How Car Dealership Lobbyists Successfully Banned Tesla Motors From Texas

Funksaw writes "In a political op-ed on his blog, long time Slashdot reader and contributor Brian Boyko (the guy who did that animated Windows 8 video) — now a candidate for state representative — explains how lobbyists from car dealerships successfully banned Tesla Motors from selling cars in Texas. From the article: 'Tesla Motors doesn't just present a case study of why a lack of campaign finance reform blocks meaningful reform on the issues that Democrats care about, like climate change and health care. A lack of campaign finance reform blocks reforms on both the Left and the Right. Here's the big elephant in the room I'd like to point out to all the "elephants" in the room: With a Republican-controlled legislature, a Republican executive, and many conservatives in our judiciary, why the hell don't we have free markets in Texas? Isn't it the very core of economic-conservative theory that the invisible hand of the free market determines who gets what resources? Doesn't the free market have the ability to direct resources to where they can most efficiently be used? I'm not saying the conservatives are right in these assumptions; but I am saying that our broken campaign finance system makes a mockery of them.'"

Comments

Free Market? LoL

[meerling]

They don't want a Free Market, they want a Free For Them Market, screw everyone else.

Also, with how I saw Red McCombs screwing around San Antonio while I lived in Texas, it doesn't surprise me one bit.

Re:Free Market? LoL

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yep. Anyone can describe a utopian economic system ("Under communism, everyone will work together for the common good!" "Under capitalism, competition and individual choice will lead to the greatest possible efficiency!") but in the real world, they all tend toward cronyism and corruption. Every single time.

Wrong party

[Libertarian_Geek]

Republicans don't want free-market.
Democrats don't want free-market.
They both want different lobbys to pay them (in campaign donations) for the "privilege" of not being encumbered by regulations of the other party.

Libertarians (both big "L" and little "l") generally want free-markets.

Re:Wrong party

[dkleinsc]

There ain't no such thing as a free market.

Either there's government enforcing at least basic rules about how the market operates (e.g. no "offers you can't refuse"), or there's non-market influences on the decisions of actors in that market (e.g. "I'm bleeding to death, it doesn't matter that the hospital in the next town offers cheaper service").

What Libertarians tend to actually want is the ability for the more powerful private actor to take advantage of the less powerful private actor with impunity. The more powerful private actor has a key advantage: They have a better ability to research and organize alternative transactions. That allows them to control the pricing in a way that the less powerful actor cannot.

For a concrete example, consider farmer Bob deciding whether to sell his corn to Archer Daniels Midland for $4.75 per bushel. Look at his options:
- Sell at the offered price.
- Not sell at all. That will probably cause him to lose his farm, because without this sale, he doesn't pay off the bank.
- Try to sell to someone else. But since there's no one besides ADM who buys corn in his area, the only way Bob could pull this off is to invent his own transport and distribution network, from scratch.
So what you have is not a free market, but a ADM-controlled market that is only free to ADM.

Re:Wrong party

[PopeRatzo]

The problem with most people who describe Libertarianism is that they have no fucking clue what they're on about

And that goes double for Libertarians.

Just in the past week, we've had "Libertarians" support restrictions on abortions, both for and against the Keystone XL pipeline (private property rights, yes!, private property rights for anyone but corporations, no!) and both for and against gay marriage.

Read Reason Magazine for six months if you really want to learn how childish and confused what passes for "Libertarianism" really is. It's the political philosophy of undergrads, and the only reason it has as much currency in the US as it currently does is because some very rich people think they can use it to further erode economic and social liberty. And because it's the political philosophy of undergrads, some very cynical people are manipulating it to create and maintain a feudal system.

History will look back at the early 21st century Libertarianism about the way it looks back on the Utopianism of the late 19th century, another childish and confused political philosophy.

Re:Wrong party

[jandrese]

Yep, that was some fancy talking that did absolutely nothing to address the problem, exactly the sort of thinking you get from Libertarian institutes.

The solution presented is "Don't have commons, designate an owner for everything, and make them responsible for it." Basically, mass private ownership of everything, even the environment. You would have an air baron whom is in charge of the atmosphere and whom you have to pay to use it. Because he owns it, he would want it to be clean as possible and wouldn't allow people to pollute it without paying him. But that doesn't work because it assumes the owner is deeply concerned with long term sustainability instead of short term profits--a proven falsehood when examining corporate behavior today, plus it arbitrarily gives enormous amounts of power to individuals. If you're going to do that, you might will probably want elect them, and if you're electing them, you're basically talking about a government and suddenly it's socialism writ large. If you don't elect them, then you're back to water barons, which is a monumental failure from a socioeconomic perspective.

There are lots of problems the free market cannot solve, just like there are lots of problems collective rule cannot solve. That's why it is important to choose the right solution for every problem. People who think there is only one true path will end up with lots of bad and inefficient solutions that often just make the problems worse.

What he's discovering here...

[roc97007]

...is that there's a difference between "Republicans" and "Conservatives".

Conservatives?

[intermodal]

I think it's cute that the synopsis above thinks Texas has a lot of conservatives in its government. Republicans != conservatives, at least not universially.

Re:Free Market? LoL

[MickyTheIdiot]

Republicans aren't free market libertarians, they are corporatists. Corporatists go complaining to the government when their long standing business model is challenged. Look throughout US history and you'll see examples going all the way back to the decline of the railroad empires.

Not a new law...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't a new law that kept Tesla out of Texas. The law that car makers couldn't sell direct to consumers in the state has been there for years. Tesla can sell all the cars he wants in Texas. He just has to get someone to open dealerships just like GM, Ford, Toyota and all the others.

Re:Nobody is Banning Tesla

[profplump]

If it's "dishonest" to frame this as "Tesla can't sell cars in Texas" then it's equally "dishonest" to frame it as "Tesla can sell cars in Texas if the follow 'the rules'". Both of those statements are true. Neither tells the whole story. And there's no reason whatever to accept one version over the other.

In 1960 blacks it was true to say "blacks in MS can vote if they follow 'the rules'". Of course "the rules" were desperately unfair both in conception and enforcement so in practice kept blacks from voting. Hence it was also true to say "blacks in MS are not allowed to vote". Just like in the Tesla case neither simplistic statement tells the whole story, but neither is any more "dishonest" than the other, they're just framed from different points of view.

Re:Free market, LOL!

[jandrese]

Yep, socialist just like Obamacare, that thing that makes you buy a corporate product just so taxpayers don't end up footing the bill when you go to the hospital unexpectedly. Practically communist it is.

The idea that there is anything at all socialist about it is laughable. It's the most corporate healthcare proposal ever devised, which isn't a surprise since it was devised by Republicans. All of the parts that were even vaguely socialist (single payer system for example) were quickly excised because they were a threat to the profit margins of drug makers, insurance companies, and other healthcare services. Most of the real cost saving opportunities were lost because the healthcare industry has a lot of lobbyists and a strong desire not to stop the gravy train.

Holy Fuck People!

[sycodon]

OK, RTFA.

EXISTING laws proscribe direct sale to the consumers. Argue if you want about how those laws cam into existence, but they are in fact, the law and predate Tesla.

Tesla wanted the laws changed. So they were actually the ones lobbying for a special exemption.

Texas didn't ban Tesla cars, they didn't change the existing laws to accommodate Tesla's sales model. You can argue about that being smart or not, but Telas's cars are NOT banned.

Re:Holy Fuck People!

[smack.addict]

Tesla doesn't want these buffoons selling Teslas because dealers don't really want to say them.

Sure, they'll pay lip service to the idea. But the problem is that Tesla's have very few moving parts. There's no money to be made off of Tesla services. And that's where these guys make their money. So they will use Tesla's to draw people in, but they'll sell something else.

By the way, who cares why? What if it is just because Elon hates TADA? In a free market, he should be able to sell direct if he wants.

Re:Free Market? LoL

[PraiseBob]

Neither party wants a free market. The difference is one of those parties makes a lot of speeches about wanting a free market.

Re:Slashdot Canidate

[Moryath]

There are two kinds of Libertarians.

Idiots who are too naive to understand that libertarianism leads to monopolism and vulture capitalism, and

Monopolist Vulture Capitalists.