Which isn't ideal, but easily better than the pentagon that has literally never passed a full audit since they started auditing them in 2018. I'm a huge fan of musk's company's, but I don't want my public tax dollars ever choosing winners/losers
I'm not a huge fan of Elmo but Telsa get's subsidies that all car manufacturers are eligible for. The fact that those manufacturers have to purchase credits from Tesla is their decision. If they can't delivery a quality ZEV the public wants to buy they have no one else to blame.
It isn't now. Tariffs (long-standing ones that have survived both parties in power) in fact are keeping byd from the US market to protect primarily Tesla.
In Tesla because of the brilliant behavior of its precious CEO, will likely be specifically targeted for exclusion from subsidies in the EU, and inevitably at home when this administration passes by
> It isn't now. Tariffs (long-standing ones that have survived both parties in power) in fact are keeping byd from the US market to protect primarily Tesla.
This is a bad take. Nobody can compete with BYD. This isn't a Tesla vs BYD issue, this is a Everyone vs Cheap labor and deregulation issue.
Byd is a product of CCP subsidies, of course they can be competed with
It would simply take a government capable of recognizing the multifold benefits of EV transition: environmental, geopolitical oil independence, energy efficiency, associated alt energy rollout and grid adaptation, lower total costs and associated economic benefits, reduced cancer and air pollution death rates, reduced logistics costs.
That's just off the top of my head and I'm not even that smart
Those subsidies also went to Boing and ULA, who also bid on those contracts.
This is such a debunked argument but I guess its undebunkable because its a branch you can hang onto about how the only reason SpaceX exists is the government.
Question is why hasn't Blue Origin managed the same then, or Arianaspace in the EU.
> Question is why hasn't Blue Origin managed the same then, or ArianeSpace ...
Or any of hundreds of other national space programs and companies, in countries which would have been ecstatic to pay 10X the US Govt's "subsidies to SpaceX", to put themselves or their nation's company into SpaceX's current position of utter global dominance.
If an interest free loan at a time when Tesla couldn’t get a bank to loan them breakfast is not a subsidy then you also agree that none of the banks received any sort of government support either right?
Because even despite many of the companies failing, the govt made a profit on TARP.
“Who is John Galt?” /s He is Schrödinger's Entrepreneur: a self made man when the ego and cult calls for it, but a scrappy startup founder just trying to save the world and get to Mars when desperate for government or Capital market support and intervention.
Most of those subs linked are from direct negotations from the state, and they are in the form of tax incentives, not cash in account.
How are you going to use that against a company that nevada agreed to give them X amount of tax incentives over a year if they build a giga factory there?
Using that as a justification that "tesla only lives because of tax payer money" is ridiculous.
Also, poking around the SpaceX data just seems entirely false too. The biggest 'loan' of $98M to spaceX for "Missle technology development". And when you follow the authorizations it was just a firm fixed price contract.
I am not here to talk you out of your mental model around the cult of Elon. His companies have received almost $40B in various forms of government support, those are the facts. He is a skilled operator, able to whip teams of engineers to success and distort reality persuasively to customers and investors alike, but his ventures would not have survived without the government support he’s received.
Let's not forget he SUED to get SpaceX contracts from the big defense contractors. The GAO was the one who upheld the protest due to the vast price disperities.
"but his ventures would not have survived without the government support he’s received."
Including firm fixed price contracts the company has won from the government for providing essential services is not a good argument. SpaceX's main customer is governments... thats how rocket companies work.
Comparing Tesla’s support to other industries reveals a double standard. The fossil fuel industry has received trillions in subsidies globally over decades (e.g., IMF estimates $5.9T in 2020 alone for fossil fuel subsidies). General Motors and Chrysler received $80B in bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis.
consumer tax credits benefit buyers, not Tesla directly, though they boost demand. Subsidies for infrastructure like Gigafactories are standard for large-scale industrial projects and not unique to Tesla.
It seems i can't be the one to talk you out of your mental model of hating elon.
Phone me when someone else lands an orbital class rocket or offers a cheaper ton to LEO. Until then you're complaining about the lowest bidder. And you're going to have a hard time convincing me that the lowest bidder is doing anything but saving their customers money on a service they were already intent on purchasing, and had previously been spending 2x - 10x for: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/753q6s/economic_comp...
I don’t have to convince you. The only people who matter are government decisionmakers who are unwilling to be held hostage by him. It doesn’t matter how good you are if you can’t be trusted. The premium you pay a non SpaceX launch provider is so that the rug isn’t pulled on you. Do you want to go to space when you want? Or only when he says you can? Cheaper is not always better.
Friend, when your argument evaporates in the presence of the financial numbers and you revert to character assassination, you might be identifying yourself among the untrustworthy. Bad faith arguments really undermine any trust I could build for you through this media.
> The premium you pay a non SpaceX launch provider is so that the rug isn’t pulled on you. Cheaper is not always better.
Again, when one of them manages to land an orbital class rocket, call me. Competition would be great.
He assassinated his own character, my statements are simply observations of how he did it and what’s left of it. My apologies we see character and who you can trust differently.
I expect the next administration will switch SpaceX to cost-plus. Musk may be banking on reaping huge profit margins on those fixed price deals. Well that ain't gonna happen. Elections have consequences.
Why does this matter? Government either gives loans and demands they are paid back, or pays for deliverables. If you have to keep your fingers in the books to feel good about what's happening, it was a badly structured contract.
Because it's my money and I want to know how it's being spent, whether it's the government or a private company spending it. I had no choice in where that money went, so I need transparency on how it's being spent.
That's why every government contractor has to report what they are doing with their government money.
"September 10th, 2001 then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged to the American public that Pentagon can't account for 2.3 trillion" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FWFAs9ffGk
AIUI, the Pentagon failing an audit is essentially akin to most people failing an audit because they can't produce every single paper receipt for everything they've ever purchased. Combine that with the fact that the Pentagon is (I believe) the single largest purchaser on the planet, the fact that much of what it does is compartmentalized in different security buckets, and that the managerial staff tends to be younger than most organizations, and it shouldn't be so surprising that it's persistently in a state of being unable to literally dot every i and cross every t.
They use auditors with clearance. I'd imagine certain programs require very specific auditors to supervise them, like how the FISA court works with specific vetted lawyers at times.
The more mundane problem is things like "drive that truck over there… drive another one back" often result in the exact location of an asset being unclear fairly frequently.
you hate the company or the product? How does someone hate a company the open sourced all of their patents which resulted in creating a ton of competition in a previously dominated market?
Some people don't ignore the fraud, the terrible working conditions, the anti-competitive business practices, the unfulfilled promises, the stock price manipulation, and the cult of personality of a highly controversial leader just because of a marketing stunt from more than a decade ago which even Elon admits was not altruistic.
I'm a fan of Tesla's patent strategy. However, calling it "open source" isn't strictly correct. Patents are only free to use as long as you also give Tesla rights to all your patents.
copy-left is referred to as open source and some even claim it's _more_ open source, but thanks for the information, I wasn't aware of the that detail.
edit: oh it's not copyleft, but specifically quid pro quo so tesla gives you their patents if you give them yours
A copy left style arrangement would require you to not enforce your patents against anyone who signs and upholds the agreement, not just with Tesla. If that was the case, I probably wouldn't have quibbled with the term "open source" being applied.
people don't demand wealth equality after a war, they just create massive inflation during the war and solve it by taking everyone's savings after the war...half the countries in europe post ww2 did something akin to replacing the national currency at exchanges rates of like 10:1 in some cases like germany...and germanys post-war inflation solution is hailed as an 'economic miracle' by many history books. Somethings tells me I wouldn't feel too jazzed about taking 90% of my savings, but I would also be resigned to do whatever because war is worse.
I get really worried when I see people glamorize equality post-war...post-war times are not good times for the middle class. The most equal wealth humanity has ever had is during caveman times, but that is not the goal.
war does not make things better folks, I hope that's not what OP was trying to say, but just in case let's be very very clear about how awful war is for progress and humanity.
post-war reconstruction fervor can inspire wealth creation. This is largely because there are no NIMBYs and eco-warriros sat around saying that the returning troops cant have a place to live and we cant have new infrastructure. If we can get that reconstruction fervor without a war it would solve a lot of our problems.
I just don't believe this, not because I have hard data, but it just doesn't make any sense. Sure, the central banks will do everything they can to ignite the economy and everyone will be generally working their hardest to recover from hard times, but how can an economy that gets completely halted to go full bore in war efforts ever hope to generate the wealth of an economy that isn't halted and has been making incremental improvements, uninterrupted?
War destroys existing structures and gives them a chance to evolve again.
The economy is growth dependent and can only perform its basic functions under growth, even if that growth is fake. By basic functions I also include all functions that do not depend on growth.
> War destroys existing structures and gives them a chance to evolve again.
are you suggesting that destroying things, results in improvement in the long run? I don't know that I could be farther from agreeing with that. If starting from scratch was better, why wouldn't we be doing it voluntarily at frequent intervals? It just seems easily dismissed as entirely incorrect.
> The economy is growth dependent and can only perform its basic functions under growth, even if that growth is fake.
I don't think this describes the economy, it just describes some of the metrics we use to gauge the health of the economy. burning down the internet and killing everyone that understands it might result in another dotcom boom, but would you say the economy is more healthy than some other reality where the internet continued to exist with no reset and only has smaller incremental gains?
being unlawful is a vital tool for people to keep tyranny in check, I would hope that most people are incredibly strong supporters of lawlessness when the laws are wrong. To give an extreme example, I imagine you supported the hiding of jewish people during nazi germanys reign, which means you support unlawful activity as long as it's against laws that are against the people.
There's no such thing as "settled science". You can not prove that any scientific consensus has no flaws in the same way you can't prove the absence of bugs in any software. It's unproductive to treat science as anything more than an ongoing, constantly improving process.
Yes there is. Germ theory is settled science. Is it theoretically possible that we'll overturn it? Sure. Is it likely? No. In the absence of any groundbreaking experimental results, it worth wasting time entertaining germ theory skepticism? Also no.
> It's unproductive to treat science as anything more than an ongoing, constantly improving process.
It's unproductive to constantly re-litigate questions like "is germ theory true" or "is global warming real" in the absence of any experimental results that seriously challenge those theories. Instead, we should put our effort into advancing medicine and fixing climate change, predicated on the settled science which makes both those fields possible.
> Germ theory is settled science. Is it theoretically possible that we'll overturn it? Sure.
You need to understand that every single theory will be improved upon in the future. That means they will change and it's impossible to predict if these improvements will have consequences in different contexts where people incorrectly claim the science is settled.
> It's unproductive to constantly re-litigate questions like "is germ theory true" or "is global warming real"
Can you think of any cases where the science had nearly full consensus and it was useful to re-litigate? Galileo isn't the only example. I can think of many.
Newtonian physics is still settled science even though we have relativity to give more accurate results in domains where Newtonian mechanics fails. It still holds in all the same places it used to.
You don't seem to understand how scientific models and theories work.
In fact, germ theory of medicine is much the same way. Germ Theory does not explain or predict or account for ALL disease, for example PTSD, and if you build a useful theory for mental illnesses that aren't caused by little creatures of some sort, that doesn't overturn germ theory, it compliments it. A person creating a new theory of how Long Covid hurts people for example may not stick strictly to germ theory, but that would STILL not overturn germ theory.
>Can you think of any cases where the science had nearly full consensus and it was useful to re-litigate? Galileo isn't the only example.
Galileo isn't an example of the science being "settled" and someone radically overturning it. Nobody believed in geocentrism due to "Science", which is also why Galileo had so much difficulty, it was literally a religious matter. Kepler was about as close as we had to any sort of consistent theory to how the heavenly bodies moved, and it was not at all settled, and yet he was still basically right
In actuality, there are remarkably few times where a theory was entirely overturned, especially by a new theory. When we know little enough about a field that we could get something so wrong, we usually don't have much in the way of "theory" and are still spitballing, and that's not considered settled science. If you want a good feeling for what this looks like, go read up on the debates science had when we first started looking at Statistical Mechanics and basics of thermodynamics. There were heated(lol) debates about the very philosophy of science, and whether we should really rely on theories that don't seem like they are physical, and that mostly went away as it continued to bear high quality predictions. The problems and places where theories are not great are usually well understood by the very scientists who work through a theory, because understanding the parameter space and confidence intervals for a theory are a requirement of using that theory successfully.
"Human CO2 and other pollutants are the near totality of the cause of the globe warming" is settled science.
"The globe is warming" is settled science
"Global warming will cause changes in micro and macro climates all over" is settled science
"A hotter globe will result in more energetic, chaotic, and potentially destructive weather" is settled science and obvious
"Global warming is going to kill us all in a decade" is NOT settled science. There is no settled science for how bad climate change will make things for us, who will be worst affected, who might benefit, etc. There is comprehensive agreement among climate scientists that global warming is harmful to our future, and something we have to try and reduce the effect of, prepare for the outcomes of, and adapt to the consequences of, and something that, whether we do anything to combat it, will be immensely costly to handle.
We understand very little about human microbiota (therapies like fecal microbiota transplant, however, are promising) yet germ theory is "settled science"? Interesting.
Can we give this fear-mongering a rest? This is his second term, he didn't topple democracy in his first term and everyone made the same arguments back then.
If anything the democrats were the party to get rid of some of their democratic process. They didn't even vote on their parties candidate, and no, that doesn't scare me either.
Not to mention the democrats had far more private money spent all three times fighting Trump and yet he still won democratically twice and lost once democratically.
The system isn't great or even good, but it's still functioning.
He incited an insurrection his first term, that came down to a few people doing the right thing. He learned from that so he's quickly firing everyone he can. He's dismantling the FEC and people who prevent foreign interference in our elections. He even removed the foreign bribery law. If he doesn't topple democracy this time, it won't be for lack of trying.
He issued an EO directing agencies to not enforce that law. So ‘worst of both worlds’. ‘legal’ as long as he doesn’t change his mind. It also opens up the possibility of selective enforcement to punish anyone he doesn’t like.
> The system isn't great or even good, but it's still functioning.
If it was, we wouldn't have unelected kids breaking and entering in some of the most sensitive government organizations, getting access to private data and dismantling institutions without congressional oversight.
He didn't topple the system but it wasn't for lack of trying. Pence had to refuse Trump's repeated requests to fix the election (a precedent that would have guaranteed single-party rule). You are relying now, as you were then, on other people in the system conducting themselves with integrity. If it were up to Trump, Biden would never have assumed office.
Yeah, and a car with a knocking engine and multiple warning lights can still drive for thousands of miles before the engine explodes.
How many more alarms before you start taking the situation seriously? Complacency like what you suggest will be the order of the day right until things break, and then everyone will forget they thought this way and talk about how obvious it all was. Granted I don't have any solutions at hand, but better to start thinking about them now than later.
It's not fear-mongering; it's rooted in reasonable predictions based on what's different between 2017 and 2025:
1. Trump and his cronies didn't seem like they actually expected to win in 2016. They weren't prepared. Now we have Project 2025 and DOGE.
2. Trump's first-term cabinet picks and other political appointees (hell, even his VP) were not chosen all that well, in that they weren't fully bootlicking Trump loyalists. Many of them pushed back on some of the crazy things Trump wanted to do. This time, everyone has been hand-picked for their loyalty and agreement with advancing the agenda in Project 2025.
3. Members of the civil service also pushed back during his first term in ways of their own, slowing things down, and making the more destructive things hard to do. Now the civil service is being gutted.
4. In 2017, Trump hadn't yet packed federal courts and SCOTUS with hard-right loyalists. That's done now, and more will come.
5. There were Republicans in Congress during his first term -- even if not many -- who disagreed with Trump, and were willing to do so publicly. They voted against the more destructive things that Trump wanted. Some even voted to impeach/convict him! But today, Congress is stepping back and letting Trump do what he wants. Certainly what he wants in the executive branch will only get him so far; eventually he will need Congress to pass things to advance his agenda. But many of those uncomfortable Republicans who were present during his first term have retired or been replaced with card-carrying MAGA members.
If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028 (which I think is certainly possible; one thing that I'm not that concerned about is the integrity of our state-run elections), I'm worried that there won't be much of an executive branch left for that president to be in charge of, and will spend nearly all of that 4-year term rebuilding what was destroyed, if they're even able to do so, both logistically and legally.
load isn't what causes degradation, it's heat and as someone who has mined crypto for years I'm aware that there are a lot of things that can be done to run hardware quite hard and keep thermals low. Whether or not that is what is being done, I have no idea. A GPU mining crypto for 5 years kept below 65C (rather easily done) is going to have far more life left than a GPU in some kids gaming PC that spikes frequently to 85C for even a year.
Seems like the news headlines should read "President makes a mistake that benefits crypto grifters, but luckily for the grifters the only blame seems to be attributed to the president because of a single tweet."
I imagine taking the inflation rate (that was growing exponentially) from nearly 300% yearly to less than 3% monthly in less than a year isn't likely to be wildly popular to all the non-crypto grifters.
I'm not sure a word like "freedom" has an objective measure.
If you click on the "personal" tab it ranks Texas as dead last - I suspect the person you are replying to is using a definition closer to that: https://www.freedominthe50states.org/personal
