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Tesla Motors Sued By Car Dealers
An anonymous reader writes "Car dealers in New York and Massachusetts have filed a lawsuit that seeks to block Tesla from selling its pricey electric vehicles in those states. The dealers say they are defending state franchise laws, which require manufacturers to sell cars through dealers they do not own. Robert O'Koniewski of the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association says, 'Those dealers are investing millions of dollars in their franchises to make sure they comply with their franchise agreements with the manufacturers. Tesla is choosing to ignore the law and then is choosing to play outside that system.'"
They cant sue under the franchise laws. Because the law is under combustible motors. It never included electric driven vehicles. Therefore this case should be thrown out of court on grounds of greed and control.
"Stop them! They are competing unfairly, by selling a product that will one day make ours obsolete!
We have engineered a law to protect ourselves from competition, and since we choose not to sell their product, we can use this law to keep them from selling their product either!"
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Go free market power, Go!
Surely this ends up being a good thing, right?
The important question is did Tesla do this because no dealers wanted to middleman the cars or because they want to head down the Apple Store route?
Isn't this like the original Amazon before they decided to stop avoiding sales tax?
As long as I'm the winner! When I lose I sue your ass off.
The car dealer franchise laws began in California w/Reagan helping a buddy's business. Soon Bush did similar in TX, then lobbyists picked up the ball and rolled it to the other states.
I can think of no other industry where it's in fact *illegal* for a manufacturer to sell their own product directly to consumers.
It makes it so that it is no longer a free market. Who knows what options and colors people actually want--dealers order speculatively what they think they can sell, then sell them--people wind up choosing between the existing inventory, usually none having exactly what they want. You'd think on big ticket purchases people would be more picky about getting exactly what they want--but we wind up with millions of same-colored cars on the road anyways.
Strike down these laws and it should be possible to actually order a vehicle that you customized on a manufacturer's "build-your-own" website--rather than it directing you to a bunch of local dealers that have their heads up their asses and don't actually have one in stock like you just spent 20 minutes configuring.
Furthermore, right now, if you want to place a custom order, you *have* to do it through a dealer--who is now an unwelcome middleman that *hasn't* made a sale yet thinks they still deserve MSRP markup for merely printing out the paperwork even though you beat a path to their door with no other option.
I truly hope Tesla wins.
Thanks for linking to the actual law in question
On reading it, it appears that the law says that the manufacturer will not make business decisions based on ownership of dealers. ie it seems to indicate that dealers and factory stores be treated equally. I don't know if it says that factory stores are illegal.
I'm reading a (quite good, if a bit self-flattering) book on Branson called "Losing my Virginity" and the guy has had to face off with this kind of old farts constantly.
I don't know what it is about these people. Don't they feel a bit of disgust trying to get in the way of someone who is, unlike them, trying to do something cool with their lives?
Again.. these people are *not* free marketers. They are opportunists. They are fine with the free market as long as it benifts them. When they are on the losing end they're absolutely fine with the government intervening in every possible way.
Tesla motors sells suped-up golf carts, not cars. No need for franchises.
And they all went noisily towards the future, sporting a futile display of kicking and screaming at progress.
How much for a franchise, Tesla? O, and I won't be joining Robert's SAD Association.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-approach-distributing-and-servicing-cars
Elon Musk made a blog post about all this legal turmoil last month. Worth a read.
I love it. Lawsuit regarding a stupid law in very liberal states and it's the republicans fault...
The Tesla "Dealers" are show rooms and advertisements only, you cant test drive, you cant get the keys, They may not even be owned by Tesla at all in some states to get around Franchise laws. BMW does the same thing, as do a lot of non-US car builders. They advertise a trip to some place where the car is built and you then buy the car in Europe.
In this case they advertise the car in a mall or other location, and then provide you internet access to the Tesla plant to place an order. The show room makes no money and sells no car.
Ford cant do this because its contracts with dealers would require Ford to pay the dealer if it somehow sold a car in that state. Tesla has no such contract with its advertisers.
In the end, all sales are done out of California, cars are built there, and shipped to the person, the show room has no additional involvement in the process.
Do you know if they have a similar system in Europe? I believe you can order direct from Audi and actually go over to their factory to pick the car up.
And yea, the dealer only option sucks, as when, for example, you're looking to buy a V8 VW Tuareg, mainly for its compact size and towing capacity, you have to buy one with *all* the options, because that's the only thing that was imported. Very anti-consumer.
Whatever you do, please don't attribute this to actual "capitalism" or "the free market." When people talk about deregulation as a horror, realize this is the kind of horror that the deregulators seek to undo -- complacent vendors with a cozy layer of protection against new entrants.
Also, consider how much like these state franchise laws resemble gerrymandering district agreements -- both rely on passing in secret -- or at least in relative obscurity, in a process that regular folks rationally stay away from -- agreements to use the force of law to keep things tidy, stable, and predictable (and profitable, for those who've done the manipulating), rather than dynamic, risky, interesting, innovative, and other nice adjectives.
The laws that give special privileges to state-sanctioned franchise owners are bad, even if they have some small silver linings, whether the franchise is for transportation, banking, legal services, auto sales, gambling, or Dixie cups. Not that their history in the auto industry isn't interesting -- this podcast is enlightening on that topic: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/06/munger_on_franc.html
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
revolutionizing the car industry isn't going to be easy, the old oil gobblers aren't going to go down with out a fight...
In my experience the only way to buy the exact model of vehicle with the precise features from the menu of all available options for the particular model is to place an order through the dealership in the later winter or early spring. Otherwise, as you say the consumer gets to choose from a limited palate according to speculative dealership managers and their sales staff. I love how the car dealers refer to themselves as "stores" as in Ford Store, Dodge Store, etc. In a real store the consumer sees an item they want, they buy it for cash or on credit, and take the item home. But at the Ford Store or Dodge Store or Toyota Store, for example, you are iucky if you can take the vehicle after almost a week after singing the purchase agreement. Then you have all the paperwork to complete and sign on actual delivery. Buying a house is less complicated although not by much.
Again.. these people are *not* free marketers. They are opportunists. They are fine with the free market as long as it benifts them. When they are on the losing end they're absolutely fine with the government intervening in every possible way.
You sound jealous that somebody knows how to play the game better than you do.
Sometimes I find it disgusting when teams do out-of-field maneuvers to lose critical games and thus fall on easier matches so they can reach the finals easier and have one hard match against a (probably) tired adversary to grab the victory at the last moment.
That's what it takes to win: sometimes it means forgetting why you started playing at the beginning.
Middlemen were supposed to do a useful service. Not this. And it's not only them. Few have the grace and fairplay to know and adapt to changing times, even if only to help progress -- many will fsck the entire Earth to get some additional coins...
Car dealers acting like a complete spoiled greedy douchebags! It's unprecedented!
Oh wait. It's completely normal. Car dealers are SCUM.
The real question is... When can we lynch them for being douchebags? How much harm do they have to cause first...
The state of NY isn't going to be happy if they have to lose out on all that tax revenue because consumers have to go to jersey or some other state to buy cars. Maybe that isn't the case right now, but as time progresses I think combustion engine cars will become less and less desirable.
America is so focused on blaming republicans/democrats, that they don't realize that they both follow the same principal: Laws are for sale. Stop this blame game and wake up. Your government has been taken over by big business, and it is the American people who are getting screwed to ensure that the wealth trickles to the top 0.1%. It's so ironic that America's ideal is to spread democracy, while its own democracy is a corrupted mess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
Because the people of those states voted on this law, specifically?
Or did it get lobbied for by certain interests, and pushed by others?
Even the most partisan state can and does have others acting in some ways.
lol... these laws cover almost every product out there. Try and sell alcohol "Direct" to the consumer and you'll find out about them really quick. There is only one, count them ONE liqueur distributor for the entire Chigago metropolitan area... and the laws are such that it costs a fortune to apply for a distribution license and you are guaranteed not to get it.
You sound like an idiot who is missing the point.
The history of the motion picture industy's old "studio system" may be relevant to this discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_system
Under the law, these dealers are absolutely right. Chrysler was forced to sell a company owned Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram store in LA for this exact reason.
If Tesla doesn't like it, then lobby to change the laws. You can't just ignore them.
"I can think of no other industry where it's in fact *illegal* for a manufacturer to sell their own product directly to consumers."
Distilled alcohol is pretty close but there are exceptions to that as well.
Insist that they order a car to your specs. You'll have to wait but I know people who regularly do it with Audis and VWs. I almost did for my last car but they found one 10 hours away that was almost exactly what I wanted so I opted not to wait the 6-8 weeks. At least in Canada, I haven't found a VW or Audi dealer who won't place a factory order with fewer options than anything on their lot.
Picking a heavily restricted special case product that was so special the constitution got changed twice due to entirely to it and applying it to "almost every product" does not a reasonable argument make.
I can buy pumpkins from a local farmer who grew them. I can buy a computer made by Dell from Dell. I can buy ink for my printer directly from the manufacturer. I can pay a local carpenter to build me a table directly. I can buy a house from the builder.
if you buy a new car in NJ and then go to register it in NY, NY will collect the tax on the sale. Which is why, when you're in the dealer in NJ, he'll ask you in what state you'll be registering the car. You say NY, and he handles the NY paperwork instead of the NJ paperwork.
Yeah, there are edge cases. He doesn't have the Alaska or Hawai'i, or even the Missouri paperwork. But, depending on where the dealership is in NJ, he's got some subset of CT, NY, PA, DE, and MD because most (all?) states have figured this out.
Where is the section of the law that says that a new manufacturer with no existing franchisees in the service area can't open factory stores that would compete with other makes?
What tesla should do is to give out non exclusive franchises for $0.01 online. Anyone can get one: corner stores, private people, my cat, just saturate the market. Then when you want to buy a car you would buy it online through some "local" dealership. Technically bob down the street would sell it to you but Tesla would handle the transaction for Bob and then pass bob his $0.02 commission.
There are few organizations that I detest more than car dealerships.
A better end run of the law would be to go federal and try to slip in an online sales rule that overrides any local laws. That would be a 21st century way to go. I don't care where Amazon's HQ is and I certainly don't want a stupid local law getting between me and Amazon.
Auto dealer franchise laws reflect a long history of auto manufacturers screwing dealers. Auto dealers were traditionally small businesses with one supplier, which put them firmly under the thumb of the manufacturer. Many dealers still are, although some are big mufti-manufacturer chains.
After looking at the New York and Massachusetts laws, it's not clear that they prohibit a manufacturer from selling entirely through their own stores. What the laws clearly prohibit is a manufacturer competing with its own dealers. If a manufacturer doesn't have any independent dealers, the law probably doesn't apply. The dealers are trying to stretch the law by arguing that the manufacturer is unfairly competing with their dealership, but that may not work.
California prohibits a manufacturer from opening a company store within 10 miles of a dealer, so Tesla has no problem there.
I can think of no other industry where it's in fact *illegal* for a manufacturer to sell their own product directly to consumers.
The motion picture industry was vertically integrated until 1948. MGM and Lowe's at the top. Paramount and Warner Brothers lower down. If you wanted decent exposure for your independent production you had to cut a deal with the majors.
As much as I'd love to believe that, I don't think this has anything at all to do with internal combustion vs electric. This strikes me more as a "there's new competition in town and I hate competition" issue. I'd be willing to bet that if Tesla was selling internal combustion vehicles this case would still be exactly the same.
I really wish companies in general (in every market segment) would stop using the courts to enforce a profit. Compete on merit and we all win, compete on legalities and everyone looses.
people jaywalk to get around it.
alcohol manufactures are also prevented from selling directly to consumers. that 3 tiered system is protected byone of the largest lobbying groups out there.
Glad California is so much better off today than it was under Reagan. Dealer franchises are a distribution network that employs lots...and lots... of people. Gasp! jobs. who needs them anyway. After all, they are private sector employees. It would be way better if they were unemployed or worked for the government
I never thought of the dealer as an unnecessary middleman before... and at the same time I learn they are protected by law.
Is it possible to order a car directly from a manufacturer, and skip the dealer markup completely?
Removing these laws won't make franchises disappear and all their employees become jobless.
It will make them have to be honest, compete, and actually *add value* rather be a protected middleman guaranteed business.
Just imagine if franchises had to win sales based on their *knowledge* of the products they sell, convenience of having ready-to-take, *desirable* inventory, and *honest, capable* service departments?
Instead we get the horrible current situation--you want a new car? You *must* go to a dealer--even though half the sales staff know less than you about the car you want to buy. You want *warranty* service? You *must* go to a dealer--whether they are competent or not.
In the ideal world in my head, a license to perform warranty service should be independent from a license to sell new or used vehicles. Any mechanic that can pass the manufacturer's certifications can qualify for a license to perform warranty service. You could place a custom order directly on the manufacturer's website and have it delivered to your home--or opt to go to a dealer and inspect existing inventory-where they have to *work* to earn a sale from you--by being knowledgable, and being good at choosing inventory that people want--not forcing their random selection on people because there are no other alternatives.
I've had a completely different experience with VW. The dealer said that he could order the car with options I wanted, but would not consider anything less than MSRP. That's for a car that they were selling for anywhere between $3000 and $4000 off of MSRP for the ones on the lot.
In practice, it was equal to a refusal to order it. I ended up getting a Nissan...
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
No, demockracy is a corrupting mess. We had as best could be made a republic. That meant several geographic regions who would govern themselves and give powers to the central government that were limited to a very narrow set.
That was eroded and due to several factors included one very large evil was pretty much killed during the civil war. Several things came out of the civil war that were good but the one thing that will lead to the same disease Rome had is centralization of power and an erosion of the limits of what government can or cannot do. Then it becomes an oligarchy of interests. Not special interests just large or powerful groups who can sway government to do their bidding.
We used to have 50 states and the state had a senator to look after their interests and we had popularly elected representatives of the people to look after their interests. That was also damaged to the point we almost have a direct vote demockracy.
The next amendment, probably within 50 years will be a direct vote system of some sort but it will most likely be tied to those larger and/or powerful interest groups in some way rather than one nominally human above an arbitrary age one vote.
which lobbying group is that, the group of people who hold the US Constitution in high regard?
Well, well. The left wing commie pinko bastards from the east coast strike again! Once again their typical BS!
When did we have a car prohibition?
He is a bit hyperbolic, but this sort of thing does exist for other products/services. Taxi service in NYC. Engineers anywhere (are regulated by a board of engineers who have a financial interest in keeping the number of engineers in the market to a minimum), and maybe a few others.
Let me translate that for you:
"During a recession, things suck. During the worst recession since the Great Depression, things suck more than during a regular recession."
Bush raised the deficit and grew government during growth years. Obama lowered spending each year he was in office and shrank government during a recession. I know you won't actually look this stuff up; Fox News discourages independent research. But you should.
Of course I expect the definition of human to be a rigid and narrow definition at first. I hope so for hate for it should generate a second civil war. Some good will come of that and some evil but it may buy us a couple centuries.
"I can think of no other industry where it's in fact *illegal* for a manufacturer to sell their own product directly to consumers."
Alcohol
... and is really wanting them to increase production to teh point that you don't have to get on a waiting list for one.
Just last night we were joking around here about the dealership that offered a free turkey with a new car. The joke was, why not charge $30k for the turkey and throw in the car?
OK fine. Tesla can start selling $100k turkeys. Free Roadster with every purchase. There's no franchise law for turkey merchants. Yet. Yes, there are regulations for groceries, which is why you asterisk the deal with "turkey will be provided as a coupon with a local grocer".
Broken window fallacy.
>The car dealer franchise laws began in California w/Reagan helping a buddy's business.
These laws have been on the books for close to hundred years.
But you are right, they should be all abolished and are one of the (many) reasons GM collapsed.
That's like expecting a bunch of investment bankers to get together and make their own computer company. These people are in the sales industry, not the auto industry. It's an antiquated business model and, thanks to the internet, their services are no longer required.
Isn’t that the premise of the apple store?
I wonder if someone else had the same thoughts. Also do you think this will turn out badly if they win with preventing Telsa from selling their own cars?
Not wanting to contradict your post, which I agree with, but you've not plumbed the depths of American corporatism deeply enough to satisfy the following:
/Beer Wars/ covers at least some of the wrong-think (and downright corruption) in the beer industry in the US. As a European who buys farmhouse beer brought freshly and directly from the farmer to my local pub, the US setup was quite an eye-opener.
> I can think of no other industry where it's in fact *illegal* for a manufacturer to sell their own product directly to consumers.
The beer industry is such an industry. And it's even worse than the car industry by the sound of it. In the beer industry it seems there's an obligtory 3 tier system: producers, distributors, retailers. The film's not perfect by a long shot (and one of the "craft brewers" should be taken out back and shot for being an insult to the phrase), but
Which in no way diminishes your comments about the car industry
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The movie studios used to own the theaters
There used to be numerous state and local laws prohibiting the corporate ownership of auto dealerships. To protect independent dealers from dealership chains and vertical monopolization of the market channel.
I though these laws were thrown out by federal courts years ago. What's up with New York and Massachusetts?
Have gnu, will travel.
My wife works for a car company, and we can get really good deals on fleet cars from the company (lightly used cars that get another 10-20% knocked off the price, in addition to the employee discount.)
We *still* have to go through a dealership, though. It's kind of fun, as the salesman hates it - there's nothing to upsell and his commission is crap on the heavily discounted car, but he still has to do all the paperwork.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Having said that, I do agree that Obama made it significantly worse.
I'm sure the Tesla outlets in more open-minded neighboring states will not care.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I did not remember where I had seen that line, but I had definitely seen it before. So I looked it up and was reminded.
:o)
Obviously he valued companionship ("Now the world has gone to bed...") yet he got no solace from it. Poor Marvin.
The dealers just sound like the mafia trying to protect their turf where they sell drugs.
I say Tesla is as much entiteled to sell their cars in their own stores as Apple sells their crap in their stores.
What they do is great. Maybe once and for all we can get rid of a law that keeps dealerships's stranglehold
on consumers. I welcome any challenge to that kind of arrangement.
Challenge that dealership rule , get rid of it for the benifit of the consumer.
Cut that fat a** middle man that just fills their pockets at our expense.
When I bought my MINI in 2005, I was able to order any options I wanted and they built the car exactly how I specified. This is from a NY dealer and exactly opposite to my experience buying a Toyota (also in NY). Franchise law is not relevant to being able to customize your purchase.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Except that Bush surfed off Clinton's growth, and created the recession for Obama.
how can we say he lowered spending when we havent had a budget in 4 years?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Neither of the two parties even proposes lowering spending. They only propose cuts to INCREASES in spending.
There is a significant difference.
How do you like your fictitious world?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skw-0jv9kts
Liberty.
"I can buy ink for my printer directly from the manufacturer"
Bad example as this swings in the complete opposite way. They try to *block* 3rd party replacement inks so you *have* to buy theirs
Spending hasn't dropped since the WWII. I don't know from which ass you are pulling that.
You might mean he constrained growth in spending better than his predecessor, but you' be conveniently forgetting the baggers taking over the House on a very specific platform of killing HCR and cutting spending. Obama had no choice but to come to the table on that one.
Of course, what they are doing now I have no fucking idea.
The car dealer franchise laws began in California w/Reagan helping a buddy's business. Soon Bush did similar in TX, then lobbyists picked up the ball and rolled it to the other states.
Reagen had more buddies in the local dealerships business than in the car giants?
Local dealerships had more lobbyists working for them than the car giants?
Because the car giants would have HATED this law. Yet it was enacted against their interest. Not only once on a fluke, but you're saying it happened everywhere due to the local car dealership lobby overpowering the car giant lobby.
What you say hence comes across to me as something a left-wing extremist conspiracy theorist would invent, some creature that dragged itself out of the losing side of the Cold War, but I'd love to hear your source, even though all reason points against there being one.
Selling is a job. We storeowners are not "middlemen". We wake up every day, go to work, pay taxes, have debts. We WORK.
I agree with you, as long as you don't advocate rent-seeking. Convince me why I should buy from you, treat me well, and you will have yourself a loyal customer. Try to put up barriers to competition and you will never see another cent from me.
Following your logic, you have no argument to get mad when the company you work for replaces you for an indian working for a fraction of your salary. Do you?
This is exactly right.
When I started my software consulting business this was a major threat. I decided to view it as an opportunity to differentiate my services on quality rather than price. I've made quite a decent living that way. Furthermore, cleaning up after other contractors have failed, and delivering a quality work product has gotten me a lot of income + referrals. Besides, your job will *always* be in jeopardy if you're a commodity—differentiate yourself! Learn some new skills on your own time, become a subject matter expert, the list goes on and on for software developers. For car salespeople, well, do whatever it takes not to be a commodity...perhaps going that extra mile so you get referrals from people who actually enjoyed buying a car from you because you kept them from experiencing the typical horrors of car buying?
But even in the first, most desperate days of trying to get my business off the ground, funded by credit card debt, I would have rejected the evil of protectionist or rent-seeking laws even if they were for my own personal benefit. For example, if my legislature had proposed a law that all foreign outsourcing contracts would be required to have a local, native project lead contractor I would have opposed that law for the evil it would be. And yes, I know what it's like not to have any pay for 3 months, and not being able to draw a regular salary for the first two years.
Perhaps it's just a mindset issue: I believe I can compete and win business without requiring the government to force people to purchase my services. Not everyone shares this belief, and thus the temptation for those people to advocate barriers to entry and rent-seeking.
Personally, I'd be tickled if GM/Ford/Chrysler/Tesla/whoever could open their own dealer network. That would rid us of the thousands of smarmy dealerships (many with horrid BBB records) that prey on folks who just want to buy and maintain a car. Then consumer complaints could be handled more centrally and dealt with at the source. In theory, this would be financially better for the consumer since you'd be removing an extra profit center between the manufacturer and the consumer.
You mean there's no record whatsoever about government spending? Nothing about how much it's spent in Afganistan, Iraq, for NASA, for the CDC, anything like that?
It's not like money stops flowing without a budget, you realize.
Because we still spent money every year. And each year the difference between what we spend and what we collect has gone down. That's the cool thing about math - it independent of politics.
We have had a budget every year - how do you think the government pays for stuff? We just haven't had a NEW budget in 4 years, but we pay with motions that just continue the previous budget.
It can also be the distributor. Toyota has two distributors which cover from NC to TX IIRC and they take the car Toyota imports or makes and they add about $800 of services and options and then sell it on to the dealer. You can get the base car without these add-ons from a dealer out of the distributor's region for a lot less. But no dealer in the distributor's exclusive area will discount those add-ons. A year ago I saved $2k by going 2 states away. And no service problems locally.
As I understand it, the agreement between Toyota and the distributors dates back to when Toyota was first trying to get established in the US and needed dealers and someone took the risk of buying a bunch of cars in exchange for the franchise. That was many millions of dollars in profits ago.
But the smart consumer....
Of course there are some restricted products, he listed one. The article is about another. I'm only disputing the "almost every product" claim.
Things may be more complicated than your post suggests. Also sorts of incentives, rebates, discounts, etc exists between the manufacturers and the dealers. All of which allow the dealer to negotiate with you and still maintain a healthy profit margin. However these may only apply to the standard factory configurations/exports and not apply to custom orders. So for custom orders the dealers may not have much room to negotiate.
I can think of no other industry where it's in fact *illegal* for a manufacturer to sell their own product directly to consumers.
Alcohol. (Where the laws and regulations are way more ridiculous than with cars.)
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2012-TAB/pdf/BUDGET-2012-TAB.pdf
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2011-BUD/pdf/BUDGET-2011-BUD.pdf
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2010-SUMMARY/pdf/BUDGET-2010-SUMMARY.pdf
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2009-TAB/pdf/BUDGET-2009-TAB.pdf
How can we say any president did anything about spending, when the President has fuck all to do with the budget?
I'm in awe of how the jackasses of Congress have managed to fool the American public with that. You'd think by now, none of those assholes would ever see another re-election, but - nope, president did it.
What you've said is true, but you are only talking about the revenue portion of government (taxes). What also desperately needs to be addressed is what should the government be spending it's money in? And that leads to the question of what role(s) should the government be in?
For example, I don't think too many people are happy with Social Security except for the people who are currently on it. FDR though the government should play the role of managing people's retirement and it lead to the debacle it is in now.
So because a group of people thought it was a good idea for the government to manage people's retirement, now were stuck trying to figure out how to pay for it. Wouldn't be better to ask the question if government should be in the business of doing something in the first place rather than just doing it and figure out how to pay for it later?
I had a related experience with a Ford dealer. I had a specific set of options I wanted on a truck, and he argued with me on every single one. "That isn't necessary." "You don't want that." I finally asked him if he realized that I was the one buying the truck, and I was interested in what I wanted, not what he wanted. Turns out, it was the last day to order for the current production cycle, and he didn't want to hustle to get the paperwork in. He knew what he had, and what was available in the area, so if he could get close to what I wanted, he could "order" one. Want to piss off a dealer? Take 15 percent off the MSRP and make that your first offer on a vehicle. It seems they like to dicker when they start at the sticker price and come off that number, but dislike starting low and justifying the increased price.
Franchise law is not relevant to being able to customize your purchase.
Yes, it is. Because it means they don't really have to compete. If the nearest dealer is the only one for 1000 miles and they won't place a factory order for you below MSRP, guess what you have to pay for a custom order? Or... go find another dealer much farther away that will place the order for you at invoice and have to pay shipping (or fly out and drive it back).
Without these laws, you could order just what you wanted, pay invoice, and have it delivered to your door.
So, true, while they don't preclude you from placing a custom order and getting exactly what you want, they most certainly are relevant because they affect the manner in which you have to go about doing so and the price you may have to pay to get it.
I can think of no other industry where it's in fact *illegal* for a manufacturer to sell their own product directly to consumers.
Alcohol would be another one where it's illegal for a manufacturer to sell directly to the customer -- the "three tier system" (requiring producers, distributors, and retailers to be three different companies) was supposed to somehow save us from alcohol abuse. Not sure exactly how.
Again.. these people are *not* free marketers. They are opportunists. They are fine with the free market as long as it benifts them. When they are on the losing end they're absolutely fine with the government intervening in every possible way.
Basically true of any company. They don't want to be interfered with but will gladly get the government to interfere with their competitors. It's to the point now where companies that don't abuse the system are at a competitive disadvantage.
franchise laws like professional licensing laws and state insurance laws are an outrage, a defense of unearned wealth. good riddance.
The car dealer franchise laws began in California w/Reagan helping a buddy's business. Soon Bush did similar in TX, then lobbyists picked up the ball and rolled it to the other states.
Wow, that took a long time for a second state to pick up on it. I would have thought that the lobbyists would have pushed it through a lot faster than that. Ronald Reagan was governor of California from 1967 to 1975. George W. Bush did not become governor of Texas until 1995.
The fact of the matter is that by 1956, 20 states had auto franchise laws, so your whole argument is just so much bs.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This comment attempts to neither support nor refute the idea Obama has lowered spending, either expressly or by implication.
A budget is a theoretical allocation. What you actually spend is what you actually spend. They are fundamentally not the same thing, though they can, in certain cases, end up having the same numbers in the same places.
I don't have to draw up a budget in order to spend all my money, max out my credit card, and end up with nothing to show for any of it. I also don't have to draw up a budget in order to spend frugally and conserve every extra penny I can. Neither does the government. It can certainly help to reach the latter result, but is not strictly necessary to do so. Of course, the latter result is almost unheard of in the USA, but it does not make it an impossible result; you can run the Heart of Gold for a long time when it does though.
"As a typewriter dealer, I take issue with Apple stores stealing my business. "
With electric cars becoming more affordable with each generation, and the range increasing with each generation, and that oil and gasoline are constantly going up, combustible engines are becoming less and less desirable.
They are suing under the disguise of Tesla breaking the law, but really, they are suing to prevent competition from coming in and providing a better product that doesn't rely on expensive gas.
Once Tesla comes in, other EV car companies would want in.
somewhere someone at goldman sachs just read this & fell out of their chair laughing...
And yea, the dealer only option sucks, as when, for example, you're looking to buy a V8 VW Tuareg, mainly for its compact size and towing capacity, you have to buy one with *all* the options, because that's the only thing that was imported. Very anti-consumer.
I think the market fixed that: the Tuareg is no longer for sale
You have it exactly right. There are significant differences in approach from person to person. For instance, if you'd elected me (you wouldn't, but bear with me), I'd have definitely nuked Mecca into radioactive glass in response to 9/11.
My position is: you kill an American in an arbitrary way, I'll kill many times that number of your group, whatever it may be. Group identification here is achieved by simply noting that the funding was Saudi, the vast majority of the group were Saudi, and the ethos and drive were Islamic. Hence, Mecca, which is an Islamist center of attention, and on Saudi soil.
There would be no TSA, no crushing of US civil liberties, no funny colored alerts, etc. Although I would have insisted that the cockpit doors be significantly hardened and communications to flight crew from passenger management crew be limited to a button that lights a cockpit lamp marked "medical emergency, land somewhere", and a switch that says "your orders have been complied with."
So, there would have been a major difference between electing say, Bush, or me WRT this whole terrorism thing.
Who we elect definitely matters, even when there are areas where they might see issues the same way. Some issues, they won't -- and that can really change outcomes.
These do not adequately (or even vaguely) characterize GDP (Gross Domestic Product.) There are innumerable effects from simple supply and demand to consumer taste and fashion that push production and consumption and exports and imports all over the map. You simply can't reasonably use food and fuel as a metric for this.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Accountability? I read it as laying out some goals for pretty damned good government.
And I voted for Obama (because Romney didn't in ANY way represent what the GP is asking for, frankly.) Obama, at least, had a few good points I could get behind. Mostly, they both suck.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I thought every car Tesla sold was a $100,000 turkey.
Does it actually though? I would simply point out that we have extraordinarily effective armed forces, a nuclear deterrent, all the resources we could ever possibly really need, and our borders are geographically convenient only for Mexico and Canada, neither of which poses a credible threat.
I think it's entirely possible that the US could up and say "Yeah, about that. Not gonna pay. All dents are zeroed. Sorry." The capability is objectively there. The will? Perhaps not. But it isn't inconceivable.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Microsoft never had a monopoly. They had a majority market penetration, and anyone was perfectly free to step outside that and use something else. There were always alternatives starting with MSDOS and working right up to today. I have never been forced to use Microsoft, and usually laugh when someone assumes that I do, or that my various undertakings did. I've run more than one successful enterprise under other operating systems, with not an MS machine in sight. There were many benefits.
Monopoly is not the same as majority market penetration.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You call me ignorant of history and then proceed to serve up a perfect example that fits well within the model I've presented.
Standard oil. became a giant because it was more efficient than it's competition. and I quote:
..out competed many of its rivals with lower costs and efficient production and logistics..
Futhermore, they were already down to 64% of market share by the time the government broke them up. That is when you add ALL of their 41 controlling companies at the time. Sounds like a problem that didn't need government intervention and that's way less market share than M$.
Monopoly:
Clearly a monopoly is something that is A) Government granted. or B) the mythical price manipulation by a private company.
A) happens all the time
B) is a rare beast for which there is no successful evidence of a company actually having profited..
There's a very nice lecture on the topic of competition and monopoly on the Liberty Classroom. I would recommend it to anyone.
Liberty.
I'm looking for a loaded CC with the V6 in black. If the website is to be believed, there are none in the country. My local dealers ONLY stock the 2.0T CCs. (Can't say I blame them. I have an older, but equivalent Passat which I got for a song because no one was buying.)
You know what really hurts? Obama has a better job creation record than the past three Republican elects. Ouch.
"The dealers say they are defending state franchise laws, which require manufacturers to sell cars through dealers they do not own"
Is this Republican or Democrat kind of free market capitalism in action?
Slashdotters love their big government when it forces people to do things like kneecap a bunch of independent auto dealers (as Obama did) after government originally injected itself decades earlier by forcing a divide between car makers and car sellers (this was a big trend that started much earlier when a growing, progressive government decided it should block movie makers from owning movie theaters, etc). But then, when the car dealers whose entire business is based on the government-driven divide between manufacturer and retailer complain that an Obama campaign contributor comes into their state operating outside those rules, the dealers are the bad guys...
oh, that's right... we're all progressives now so there's no need for consistent rules in the marketplace; we replace those rules with political expediency to advance ideological agendas. How else can we promote the transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to the rich people who need their subsidized status symbols?
We should either have these stupid rules for everybody (and the government bloat and market inefficiencies that come along with implementing and enforcing the rules) or we should delete the rules for everybody so none of the competitors gets an artificial leg-up. If Tesla really has a superior product, he should easily win in the marketplace since he has so many advantages (he has no legacy costs like an army of retired unionized workers with guaranteed benefit plans, old facilities with high energy and maintenance costs and environmental contamination, old contracts with inefficient supply chains, etc). The fact that he needs government loan guarantees up-front, government subsidies for each purchase, and the ability to dodge the government rules applied to all other car companies, says that there are real problems with what he is selling. And no, I have no interest in petroleum or car companies... I just am entertained by left-wingers who whip-saw back and forth between wanting big government to hamper business and wanting it to get off the backs of their favorite businesses; The US Government is a blunt instrument (our founders intended it to be that way and intended it to be difficult to control... to make it nearly impossible for a tyrant to use). If people truly believe Musk and Tesla are superior, then prove you believe it by demanding these stupid rules come off of all all dealers, or apply equally to Musk... then if Tesla succeeds it will be all the sweeter because it will have been on a level playing ground; if he succeeds in a rigged game, it will be like the slugger on steroids (his record will always carry an asterisk, and a footnote that it was a dishonest game)
I regularly purchase alcohol direct from the manufacturer in large drums. It is much cheaper than alcohol from the liquor store. It requires maintenance of a permit.
Worse compared to what cannibalism and living in caves... jeeze, let's separate the things he had to do (to prevent a live remake of Mad Max), from the things did because he wanted to. Arguable the wrong time for a comprehensive health plan I concur. Now there's a whole raft of issues surrounding the further erosion of the Constitution, Human Rights, America as a leader of the free world, and the continuation of the Banking Industry perpetrating exactly the same behavior after the meltdown as before and nobody including Obama saying "WHOA!!!" or pursuing any kind of justice.
All of this presumes Obama has any say whatsoever. What if the reason he looked so scared at the first debate was that he recently did several things that didn't please his handlers and they let him know in no uncertain terms that we're over due for a Presidential Assassination. I don't think it was Romney that had him that flustered thanks.I'm beginning to think its all just smoke and mirrors to distract us from the fact that someone somewhere is bleeding us all dry.
I hate political speak, its designed to obfuscate and mislead. That said, Obama has radically reduced the burn rate from the Bush Administration. We are still going into debt but at a significantly slower rate than during the Bush fiasco. Save for one important exception. The Fed is printing money like its going out of style and its buying up all the bad mortgages. To fake an economy and prevent the fan and the shit from dancing, but they are oh so close. So even if everything else is sweet, this one thing has all the necessary ingredients to blow the whole damn thing clean up. Its going to be fascinating to see if he can sustain the suspension of belief long enough to cross the valley of the shadow of death and get to the other side.
I think it depends on the marque, but for many usually the way it works is when you choose your car from the dealer, an order is placed with the manufacturer. Historically, if it was something they kept in the country, you'd get it fairly quickly - though AIUI most manufacturers have gone over to just-in-time manufacturing, which means they don't keep a stock of cars. They build more-or-less everything to order.
This means that whenever you buy a brand new car, there's a lead time associated with it.
Occasionally a dealer may buy a number of cars themselves and sell them. Legally they're sold as "second-hand", even though they've only got delivery mileage on the clock. In such cases, obviously you get whatever the dealer bought, though there's practically no lead time associated with this.
The reason a dealer might do this is because of how payments are structured within the industry. Dealers don't actually need to make a single penny of profit on any car they sell provided they hit the sales targets set by the manufacturer. If they do this, they get bonuses that are so huge they pretty much pay for the business to exist. If they don't - well, they don't get those bonuses. These targets are calculated whenever they're calculated - probably quarterly - and if it's near the end of a quarter and a dealer's not going to reach their target through sales to customers, that's when they buy cars for their own stock. Obviously if the dealer has to do this he'll pick cars that he knows will sell very easily.
I imagine much of the bashing is based on sales technique.
Fifteen, twenty years ago, most sales was based on the idea of flogging features and benefits - the car has this feature, which gives you this benefit - and could be quite aggressive in telling the customer that "you must have this benefit, therefore you must buy this product. Now sign, damn you!".
Modern sales technique is very much more customer-focused - you work towards selling something that makes the customer somehow feel good - and ideally this should permeate every aspect of everything you do from product development through marketing, sales and aftercare.
Apple are absolute masters of this - they advertise based on how you can video chat with your granny, play music or look at photos, they operate stores where you find pleasant, non-intrusive sales staff and there's no shortage of people with stories of how the nice man at the Genius Bar fixed their MacBook/iPad/iPhone even though technically they didn't have to because it had suffered non-warranty damage. Whether or not you like their products, you can't deny that following such a technique has worked pretty well for them.
Thing is, some companies - and for that matter some industries - have been quicker than others to pick up on this. The motor trade - with a few exceptions - has been pretty slow to pick up on it. In the '80s and '90s, all a dealer had to do was buy the right franchise and it was pretty much a license to print money. Today, he has to actually make an effort to make his customer feel good and more than a few of them are in terrible trouble as a result.
...in the traditional and legal sense. Maybe it's an electrical appliance.
Compact sized Touareg? Let me guess your nationality...
I can think of no other industry where it's in fact *illegal* for a manufacturer to sell their own product directly to consumers.
Illegal drugs industry.
Go ahead.
Sounds much like the whole Tucker scheme of the late 40's. That didn't turn out well, but I am sure the big 3 gained some valuable knowledge on the behalf of Tucker's ideas... We can look at it and say that the big 3 are doing things on their own and in parallel to Tesla, but the fact that Tesla was [pretty much] first to market and has probably innovated more and pushed the boundaries, they are the pioneers that will likely serve as the research test bed for the others... until they are no longer needed - which must be sometime around - Now. Not a fan of these tactics and being an old car guy, hated what they did to Tucker - from when I first seen the movie in high school. This ain't cool.
Read again.
No dealership THAT SELLS CARS.
US is not, and has never been, spreading democracy. It's spreading "free markets", which in practice means screwing everyone in order to further enrich the 1%, either through destructive economic policies or an outright right-wing dictatorship. And really, why settle for looting one country when you can loot the entire world?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Did you end up repeating first grade in order to learn how to end a sentence like a human being?
It's a bullshit law, just like our health insurance law. Why should I be FORCED to buy something through a middle-man? Car dealerships can go fuck themselves. With health insurance, why should I be FORCED to buy it, or be PUNISHED for not buying it? If you are a citizen living in Massachusetts, you are forced by law to purchase things from corporations because you live there. Someone fucking explain that bullshit.
Obama spent* as much (or slightly more) in 1 term than Bush did in 2.
*I disagree with the entire notion of saying "X spent" anything, as it really was Congress that did the spending, but for some reason everyone wants to blame just 1 very politically divisive guy instead of the 535 bickering schoolchildren we call Congress.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Not entirely true. Obama has actually reduced the rate of spending in his first term, a majority of which was put in place before he even took office. He was the recipient of a budget that took a huge jump in 2009 thanks to Bush and Obama hasn't done a lot to shrink it but it's not fair to put responsibility for all the current spending on his back.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/