Why the surprise? There's plenty of people who love the idea of government owned monopolies.
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Split Thread Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla
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Why the surprise? There's plenty of people who love the idea of government owned monopolies.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
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Sure, but I didn’t think TGZ was one of them.
jeremyp
Philosopher
Full Self Driving is.
I suspect the Tesla semi might be.
Not in the traditional sense. I'd be interested to see how much money SpaceX and Starling are really making.
That definitely is a con. I was a made by a board filled with Musk stooges and the shareholders were not properly informed about it. I believe a court has ruled on that one and said he must give it back.
Correct. That's just a cluster something.
jeremyp
Philosopher
It's not, because the Cybertruck is made by Tesla but Falcon 9 isn't.
I'll give you Falcon 9 as a laudable achievement. Are there any others?
dirtywick
Penultimate Amazing
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yeah he deceived shareholders by basically staging acting as if the board was negotiating a pay package on behalf of them when actually it was creating his own compensation package that was incredibly favorable to him. call it what you want, but that's cheating people out of money.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/30/tes...voids-elon-musks-56-billion-compensation.html
The Great Zaganza
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no, you didn't, or i wasn't clear.
the amount of Corporate Socialism in the US, in the shape of Regulatory Protectionism, Knowledge Transfer from US funded institutions, bailouts, cheap prison labor and letting employees get food stamps is mind-boggling.
It is 100% fair to say that this has made Corporate America completely uncompetitive, which is demonstrated every time a US company tries to open a subsidiary in another country that isn't just a tax shelter.
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Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
Ehh, TGZ responded before me and pushed a different direction, even it it was related. Hence, I'm going to delete this to reduce distractions.
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theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
The Great Zaganza
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A note on Falcon 9 :
the reason why NASA never built something like this is that Congress would have eliminated their entire budget after 2 failed flights.
Musk has so much more freedom to fail than NASA that a comparison isn't appropriate.
And unlike NASA, Musk gets to treat his employees like garbage.
the reason why NASA never built something like this is that Congress would have eliminated their entire budget after 2 failed flights.
Musk has so much more freedom to fail than NASA that a comparison isn't appropriate.
And unlike NASA, Musk gets to treat his employees like garbage.
novaphile
Quester of Doglets
The thing he turned off to help the Russians? That Starlink?
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Weaponized pedantry. Starlink represents a legitimate achievement, for which Musk deserves credit just as much as he deserves discredit for Cybertruck. Indeed, if it weren't a legitimate achievement, it wouldn't be helpful to Moscow.
But now we're diving deeper into Musk Derangement Syndrome. Everything Musk does is a scam. Unless it helps the Russians. Then it's a legitimate achievement. But Musk doesn't get any credit for it, because everything Musk does is a scam.
My view is that very little that Musk's corporations have produced is a scam. At worst, some of the claims about Tesla vehicles are overblown. That's it, unless you have a knee-jerk "all capitalism is a scam" or terminal socialistice mindset.
And I don't think you're giving Falcon 9 enough credit. It's a pretty big achievement.
Marcus
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Even with cybertruck, it's hard to argue that it's not a success, pre- orders are up to 2 million.
https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-cybertruck-pre-orders-exceeded-2-million
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
That's not a lot. What is it? About 20/30 trucks? People are still waiting for their supporters from years ago.
tyr_13
Penultimate Amazing
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Except those preorders aren't being executed.
If you didn't preorder, you can order a CyberTruck now and get it within a 2024. Do you think Tesla has the capacity to fulfill two million preorders and normal purchases in a 2024? They don't.
The 'preorders' were not commitments of any sort. They were placeholders. The price wasn't even locked in, which is why so many people who put down the completely refundable $100 are not pulling the trigger.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Opps.
$100 deposit for two million trucks.
The end of the queue has to wait many years.
Why would you think knowledge transfer from US funded institutions is a bad thing? The whole point of public funding of science/knowledge creation is supposed to be because knowledge is a public good* (and thus it doesn't get enough funding in the private sector), but having funded it, of course the point is for people to put it to use.
I agree that most of the others are problems.
*I'm not convinced this actually turns out to be as true in practice as it seems, precisely because the transfer of knowledge isn't as easy as we usually suppose.
The Great Zaganza
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It's a bad thing if taxpayers have all the costs and Risks and private companies all the profits.
And then brag about their R&D.
All of US Pharma would belong to the Government if they had to pay in shares for the technology they get for free now.
I'm not sure if this answers my question. Are you suggesting that the government shouldn't spend money on scientific research, or are you suggesting that they should try to turn the product of that research into a club good (ie. extract payment for its use) instead of a public good? Or something else?
The Great Zaganza
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The Government should get to keep full control of all Patents and what comes directly off them, and give them to any company they want if one company misuses them by, for example, withholding research for profit reasons.
And of course the government should get the same return on investment as any angel investor.
After all, capitalists keep telling us that the State should be run more like a company.
Not giving away valuable stuff for free seems to be very much in line with that idea.
And of course the government should get the same return on investment as any angel investor.
After all, capitalists keep telling us that the State should be run more like a company.
Not giving away valuable stuff for free seems to be very much in line with that idea.
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I assume you mean all patents that are produced in government funded research facilities, right?
I'm assuming that this means something like charging a fee for the use of the aforementioned patents? Or something else?
The whole reason that the role of government is to fund the production of public goods is that you can't charge for them, because they are both non excludable and non-rival, which causes markets to undersupply public goods (no one produces them, because while they are valuable you can't make a profit producing them). When it comes to research universities, its not like every idea is patentable.
However, to the extent that you can turn these public goods into private goods, it might be useful to do so, though it makes one question the role of government in producing them in that case.
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