Which is completely irrelevant to debt growth. Off the book spending contribute as much as on the book spending.
From your tone I assume you think we should've just let the banks go under, which is an easy sentiment when you foolishly believe you wouldn't have lost money.
I take it you have no idea what "moral hazard" is.
There are a lot of things closer than Alpha Centauri. For example, there's our entire Solar System. Now, why someone would ignore Mars and talk about Alpha Centauri is beyond me.
Social fairness is a principle that many governments (including the USA) are based on.
Then what is it and where does it show up in the Constitution? The US wasn't based on income equity or that would have been specified in the Constitution. It's not based on GDP, unemployment, or national debt or that would have been specified in the Constitution. It's not based on mental illness, criminality, depression, violence, job productivity, life expectancy, child mortality, obesity, addiction, and literacy, or that would have been specified in the Constitution.
Saying you don't believe in social fairness is like saying you don't believe in freedom.
Except that freedom is a concrete, objective concept which we can express in terms of constraints on our actions. I can't go around chopping people with an ax. If government were shooting people who disagree publicly with the government, that too would be a concrete, objective constraint on my action.
Social justice is just some touchie feelie thing that means whatever you want it to mean.
The point about openness and connectedness being at odds with strong government is also a major oversimplification. Most of the services and duties that a big government performs are things that need to be done. You maintain that many if not all of these would be better off being controlled by private citizens or corporations, but all these things need to be done by someone.
Exactly, hence why "private citizens and corporations" are mentioned. Since you don't actually try to show that argument to be false, there's not much to say except that I still believe that most such functions (including most of your "social justice" functions above) would be better handed at the private level.
There seems to be a fantasy among small government proponents that if you take a certain responsibility away from the government it will simply not need to be dealt with anymore
You're the only one engaging in the fantasy. Small government proponents don't claim the problem goes away (though sometimes, like in the "war on drugs", it does) when government is removed from the equation, but rather that the problem gets handed off to the powers that are most competent and interested in handling the problem.
This is kind of a myth. Yes private owners care more about capital, but that doesn't mean that they use it for the improvement of society. These ideas have been tested and they don't measure up. Look historically at any instance of a government service being privatised.
Air travel. Telecommunications. I find it telling that I could find a positive example of privatization in one of your claimed counterexamples.
It also means no price controls for the same reason.
Even monopolies won't price things at infinity because that doesn't optimize profits.
The fantasy of small government libertarianism is that if you take power away from the government that power will somehow vanish into thin air and no longer be used.
Again, this is a fantasy you entertain not small government libertarians. The power devolves to the people. It does not vanish.
I don't have the time or patience to go into the full debate about large vs. small government here
I think that is good, for you haven't demonstrated the competence to argue your side. One doesn't magically end up with Somalia when one cuts out the voracious rent seeking and pointless, huge entitlements that overwhelm US society.
It's just a bad decision. Even scientists, when their bluff is called, pick and choose what science they do. It's profoundly delusional to throw money at a subject and hope some of it sticks, even if "science" is somewhere in the title.
The "Energy Trap" is nonsense. Energy doesn't get expensive merely because petroleum gets somewhat expensive. That observation devastates the basic, unwarranted assumption of the essay.
Good thing the DoE made those loans. That was supposed to be an argument in favor of the loans to Tesla Motors, right?
I suppose if you're an idiot, anything can be considered an argument in favor of loans to Tesla. But for a reasonable person, huge subsidies to a business indicate weakness, especially one that even at its best never showed a significant profit.
Is the end of manned space flight really a bad thing?
How are people going to get into space, if they stop going into space? The idea driving our exploration of space is that we will eventually be there. Get rid of that and there really isn't much reason to do anything aside from some commercial and military-based Earth-facing activities. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge just isn't that valuable.
Sure, we could explore a dozen new worlds that would never matter to us rather than extensive manned expeditions. But what would be the point?
I hear that pathetic excuse a lot. I voted for Romney because there was such an alternative. I thought it was better than voting Libertarian that election cycle which was yet another choice.
Well, for last ten years NASA have been regularly on chopping block thanks to Republicans
And thanks to the Democrats as well. Keep in mind that current debt as a fraction of GDP jumped up by 25% during the Democrat dominated Congress of 2009-2011.
That all depends on what you use the meatbag for. People tend to forget that meatbags are still one of the most advanced machines on Earth (and you can always augment a meatbag, once robotics and cybernetics gets to that point). Sure, the robot doesn't need food, air, etc, but those aren't really that significant of needs. They're just mass in the end.
In exchange, you get capabilities that aren't reflected in robots, such as on site decision making and complex on site study of surface characteristics and high maneuverability even in a bulky space suit. The Moon incidentally is the only place where such capabilities don't shine due to its closeness to Earth.
Ever wonder why even forty years after the end of Apollo, that no one from the US government dares go back to the Moon? Aside from the "Been there. Done that." attitude so common in space advocacy and the public, it's because you can't top the manned activities (all from only two man-weeks on the Moon!) with a few robots, even forty years later. Instead, it'll take an extensive though not necessarily manned effort to do better.
A mission failure in the lunar capture plan could lead to a global disaster.
The Moon has already been captured so no reason to capture it again.
Oh, you mean the global disaster that would be caused by the somewhat bright light and perhaps even slight noise (we must steel ourselves to consider worst case here) that would come from a tiny asteroid dissipating way up in Earth's atmosphere?
The greatest burden to humanity would be the possibility of an unmanageable swarm of 911 (or equivalent) calls, thousands even. This will probably completely overwhelm our delicate emergency infrastructure. It might even be a worse disaster than the average Manchester football game.
Would obtaining an asteroid be worth that terrible, fearsome risk? I... I... just don't know.
If there was any reason that we should have universal healthcare it is the threat of biological weapons.
Since it's not (the current system of people showing up in US (since that's the only place with this sort of debate) emergency rooms actually works just as well), the contrapositive of your conditional statement asserts that no reason exists for universal healthcare.
What is the chance that some time soonish the batteries burn out when they are needed. How do you feel about your fly by wire plane if the servos aren't working?
In flight, the engines provide the power. Past that, I don't know, though I think the plane has a mechanical backup in case the entire electrical system fails.
So the plane is safe so long as the battery doesn't catch fire - again - and get hot enough to burn through its containment box. Hmm , let me think about that definition of "safe" for a moment....
Where is it going to get the energy to get hot enough to burn through the containment box? There's only so much energy in that battery. Build a box to contain that and that's it - as long as the fools who can't wire batteries correctly don't figure out a way past that.
So, the government gave them $500 million in guarantees, then, after they budgeted for $500 million in development, the line was cut down to $200 million, and they ended up with problems?
Tough world isn't it? Apparently, this was easy to predict behavior because Fisker missed some mileposts. Hmmm, interesting. The freezing of the credit line precedes Solyndra. So I guess I was wrong about the credit freeze being due to enhanced scrutiny.
Most of the projects the DOE funded are doing quite well, and they've exhausted less than 10% of the money set aside for losses in the program.
So far. And what does "doing well" mean? It means the borrowers haven't gone bankrupt yet. It doesn't mean, for example, that they've done anything useful with the money. I really tire of the deceptive claims made about these programs.
Unfortunately they focus mainly on religious and ethnic hatred, which doesn't really account for some of the biggest genocides of the 20th century like in Pol Pot's Cambodia, Stalin's USSR and Mao's China, They do mention Pol Pot a couple of times, for the "blue ribbon" symbolism and the "Denial" stage, but miss the root of the problem. Their view is shallow at best, IMO.
But is there anything wrong with the overall categorization? I think a better example would be the conquests of the Mongols (and similar brutal wars, during the fall of the Western Roman Empire). They had many of the characteristics like dehumanization, but they didn't bother with symobolization,or organization. In situations where it was ordered, the Horde moved in and just killed everyone. No need to make plans for genocide when you have an extremely competent and obedient army ready to carry out your every whim efficiently. I doubt that the Mongols bothered to polarize their forces before most such massacres.
Most significantly, there was never any attempt to hide such atrocities. Widespread knowledge of previous atrocities made future battles and conquests easier.
"Genocide Watch" would have probably missed those "early stages" of Communism...
Let's take a look. Classification and symbolism is pretty obvious. They classified a lot of people in classes that were good (eg, revolutionaries, proletariat, heroes of the people, etc) and bad (kulaks, capitalists, class enemy, enemy of the people, etc).
Some categories were vague such as "kulak" which apparently degenerated in the late 30s into whoever could be accused (apparently, the secret police had quotas and not enough kulaks around to meet said quotas).
Dehumanization happened as well. For example, here's a quote from Lenin in a speech written some point in 1918 and published in 1925:
...while barely two million consist of kulaks, rich peasants, grain profiteers. These bloodsuckers have grown rich on the want suffered by the people in the war; they have raked in thousands and hundreds of thousands of rubles by pushing up the price of grain and other products. These spiders have grown fat at the expense of the peasants ruined by the war, at the expense of the starving workers. These leeches have sucked the blood of the working people and grown richer as the workers in the cities and factories starved. These vampires have been gathering the landed estates into their hands; they continue to enslave the poor peasants.
Ruthless war on the kulaks! Death to them! Hatred and contempt for the parties which defend them-the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, and today's Left Socialist-Revolutionaries! The workers must crush the revolts of the kulaks with an iron hand, the kulaks who are forming an alliance with the foreign capitalists against the working people of their own country.
The kulaks take advantage of the ignorance, the disunity and isolation of the poor peasants. They incite them against the workers. Sometimes they bribe them while permitting them to "make a bit", a hundred rubles or so, by profiteering in grain (at the same time robbing the poor peasants of many thousands of rubles). The kulaks try to win the support of the middle peasants, and they sometimes succeed.
Note the use of dehumanizing terms like "bloodsucker", "spider", "leech", and "vampire". Then a call for their deaths in the middle paragraph. There are other timeslike when during a revolt Lenin ordered the hanging of a hundred kulaks to make examples of them.
There would have been about 15 years of genocide precursors (and ruthless massacres and imprisonments) prior to the Ukrainian Homodor (in which several million Ukrainians died).
Ah, yes, where would we be without the ignorant to tell us what "hate speech" should mean? You see this as "hate speech". I see this as an example of the new civility in politics. The fact that you considered these even worthy of discussion indicates to me the total bankruptcy of modern political correctness. Feel free to go back to the infanticide, bestiality, or whatever it is you do when you aren't posting insipidly on Slashdot.
DOE should take control of the company, oust its top executives and either turn it around or sell off its useful assets to other companies who will use them to achieve the goals of the loan and recoup the taxpayers' costs. Otherwise Fisker will probably sell its assets off for less than they are worth and the executives will get kickbacks or positions at those companies in exchange for doing so.
But of course. Bankruptcy court provides standard ways to do this. I believe firesales have been contested before in bankruptcy court for this sort of reason though I'd probably have to google a bit to find an example.
The government froze their credit line under 200 million.
So the loan was a bit under $200 million most which didn't get paid back. That's still a lot of money that the US government is now on the hook for. And incidentally, why did the US government bother to freeze the money? Because they are now under scrutiny for these programs.
And this company failed due to the current trend in American economics. Mr. Fisker wanted to invest and build to create a product to sell. The board wanted to do nothing in an effort to save cash. So Fisker left and the board said, "great! now fire everyone, don't produce anything, and will save loads of cash! Surely success will come!"
Well, the board probably was correct here. The company probably is more successful than if it had "invested" the money down that particular rathole.
While it is true that taking risks can have great benefits, it's worth noting that one can take risks without even a chance of gain. I see no indication here that the board of directors made the wrong choice.
he company said it earned approximately US$1 million on revenue of US$20 million.
Who here thinks they would have made anything resembling a profit without the substantial help from government? First, they secured a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy. Second, they picked up $10 million from the California Energy Commission for machinery purchases. Finally, purchasers of the vehicle get $7,500 in tax credits from the Federal government.
That's not the sign of a company that would have gone somewhere without ample and continued government subsidies.
It's worth noting that the already established and highly profitable oil companies take billions of incentives from your government every year. Evidently, they just love giving money to industrialists of every stripe. And banks, of course.
Everyone gets access to most of those subsidies. There are very few oil subsidies. While all of the Tesla subsidies I just mentioned are unique to "green" technologies.
Advancing new basic technology with great strategic potential for reducing US dependency and therefore entanglement in the middle east is an excellent idea.
Why do you think that? Entanglement with the Middle East just isn't that big a deal, nor does it magically go away just because you're dumping a lot of money into deadend, excuse me, "basic" technologies.
but doing nothing until after oil hits $500 a barrel would be far worse.
The thing you don't get is that no, waiting till oil hits a ridiculous price is not "far worse". First, there's the concept of "time value". Something now is more valuable than something in fifty years. Similarly, a cost now is more costly than a cost down the road.
By holding off on currently uneconomic transitions, we get more money from oil production and the infrastructure. That's money now.
We also put off the cost of transitioning, which I might add is not going to get more expensive merely because we delay. We can't get any more dependent on oil than we've been for the last fifty years. Nor as we now see do we make the transition any easier or cheaper just by throwing money at it. End result of the current generation of green technology initiatives has been that we squander wealth and revert to the old way of doing things once the subsidies go away.
Slashdot Mirror
was moved to being "on the books"
Which is completely irrelevant to debt growth. Off the book spending contribute as much as on the book spending.
From your tone I assume you think we should've just let the banks go under, which is an easy sentiment when you foolishly believe you wouldn't have lost money.
I take it you have no idea what "moral hazard" is.
There are a lot of things closer than Alpha Centauri. For example, there's our entire Solar System. Now, why someone would ignore Mars and talk about Alpha Centauri is beyond me.
Social fairness is a principle that many governments (including the USA) are based on.
Then what is it and where does it show up in the Constitution? The US wasn't based on income equity or that would have been specified in the Constitution. It's not based on GDP, unemployment, or national debt or that would have been specified in the Constitution. It's not based on mental illness, criminality, depression, violence, job productivity, life expectancy, child mortality, obesity, addiction, and literacy, or that would have been specified in the Constitution.
Saying you don't believe in social fairness is like saying you don't believe in freedom.
Except that freedom is a concrete, objective concept which we can express in terms of constraints on our actions. I can't go around chopping people with an ax. If government were shooting people who disagree publicly with the government, that too would be a concrete, objective constraint on my action.
Social justice is just some touchie feelie thing that means whatever you want it to mean.
The point about openness and connectedness being at odds with strong government is also a major oversimplification. Most of the services and duties that a big government performs are things that need to be done. You maintain that many if not all of these would be better off being controlled by private citizens or corporations, but all these things need to be done by someone.
Exactly, hence why "private citizens and corporations" are mentioned. Since you don't actually try to show that argument to be false, there's not much to say except that I still believe that most such functions (including most of your "social justice" functions above) would be better handed at the private level.
There seems to be a fantasy among small government proponents that if you take a certain responsibility away from the government it will simply not need to be dealt with anymore
You're the only one engaging in the fantasy. Small government proponents don't claim the problem goes away (though sometimes, like in the "war on drugs", it does) when government is removed from the equation, but rather that the problem gets handed off to the powers that are most competent and interested in handling the problem.
This is kind of a myth. Yes private owners care more about capital, but that doesn't mean that they use it for the improvement of society. These ideas have been tested and they don't measure up. Look historically at any instance of a government service being privatised.
Air travel. Telecommunications. I find it telling that I could find a positive example of privatization in one of your claimed counterexamples.
It also means no price controls for the same reason.
Even monopolies won't price things at infinity because that doesn't optimize profits.
The fantasy of small government libertarianism is that if you take power away from the government that power will somehow vanish into thin air and no longer be used.
Again, this is a fantasy you entertain not small government libertarians. The power devolves to the people. It does not vanish.
I don't have the time or patience to go into the full debate about large vs. small government here
I think that is good, for you haven't demonstrated the competence to argue your side. One doesn't magically end up with Somalia when one cuts out the voracious rent seeking and pointless, huge entitlements that overwhelm US society.
Without the dog, you can't have the dog bite. And there will frequently be terrible "masters".
It's just a bad decision. Even scientists, when their bluff is called, pick and choose what science they do. It's profoundly delusional to throw money at a subject and hope some of it sticks, even if "science" is somewhere in the title.
Good thing the DoE made those loans. That was supposed to be an argument in favor of the loans to Tesla Motors, right?
I suppose if you're an idiot, anything can be considered an argument in favor of loans to Tesla. But for a reasonable person, huge subsidies to a business indicate weakness, especially one that even at its best never showed a significant profit.
Sorry, but check your facts first
I did. Imagine that. Maybe you should actually look at the debt accumulated during the Obama administration than make empty claims.
Is the end of manned space flight really a bad thing?
How are people going to get into space, if they stop going into space? The idea driving our exploration of space is that we will eventually be there. Get rid of that and there really isn't much reason to do anything aside from some commercial and military-based Earth-facing activities. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge just isn't that valuable.
Sure, we could explore a dozen new worlds that would never matter to us rather than extensive manned expeditions. But what would be the point?
and they still can't get their launch right more than the NASA
NASA has no launch vehicle. And the few attempts to develop a replacement for the Space Shuttle have all failed hard.
I believe both groups have at one time or another claimed responsibility.
I hear that pathetic excuse a lot. I voted for Romney because there was such an alternative. I thought it was better than voting Libertarian that election cycle which was yet another choice.
Well, for last ten years NASA have been regularly on chopping block thanks to Republicans
And thanks to the Democrats as well. Keep in mind that current debt as a fraction of GDP jumped up by 25% during the Democrat dominated Congress of 2009-2011.
That all depends on what you use the meatbag for. People tend to forget that meatbags are still one of the most advanced machines on Earth (and you can always augment a meatbag, once robotics and cybernetics gets to that point). Sure, the robot doesn't need food, air, etc, but those aren't really that significant of needs. They're just mass in the end.
In exchange, you get capabilities that aren't reflected in robots, such as on site decision making and complex on site study of surface characteristics and high maneuverability even in a bulky space suit. The Moon incidentally is the only place where such capabilities don't shine due to its closeness to Earth.
Ever wonder why even forty years after the end of Apollo, that no one from the US government dares go back to the Moon? Aside from the "Been there. Done that." attitude so common in space advocacy and the public, it's because you can't top the manned activities (all from only two man-weeks on the Moon!) with a few robots, even forty years later. Instead, it'll take an extensive though not necessarily manned effort to do better.
A mission failure in the lunar capture plan could lead to a global disaster.
The Moon has already been captured so no reason to capture it again.
Oh, you mean the global disaster that would be caused by the somewhat bright light and perhaps even slight noise (we must steel ourselves to consider worst case here) that would come from a tiny asteroid dissipating way up in Earth's atmosphere?
The greatest burden to humanity would be the possibility of an unmanageable swarm of 911 (or equivalent) calls, thousands even. This will probably completely overwhelm our delicate emergency infrastructure. It might even be a worse disaster than the average Manchester football game.
Would obtaining an asteroid be worth that terrible, fearsome risk? I... I... just don't know.
If there was any reason that we should have universal healthcare it is the threat of biological weapons.
Since it's not (the current system of people showing up in US (since that's the only place with this sort of debate) emergency rooms actually works just as well), the contrapositive of your conditional statement asserts that no reason exists for universal healthcare.
What is the chance that some time soonish the batteries burn out when they are needed. How do you feel about your fly by wire plane if the servos aren't working?
In flight, the engines provide the power. Past that, I don't know, though I think the plane has a mechanical backup in case the entire electrical system fails.
So the plane is safe so long as the battery doesn't catch fire - again - and get hot enough to burn through its containment box. Hmm , let me think about that definition of "safe" for a moment....
Where is it going to get the energy to get hot enough to burn through the containment box? There's only so much energy in that battery. Build a box to contain that and that's it - as long as the fools who can't wire batteries correctly don't figure out a way past that.
So, the government gave them $500 million in guarantees, then, after they budgeted for $500 million in development, the line was cut down to $200 million, and they ended up with problems?
Tough world isn't it? Apparently, this was easy to predict behavior because Fisker missed some mileposts. Hmmm, interesting. The freezing of the credit line precedes Solyndra. So I guess I was wrong about the credit freeze being due to enhanced scrutiny.
This is a strawman. The tea party doesn't want to honour the constitution
Yep. That is a straw man. Do you have a real argument?
Most of the projects the DOE funded are doing quite well, and they've exhausted less than 10% of the money set aside for losses in the program.
So far. And what does "doing well" mean? It means the borrowers haven't gone bankrupt yet. It doesn't mean, for example, that they've done anything useful with the money. I really tire of the deceptive claims made about these programs.
Unfortunately they focus mainly on religious and ethnic hatred, which doesn't really account for some of the biggest genocides of the 20th century like in Pol Pot's Cambodia, Stalin's USSR and Mao's China, They do mention Pol Pot a couple of times, for the "blue ribbon" symbolism and the "Denial" stage, but miss the root of the problem. Their view is shallow at best, IMO.
But is there anything wrong with the overall categorization? I think a better example would be the conquests of the Mongols (and similar brutal wars, during the fall of the Western Roman Empire). They had many of the characteristics like dehumanization, but they didn't bother with symobolization,or organization. In situations where it was ordered, the Horde moved in and just killed everyone. No need to make plans for genocide when you have an extremely competent and obedient army ready to carry out your every whim efficiently. I doubt that the Mongols bothered to polarize their forces before most such massacres.
Most significantly, there was never any attempt to hide such atrocities. Widespread knowledge of previous atrocities made future battles and conquests easier.
"Genocide Watch" would have probably missed those "early stages" of Communism...
Let's take a look. Classification and symbolism is pretty obvious. They classified a lot of people in classes that were good (eg, revolutionaries, proletariat, heroes of the people, etc) and bad (kulaks, capitalists, class enemy, enemy of the people, etc).
Some categories were vague such as "kulak" which apparently degenerated in the late 30s into whoever could be accused (apparently, the secret police had quotas and not enough kulaks around to meet said quotas).
Dehumanization happened as well. For example, here's a quote from Lenin in a speech written some point in 1918 and published in 1925:
...while barely two million consist of kulaks, rich peasants, grain profiteers. These bloodsuckers have grown rich on the want suffered by the people in the war; they have raked in thousands and hundreds of thousands of rubles by pushing up the price of grain and other products. These spiders have grown fat at the expense of the peasants ruined by the war, at the expense of the starving workers. These leeches have sucked the blood of the working people and grown richer as the workers in the cities and factories starved. These vampires have been gathering the landed estates into their hands; they continue to enslave the poor peasants.
Ruthless war on the kulaks! Death to them! Hatred and contempt for the parties which defend them-the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, and today's Left Socialist-Revolutionaries! The workers must crush the revolts of the kulaks with an iron hand, the kulaks who are forming an alliance with the foreign capitalists against the working people of their own country.
The kulaks take advantage of the ignorance, the disunity and isolation of the poor peasants. They incite them against the workers. Sometimes they bribe them while permitting them to "make a bit", a hundred rubles or so, by profiteering in grain (at the same time robbing the poor peasants of many thousands of rubles). The kulaks try to win the support of the middle peasants, and they sometimes succeed.
Note the use of dehumanizing terms like "bloodsucker", "spider", "leech", and "vampire". Then a call for their deaths in the middle paragraph. There are other timeslike when during a revolt Lenin ordered the hanging of a hundred kulaks to make examples of them.
There would have been about 15 years of genocide precursors (and ruthless massacres and imprisonments) prior to the Ukrainian Homodor (in which several million Ukrainians died).
Ah, yes, where would we be without the ignorant to tell us what "hate speech" should mean? You see this as "hate speech". I see this as an example of the new civility in politics. The fact that you considered these even worthy of discussion indicates to me the total bankruptcy of modern political correctness. Feel free to go back to the infanticide, bestiality, or whatever it is you do when you aren't posting insipidly on Slashdot.
DOE should take control of the company, oust its top executives and either turn it around or sell off its useful assets to other companies who will use them to achieve the goals of the loan and recoup the taxpayers' costs. Otherwise Fisker will probably sell its assets off for less than they are worth and the executives will get kickbacks or positions at those companies in exchange for doing so.
But of course. Bankruptcy court provides standard ways to do this. I believe firesales have been contested before in bankruptcy court for this sort of reason though I'd probably have to google a bit to find an example.
A loan guarantee is not the same as a loan.
[...]
The government froze their credit line under 200 million.
So the loan was a bit under $200 million most which didn't get paid back. That's still a lot of money that the US government is now on the hook for. And incidentally, why did the US government bother to freeze the money? Because they are now under scrutiny for these programs.
And this company failed due to the current trend in American economics. Mr. Fisker wanted to invest and build to create a product to sell. The board wanted to do nothing in an effort to save cash. So Fisker left and the board said, "great! now fire everyone, don't produce anything, and will save loads of cash! Surely success will come!"
Well, the board probably was correct here. The company probably is more successful than if it had "invested" the money down that particular rathole.
While it is true that taking risks can have great benefits, it's worth noting that one can take risks without even a chance of gain. I see no indication here that the board of directors made the wrong choice.
he company said it earned approximately US$1 million on revenue of US$20 million.
Who here thinks they would have made anything resembling a profit without the substantial help from government? First, they secured a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy. Second, they picked up $10 million from the California Energy Commission for machinery purchases. Finally, purchasers of the vehicle get $7,500 in tax credits from the Federal government.
That's not the sign of a company that would have gone somewhere without ample and continued government subsidies.
It's worth noting that the already established and highly profitable oil companies take billions of incentives from your government every year. Evidently, they just love giving money to industrialists of every stripe. And banks, of course.
Everyone gets access to most of those subsidies. There are very few oil subsidies. While all of the Tesla subsidies I just mentioned are unique to "green" technologies.
Advancing new basic technology with great strategic potential for reducing US dependency and therefore entanglement in the middle east is an excellent idea.
Why do you think that? Entanglement with the Middle East just isn't that big a deal, nor does it magically go away just because you're dumping a lot of money into deadend, excuse me, "basic" technologies.
but doing nothing until after oil hits $500 a barrel would be far worse.
The thing you don't get is that no, waiting till oil hits a ridiculous price is not "far worse". First, there's the concept of "time value". Something now is more valuable than something in fifty years. Similarly, a cost now is more costly than a cost down the road.
By holding off on currently uneconomic transitions, we get more money from oil production and the infrastructure. That's money now.
We also put off the cost of transitioning, which I might add is not going to get more expensive merely because we delay. We can't get any more dependent on oil than we've been for the last fifty years. Nor as we now see do we make the transition any easier or cheaper just by throwing money at it. End result of the current generation of green technology initiatives has been that we squander wealth and revert to the old way of doing things once the subsidies go away.