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I don't follow. Let's presume the rational markets hypothesis for now (dubious in the case of Tesla but it's not important here). Then the value created by Tesl

by nvm0n2 3y ago

I don't follow. Let's presume the rational markets hypothesis for now (dubious in the case of Tesla but it's not important here). Then the value created by Tesla is not people owning cars who previously didn't, but the increased quality or value of the cars vs what they otherwise would have had. Whilst individual purchasing decisions are zero-sum in the moment i.e. if someone spends X on a Tesla they can't then spend X on anything else, that doesn't mean Tesla siphons customers from every other company in the world (why restrict to cars?). Rather, in the long term other companies get more competitive, increasing the value of all cars, and people get "richer" because now they can drive more/better/their air is cleaner/whatever, and Tesla also get richer, so wealth has been created. An individual micro-economic transaction on that day may be zero sum, but the whole economy overall isn't unless there's no growth.

slg 3y ago
>An individual micro-economic transaction on that day may be zero sum, but the whole economy overall isn't unless there's no growth. As I said, the economy is neither zero-sum nor completely not zero-sum. It exists somewhere in between. If you can recognize that individual microeconomic situations can be zero-sum, you should be able to recognize that some macroeconomic situations are zero-sum. I'm not arguing that these guys didn't create any wealth. I am arguing that their wealth is not equal to the value they created. Some of their wealth is wealth they captured from other people. I think it is pretty obvious that stockholders of other automakers would have more wealth in a world without Tesla. Musk now captures that wealth for Tesla stockholders. The same situation plays out for other people in Musk's orbit. The rest of the automakers are now producing fewer cars due to the presence of Tesla, therefore they are employing fewer people. Musk is extremely anti-union while many of his competitors have a unionized workforce. This allows him to treat his employees worse off. His wealth is therefore effectively coming from workers who are now in a worse situation than they were if Tesla didn't exist and those employees were working for another automakers.

by nvm0n2 3y ago

slg 3y ago

>An individual micro-economic transaction on that day may be zero sum, but the whole economy overall isn't unless there's no growth. As I said, the economy is neither zero-sum nor completely not zero-sum. It exists somewhere in between. If you can recognize that individual microeconomic situations can be zero-sum, you should be able to recognize that some macroeconomic situations are zero-sum. I'm not arguing that these guys didn't create any wealth. I am arguing that their wealth is not equal to the value they created. Some of their wealth is wealth they captured from other people. I think it is pretty obvious that stockholders of other automakers would have more wealth in a world without Tesla. Musk now captures that wealth for Tesla stockholders. The same situation plays out for other people in Musk's orbit. The rest of the automakers are now producing fewer cars due to the presence of Tesla, therefore they are employing fewer people. Musk is extremely anti-union while many of his competitors have a unionized workforce. This allows him to treat his employees worse off. His wealth is therefore effectively coming from workers who are now in a worse situation than they were if Tesla didn't exist and those employees were working for another automakers.