_edo

This is the sort of thing I've come to expect from Elon Musk, the plan that once you see it you think "oh...yeah. Of course." Tacking the removal fees to the end of contract is a little iffy to me, but overall, what. a. move.

This gives consumers who want a way to get into solar a low-cost, low-risk entry point where they'll probably break even, do a little better, or at least be somewhere in that neighborhood month to month. There is a $1,500 removal fee (which could be done for private contractors for less) but that's also kind of peanuts for anybody who's looked into solar and realized the massive up-front investment. I know that's why my house doesn't have solar.

For Tesla this gives them them the ability to ramp up production, have a huge testing base, and start lowering costs while raising quality. If costs get low enough and quality high enough they could push solar technology to the point that it makes sense for the average consumer to purchase off the shelf. Short of that they're getting a whole bunch of solar panels out there.

Talk about a win-win, this is amazing.

edit: I just woke up and kind of jumped the gun here, didn't even realize I was looking at the 'commercial solar' page.....but it's too late to delete this comment. I do think it's a really cool business model and it's also really cool that SunRun has been doing it, too.

Because they didn't know how to run the new business.

It's the same story as when Sears rose to prominence: they saw a business model the other mail-order retailers didn't understand.

The irony is Sears started as a mail-order catalog but couldn't get back to the old model in time. But of course their large management structures couldn't move as fast as small company with somebody like Bezos at the helm who could just make calls on the spot.

Yeah. Management work for the owners just like everybody else. They're workers who happen to not be represented by the union.

Management only takes losses so far as they have equity stakes in the company, which is to say the extent to which they are owners. When GM lost $38 billion in a year the people who own the company took that hit.

That's why employees usually don't value ownership in a company, because it cuts both ways. A salary only deposits into your account.

Doesn't matter. Executives (in this case) are workers, not owners. Some of their pay may be in equity in an attempt to align their interests with the owners but their agreement with the owners is the same as a janitor's: they take guaranteed pay in exchange for not being tied to the risks and rewards of the profit/loss cycle.

By sharing in losses I mean losing money in absolute terms, that's what happens to owners. Owners don't just make less money in bad times, they lose money. Workers may lose money relative to what they think they would make otherwise, but they still make money.

Accepting the risk of losses is why owners have a legitimate claim to the profits. Workers take a guaranteed paycheck which shelters them from losses in bad years and forfeits their claim to profits in good.

The workers never take a share of the losses.

In 2005 when the company lost $10 billion or in 2007 when they lost $38 billion the union workers didn't get bills in the mail instead of checks. On a personal level, the workers are still making profit regardless of whether or not the company is as well.

In 2008 GM was a $100 billion in debt. The union workers didn't pay that, they didn't take responsibility for that, the taxpayers did.

Looks really interesting, but in the first paragraph of the introduction:

> A recession, for example, is a time when many people have decided to........express support for fiscally conservative government.

What? I'm not sure how this sentence is showing up below words like Yale and NBER at the top of this paper.

The overall idea that stories can drive recessions has clearly happened: a population buys in to the story that profits are derived from exploitation, they abolish profits, then a major recession hits as the economy ceases functioning.

He does touch upon the "profiteer" narrative as a possible source of the 1920 recession, but skips how that same basic narrative would play a major role in shaping the USSR.

He speaks of the narratives of the 2008 financial collapse, but only in terms of how people referenced The Great Depression. What about the narrative that everybody should be able to buy a house, which led to lower lending standards, which led to horrible practices on the back end to try and salvage the the bad loans being written, which led to a global recession.

Taxing something makes it less common. Doesn't matter if it's carbon, cigarettes, sugar, productivity, or investing.

Tax investing and that shifts the line just like a carbon tax, except in this case the people investing are more likely to start buying politicians or sending their money overseas. Those things don't benefit society like having them fund the research and diligence necessary to find and invest in the next Google, the next Target, or the next energy revolution.

No, you add value to their labor and in return get to keep some of it.

Or you can solve some previously unsolved problems which allow you to produce better products for lower costs than your competitors. This is how Carnegie, Rockefeller, Walton, Bernard Kroger, Aaron Montgomery Ward, Richard Warren Sears, etc. all made their fortunes. Even modern tycoons like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc.

Can they get too much market power and start stealing from society? Absolutely, that's why we have anti-trust laws. But to see a fortune and assume a theft is to fundamentally misunderstand economics.

And what happens to society as a whole when we abandon a person's right to own the products of their labor? What happens when highly productive people decide they have better things to do than go to work and get taxed at 70%?

A lot of people like a carbon tax because it will lower carbon emissions, if you tax productivity it has the same effect. A lot of people like clean energy subsidies because it makes clean energy more common, unfortunately subsidizing poverty often has the same effect.

I'm not saying you're wrong to care, I'm saying it's not a simple problem.

This stuck out as strange to me since they defined microplastics as <5mm. If you run water through sand it would filter things this large, and that's a common wastewater treatment practice.

There's also good societal reason to encourage teenagers like this to undertake another 4-8 years of difficult education to become those random adult engineers.

Showing them "hey what you can do with your mind is valued by society" might help do that.

> The world is deeply unjust economically.......and I feel stupidified when I see how these programmes aren't yet serious international standards.

It's not really that simple. Taking, by force, from Person A to raise Person B's children is complicated especially if you're worried about justness.

The average college football player, with their 2% chance of making it to the NFL, is worth the median NFL salary of roughly $800k? This has gone a little too far off track for me.

The core issue here is claiming that profits are derived from not paying players. There are plenty of teams not paying players and losing money. The top teams could pay players well and still make profit. There's a small Goldilocks zone where what players should be paid lines up with the team's level of profit. The old "profits come from not paying workers" canard is a story with little to no explanatory power here.

> Trump’s unilateral, preemptive trade war...

Is it preemptive? I've been hearing about their intellectual property theft issues for over 15 years.

> It's profitable only because the players aren't paid.

No.

The NFL minimum salary is under $500k and by your own admission these players aren't that good.

Even a generous $200k/yr and a generous 100 player roster only adds up to $20 million, and there are teams with over $50 million in profits.

Big football programs make big money, small programs don't.

For the 2012-2013 season University of Texas brought in over $100 million with under $30 million in expenses. Same year Alabama brought in $88 million on $47 mil in expenses.

edit: The magnitude of these numbers is why I think these teams and perhaps a 4-year league should be spun off and the players should be paid.

-https://smartycents.com/articles/college-football-revenue/