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First Arab Supercar Costs $3.4 Million, Has Diamond-Encrusted Headlights
cartechboy writes "If you're looking for bling, you can always count on Dubai. At the Dubai Motor Show this week, Lebanon-based W Motors unveiled what is billed as the world's first Arab-built super car. The Lykan Hypersport incorporates jewels and precious metals in its construction, suicide-style doors, and an interactive holographic display system. (Yes, drivers will be able to adjust radio volume via a holograph.) The 750 horsepower car accelerates to 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds and has a top speed of 245 mph. The cost: $3.4 million, but owners will also receive a Cyrus Klepcys watch, said to be valued at around $200,000. W Motors plans a whopping 7 units for production."
Not that it is relevant to anyone who could possibly buy this.
Let me know how much of it is 3D printed, then I'll be impressed.
And none of these "HE EARNT IT FROM THE SWEAT OF HIS BROW" lies, please.
1) Hard workers are poor - smart workers are rich;
2) Arab oil magnates CERTAINLY didn't work for it.
...will it run Linux ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
245 MPH, suicide doors, diamond headlights. This is an epic disaster on wheels!
Some people just really have more money than they know what to do with, don't they?
I can think of a lot of better uses for $23.8 million dollars then some toy car...
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One has to wonder how much faster it would go if you got rid all the unnecessary opulence built into this car.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Conspicuous consumption is the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power â" either the buyerâ(TM)s income or the buyerâ(TM)s accumulated wealth. Sociologically, to the conspicuous consumer, such a public display of discretionary economic power is a means either of attaining or of maintaining a given social status.
Moreover, invidious consumption, a more specialized sociologic term, denotes the deliberate conspicuous consumption of goods and services intended to provoke the envy of other people, as a means of displaying the buyerâ(TM)s superior socio-economic status.
Nothing new.
That's like the "World's Most Expensive Champagne" which is just regular champagne with diamonds in the glass. If you're giving away a $200,000 watch with your car, then the value of the car is $200,000 less, not more.
Gaudy nouveau riche showing off their lack of class and style. Yeah, you can have Dubai. Money doesn't make a man, though it certainly has unmade more than one. The Arabs haven't learned this, and given the generations of oil wealth they've had by now, they probably never will.
Personally I suspect that anyone who has amassed such riches is a selfish person. It's not like you wake up one day and suddenly are a multimillionaire. I don't know any millionaires personally though, so who knows.
Where did you get that figure? It says 3.4 million.
How quaint!
perhaps not the best marketing terminology for a vehicle, in that area of the world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From our American taxes to the military to Haliburton to Dubai to diamond encrusted cars. Fuck this country.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
This car is chump change for Middle Eastern royalty than can afford a $600 million dollar yacht like this one. The operation and maintenance costs on this yacht alone are estimated to be $60 million/year.
I do agree with you though, this money could be better spent.
Is it just me, or does this feature not sound particularly attractive?
Granted, I have no idea what it means, but I feel that it is probably not the ideal marketing angle for the "world's first Arab-built supercar".
And those wobbly suicide doors are hilarious.
Why can no modern car maker design something with the beauty and elegance of an E-Type or Muira?
Because, obviously if you can afford a 3.4 million dollar car, you can clearly afford the gas for it. Although, for that kind of money, you could probably buy a Tesla and still have plenty left over to hire someone to follow you with a generator, for the entire time you own your car.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Oh yeah, to make everyone in the world feel like shit.
Holograph doesn't mean what cartechboy thinks it means. Let it be known.
It seems that the uber wealthy run out of ways to flaunt it, so they have to come up with more and more outlandish displays to let others know how much more they have than you. These aren't even improvements in quality or aesthetics. Tooling around in a Bugatti is passe, apparently.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
And none of these "HE EARNT IT FROM THE SWEAT OF HIS BROW" lies, please.
1) Hard workers are poor - smart workers are rich;
2) Arab oil magnates CERTAINLY didn't work for it.
Not sure what you are intending to slam ... capitalism, or Islam?
3.4 * 7
In the case of these Arab skieks, they get it by exploiting the natural resources of their land. They got where they are because their great-great-grandpa was in charge and was able to cut deals with the Europeans when they controlled that area. After the Europeans left, they filled in the power gap and kept the oppressive system going.
Now to stay in power, they tell the little people that they are poor and have no hope of things getting better because of Israel and the US of A.
In the meantime, they buy shit like this car instead of plowing the money back into their own society and peoples. Because, if they were actually to educate and invest in their own peoples, the little people would figure out that the true enemy of their well being isn't Israel or the US* but these assholes who exploit them and their lands.
*Yes, I realize the US does have something to do with it - like helping to keep these assholes in power.
What the Arab peoples need to do, is line these guys up, shoot them, and create a democracy.
The Persians need to knock of their religious leaders because they are even bigger assholes and frauds. Beware of clergy: they are the biggest power hungry people on Earth and the most Evil.
But the production run is seven. $23.8 M for all seven, buy one for each day of the week...
-- Alastair
Arseholes of either or both religions.
Yeah, rich royals are the perfect reason to be a socialist. How brain dead.
Catalog lists more paint deco options (9) than the entire production run (7).
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Capitalislam
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I'm sure you can, for your own personal definition of Better. Then again, the Sheikh probably thinks he knows better than you how to use his people's money because he is mandated by God, fate, and destiny to rule whatever land it is we're talking about here. I'm sure there's a distinction in viewpoints here, but I realize I'm failing to grasp it.
To quote the always beloved Margaret Thatcher "The only problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money".
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I would buy one for my wife, but women are not allowed to drive it.
I wont say they don't have the right to spend their money on what they want, but with people starving in the world this is offensive.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
From the video, the door hold-up mechanism needs work. When they open the "suicide doors", which rotate backwards and upward, it looks like the counterbalancing system isn't quite right. The demonstrator has to adjust the door to keep it open, and then it shakes.
There is a web site for the company with more specs. The engine is a 6-cylinder boxer type, which seems undersized for the claimed performance. Most supercars have from 8 to 18 cylinders.
Surprisingly, it's not an all-wheel drive vehicle. Most supercar-class sedans are. I'm surprised they can get that acceleration with rear wheel drive only. There are rear wheel drive race cars that can do it, but sedan-sized cars usually need all-wheel drive to get enough traction. The rear tires aren't especially large. There's nothing like Formula I aerodynamics to get huge levels of downforce. I wonder if this thing's claimed acceleration just reflects performance on a dynamometer.
No active suspension, either. That's a real problem with supercars - if they're low enough to go fast, they're too low to go anywhere. See Top Gear's evaluation of the Bugatti Veyron, where it takes them an hour and wooden blocks to get it out of a driveway.
Maintenance: "a team of qualified W engineers will fly to anywhere in the world to service your Hypercar or to help with any problem you might encounter with the Lykan at any given time."
no electric doors?
Just highly impractical for daily life of just about anybody...
Car will be stolen faster than you can sneeze the moment you're out of it, especially due to those encrusted diamonds, jewels and other precious metals.
Great idea. For sure nobody will try popping the diamonds out from around the headlights.
Fun fact: Saudi Arabia prohibits women from driving cars, has imported some half million Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis drivers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I see a lot of CGI, and this:
If W Motors manages to pull it off, the Lykan Hypersport could potentially be the first car to feature an interactive holographic display system
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I think you are missing out lucky, you don't have to smart to be born int wealth.
Even then their wealth was not originally created by hard work, or even smart work, it created by taking resources that belonged to everyone and using it to benefit themselves. Ok their ancestors where smart thieves, but not smart workers.
3.4 million. US dollars.
Hmmm ...
Naw, I doan' need no steenking watch.
The banks ran out of other peoples' money but the capitalists never seem to run out of other peoples' labor.
It'd be more impressive if they weren't building their country with slave labor.
Personally I suspect that anyone who has amassed such riches is a selfish person. It's not like you wake up one day and suddenly are a multimillionaire. I don't know any millionaires personally though, so who knows.
The millionaire who actually works to amass their wealth is usually not a selfish individual. They know what they had to do to get there, and most of them started with nothing. And quite a few of them are often charitable, and not just for the tax breaks.
The selfish cocksuckers with more money than sense are the ones born into it, swaddled in a gilded crib. Don't think for one second their financial sense was any less fucked from birth.
I wonder if it has Oculus Rift support?
I don't see how the grandparent was suggesting socialism but anyway.
Just because you don't believe in socialism doesn't mean that having people who do effectively no work and waste huge amounts or resources is right.
There are many things in between pure socialism and pure capitalism, and maybe even other ways that are not either.
I believe in both hard work, intelligence, risk taking, ... should be rewarded, but their also needs to be a level of fairness as well. It does not have to be totally fair life's tough get over it, but the extremes can be eliminated. The top 10 CEOs in the US earn other $100 million the average wage is about 0.04 Million you are in a dream world if you think these people work 2500 times harder, better, smarter than the average worker.
Also the reward does not necessarily need to be money.
I'm glad that the spend it on crap. A Muslims idea of a good cause is funding a terrorist attack in the west.
$3.4 mil and you don't get whale penis leather interior? Oh well, at least a woman will never drive it.
The Gulf Arab states are massive examples of the state "plowing the mony back into their own society and peoples". If you are a native, life is good: free universities, high-salary jobs that don't require much work, all kinds of subsidies. It is the migrant workers from mainly the Indian Subcontinent that have it bad, but even the simplest UAE native enjoys a very high quality of life.
Your vision of poor masses held down and turned against Israel and the US may hold to some degree for Saudi Arabia or pre-revolutionary Syria, but it does not hold for the welfare states of the Gulf.
two words: fungible commodity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why OR/OR why not AND/AND. Perhaps he has $6 million to spend and he give $3 million to charity.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You must be arguing from a theistic position. It's sure not supported by the genetic code as expressed by wolves, seagulls, sharks, or dragons.
Because the human greed gullet sometimes takes years to complete the swallowing motion, we're the dancing bees of declaring "dibs".
A highly popular dance move is the puerile head fake of vapid collectivism.
It's certainly true that all life on earth shares the destiny of our damp blue marble, which should give pause to the greedy algorithm running amok.
Another highly popular head fake is the display of flagrant excess. Gives the chattering classes a focal point having nothing to do with reforming the "heads I win, tails you loose" gravy train known as Wall Street.
This is not a car to be driven by a Bangladeshi chauffeur. The warehouse is full of European sedans for that purpose. No, this is a car to be driven by the young playboy Prince who, educated at Eton and Oxford, has barely spent a day in his father's homeland since he was 5 years old.
It can't be considered a super car. It is missing one key ingredient...
A proper super car requires a magic horn to transform it into its super form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQnnZOJSlh0
This space unintentionally left blank.
You are right. I would just replace "educated" with "bought a diploma from", that is all.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Didn't the doors look a bit flimsy/wobbly when it was first opened?
The end of the video links to the Devel Sixteen that claims will have 5000 hp, go from 0-60 in 1.8 sec., with a max speed of 348 mph. I don't know about you but these cars seem like they're for autophiles who use Franklins as toilet paper. Who knows how well they will perform.
This article only goes to prove that large inequalities in wealth don't lead to anything good. The Arab market is chasing the ultra-rich, because that's where the money is at. If money were distributed more equitably, the car manufacturers would work on things that actually move humanity forward (like producing better technology). This kind of opulence just goes to show that when the market is twisted to chase after the ultra-rich (because large wealth inequalities exist), it goes to nothing good - just diamonds and opulence and conspicuous consumption designed to let princes show off how big their "dick" is. (Yeah, I can already hear the Republicans saying that mining diamonds produces jobs - but they are worthless, non-helping-humanity-move-forward kind of jobs. We are rich not because of the amount of rocks we dig out of the ground, but we are rich because of our technology.)
It sounds to me like liberal policies designed to reduce wealth inequalities are the only thing that will move humanity forward.
On a related note:
TED Talk on Income Inequality by Nick Hanauer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIhOXCgSunc
TED Talk: Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html
If you have $6 million just lying around and have just given $3 million to a good cause, that still leaves $3 million you could give to a good cause.
>
I do agree with you though, this money could be better spent.
The way oil rich Arabs spend their money is very aggravating - especially from a European POV. The EU is being flooded with refugees from North Africa and has to spend a lot of money on taking care of them and at the same time Arabs, who are ethnically much closer to North Africans (almost the same religion and language), have almost no sympathy for refugees and instead spend money on crap like this. And it's not just a matter of money but also culture. I try hard not to be xenophobic and try to tolerate intolerance but it seems to me that when devout Muslims flee North Africa it would be easier for them to integrate into an Arab country since then they would neither face such a culture clash nor need to learn an entirely different language. And it's not like rich Arab countries don't want workers for the shittiest of shitty jobs - but they import them from India (mostly). Maybe I'm wrong but to me it seems that at least one pretty big problem in the world could be solved pretty easily if Arabs that can afford crap like this would instead think more of their fellow humans - at least the ones that are ethnically very close but just weren't lucky enough to be born on a pile of black gold.
this is an old right wing attack on Socialism. It's based on the assumption that the ruling class 'earned' their wealth. It's easy enough to disprove just by pointing out the huge amounts of gov't contracts, free money and support nearly every one of the ruling class gets. Heck, last I heard the British still hand their Royalty something on the order of $100 million a year in free money. Basically, we all rely on 'other people's money', because money == labor in a modern society (like it or not there's not enough gold for it to be a standard) and sorta the entire point of having a Civilization is to work together for the common good. Otherwise it's just dog eat dog slavery.
The hard part isn't pointing all that out, it's boiling it down to a nice sound bite like Margaret did. Yeah, I can bang on all day about how we already produce enough food to feed 10 billion people, how automation is making the even 40 hour work week obsolete and about how single payer healthcare works better than the mess in North America. But that doesn't hit you in the gut like Margy's comment. It might be right (it is) but it doesn't _feel_ right. It doesn't appeal to common sense and emotion.
The problem socialists have is the right wing has simple answers to complex problems. Sure, they're self serving answers at best and horrifically wrong at worst, but given the choice it's much easier to get people to go along with them.
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Have these guys contributed anything of value to humanity since the middle ages? Worthless trash.
I say auction it off and use the proceeds for charity. Get the Sheiks all together in a room and see which 7 walk out with billion dollar cars. Hype the auction enough and you could sell it on pay-per-view to make back the initial investment.
(The only condition is that after the auction is final the Stig takes one around the track.)
Shift happens. Fire it up.
I take it that you have no savings? Nothing beyond the clothes you stand in and your accomodation, food and heating paid for the month? If you have more why not give it to a good cause?
Minimum Sheikh Royalty Prices?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
The only problem with Thatcherism is that eventually you run out of state infrastructure (council houses, utility companies, railways, etc.) to sell off at fire-sale prices to appease your wealthy donors.
a penis. http://www.wmotors.ae/hyper_styling_images/1376466478lykan_styling01.jpg
While America's working poor puts in overtime working two part time jobs without health care and with no savings, busting their humps to pay $4/gallon to these Arab oil tycoons so they can build $3.4M supercars.
Many shieks give a lot to charity, if by charity you mean schools and facilities with the guy's picture everywhere and loyalty oaths before receiving largesse. It's how you build a power base. Christianity worked the same way quite some time ago, and Islam still works that way in poorer regions (that is: "Charity" in return for personal loyalty, not just faith in the religion).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Hey, if you ever win the lottery, you'll know what to do. But to each his own.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Oh, I'm not trying to force anyone. Nor do I play the lottery :P.
Arab oil magnates CERTAINLY didn't work for it.
I suppose that depends upon how you define work. Does killing or imprisoning all of your opposition count?
you are in a dream world if you think these people work 2500 times harder, better, smarter than the average worker.
Pay has nothing to do with that. At all. This is a common misunderstanding on Slashdot. Your pay is based on what the market says you're worth. The more skills a job requires / the fewer people there are with those skills = more pay.
There are a lot of people willing to work checkout counters, sweep floors and run the fry machine (BTW I have done all three at one point or another) because they don't have the skills or experience to get a different job. By contrast, there are a comparatively very very small number of people with the expertise and experience to justify putting a company with tens of billions of dollars in revenue and jobs of tens of thousands of workers and the money of tens of millions of shareholders in their hands. Many of them suck at the job once they are given it, but you have only a small pool of people with even close to the right experiences and skills to pick from, so there you go.
I don't think that star NFL running backs are worth what they are paid, nor plumbers, nor wedding photographers. But you know what? They make that money because of the market, and I don't begrudge them that money since it's a lot better way to handle it than a socialist government picking how much money people should make for them. BTW I do think it's probably time to raise the minimum wage, but I think your point was more concerned with lowering the top of the scale than raising the bottom.
"95% of all Slashdot
Doesn't usability suffer horribly from parallax?
Twinstiq, game news
It is the easiest thing in the world to criticize. Even donkeys can do it. When is the last time you built a super car. If this was Ferrari I don't think the car would be given half the scrutinty you people are giving this. Just because these guys are arabs doesn't mean you are better than them. Fuck let them finish it first. For serious fucks sake you guys are hard on this company. Did they kill your mother or something. Or is just you don't like country of origin. Maybe the car does suck as much as you are claiming it sucks ( i'm assuming all you experts have driven this thing around for a while) but would this reaction be the same if some Israeli company had made this super car with holographic controlls. Try to be objective.
-Two legs are good, but four legs are better.
Probably the rich / poor class dicotomy (something the USA has avoided untill recently). Or perhapes he wasn't slaming anyone. Maybe he just meant work smart not hard. A fool will toil to the end of his days and end up broke. Only the suckers work for a living. The idea of working hard and pulling yourself up from the bootsraps used to have an enduring apeal in the USA, but now thanks to crony capitalism the game is rigged. The big players do not want startups and will do everything in their legal power to prevent you from working hard to get ahead. It is now illegal in the USA to operate a lemonade stand, because the big players don't want competition and will legislate 'food and safety standards' to prevent you from selling this dangerous commodity. So if you want to work hard to get ahead emmigrate to the communist republic of China where capitalism is respected and you can create a food stand (business) by selling stuff on the side walk. In the USA the only way to get ahead is to be a smarter criminal, and play the sytem. Why not get an Obama phone. All the big corporations are getting hand outs from the government why not you. Just realize that the smart (owners of the big coorps) are getting more money of the obama phone than the poor are. It is only the dumb suckers in the middle class that get screwed. Hard work and dillegence are no longer survival characteristics in the usa. The things that get you ahead are people skills, and a well defined knowlege of how to fake documents, counterfit money (hey the government does like competition so this is illegal), and identity theft. Think about it. Most of the illegal aliens in the country (70 million) have a working set of paper (e.g. social security card, drivers license) How are you kids going to compete against the mexicans if they can't generate equally authentic documents. The answer is they aren't . So parnets be good parents, teach you kids how to lie and steal well. Their future depends on it. Don't let them be suckers. The sucker who works hard is going to end up broke dumb and homeless.
Perhaps you can you compare and contrast any rich person in the US vs some wealthy shik?
Plow back into their own society and people, what a joke. Look up all the tax avoidance scams the rich pull. How's most of corporate america's tax rate compared with your own (not total dollars spent, the RATE).
How about cutting a deal with the CIA to make sure you stay in power? I'm sure that takes time/effort/energy and could count as 'work'.
If doesn't fly and go underwater, it's not Supercar!
This sort of thing is exactly why Karl Marx proposed a 100% estate tax. Men, born into wealth and doing nothing to earn their exalted status, spending it frivolously on status-enhancing trinkets while people all around them starve and suffer at their displeasure.
Aristocracy is the enemy of equality. It's the ultimate, degenerate form of capitalism, in which what you own determines your rights and privileges instead of what works you do, and it locks in how much prosperity and liberty you will enjoy from birth with no means of getting ahead short of the whims of the wealthy or society-shattering violence.
It's not surprising how, in light of how far apart they are, that democratic socialism turned into equally extreme revolutionary communism in countries that had yet to experience democracy and a method for the underclass to pursue equality through peaceful means.
How appropriate, considering the type of people (and state of mind/level of intoxication) who will be driving these.
I approve this design.
Charity still works that way in the Capitalist religion, too. Consider the stipulations that, e.g., the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has placed on third-world countries pledging loyalty to "intellectual property" laws to protect Big Pharma before "charity" is rendered. Indeed, US foreign aid "charity" generally comes with strict requirements of loyalty to the interests of global megacorporations; nations that attempt to cut Wall Street profits out of the loop of uplifting their own people are generally faced instead with sanctions cutting into food and medical supplies of the general populace (who must prove sufficient loyalty to Global Capitalism before being worthy of largess).
Look up ZiL some time.
Statist utopias don't prevent excesses. They just limit excesses to the statists.
Oh, geez, another asshole who will dredge up any reason to hate Bill Gates. When you save 100000 children, you get to criticize.
Why should "US foreign aid" even matter? Don't you give significantly to charities which no such restrictions? Far more that the government gives on your behalf? I mean, I assume you donate a lot since you have such strong opinions on how the money should be used, right? You're not just trying to enslave random strangers to your personal values?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The price of ONE if these cars can elevate 300 Saudi poor to owning a modest home that is comfortable and has clean water and sanitation.
You have no idea about Middle East. Saudi Arabia is a 19th century theocracy strongly influenced by Wahhabi style of Islam (they are super right wing wacko birds following Sharia.)
But Saudi Arabia is not a poor country, its one of the richest countries in the world. The stuff you imagine - clean water and sanitation for Saudi poor - does not exist. Because Saudi poor does not exist. There are unemployed Saudi youth...but they are not poor.
Do you know how the Arab Spring did not make a presence in Saudi? The kingdom increased the monthly allowance to citizens. Meaning the whole country is bribed and kept happy. (How can you blame the citizens? The Al Saud family makes money, but also shares the spoils. Most of the oil rich states in middle east are super welfare states - so an internal revolt by the poor will not happen.
http://cjpp5.over-blog.com/article-al-ahram-weekly-online-egypt-riyadh-escapes-the-arab-spring-by-omayma-abdel-latif-111103275.html
Tat Tvam Asi
I can't wait until these shitheads run out of oil and thus money. The massive human rights violations these fuckheads are responsible for are sickening. They don't deserve this decadence. They barely even deserve to be alive.
Also fuck moral relativism. Jailing gays is wrong. Forcing women to cover themselves is wrong. Imposing their religion through force of government on people is wrong.
This is the budget version.
It doesn't exist if Top Gear hasn't reviewed it.
I'm sure you can, but why don't you then? Part of a free market or even capitalist society is that you can do those things. The better the ideas are the more people you can help with employment or providing goods and services to them.
Of course if your ideas suck then you go under and don't get to continue getting funding for things that are not sustainable, useless, outdated or all of the above.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
So many posts yet no one has commented on the fact that the car is just seriously ugly. It reminds me of a Corvette C7, what with all the cut-outs and creases.
Hey, for all I know it's super-duper in the wind tunnel but it sure looks like something from the sketchbook of a motorhead who's still in junior high.
My opinion, of course. In all seriousness, though, if I'm going to spend that much money on something, I want it to not just work well but be pretty to boot.
And yes, "pretty" is a valid criteria for choosing a car. If you're spending that much, you should be able to get everything, including "pretty".
Does anybody actually think this car is pretty?
Straw man. We're talking about having $3 million spare cash, not savings in general.
Have you?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
For the glint eyed fanatical retard who has almost everything.
Yes, my civilization has produced plenty of value. In fact almost everything of value in the last 500 years has come from the civilization whose values I share and support financially and intellectually.
No blue carpet or gold curtain rods?
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Arabs don't do manual labor, so how exactly is this Arab built. Arab designed maybe.
It's posts like yours why I'm not a socialist.
Do I think spending that much for a car makes sense? Hell no!
Do I think it's their money and they can do with it what they will (burn it for all I care), and it's none of anyone's business to tell them otherwise? Damn right!
And no - as long as it's legal, I don't care how they earned the money. (though laws, or their lack of, can and should be regularly reviewed to see if they are indeed in society's best interest)
Socialism talks about eliminating what it calls "social injustice", but in reality what always seems to end up happening is that it impoverishes everyone except for the current ruler who becomes fabulously wealthy (e.g. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament) while the rest of the population starves. History has clearly shown that setting up a society where some bureaucrat prevents you from buying a $1000 dollar because those are rationed for VIP party members and you'll have to make due with the $500 set, is the wrong way to solve this problem.
If you don't like how wealthy these oil shieks are, then either quit buying their stuff, or start running a competing service without the huge markups.
As for this car specifically, no big deal. You guys are so fixated on the final product and the waste of materials it created. Look further down the supply chain. It created a factory with at least 6 or 7 employees. It bought materials (from the exotic composites, to the cut gemstones) from other companies feeding the bottom lines of those companies. All in all, the money wasted on these cars is providing jobs - directly and indirectly - to hundreds of people. With more jobs over there, maybe fewer over there will be tempted to strap on suicide vests...
They say it has a self-destruct button, but no ejector seat...
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
since if we don't 'deserve' anything then the world is dog eat dog, winner take all. But then what's the point of Civilization? As a rational person I rather like it.
Also, I'd like to believe that humanity as a species is capable to taking care of each other (e.g. providing food, shelter and health care to all) without resorting to starvation. If we're not, again, we're not much better than Monkeys. Heck, we might be worse. Monkeys don't torture each other for fun.
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you're never going to get rid of cronyism. So rather than trying to fight it in vain you should be asking how you can get yourself a piece of what Civilization has to offer.
I don't see the middle class and poor screwed by socialism. I do see them screwed by fascism (Stalin, Mao etc) which is usually what people mean when they say 'socialism'...
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where do those profits come from, and what did the current generation of Royals do to 'earn' 8 million pounds a year? What ever it is I'd like me to do some of that... :)
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Is this just wrong? It lists $55 million US as the figure for the payout. Still half what I assumed but pretty good pay for being an 'owner' that contributes basically nothing (unless you count tourism, and I know that matters).
I've never really suggested we get rid of them (I don't think we have the power) I just want to use the gov't the same way they do: to improve my lot. The only difference is I want to improve everyone elses lot too while I'm at it. Like I said, socialism.
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Socialism is an attempt to address the societal symptoms, and not the cause. The cause being an authoritative statist form of tyranny and oppression. Ironically, the idealism of socialism quickly turns into the disease that it was set out to nullify in the first place.
The solution is capitalism. What we have now in the US is anything but. However, you can blame the ignorant masses for letting the system degenerate over time. Adam Smith must be turning over in his grave by now.
Life is not for the lazy.
Am I the only one that want's Top Gear to get a hold of it?
(and possibly ruin it!)