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To clarify, you don't think private investment is up to solving the better car problem? Government needs to pick the winners and losers in this situation?
by tosseraccount 11y ago
To clarify, you don't think private investment is up to solving the better car problem? Government needs to pick the winners and losers in this situation?
- zaroth 11y agoWhen did the government do that? They offered the subsidy to any business who could build a viable electric car, not just to Tesla. It's not instead of private investment, in fact there's quite a bit of that with Tesla, but rather "more is better". It's a classic subsidizing of positive externalities, a basic role of government. Are you pretending that there haven't been incredible subsidies around oil, gas, and the whole infrastructure which was built up to support the ICE? The government investment into electric vehicles is quite paltry by comparison. I hope I'm in the middle of an economic discussion, not a political one. To me it seems like the subsidy was well thought out to achieve stated strategic goals and appropriately sized -- enough to materially effect the decision making process of what to purchase, but not so much that you basically can't afford not to buy one (e.g. "cash for clunkers").