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Originally Posted by Rainmaker
Those things are good. I just don't know why our tax dollars have to pay the business expenses for a billionaire.
Point was that Tesla would not be a successful company without taxpayers covering a considerable cost of their product as well as their infrastructure. Most businesses don't have that luxury, especially small businesses.
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Some of this was already addressed, but most businesses are also not producing cutting-edge products in a business that has been deemed important to national goals or in the case of Tesla, even national security/future of the species on Earth.
To be sure, there are other ways to handle this. We could take an approach such as just saying we don't care if we develop alternative, more climate-friendly forms of transportation and just let the private sector do it whenever it feels like it. We could also take a more heavy-handed approach and just demand increased emission standards and the like regardless of whether there is a viable product at a price consumers can afford, and watch the carnage that would unfold in the economy. We've decided carrot is a better approach than stick, and that there are some areas in which just letting events unfold as they will is harmful - or in the case of climate change, catastrophic. What we are doing in terms of developing EVs is entirely inadequate, but it is
something.
One can advocate for other alternatives, but in the broad strokes I don't think those other ways are
better. I also don't think it makes sense to lump companies that are operating in these critical areas in the same basket with others that are just making common-use widgets or services of whatever type. That's not to say those products don't matter, they absolutely do, but they are far more replaceable and not nearly as vital to the growth of essential technologies.