliente]

Things I've learned recently:

Bridges require maintenance.
Obama is not eligible to be president.
Diurdi is Finnish, and therefore ???

[Deleted]

Things I've learned recently:

Did you know that A fully loaded 2 axle truck (18 tons or 40,000 pounds) causes over 100,000 times more damage to paved roads than a light car that weights only 1 ton (2,100 pounds)?

Double the weight put on the axle and road damage caused increases 16-fold.

[Wells]

And if you have more traffic your repair costs don't go up.

[BLCalliente]

Did you know that A fully loaded 2 axle truck (18 tons or 40,000 pounds) causes over 100,000 times more damage to paved roads than a light car that weights only 1 ton (2,100 pounds)?

Double the weight put on the axle and road damage caused increases 16-fold.

Well, I didn't know that specifically, but I understand the concept. I wasn't disputing any of your claims or maths.

[mistuhbull]

You people are taking Diurdi's statements excessively literally, instead of understanding the concept.

Assume a bridge costs 1.5 billion dollars to build and maintain regardless of use. Adding more traffic will not change this.

If 500 cars traveling it every day causes 100 million to be added to the cost, but 1,000 cars only causes 100,100,000 total to be added to the fix costs.

This means that so long as there is traffic, more traffic increases cost by a negligible amount. That's how economies of scale work.

Wether he is right or not I don't know, i'm not a structural engineer or bridge builder. but that is his concept.

Taking a sentence and harping on the literal meaning after it has been clarified is not debate, it is not discussion, it is screaming at the top of your lungs that you are right and they are wrong.

[Wells]

He's literally saying a bridge that sees no use will have the same repairs costs as one that sees heavy traffic.

On this very page he's said the number of people who use a bridge doesn't effect the cost.

[mistuhbull]

He's literally saying a bridge that sees no use will have the same repairs costs as one that sees heavy traffic.

On this very page he's said the number of people who use a bridge doesn't effect the cost.

Taking a sentence and harping on the literal meaning after it has been clarified is not debate, it is not discussion, it is screaming at the top of your lungs that you are right and they are wrong.

If one person causes the bridge to need $1 of maintenance, and 100 people still require it to need $1 of maintenance, then the amount of people using the bridge doesn't affect the cost, that the bridge is used does

[Wells]

That's not how maintenance works. If one person crosses the road and causes X damage one thousand people cause 1000X damage. Maintenance includes wear and tear, hell that's probably the majority of costs. Traffic volume absolutely drives up wear and tear.

[jeanty]

i think obama have did lots of things for citizen,so he had been elected president.

[Xeones]

i think obama have did lots of things for citizen,so he had been elected president.

What? I don't have a clue what you're saying.

[Dacien]

i think obama have did lots of things for citizen,so he had been elected president.

He didn't. He organized communities. Oh, and he didn't vote a lot in the Senate.

[Jaxi]

That's not how maintenance works. If one person crosses the road and causes X damage one thousand people cause 1000X damage. Maintenance includes wear and tear, hell that's probably the majority of costs. Traffic volume absolutely drives up wear and tear.

I think you are oversimplifying it. There are a few factors that come to mind that you are overlooking.
-Age of bridge. This will determine the material used, technological means available at time of production, and general stress inflicted on the bridge over the lifetime.
-Location of bridge. If a bridge is located next to salt water, the maintenance cost of preventing corrosion will be much higher than the stresses inflicted by cars.
-Vehicles driving on bridge. Buses and large trucks are much more destructive to a road than vehicles.

Anyway, I doubt there is a universal unit of measurement that allows one to measure the amount of strain that a car puts on any given bridge. I think they would look more at accelerating decay relative to higher traffic times in the year, month, week, or even day.

I need to ask though. Are you guys just doing a "You said this," "No I did not" argument now? Honestly, I looked back, and I can't find where this starts. Of course the more cars that drive a bridge the more damage it takes.

[Dacien]

Yes, Obama had jobs. I thought this has been debunked?

My point wasn't whether he had jobs or not, I'm just responding to jeanty's claim that Obama was elected president because he did so much for the citizenry.

No, Obama voted quite a bit in the US Senate. I assume you've been misled on this as well. He voted present in the Illinois State Senate, but not any more or less than other Illinois senators.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...f_Barack_Obama
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...ate-very-ofte/

Interesting though, Hillary's responsible for making initial digs on Obama about both his birth certificate and his voting "present" as a senator.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...s-complicated/

You're right, I'm wrong on this. Only 3% of the time did he vote "present" in the Illinois State Senate.

[Stanton Biston]

It's my fault. I made a comment about private companies not building roads because it's not cost-effective. Diurdi responded, someone else talked about economy of scale, and now we have 4 or 5 pages of word twisting.

I take the blame. I'm ashamed.

My Economies of Scale note had to do with Dirudi's somewhat bizarre comparison of using the mail service to buying groceries. The cars/bridges thing is equally bizarre as people are arguing theories as examples without strong engineering backgrounds, causing a bit of a mire.

i think obama have did lots of things for citizen,so he had been elected president.

I'm not really one way or the other about Obama. In my eyes, he's pretty average other than being not white.

That said, I don't think an analysis of his voting record is really a good way either way to say if he's a good candidate for president. I can't think of anything in particular he was responsible for, either as Illinois' senator or as a US senator. That he served two years and voted a number of times in the US senate just makes him as qualified as any other two year US senator.

But I'd also say that most candidates for president recently are light on the qualifications side of things. Assuming Obama gets re-elected and Hillary stays Sec. of State, she'd have some serious cred to run for President in 2016.

Kind of like Colin Powell who SHOULD have been the first black president. Dude is still more qualified for the job than anybody running combined.