[bob.murphy.ancap]

I think I agree with most of your comment, bigqueue. On a car being an “investment,” it depends what you’re holding as the counterfactual. E.g. if someone “has to” go to X for work, and without a car the best (all things considered) method is to take the bus, then you could evaluate buying a car in light of that.

It would probably turn out that the car had a negative ROI in purely monetary terms (since the car payments each month are higher than the bus fare), but still you could figure that stuff in, to calculate how much of the car’s monetary expense was investment, and how much was consumption. E.g. if the person were able to earn more income in some of the extra time that having the car afforded (since less time spent on the bus), then that might matter.

Or in the extreme, if someone wouldn’t be able to take a higher-paying job without getting a car, then in that kind of scenario a basic car would be an investment, while getting a nicer car would be partly consumption and partly investment.