Elon Musk's companies are fueled by government subsidies

In my opinion, the worst by far is the implicit subsidy where fossil fuel users are allowed to pollute without paying for the damage caused by that pollution. If you accounted for that fully, renewables would be cheaper today. Coal pollution alone causes something like one million deaths per year. It's like a big war that never stops. That's not even counting the potential deaths and disruption from climate change.

Fossil fuel users poison our land, air, and water without consequence and without paying for the damage, but somehow it's the guy making solar panels and electric cars that everybody complains about.

What does this have to do with Musk's businesses?

They pay their way, but they also transfer indirect costs to the rest of society which are not accounted for in the sort of calculations made in the linked article. For instance, in London electric cars are exempt from road tax, and the congestion charge. These would be counted as subsidies, but without taking into account the indirect costs which the subsidies in fact aim to at least partly price in - that is, the impact on health from vehicle internal combustion engines in the city. For instance, exposure to particulate matter is one of the major risk factors for heart attack and cardiovascular disease, and it alone is responsible for over 3000 premature deaths each year, just in London:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

Then add in the effects of Nitrogen and Sulphur oxides on asthma, emphysema, bronchitis and general respiratory illness. These have direct costs, of loss of productivity and increased hospital admissions, and also impacts on people's lives which cannot be priced into calculations.

None of this is taken into account when you attempt to directly compare one thing to the other based purely on the market price.

Exxon and Chevron paid those taxes on actual earnings. As soon as Tesla starts profiting, then they will owe taxes as well.

> US oil majors pay among the highest corporate tax rates on earth.

How much do you know about this? I've heard this statement, and I've heard it's a myth, that it only refers to one tax of many and that overall the overall tax rate in the US is relatively low for corporations. However, I have no independent knowledge would like to learn more.

Also, they don't pay for two enormous externalities: The military and wars in the Middle East, and climate change.

So, what is the environment worth? Cause that seems awfully cheap.

Don't you think it's a bit disingenuous to compare worldwide taxes and worldwide revenue with US subsidies? How much did they pay in income taxes to the US government?

One man's market distortion is another man's pricing in of manifest but indirect costs.

To take an obvious case, it might be very cheap for my neighbour to heat his house with coal. Then one day laws are introduced which say he has to abide by emissions standards, and in order to do that, buy an expensive clean-burning stove, and expensive specially refined low-sulphur coal. If that ends up making it cheaper to use natural gas instead, no doubt the coal company (and the neighbour) will say the rules represent an artificial distortion of the market. But I would say the rules are there prevent him transferring the true costs of burning cheap coal onto my family (and the other families nearby) and their health.

Government spending distorts the market towards 'things that are good for citizens' and away from 'things that are good for the owning class', you mean. And your second phrase is exactly backwards; the government funds research no corporation would ever be able to fund because it isn't profit-maximizing, and when all that public funding inevitably reaches a breakthrough that's good for businesses and people alike the profits are subsequently privatized giving the public sector no credit.

For example take this jerk Bolden who turned the nasa-spacex relationship into a measuring contest

http://gizmodo.com/nasa-says-nobodys-getting-to-mars-without...

Now we know what he means, that he thinks there's no way that musk will sink the acrued capital of spacex and go to mars.

But even if he's wrong and elon does just that he's already won the argument because spacex is a government contractor and there has been government help nevermind that spaceX has saved NASA so much money

Socialists are self-centered. They demand things that they want from other people. To the extent that they want government to pay to take care of others, it's because they don't want to reach into their own pockets and pay help out themselves and "rich people" are seen as a collective resource to which somehow they are morally entitled to.

Libertarians, by contrast, are permissive to selfishness, which means they tolerate, say objectivists, but when they act in pro-social fashion they mean it because its their time and their money they're putting forward. Perhaps I experience selection bias, but I know many libertarians who volunteer to build homes for the needy, feed the poor, and have set up organizations to support homeless camps. By contrast, a smaller fraction of the liberals I know would ever do such things; that's the provenance of the state.

Tesla needs to raise money to make the affordable EV in high volume. Many of the companies we discuss here are in the same situation.

It is beholden to "us" as much as the us gov't is beholden to us. That is, somewhat loosely in some situations the counterparty can extract some sort of its will on the enterprise.

In an ideal world, there wouldn't be companies, we would all work together. We don't, and our society is instead organized along capitalist premises. As such, the government support parts of the market that we feel need encouragement, and ostensibly stays out of the way otherwise.

You can agree or disagree with the premise, but that's how we do things. There are many, many vastly more egregious cases of privatizing gains and socializing losses than electric cars and reinventions of the energy network.

> I think a tax advantage can be considered a subsidy only when others are actually taxed more due to not receiving it.

Wouldn't that be everyone? Unless you mean they increase the tax rate for the others while reducing yours... but net comes out the same.

My point is that there usually isn't a standard to these, the government can claim all kinds of subsidies because it's saying that's the amount they aren't charging (even if that amount was never to be charged to begin with).

Notice how the price of a Tesla car roughly halves at each major iteration? Now project the line out into the mass-market price range.

I'm not an expert on the history of Ford, but I imagine that their cars also started off as a luxury item and only after obtaining some market share were they able to build the massively efficient production lines that they are famous for?

That solution is more elegant, but it requires more political finesse. Measuring the external costs raises many difficult questions. What to do with that money raises many more (hopefully not as difficult) questions. It is also a more general solution, which naturally threats more interests. All this makes it take longer to implement and makes a lot more people interested in prolonging it even further. Which raises costs and drives the best talent away, and makes it more likely the project gets killed. Throwing some pocket change to a few talented individuals and hope for the best is nasty hack, but sadly we lack skilled and properly motivated politicians to do much better.

And in that magical world I probably have a mansion in the Hamptons.

Wow, I really hope this is satire. I don't want to live in a world where somebody can write that last paragraph seriously.

- How does toxic lithium mining fair to the countless oil spillage disasters that happen every few years? It doesn't. Lithium mining is now a rising industry in the dawn of the electric era, and it is nonetheless a limited resource which will very shortly need to start being synthetical, simply out of practical necessity.

- Tesla has been profitable for numerous financial quarters, although not consistent. On that basis, neither has been GM for many quarters after the crisis, after causing an $11.2 billion loss to the American tax payer.

- Tesla is funded mostly by competitors and revenue, not by the tax payer. Read the above sentence again for contrast: GM caused a direct loss of $11.2 billion to the tax payer. Tesla only borrowed and then repaid in full.

- The subsidy granted to Tesla by the US gov, only a minuscule percentage of the GM bailout, was repaid in full with interest by Tesla, with the tax payer making a profit. The loan was around $450 million, not $11 billion.

- Does the fictional subsidy working in the favour of the so called ultra rich really work out better than the oil barons of the world? Which is really the strongly monopolised industry with price strictly regulated in favour of private interest? Does the name Rockefeller or Saud ring a bell?

- How does the net time value of a Tesla fair to a normal middle class sedan? Well, it's only the higher upfront class you pay. On a 10 year span Tesla directly competes with most mid level sedans.

- Furthermore, iteration takes a long time and cost efficiency takes the longest time in manufacturing, if you weren't be a belligerent skeptical.

- I can see your finances do not buy you a Tesla just yet and that makes you angry. The secret to changing that is to stop blaming the "ultra rich" for your problems and take a real good look in the mirror.

Do you really not sense any irony in your "ad hominem arguments"? If must warn you that a brain dead moron might be dangerously close to you.

I don't particularly care you've found fault in my logic as being belligerent makes someone like you feel good, this is the Internet after all.

But if you are a third party reading this, don't get stuck on the fact that you can't yet afford a Tesla. And when you do the math, don't look at upfront cost only, that's the worst way to do it. Add up fuel cost for your average mileage, average maintenance, repairs, insurance premiums, tax credits over the number of years you plan to keep it for and workout the real value. You will be amazed to learn a Tesla isn't that expensive after all. A 70D starts at $57k and from thereon you can start decreasing tax credits, fuel savings and so forth. Is it really more expensive or are you unaware about what the net time value of a purchase is? Time to get your economics in order.

Lastly, every business starts out with an overpriced overbloated product, even if you're launching a stupid new social network for dogs, it always takes time to become efficient. Let alone with cars. People who haven't built things from scratch often lack this sense of continuous iteration that is necessary, but I would really re-consider my position against Elon and Tesla and all the great work they have been doing.

Things that have their origins in defense:

GPS

Siri

The Internet

Tor

Not saying pork isn't a huge problem but saying no awesome technology comes out of defense spending is untrue.

You had me at defense contractors. Successful or not it wouldn't create a net benefit for humanity or even the subset of it our government is ostensibly serving.