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The irony here is that Democrats, for more than a decade, did anything and everything, by bankrolling taxpayers money into incentives and subsidies, to protect
by esalman 1y ago
The irony here is that Democrats, for more than a decade, did anything and everything, by bankrolling taxpayers money into incentives and subsidies, to protect Tesla, help it compete and even flourish and scale, in the auto market where margins are razor thin and true innovations are hard to come by, even less so from smaller players. Nobody, except Republicans, batted an eye because climate change, science and environment comes first supposedly.
- hiddencost 1y ago[flagged]
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoHe is right you know. He managed to fleece dems and is now fleecing the other side. Neutral observer can only stay in awe of his talents.
- esalman 1y agoThanks, I am indeed talking as a neutral observer. It's been almost 7 years since I realized how much of a nutcase he is. Some democrats only realized it 8 months ago.
- Capricorn2481 1y ago> Some democrats only realized it 8 months ago This is some wild revisionist history. Democrats have been sounding off about Musk for years. He endorsed Trump way back in 2020. Nobody is learning anything new about him. On the contrary, everyone is dug in with how they feel about him because it's too late to do anything about it, so they might as well pretend everything is fine.
- esalman 1y agoHe voted for Biden in 2020.
- sd8f9iu 1y agoClimate change, science, and the environment are indeed valid reasons (as was plainly stated at the time) for subsidies to electric cars (amongst hundreds of billions of dollars of other environmental subsidies Democrats passed). The CEO spending hundreds of millions of dollars to curry favor with the ruling party, which is almost certainly the reason this specific number was chosen, is not.
- cosmicgadget 1y agoTesla's success/threat pushed traditional automakers to actually build EVs at scale. It convinced consumers that EVs are viable and kickstarted charging infrastructure. The left accomplished its goal even if it probably would have preferred Elon not go all Kanye on us.
- esalman 1y ago> The left accomplished its goal Yeah we allowed a deranged billionaire to transform auto industry, even if it cost us democracy and threats of fascism and authoritarianism for the foreseeable future. Completely delusional.
- cosmicgadget 1y agoPost hoc ergo propter hoc
- esalman 1y agoA lot of people, including me, realized even as early as circa 2018 that he was a nutcase. Imo the point of post hoc ergo should've been when he said zero Covid case by April (2020).
- cosmicgadget 1y agoSure but the authoritarianism outcome was not predestined by simply funding the technologies he invested in. Plenty of eccentric and/or drug-addled billionaires went on to live relatively harmless lives. He could have been a jar-pissing recluse or spent his days pinning the weasel in a Caribbean polycule dormitory or gone on wild John McAfee adventures. The place we went wrong wasn't incentivizing Tesla, it was allowing the other guy to escape conviction.
- arandomusername 1y ago[flagged]
- hello_computer 1y agoi think it’s more than irony. why would the government—irrespective of party—give him billions in refundable credits for over a decade? remember paypal was also an in-q-tel investment? “boring company” to connect DUMBs. starlink for the control grid. spacex to deploy it. tesla as the self-driving AI slam-dunk (windows update car is another control grid). the government has been heavily invested in elon long before donald trump got political. why? with the kind of budget the CIA has, you could make anyone seem as though they had “the midas touch.” name one of your kids “damien” and dress up like the antichrist. the devil has an army. the pentagon points south (down). we ponder our next pleasure as the innocent are slaughtered with our energies, with our tacit approval.