Elon Musk is TIME Person of the Year [CLOSED: VIOLATION OF NO-POLITICS RULE]

[Cyberman]

TIME is trying to regain its glory days when they were actually reputable.

I have to agree, after they chose bin laden one year, I lost all respect. Yes, I purposely didn't capitalize the name.

 

[Cyberman]

Good choice, it's about damn Time.

 

[Crissa]

I have to agree, after they chose bin laden one year, I lost all respect. Yes, I purposely didn't capitalize the name.

Sorry, that didn't happen. So no worries?

The selection process originally wasn't meant to be positive, just noteworthy. But people don't seem to understand that concept - and to be honest, it promotes the selected which is a bad thing to do for someone negative.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

And for Elon no subsidies is good.... ? never mind that he made all his intial money in .com a subsidized www.

Sort of like Walmart, UPS, and Amazon are subsidized by the highway system?

Doesn’t quite track with direct payments from the government.

Space X functions because it wins taxpayer funded space exploration. One could say subsidized space exploration now that private companies are doing it.

Should we give government contracts to higher bidders delivering less sustainable, less effective and less safe solutions? Or are you suggesting we ditch the space program entirely?

You are making weird/ awkward comparisons which just don’t track against direct subsidies.

I would love to see every EV startup have the same opportunities that Tesla had. The older program hasn’t expired so 99% of the benefits they got are still available. A loan program similar to the one Tesla got also makes a ton of sense.

An open ended program that is likely to cost the government over a hundred billion dollars over the next decade if it has the result it intended does not make sense. Particularly not when almost all of the companies benefitting from it are multi-billion dollar corporations and serial corporate welfare recipients.

GM in particular has already received $1.5 billion in benefits from this program and has little to nothing to show for it.

The ironic thing about all of this is the company which will benefit from this the most is Tesla. As the only company capable of producing the 100s of thousands of EVs per year, they are going to take 5 times what their nearest competitor takes out of the program even if the union clause passes.


It would be a lot more palatable if there were a cap on how much the program would cost. Or at least how much each company could receive from the program. So far it’s an open ended monstrosity.

 

[Crissa]

There are almost 300 million registered cars in the US. 17 million sold every year. The average - median - buyer buys a car once every 11 years.

A handful of 200k subsidies aren't going to cut it to get enough BEVs on the road or into most people's hands,

-Crissa

 

[Dids]

The point is simple, current government is way to inefficient at capital reallocation.

Fiat money is an illusion, MMT economics means tax revenue is irrelevant except for throttling inflation, and government by itself never produced anything by itself, that people didn't do, or could not do through other artificial entities.

This is what Elon says, worth a watch:

My bad, I thought I was engaging in the serious EV topic of goverment subsidies. Your other thoughts are interesting but if I engage moderation will just remove them and probably yell at me.

 

[Dids]

Sort of like Walmart, UPS, and Amazon are subsidized by the highway system?

Doesn’t quite track with direct payments from the government.



Should we give government contracts to higher bidders delivering less sustainable, less effective and less safe solutions? Or are you suggesting we ditch the space program entirely?

You are making weird/ awkward comparisons which just don’t track against direct subsidies.

I would love to see every EV startup have the same opportunities that Tesla had. The older program hasn’t expired so 99% of the benefits they got are still available. A loan program similar to the one Tesla got also makes a ton of sense.

An open ended program that is likely to cost the government over a hundred billion dollars over the next decade if it has the result it intended does not make sense. Particularly not when almost all of the companies benefitting from it are multi-billion dollar corporations and serial corporate welfare recipients.

GM in particular has already received $1.5 billion in benefits from this program and has little to nothing to show for it.

The ironic thing about all of this is the company which will benefit from this the most is Tesla. As the only company capable of producing the 100s of thousands of EVs per year, they are going to take 5 times what their nearest competitor takes out of the program even if the union clause passes.


It would be a lot more palatable if there were a cap on how much the program would cost. Or at least how much each company could receive from the program. So far it’s an open ended monstrosity.

No I think you are misunderstanding my argument. It was that I appreciate Elon for his zany brain and brilliance, but he has terrible public policy ideas, he often wants to use engineering (optimized tradeoff) to solve political (emotional) problems. This is understandable, he has said that he has a diagnosed empathy disability.
Direct subsidies such as tax breaks often have important public policy goals. The goal for the oil and gas subsidies is energy independence so that the United States can wage war if needed against oil rich nations. Is oil killing the planet, obviously yes, would Iran kill the planet if they could knock out the United States also obviously yes. It is in the balance that life is best....

 

[Ogre]

There are almost 300 million registered cars in the US. 17 million sold every year. The average - median - buyer buys a car once every 11 years.

A handful of 200k subsidies aren't going to cut it to get enough BEVs on the road or into most people's hands,

-Crissa

Tesla has been selling cars for the past 2 years without them. As many as they can make. EVs don’t need to be spoon fed to people at this point, people prefer them.

The 200,000 won’t get every single car made, but it will help car makers convert their production over. At least if that’s how they choose to invest it. It will also give small growing companies a chance to catch up to the big players in this new, blooming market. If existing players can continue sucking up all the subsidies we aren’t investing in new talent, we are enriching existing companies.

Within 5 years, EVs are going to be significantly less expensive to produce than ICE vehicles and subsidies are going to be even sillier.

As I said above, the open ended nature of this bothers me. You say 300 million registered cars? Are we going to replace them all? That’s 2.4 trillion dollars ($3.6T if all union). Which would be spent to encourage people to do the thing they will want to do regardless.

It’s like rewarding your kids with ice cream for eating their desert.

All I’m suggesting is some kind of caps with a hard top to this thing. 1m units per maker? 2m? Then we could reasonably come up with an estimate for how much it’s going to cost. Nobody has talked about this thing potentially costing $1T, and given the current structure, that’s entirely possible within 10 years.

 

[CyberGus]

I have to agree, after they chose bin laden one year, I lost all respect. Yes, I purposely didn't capitalize the name.

The 2001 "Person of the Year" was Rudy Giuliani. In retrospect, Bin Laden was probably the better choice

 

[Cyberman]

Sorry, that didn't happen.

The selection originally wasn't meant to be positive, just noteworthy. But people don't seem to understand that concept - and to be honest, it promotes the selected which is a bad thing to do for someone negative.

-Crissa

I stand corrected. I do remember seeing an edition of Time with bin laden's pic on it, and then controversy over them wanting to make him man of the year. Fortunately, they went with Rudy Giuliani instead

 

[Crissa]

The 2001 "Person of the Year" was Rudy Giuliani. In retrospect, Bin Laden was probably the better choice

Yes, well, hindsight is 2020.

Tesla has been selling cars for the past 2 years without them. As many as...

..And not enough to satisfy demand. In three years, they might approach 5% of the demand for cars in the US alone. Higher prices means able to pay off more investment which means more production.

Tesla may not be able to expand so quickly, but other car makers could also expand. And none of them have the ability to raise capital like Tesla does.

Do we want to replace only 5% of the cars or all of the cars? Do we want only rich people to have EVs?

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

Yes, well, hindsight is 2020.

This explains COVID.

..And not enough to satisfy demand. In three years, they might approach 5% of the demand for cars in the US alone. Higher prices means able to pay off more investment which means more production.

Tesla may not be able to expand so quickly, but other car makers could also expand. And none of them have the ability to raise capital like Tesla does.

Do we want to replace only 5% of the cars or all of the cars? Do we want only rich people to have EVs?

-Crissa

Companies are going to do what they need to do to compete.

If there are incentives or not, the market is shifting. If companies don’t move quickly, then there will be a bigger green field for Tesla to move into. If they can’t figure out how to do that after the first quarter million vehicles, I don’t know that they ever will.

GM and Nissan both accepted $1.5 billion in government money are are essentially at step one of this transition. Ford has barely tapped their EV incentive money and seems to be ahead of both.

I don’t see the incentives affecting the market as much as you seem to think they will. I also don’t see them having a positive effect on innovation and companies ability to effect production line changes.

What is affecting the market very much is Tesla—a company which receives no subsidies at the moment—stealing market share from companies that are eligible for subsidies. Equaling the playing field by resetting the subsidy count for bigger/ more established players in this market is going to make it harder for new entrants. Removing the cap will make it almost impossible for new entrants in the future as Tesla continues to drive their costs down and captures increasing amounts of profits.

Also, we’re climbing the S Curve already. Very soon, ICE vehicles will be about as interesting as flip phones. Very very soon, nobody is going to even consider ICE vehicles regardless of pricing.

You keep suggesting eliminating subsidies would only benefit the rich. The problem is in the current market adding subsidies doesn’t make cars more affordable, it only drives up the prices car makers can demand for their cars. If you want subsidies to benefit the lower-middle-class, you need a lower income cap then what is proposed currently. You might also consider limiting subsidies to more affordable vehicles. Subsidies on $80k SUVs and trucks only benefits the rich.

 

[TruckElectric]

 

[Ogre]

I like Warren generally, but she comes across as quite tone deaf or out-of-touch spouting about Musk and taxes right now. Doesn’t her media person keep her clued in on current times?

 

[TruckElectric]

I like Warren generally

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