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Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

> reaching your hands deep into the pockets of other people

I think you're right, but not in that way.

Tesla charged wealthy people a lot for the original tesla roadster. Then they took what they learned and charged wealthy people a lot for a better car, the original model S. Then the X.

He continued reaching into the pockets of wealthy people for further updates to the model S/X, updating the motor, then motors.

Now the model 3 and Y are available for less wealthy people. I'm sure the next generation of tesla cars will be more affordable, maybe even Jimbob.

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If you want to understand the problems, spend less time worrying about the parts of the economy where over time you pay less and get more, and spend more time worrying about the parts of the economy where over time you pay more and get less. That's where it's broken. Health care, housing, education.

This is a bizarre way to look at a private transaction for a luxury good.

Nobody needs a Tesla.

If a wealthy person pays $100k for a car, it’s because they think it’s worth $100k.

If the price later drops to $80k, that’s not money out of the first persons pocket. They were willing to trade $100k for a car they wanted.

And by this very logic, lowering the price of goods over time is bad. What a insane world we’d live in if that were true.

> Nobody needs a Tesla.

But does everybody need another 100 years of gasoline cars?

It probably is a bizarre way to look at things, but the wealthy people are paying to develop EVs, then the not so wealthy to develop even more practical cars and so on until they are practical for normal folks. And they reach price parity with ICE cars.

People have been saying that the economical/low impact car to buy is a used car that was already built. Now you can buy used teslas.

> He continued reaching into the pockets of wealthy people

I'd argue he used subsidies from the government, both direct and indirect.

Buyers get a tax credit for electric cars. SolarCity received hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants from different state governments, I believe this all went to Tesla.

Tesla's high curb weight causes more damage to roads. Tesla's lack of unionization means that it relies on mistreatment of workers to get its cars made.

There are a lot of examples of Musk taking money both directly and indirectly from those who are not in his customer base. I won't argue whether or not Tesla has been a net benefit or not for the USA, but the result of this is that Musk can point to his company's success and marketing to pump the share price-- and he is now attempting to dump it.

The sneaky thing about inequality is that a lot of the direct costs are externalized. Musk can still appear "self-made" when he has externalized so many of his costs to the taxpayer and his workers.

> Buyers get a tax credit for electric cars. SolarCity received hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants from different state governments, I believe this all went to Tesla.

Those cars wouldn't have been made or bought without those grants, the grants offset the extra cost of electric cars so they didn't put money into anyone's pockets, its just the government investing in getting electrification happen earlier.

Without them that money the profits would just have went to combustion car manufacturers instead like before.

Sure. But acknowledging the source of the investments would be swell. And it's a bit cheeky to be vehemently against govt and taxes after being one of the largest beneficiaries of said govt.

Yep! It's not a bad thing at all, it just ought to be acknowledged.

And most important: Wealthy people invested into Tesla stock hype, that is where most of Musks money comes from.

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