8 ms·

The thing is, everyone _could_ get a pony, if we decided that doing so was a priority. Ponies cost about $1000. If it mattered enough, the US government could

by goo 7y ago

The thing is, everyone _could_ get a pony, if we decided that doing so was a priority. Ponies cost about $1000. If it mattered enough, the US government could ABSOLUTELY afford $330 billion to get everyone a pony. It's not that tremendous things aren't possible, it's that we aren't doing them.

bzbarsky 7y ago
Not to take away from your main point, but the capitalized total cost of ownership for a pony is _much_ larger than $1000 (which, by the way, is the price for a not-very-good-natured pony; breeds with nice temperaments cost a lot more according to https://pets.costhelper.com/pony.html https://pets.costhelper.com/pony.html ). Doing some quick checking, food for a pony is ~$1-2k per year. Lodging is $2-3k per year. Basic preventative veterinary care is $1k per year; if the pony gets old this could get a lot more. That's $4-6k a year for upkeep, and ponies live for 20+ years. So the actual cost of a pony, even with discounting and whatnot for future dollars, is probably at least $50k, not $1k.
- goo 7y ago
  If you really think through the implications of every individual in America owning a pony, it gets a lot more interesting than that! It means that everyone in every city would own a pony -- would that mean that perhaps a proxy ownership situation would occur, where you had a certificate of pony ownership, but the pony would be housed and maintained anywhere in the country that could do so cheapest? It would cost a lot more than 2-3k/year to house a pony in NYC! Let alone the sudden demand for housing about 5 million of them... My guess is that these ponies would be kept in horrible conditions similar to the way domesticated cattle are raised for milk and meat. I would hazard that all of our assumptions about the actual price of ponies and maintenance would come down if we all needed to have a pony, and would come down by a LOT.
  - bzbarsky 7y ago
    Well, yes, the "there aren't 330 million ponies in the US, and if there were, where would we keep them?" problem is definitely a problem too!
- s1artibartfast 7y ago
  Not to mention the costs to offset the carbon impact of the pony's feed.

by goo 7y ago

bzbarsky 7y ago

Not to take away from your main point, but the capitalized total cost of ownership for a pony is _much_ larger than $1000 (which, by the way, is the price for a not-very-good-natured pony; breeds with nice temperaments cost a lot more according to https://pets.costhelper.com/pony.html https://pets.costhelper.com/pony.html ). Doing some quick checking, food for a pony is ~$1-2k per year. Lodging is $2-3k per year. Basic preventative veterinary care is $1k per year; if the pony gets old this could get a lot more. That's $4-6k a year for upkeep, and ponies live for 20+ years. So the actual cost of a pony, even with discounting and whatnot for future dollars, is probably at least $50k, not $1k.

goo 7y ago
If you really think through the implications of every individual in America owning a pony, it gets a lot more interesting than that! It means that everyone in every city would own a pony -- would that mean that perhaps a proxy ownership situation would occur, where you had a certificate of pony ownership, but the pony would be housed and maintained anywhere in the country that could do so cheapest? It would cost a lot more than 2-3k/year to house a pony in NYC! Let alone the sudden demand for housing about 5 million of them... My guess is that these ponies would be kept in horrible conditions similar to the way domesticated cattle are raised for milk and meat. I would hazard that all of our assumptions about the actual price of ponies and maintenance would come down if we all needed to have a pony, and would come down by a LOT.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  Well, yes, the "there aren't 330 million ponies in the US, and if there were, where would we keep them?" problem is definitely a problem too!
s1artibartfast 7y ago
Not to mention the costs to offset the carbon impact of the pony's feed.