[bhawks]

Trucks are literally an asset - you can't do depreciation on a liability.

The only way a 'truck' could be a liability is a lease for said truck.

There are plenty of economically rationale reasons why a company may own more trucks they strictly need to manage delivery. For example wanting to handle seasonal bursts, wanting to ensure reliability, preparing for an expansion, being able to lease capacity to other businesses.

Actually you can go replace truck with server and you describe what made AWS make initial sense.

Please stop misusing accounting concepts.

[cbsmith]

> Please stop misusing accounting concepts.

Assets can also be liabilities. The mortgages in a mortgage backed security is both an asset and a liability, as was only too well demonstrated in 2008... It's an asset in the security portfolio, but until you sell the security, it's a liability for whomever is securitizing it.

[bhawks]

In the GFC the government literally created the Troubled _Asset_ Relief Program. Those MBSs were assets and didn't magically become liabilities.

The problem was the market value of those assets plummeted because no one expected them to generate the agreed upon cash flows because the underlying loans were going into correlated defaults. Despite all this the only party that saw the mortgage as a liability is the individual who's responsibility it was to make a monthly payment on said mortgage.

Outside of swaps and other derivatives financial instruments and other properties don't magically switch from being an asset to being a liability based on random external factors.

This conversation is like accountants talking about processes, threads, fibers and context switching... very imprecisely.

[cbsmith]

> Outside of swaps and other derivatives financial instruments and other properties don't magically switch from being an asset to being a liability based on random external factors.

I wasn't saying they switch; I'm saying they can be both an asset and a liability. Liability isn't strictly an accounting term. It also can refer to something that acts as a disadvantage. Illiquid assets whose valuation can be volatile can be a liability.

[delecti]

I'm not using liability in the accounting context, but in the colloquial one.

> a person or thing whose presence or behavior is likely to cause embarrassment or put one at a disadvantage.

Code is absolutely a liability. Code deteriorates as conditions change, and unchanged code also becomes more vulnerable in a way that conventional objects can't.

[patmorgan23]

A truck also comes with a maintenance liability if you want to continue getting value out of it, just like code.

[bhawks]

Liabilities are obligations of a company to pay money owed to a lender as a result of a previous transaction.

You are describing an operating expense which has an entirely different nature than a liability.

'comes with a maintenance liability' is a handwaving statement that means practically nothing without a ton of contextual information. A true liability has a contractual set of obligations to pay defined amounts on a agreed upon schedule. No one is going to come after you for not changing the oil on your truck, try missing payments on a lease.

[fragmede]

> No one is going to come after you for not changing the oil on your truck

Several parties will come after you for not changing the oil on your semi-truck that is being used professionally for freight, starting with your driver, your insurance company, and the US Department of Transportation (DOT), specifically the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), with whom you have m have to provide maintenance records. Trucking is a highly regulated industry, and after Crowdstrike, software engineering is only going to get more regulated, not less.