An Economics Question

In high school I was president of the Ecology Club for two years, pushing a lot of recycling programs, planting trees, and generally getting into a mindset where I believe we should limit waste as much as possible in our lives.

In college I took a year of “Economics 101” (it was probably actually called “Economics A, B, & C” or something, but you get the idea) and got a pretty basic grasp of most of the big concepts.

This evening we had a BBQ — just burgers & dogs for the Long-Suffering Wife and I, but it was good.

The actual BBQ we have is probably seven or eight years old. We also still have the previous BBQ which we “retired” after six or seven years.

My daughter’s car is sitting, dead, in the driveway, thanks to a small part that broke (catastrophically) over a year ago.

Why am I firing off all of these apparent non sequiturs? They really are related. Stick with me.

The BBQ is getting harder and harder to use. It’s a big, five-burner, propane powered beastie.

The problems are:

1. The three grills have all deteriorated, mainly from the ceramic coating on them cracking off, and they need to be repaired or replaced
2. The “heat tent” sheets, the thin, flat horizontal sheets between the burners and the grill which are designed to spread the heat from the burners evenly, are all falling apart and need to be replaced

You can google for parts easily enough, the problem is what they cost. The replacement grills are anywhere from $100 to almost $200, and the heat tent sheets can be another $50 or more.

But you can buy a brand new grill, equivalent to what I’ve already got, for under $500.

Given the amount of material that goes into a propane BBQ of that size, how can two replacement parts cost almost half of what a new one does?

Given the wear and tear on the old one, it’s almost more economically sound to simply trash the old one and buy a new one. But isn’t that a tremendous waste?

Ditto on the daughter’s PT Cruiser. It has a tiny part in the ignition switch that broke off (two hundred miles from home, halfway between Sacramento and Los Angeles in the middle of nowhere, of course) and it is impossible to start the car.

After getting towed to Coalinga and spending four days being stuck over a holiday weekend waiting for parts, I was finally told that the only solution was to replace the entire steering column assembly for $2,000+. Because a $20 part had broken. I ended up paying someone at a corner repair shop to hotwire it for me to get it started and drove to LA praying that it wouldn’t die again.

Apparently this is a recurring problem with the PT Cruiser and other Chrysler products. Because it’s not as critical as the current GM ignition switch problem, i.e., no one’s died because of it, just gotten stranded, there’s no recall. There’s also no way to get a dealer, ANY dealer, to simply get the one tiny part, open up the steering column, and replace the part for $200 or so.

When I got back to Los Angeles, I called multiple Chrysler repair shops and dealerships. Each time I described the problem, I got a response of, “Oh, yeah, that problem. We’ll have to replace the steering column and it will cost a couple thousand dollars.” On a car that might be worth $3,500.

At least two of the people I spoke to suggested just scrapping the car. A perfectly good, functioning, basic transportation vehicle which will probably go another 50,000 or more, worth $3,500 — scrap it because of a $20 part broke?

How does any of this possibly make sense economically?

I know how it makes sense for the car companies and the hardware stores! They get to sell me another $25,000 car to replace a $3,500 car that needs a $20 part which they refuse to sell to me or repair. Yeah, got it, I know how that makes economic sense for them. What about me?

The hardware store gets to sell me another $500 propane BBQ (and try to get me to upgrade to a $1,000 one) to replace an existing unit that is perfectly safe, perfectly functional, but is simply in need of a couple of spare parts that should cost $100 or less instead of $250 or more. Again, that makes perfect sense for them — but I’m not buying it.

Getting back to the economics and the Ecology Club, how can it make sense in the big, global picture, to throw out a car with the working engine, transmission, electrical system, interior, glass, and so on, because one part broke in the ignition switch? I got A’s in those college economics courses, and I’m not seeing the logic here.

Anyway, the other economic theory is that when something doesn’t make sense economically due to unnatural restrictions on the market, the market will react to get around those artificial restrictions.

I had been looking for replacement parts for this BBQ make and model — turns out if you look for generic parts instead of model-specific parts and purchase them from dealers out on the internet instead of the big, national chain hardware store where you got the original BBQ, you can find those parts for $60 or $70 instead of the $250 or more that they think they should cost.

If you look long enough and your google-fu is strong enough, you can find an off-market, non-Chrysler part for that ignition switch for about $60, along with a YouTube video that shows you step-by-step how to replace it. Granted, there are a couple of specialized tools needed there, and that level of mechanical repair is a bit out of my league. On the other hand, $60 plus some sweat plus some learning curve plus some tools bought, rented, or borrowed is a LOT less than $2,000+. Besides, what have I got to lose? What’s the worst I can do, break it so that it really does need a whole new steering column instead of just one part?

One of the things that my Economics 101 professor taught over and over was that any problem involving people was at its final root cause be an economics problem, and could be dealt with as such. That applies here.

I’m not sure what the exact law of economics is, but for the moment we can refer to it as “The Law Of Multiple Ways To Skin A Cat.”