I drove a 20 year old Porsche for five years and even that honestly was pretty economical. I finally sold it to a family member who wanted it when I decided I didn't want to go another summer in the south without AC.
I saw a video recently that was trying to make the point that smarter people don't make anymore money than everyone else. One of their quips was about college professors driving obviously old cars, their assumption being that if they made more money they'd all be driving new cars. I've even got family with more than a couple million in relatively liquid assets who won't buy new cars. It seems to be one of the hallmarks of being first generation financially well off to either not buy new cars and or to buy new but very reliable cars with the intention of driving them for a decade or more.
I googled "profit margin on a model s" and from all the results it would seem that the profit margin for a model S is about 25%. It is actually the R&D and capital investment costs which are keeping their balance sheets in the red for the time being.
I'm by no means an expert but my impression was that the battery packs were the single big expensive item. The motor(s) and differential(s) being of moderate cost compared to the rest of the vehicle. The drive train should be pretty simple as their isn't a transmission or anything like that, and the electric motors are incredibly simple compared to just about any modern internal combustion engine.
The quality of the rest of the car is certainly a critical concern but from everything I've heard they are very quick to fix and replace anything that goes wrong.
In another recent discussion about renewable power I was curious enough to do the math for solar thermal storage. I believe the number I came up with was a 30 square mile tanker farm could hold enough molten salt to power the USA for a week. I don't know how much space we'd need realistically because one large tanker farm would be impractical so we'd need a bunch of smaller facilities spread around the country to protect from disaster and abnormal weather conditions. The bottom line though is that replacing fossil fuel power generation isn't all that infeasible, it's simply not economically competitive enough at this point to make it a rush priority.
Having grown up in one of those states I believe the reason you couldn't hunt big game with.223 was because it is shot from a rifle. Most hunting in the state restricted the use of rifles because the population was too dense and the land too flat. A shot from a rifle could easily travel thousands of feet, if not miles, beyond the intended target and still be deadly. Even then I remember a neighbor finding a fresh shotgun slug in a piece of firewood stacked against his house. And our house had a rifle round pass through it which would have removed your head had you been sitting on the crapper at the time.
Disney and McDonalds also both take advantage of the McRib sales strategy. People in general are foolish and if something is only available for a limited time, even if it's awful, we're more likely to give in and buy it.
I'm not for the government on this issue, or the no fly list, I'm just pointing out that cell phones are not a necessity. I've owned cell phones on and off over the years and while very convenient, they are by no means necessary for modern life. Comically enough though, I know practicing Amish folks that do use cell phones. It depends on the particular Amish community, but the apparent prohibition on electricity stems from a prohibition on having wires entering the home. Using cell phones avoids the need for wires coming in and out of the house if you charge it in your workshop or anywhere really that isn't in your house.
Sorry, cell phones are not a necessity. Food, water, and shelter are necessities. Cell phones are a luxury, and notably lower on the totem pole than refrigeration, running water, and sewage treatment. If you decide you have to have a cell phone on hand you can always remove the battery while not actively using it, or you could keep it in a shielded container to prevent it constantly reporting. I'm sure you could also open up the phone if you really wanted to and remove/modify the GPS chip, although the police could then still know which towers you were near.
The work is a lot less pleasant but the benefits are better in every possible measure. More and better vacation and sick leave. Better health insurance coverage, and significant 401k matching. Pay after a few years on the job is now almost triple what I earned as a programmer.
Most programmers are working on business software which isn't rocket science, or really even model rocketry level, tweaking UI elements and changing logic to match new business rules. While the term "code monkey" may be unnecessarily derogatory, there is a reason it was coined in the first place. I was a programmer for six years and I wouldn't mind doing that work again if the benefits were similar or better. But as it is I'd rather work a couple more decades in a grinding job and then retire than take a more pleasant job but spend the rest of my life on the job.
While it's relatively easy and simple work it is tedious as hell, and it would seem that the people in charge only aim to make it more so. Some of it can be automated although the requirements change so frequently that we've never managed to get a fully functional set of scripts running properly. Most of the work though involves analyzing dense documentation that is written in the most weasel worded fashion while attempting to be technical, and that comes from both the customer and the requirements group. There is other more standard work that we do but the above is what keeps people from wanting to work here. When I took the job three other people had already turned it down once they realized just how grinding it would be, and that was in the midst of the economic crash.
Actual programming I would say is a little more challenging than the maintenance and security fap that I do now. When I was in programming though, we'd get new recruits in frequently that just had a few months of specialized training on top of a HS degree and they'd work out just fine. The only job in tech that I'd say requires a lot more experience and training to do passably well is design and possibly extremely specialized stuff like assembly on obscure systems. Those kinds of jobs though are a small minority when you look at the whole of the IT field.
Bullshit, anyone can buy a brand new book and photocopy or scan it if they like, and then resell the original while retaining a copy. It is less convenient, and you don't necessarily get to keep an exact replica of the original but it is close enough. And that would certainly be enough to give a publisher fits.
The problem is that the various publishing industries don't want to actually sell anything but non-transferable licenses to consume their content. Customers though, after millennia of buying and trading physical objects, don't care about the the non-transferable license bits, and perceive it as them buying the content.
The argument that the MPAA, RIAA, and friends have been making for decades now, is that they aren't actually selling digital copies of whatever media item. They believe they are selling us non-transferable licenses. This selling of non-transferable licenses isn't really made readily obvious to customers, who by and large believe they are buying the media, not a license.
Personally I disagree with the concept of non-transferable licenses when it comes to digital media, but that is how they view it, or at least how they argue it legally.
It says more about the lack of jobs than lack of skills. I work in a tech job that pays pretty well, but I could probably train anyone of average intelligence to do this work in a few months. And that has been the case with practically every job I've ever held and most that I've seen. The problem of getting a good job is usually an issue of opportunity. Which is why minorities with strongly negative stereotypes struggle, they aren't given the same opportunities. And it's also why social networking is such a huge factor in landing a good job, if people making hiring decisions have a positive preexisting relationship with an applicant they are more likely to be selected.
Youth engagement in the labor force has been relatively low for awhile now. Teenagers simply can't compete when their competition has more experience and a higher need for the job, and hence a better work ethic. If I'm hiring and I could pick a teenager who lives with their parents or a single mother in her 20's, I'm going to pick the single Mom. The teenager is more likely to look for a reason to call off work, while the Mom will probably ask for more hours. The teenager is probably attending school and so only available for specific hours. Basically the Mom needs the money from the job to get by and provide for her child so she'll be more motivated to not lose the job. Whereas the teenager wants the money but has less motivation to not screw it up because their still living in a safety net.
That isn't to say that all teenagers are layabouts, and all single Moms are workaholics. I would hope that all employers actually interview potential hires to determine which is a better candidate. But I can easily see how when the job market is rough for adults that it is going to translate into an even tougher market for teenagers.
What makes it all worse is that minimum wage jobs are kind of a trap for skilled workers. The smart economical move if you lose your job and have trouble finding an equivalent job quickly is to take something that pays less to reduce the rate at which your savings depletes, while you continue to search for a job. The trap though is that people then presume that because you took that low paying job, that you must be less capable and so you get passed over.
The helium is lighter than air, so as long as you keep the only openings of the bag or mask on the bottom it should push all the regular atmosphere out the bottom opening. I'm not sure about the densities of other inert gasses that might be cheaper than helium. But so long as the other inert gasses are either heavier or lighter than normal atmosphere it is a simple exercise to provide for the gas to build up where you want it. You want inert gasses to be what the victim is breathing instead of oxygen because it would sustain life, and carbon because that would trigger the bodies asphyxiation panic mode and cause undue suffering.
You don't really need to fill an entire room. You could simply strap the victim to a table or chair, which many facilities already have. Then put a gas mask on them and pump it full of your favorite inert gas. If the room is ventilated at all you wouldn't need any special pumps or valves other than the shutoff valve attached to the gas canister. You could literally go buy a mask and duct tape at an army surplus store, pickup a small tank of helium, and some rubber tubing and be all set to conduct executions. Now that I think about it the mask is actually an unnecessary expense, you could just use a plastic bag. You only need enough helium to fill the bag or mask, and then a trickle to maintain positive pressure preventing regular atmosphere from getting in for the few minutes till death.
I had to take a federally mandated drug test once when I was taking opiods occasionally for kidney stones. When I was filling out the paper work I noticed there was no area to list prescriptions. I asked the person administering the test where to note this just in case it showed up in the test, and she said they didn't collect that information. This told me one of two things, either they were only testing for a narrow subset of drugs which didn't include opiods, or they can't be bothered to try and filter out positives from prescriptions.
I would think the second to be more likely but I haven't heard anything from HR asking me to explain the results of the test. The second is looking more and more likely but it seems incredible to me that they wouldn't check for opiods seeing as how heroin has been on the rise, and opiod abuse is a real issue in the US.
Not really, we're just at a point where we can observe actions and reactions which we don't understand. That doesn't mean that they are somehow magically truly random. At some point in human history the variation in ocean tides must have been seemingly random and incomprehensible. Over time patterns were found and eventually tides became a predictable phenomena, even if the science of why tides happened wasn't understood. And now today we understand the science of tides. Provided that our scientific understanding continues to advance we'll eventually understand the rules governing and driving what today appears to be random.
As a former military member I have no qualms saying that mandatory conscription is bullshit. If a society believes it needs more soldiers but can't get enough people to sign up then it obviously doesn't really believe it needs those soldiers very much. The only conscription I feel we need is that of politicians into the infantry. Every military action we engage in should see each unit on the front lines attended by a politician serving as cheerleader/waterboy with no special protections.
Conscription is a tool of the ruling class to force the proles into fighting where they have no interest. The tears from the military leadership over not being able to recruit perfect soldiers while offering laughable benefits and pay, and blaming it on junk food and video games, is pure entertainment from my view point.
I think that it's actually state specific in the US. I know the state I grew up in it was illegal. The state I live in now allows it I believe. Or perhaps law enforcement just doesn't ever care enough to ticket for it because I see cars parked the wrong way all the time, probably 30% of the parked vehicles I see are parked facing traffic.
The $4,000 loss per car is honestly very laughable. The apparent loss is because the financials for the company represent the entirety of their expenses and income. Yes, investors would like Tesla to be profitable as quickly as possible. Tesla's mission statement however is not to be profitable, and so their balance sheets show a lot of money still being spent in research and development. For instance Tesla is building their own battery plant because without it the world isn't producing enough batteries to meet their production goals, meanwhile the cost of that plant is part of the cost of each car they build. The actual profit margins on a Model S is around 25% which is enough to make just about any company except maybe Apple a bit envious.
A niche market that has at least 325,000 people willing to spend $1000 for a pre-order spot is something most companies would do well to own. Such a massive pre-order queue is indicative of a much larger market for EV's. Tesla is actively working to ramp up production so they can fill those existing orders. And as the investment in production facilities matures I wouldn't be surprised to see the cost of Tesla cars actually come down a bit, which will attract even more buyers.
"while fossil fuel is taxed at around what even climate change activists generally say externalities from carbon emissions are"
I couldn't find any sources that looked even slightly impartial on this. Many sites I would expect to be pro-climate were saying gas would be $12 - $15 a gallon if we counted in all the subsidies through tax breaks, leases, and wars fought on the oil industries behalf. The most moderate I could find was in the WSJ which typically leans the other way and seemed to say that taxes should perhaps be double what they are now, which is about $0.49 a gallon.
"In different words, you're saying that the effect of raising the gas tax further wouldn't be to sell more electric vehicles (since they can't be produced fast enough anyway), it would simply be to increase profits for Elon Musk. Thanks for clearing that up."
Are we both speaking English here? Raising taxes on gas can't currently result in more profits for Tesla because they are already producing and selling their cars as fast as possible. Maybe ten years from now they might have production ramped up enough to have extra cars to sell and need more of a competitive edge, but that is certainly not true currently. Remember Tesla's goal though has never been to dominate the electric car market, the aim has been "to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible." Whether or not Tesla reigns supreme when all is said and done isn't critical to that mission.
"In fact, Tesla's waiting list is more like Ferrari's: they make a specialty product for a niche market, and they just want even more subsidies (an increase in the gas tax is effectively an additional subsidy for Tesla)."
Even when gas prices were more than double what they are today people weren't switching to electric vehicles in droves because the savings in gas isn't worth the price premium for an electric vehicle. You had people buying more efficient cars and the prices for old efficient models went up a good bit though. And again if they are already selling all the cars they can it wouldn't represent an increase in profits at all for Tesla. It might result in more sales for Chevy and Nissan electric vehicles, which out sell the Tesla models currently. And that would still be inline with Tesla's mission statement.
"That makes no difference in the end; Tesla still profits from it the same way."
And you may as well argue that WIC and SNAP benefits are a subsidy for Walmart.
"And until they do, they are still subsidized by fossil fuels."
Yup, and it's likely worth the cost for the time being because they are polluting less and represent an incredibly small portion of miles driven on our roadways. If this is such a near and dear concern for you let me know when you plan to protest marathons and other uses of public roads without paying gas taxes.
In 2015 we had 260 million vehicles registered for use on public roads in the USA, at the end of 2015 there were only about 410 thousand electric vehicles registered. That means we have a truly horrifying 0.16% of vehicles freeloading when it comes to road taxes. Shit, I'll bet that abuse of farm diesel amounts to more lost road taxes.
"Really, you're grasping at straws. Elon Musk wants more subsidies to increase his profits; it's typical, simple crony capitalism, and you're promoting it."
I'm sorry but you are the one continually grasping at the same straw. Musk is pushing for the antiquating of the ICE powdered vehicle. His company is already selling every single vehicle it can produce, increasing demand won't help him produce more vehicles. Apparently as of last month he has actually promised to sell another 325k more vehicles that he can't currently produce. The only avenue for extra profits here is that he could possibly raise the prices on his cars but that is opposite his mission of making mass market vehicles.
The public already is going to Tesla to get their cars. As of a month ago more than 300K people had ponied up a $1k payment each to have a place in line to buy a Model 3 whenever they go on sale. So far as aesthetics go maybe your sense of taste is just off, as I've seen little criticism of their cars.The Model S is the closest thing to what I pictured in my head as a kid the cars of the future would look like. And the Model S looks that way largely for functional purposes to make it efficient, I have no doubt they could make something more appealing to the street racing crowd with unnecessarily large spoilers and fender flares.
You're aware of course that Tesla can't produce enough cars to keep up with demand, right? Hell they announced a new model just a few weeks back, and sold spots in line to buy one for $1k each, and raked in more than $100m in the first few days. He doesn't need to be concerned about finding more customers to buy his cars. The big reason most people aren't driving a Tesla or similar car today is the high cost of new automobiles and the very limited supply. As time goes on and electric cars make their way into the used market ICE cars will be phased out, especially seeing as how electric cars will last a lot longer likely only needing a battery replacement after 10+ years.
So far as subsidies go the only big one I'm aware of is the low interest loan they had and already paid off. The subsidy for buying an electric vehicle from the fed is paid to customers, not Tesla. Even if that boosts sales a bit it isn't large enough to account for the waiting list to purchase a new Tesla. While Tesla and all other electric car drivers don't currently pay any direct road taxes, they will eventually once they become a large enough share of the road traffic. We don't bother taxing bicyclists for their use of the roadways because it would be an insignificant amount, and the same is still probably true for electric vehicles. That said everyone that participates in modern society is paying road taxes through their purchases of goods shipped via semi-truck, which produce the lions share of wear and tear on our roadways.
I agree that so long as we have states that are free to establish their own tax laws and companies which can freely cross those borders then we're going to have games played. The easiest solution I can think of that might have some semblance of fairness would be a federal law under the interstate commerce clause. That clause would require that corporations divide up their profits across all state and city jurisdictions where they have offices/employees. Use some formula like counting number of employees, contractors, labor costs, and real estate. The point being to simply attribute to each state the profits actually generated from the efforts of it's residents. The formula would undoubtedly be a source of contention and I won't pretend to know what it should look like in whole. But I think such a regulation would improve the state of corporate tax dodging within the USA.
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Honestly idiots risking their own lives doesn't bother me at all. The risk they bring to other people on the road is a little more worrisome.
I drove a 20 year old Porsche for five years and even that honestly was pretty economical. I finally sold it to a family member who wanted it when I decided I didn't want to go another summer in the south without AC.
I saw a video recently that was trying to make the point that smarter people don't make anymore money than everyone else. One of their quips was about college professors driving obviously old cars, their assumption being that if they made more money they'd all be driving new cars. I've even got family with more than a couple million in relatively liquid assets who won't buy new cars. It seems to be one of the hallmarks of being first generation financially well off to either not buy new cars and or to buy new but very reliable cars with the intention of driving them for a decade or more.
I googled "profit margin on a model s" and from all the results it would seem that the profit margin for a model S is about 25%. It is actually the R&D and capital investment costs which are keeping their balance sheets in the red for the time being.
I'm by no means an expert but my impression was that the battery packs were the single big expensive item. The motor(s) and differential(s) being of moderate cost compared to the rest of the vehicle. The drive train should be pretty simple as their isn't a transmission or anything like that, and the electric motors are incredibly simple compared to just about any modern internal combustion engine.
The quality of the rest of the car is certainly a critical concern but from everything I've heard they are very quick to fix and replace anything that goes wrong.
In another recent discussion about renewable power I was curious enough to do the math for solar thermal storage. I believe the number I came up with was a 30 square mile tanker farm could hold enough molten salt to power the USA for a week. I don't know how much space we'd need realistically because one large tanker farm would be impractical so we'd need a bunch of smaller facilities spread around the country to protect from disaster and abnormal weather conditions. The bottom line though is that replacing fossil fuel power generation isn't all that infeasible, it's simply not economically competitive enough at this point to make it a rush priority.
Having grown up in one of those states I believe the reason you couldn't hunt big game with .223 was because it is shot from a rifle. Most hunting in the state restricted the use of rifles because the population was too dense and the land too flat. A shot from a rifle could easily travel thousands of feet, if not miles, beyond the intended target and still be deadly. Even then I remember a neighbor finding a fresh shotgun slug in a piece of firewood stacked against his house. And our house had a rifle round pass through it which would have removed your head had you been sitting on the crapper at the time.
Disney and McDonalds also both take advantage of the McRib sales strategy. People in general are foolish and if something is only available for a limited time, even if it's awful, we're more likely to give in and buy it.
I'm not for the government on this issue, or the no fly list, I'm just pointing out that cell phones are not a necessity. I've owned cell phones on and off over the years and while very convenient, they are by no means necessary for modern life. Comically enough though, I know practicing Amish folks that do use cell phones. It depends on the particular Amish community, but the apparent prohibition on electricity stems from a prohibition on having wires entering the home. Using cell phones avoids the need for wires coming in and out of the house if you charge it in your workshop or anywhere really that isn't in your house.
Sorry, cell phones are not a necessity. Food, water, and shelter are necessities. Cell phones are a luxury, and notably lower on the totem pole than refrigeration, running water, and sewage treatment. If you decide you have to have a cell phone on hand you can always remove the battery while not actively using it, or you could keep it in a shielded container to prevent it constantly reporting. I'm sure you could also open up the phone if you really wanted to and remove/modify the GPS chip, although the police could then still know which towers you were near.
The work is a lot less pleasant but the benefits are better in every possible measure. More and better vacation and sick leave. Better health insurance coverage, and significant 401k matching. Pay after a few years on the job is now almost triple what I earned as a programmer.
Most programmers are working on business software which isn't rocket science, or really even model rocketry level, tweaking UI elements and changing logic to match new business rules. While the term "code monkey" may be unnecessarily derogatory, there is a reason it was coined in the first place. I was a programmer for six years and I wouldn't mind doing that work again if the benefits were similar or better. But as it is I'd rather work a couple more decades in a grinding job and then retire than take a more pleasant job but spend the rest of my life on the job.
While it's relatively easy and simple work it is tedious as hell, and it would seem that the people in charge only aim to make it more so. Some of it can be automated although the requirements change so frequently that we've never managed to get a fully functional set of scripts running properly. Most of the work though involves analyzing dense documentation that is written in the most weasel worded fashion while attempting to be technical, and that comes from both the customer and the requirements group. There is other more standard work that we do but the above is what keeps people from wanting to work here. When I took the job three other people had already turned it down once they realized just how grinding it would be, and that was in the midst of the economic crash.
Actual programming I would say is a little more challenging than the maintenance and security fap that I do now. When I was in programming though, we'd get new recruits in frequently that just had a few months of specialized training on top of a HS degree and they'd work out just fine. The only job in tech that I'd say requires a lot more experience and training to do passably well is design and possibly extremely specialized stuff like assembly on obscure systems. Those kinds of jobs though are a small minority when you look at the whole of the IT field.
Bullshit, anyone can buy a brand new book and photocopy or scan it if they like, and then resell the original while retaining a copy. It is less convenient, and you don't necessarily get to keep an exact replica of the original but it is close enough. And that would certainly be enough to give a publisher fits.
The problem is that the various publishing industries don't want to actually sell anything but non-transferable licenses to consume their content. Customers though, after millennia of buying and trading physical objects, don't care about the the non-transferable license bits, and perceive it as them buying the content.
The argument that the MPAA, RIAA, and friends have been making for decades now, is that they aren't actually selling digital copies of whatever media item. They believe they are selling us non-transferable licenses. This selling of non-transferable licenses isn't really made readily obvious to customers, who by and large believe they are buying the media, not a license.
Personally I disagree with the concept of non-transferable licenses when it comes to digital media, but that is how they view it, or at least how they argue it legally.
It says more about the lack of jobs than lack of skills. I work in a tech job that pays pretty well, but I could probably train anyone of average intelligence to do this work in a few months. And that has been the case with practically every job I've ever held and most that I've seen. The problem of getting a good job is usually an issue of opportunity. Which is why minorities with strongly negative stereotypes struggle, they aren't given the same opportunities. And it's also why social networking is such a huge factor in landing a good job, if people making hiring decisions have a positive preexisting relationship with an applicant they are more likely to be selected.
Youth engagement in the labor force has been relatively low for awhile now. Teenagers simply can't compete when their competition has more experience and a higher need for the job, and hence a better work ethic. If I'm hiring and I could pick a teenager who lives with their parents or a single mother in her 20's, I'm going to pick the single Mom. The teenager is more likely to look for a reason to call off work, while the Mom will probably ask for more hours. The teenager is probably attending school and so only available for specific hours. Basically the Mom needs the money from the job to get by and provide for her child so she'll be more motivated to not lose the job. Whereas the teenager wants the money but has less motivation to not screw it up because their still living in a safety net.
That isn't to say that all teenagers are layabouts, and all single Moms are workaholics. I would hope that all employers actually interview potential hires to determine which is a better candidate. But I can easily see how when the job market is rough for adults that it is going to translate into an even tougher market for teenagers.
What makes it all worse is that minimum wage jobs are kind of a trap for skilled workers. The smart economical move if you lose your job and have trouble finding an equivalent job quickly is to take something that pays less to reduce the rate at which your savings depletes, while you continue to search for a job. The trap though is that people then presume that because you took that low paying job, that you must be less capable and so you get passed over.
The helium is lighter than air, so as long as you keep the only openings of the bag or mask on the bottom it should push all the regular atmosphere out the bottom opening. I'm not sure about the densities of other inert gasses that might be cheaper than helium. But so long as the other inert gasses are either heavier or lighter than normal atmosphere it is a simple exercise to provide for the gas to build up where you want it. You want inert gasses to be what the victim is breathing instead of oxygen because it would sustain life, and carbon because that would trigger the bodies asphyxiation panic mode and cause undue suffering.
You don't really need to fill an entire room. You could simply strap the victim to a table or chair, which many facilities already have. Then put a gas mask on them and pump it full of your favorite inert gas. If the room is ventilated at all you wouldn't need any special pumps or valves other than the shutoff valve attached to the gas canister. You could literally go buy a mask and duct tape at an army surplus store, pickup a small tank of helium, and some rubber tubing and be all set to conduct executions. Now that I think about it the mask is actually an unnecessary expense, you could just use a plastic bag. You only need enough helium to fill the bag or mask, and then a trickle to maintain positive pressure preventing regular atmosphere from getting in for the few minutes till death.
I had to take a federally mandated drug test once when I was taking opiods occasionally for kidney stones. When I was filling out the paper work I noticed there was no area to list prescriptions. I asked the person administering the test where to note this just in case it showed up in the test, and she said they didn't collect that information. This told me one of two things, either they were only testing for a narrow subset of drugs which didn't include opiods, or they can't be bothered to try and filter out positives from prescriptions.
I would think the second to be more likely but I haven't heard anything from HR asking me to explain the results of the test. The second is looking more and more likely but it seems incredible to me that they wouldn't check for opiods seeing as how heroin has been on the rise, and opiod abuse is a real issue in the US.
Not really, we're just at a point where we can observe actions and reactions which we don't understand. That doesn't mean that they are somehow magically truly random. At some point in human history the variation in ocean tides must have been seemingly random and incomprehensible. Over time patterns were found and eventually tides became a predictable phenomena, even if the science of why tides happened wasn't understood. And now today we understand the science of tides. Provided that our scientific understanding continues to advance we'll eventually understand the rules governing and driving what today appears to be random.
As a former military member I have no qualms saying that mandatory conscription is bullshit. If a society believes it needs more soldiers but can't get enough people to sign up then it obviously doesn't really believe it needs those soldiers very much. The only conscription I feel we need is that of politicians into the infantry. Every military action we engage in should see each unit on the front lines attended by a politician serving as cheerleader/waterboy with no special protections.
Conscription is a tool of the ruling class to force the proles into fighting where they have no interest. The tears from the military leadership over not being able to recruit perfect soldiers while offering laughable benefits and pay, and blaming it on junk food and video games, is pure entertainment from my view point.
I think that it's actually state specific in the US. I know the state I grew up in it was illegal. The state I live in now allows it I believe. Or perhaps law enforcement just doesn't ever care enough to ticket for it because I see cars parked the wrong way all the time, probably 30% of the parked vehicles I see are parked facing traffic.
The $4,000 loss per car is honestly very laughable. The apparent loss is because the financials for the company represent the entirety of their expenses and income. Yes, investors would like Tesla to be profitable as quickly as possible. Tesla's mission statement however is not to be profitable, and so their balance sheets show a lot of money still being spent in research and development. For instance Tesla is building their own battery plant because without it the world isn't producing enough batteries to meet their production goals, meanwhile the cost of that plant is part of the cost of each car they build. The actual profit margins on a Model S is around 25% which is enough to make just about any company except maybe Apple a bit envious.
A niche market that has at least 325,000 people willing to spend $1000 for a pre-order spot is something most companies would do well to own. Such a massive pre-order queue is indicative of a much larger market for EV's. Tesla is actively working to ramp up production so they can fill those existing orders. And as the investment in production facilities matures I wouldn't be surprised to see the cost of Tesla cars actually come down a bit, which will attract even more buyers.
"while fossil fuel is taxed at around what even climate change activists generally say externalities from carbon emissions are"
I couldn't find any sources that looked even slightly impartial on this. Many sites I would expect to be pro-climate were saying gas would be $12 - $15 a gallon if we counted in all the subsidies through tax breaks, leases, and wars fought on the oil industries behalf. The most moderate I could find was in the WSJ which typically leans the other way and seemed to say that taxes should perhaps be double what they are now, which is about $0.49 a gallon.
"In different words, you're saying that the effect of raising the gas tax further wouldn't be to sell more electric vehicles (since they can't be produced fast enough anyway), it would simply be to increase profits for Elon Musk. Thanks for clearing that up."
Are we both speaking English here? Raising taxes on gas can't currently result in more profits for Tesla because they are already producing and selling their cars as fast as possible. Maybe ten years from now they might have production ramped up enough to have extra cars to sell and need more of a competitive edge, but that is certainly not true currently. Remember Tesla's goal though has never been to dominate the electric car market, the aim has been "to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible." Whether or not Tesla reigns supreme when all is said and done isn't critical to that mission.
"In fact, Tesla's waiting list is more like Ferrari's: they make a specialty product for a niche market, and they just want even more subsidies (an increase in the gas tax is effectively an additional subsidy for Tesla)."
Even when gas prices were more than double what they are today people weren't switching to electric vehicles in droves because the savings in gas isn't worth the price premium for an electric vehicle. You had people buying more efficient cars and the prices for old efficient models went up a good bit though. And again if they are already selling all the cars they can it wouldn't represent an increase in profits at all for Tesla. It might result in more sales for Chevy and Nissan electric vehicles, which out sell the Tesla models currently. And that would still be inline with Tesla's mission statement.
"That makes no difference in the end; Tesla still profits from it the same way."
And you may as well argue that WIC and SNAP benefits are a subsidy for Walmart.
"And until they do, they are still subsidized by fossil fuels."
Yup, and it's likely worth the cost for the time being because they are polluting less and represent an incredibly small portion of miles driven on our roadways. If this is such a near and dear concern for you let me know when you plan to protest marathons and other uses of public roads without paying gas taxes.
In 2015 we had 260 million vehicles registered for use on public roads in the USA, at the end of 2015 there were only about 410 thousand electric vehicles registered. That means we have a truly horrifying 0.16% of vehicles freeloading when it comes to road taxes. Shit, I'll bet that abuse of farm diesel amounts to more lost road taxes.
"Really, you're grasping at straws. Elon Musk wants more subsidies to increase his profits; it's typical, simple crony capitalism, and you're promoting it."
I'm sorry but you are the one continually grasping at the same straw. Musk is pushing for the antiquating of the ICE powdered vehicle. His company is already selling every single vehicle it can produce, increasing demand won't help him produce more vehicles. Apparently as of last month he has actually promised to sell another 325k more vehicles that he can't currently produce. The only avenue for extra profits here is that he could possibly raise the prices on his cars but that is opposite his mission of making mass market vehicles.
The public already is going to Tesla to get their cars. As of a month ago more than 300K people had ponied up a $1k payment each to have a place in line to buy a Model 3 whenever they go on sale. So far as aesthetics go maybe your sense of taste is just off, as I've seen little criticism of their cars.The Model S is the closest thing to what I pictured in my head as a kid the cars of the future would look like. And the Model S looks that way largely for functional purposes to make it efficient, I have no doubt they could make something more appealing to the street racing crowd with unnecessarily large spoilers and fender flares.
You're aware of course that Tesla can't produce enough cars to keep up with demand, right? Hell they announced a new model just a few weeks back, and sold spots in line to buy one for $1k each, and raked in more than $100m in the first few days. He doesn't need to be concerned about finding more customers to buy his cars. The big reason most people aren't driving a Tesla or similar car today is the high cost of new automobiles and the very limited supply. As time goes on and electric cars make their way into the used market ICE cars will be phased out, especially seeing as how electric cars will last a lot longer likely only needing a battery replacement after 10+ years.
So far as subsidies go the only big one I'm aware of is the low interest loan they had and already paid off. The subsidy for buying an electric vehicle from the fed is paid to customers, not Tesla. Even if that boosts sales a bit it isn't large enough to account for the waiting list to purchase a new Tesla. While Tesla and all other electric car drivers don't currently pay any direct road taxes, they will eventually once they become a large enough share of the road traffic. We don't bother taxing bicyclists for their use of the roadways because it would be an insignificant amount, and the same is still probably true for electric vehicles. That said everyone that participates in modern society is paying road taxes through their purchases of goods shipped via semi-truck, which produce the lions share of wear and tear on our roadways.
I agree that so long as we have states that are free to establish their own tax laws and companies which can freely cross those borders then we're going to have games played. The easiest solution I can think of that might have some semblance of fairness would be a federal law under the interstate commerce clause. That clause would require that corporations divide up their profits across all state and city jurisdictions where they have offices/employees. Use some formula like counting number of employees, contractors, labor costs, and real estate. The point being to simply attribute to each state the profits actually generated from the efforts of it's residents. The formula would undoubtedly be a source of contention and I won't pretend to know what it should look like in whole. But I think such a regulation would improve the state of corporate tax dodging within the USA.