3 ms·
Mitt Romney must hate Tesla - it is a textbook example of why governments should sometimes mess with free markets. If the government had not provided this loan
by MarkMc 13y ago
Mitt Romney must hate Tesla - it is a textbook example of why governments should sometimes mess with free markets.
If the government had not provided this loan Tesla would have gone bankrupt and the US would have lost a significant high-tech asset. 99% of the time the market is more efficient than government, but that other 1% counts for a lot.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- JunkDNA 13y agoThe right wing argument against government meddling isn't that it doesn't work sometimes (broken clocks being right twice a day and all that). The complaint is that, in aggregate, for every Tesla there are countless Solyndras. Governments aren't good at picking investments for the exact same reason individual people are not good at picking investments: predicting the future is hard. It's doubly hard when governments do it because of the distorting influence of constituents and politics. Let the private sector keep that money and if Elon convinces enough people to lend him cash, he can move forward. I have no doubt he could have done everything he has without a loan from Uncle Sam.
- josefresco 13y ago"The complaint is that, in aggregate, for every Tesla there are countless Solyndras" The problem with that argument or complaint is the evidence against it... "The Energy Department has said that losses in the $34 billion loan portfolio amount to about 2% of the total." This program might be a success so far, I cannot speak to past government investments which might back the "right wing" view better.