Tesla — Faith-Based Projects Block Out Rational Discernment

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In faith-based projects, people inevitably get carried away into dimensions insulated from realistic and rational discernment.  

Below find more on what is structurally wrong about Tesla — emphasis is retained from the original article.

[Elon Musk] has singlehandedly perverted the market for electric cars – which aren’t an intrinsically stupid idea – by stupidly building them to be high-performance and luxurious, which has made them much too expensive to be anything other than low-volume indulgences for the virtue-signaling affluent. And – because of the Lemming Effect – steered almost every other car manufacturer in the same stupid direction.

There is only one electric car on the market which stickers for less than $30,000 – and only does so by $10. It is the $29,990 Nissan Leaf.

The next most “affordable” electric car is the $36,620 Chevy Bolt.

...

[S]ubsidizing high-performing/high-cost electric cars for virtue-signaling affluent people who ought to be buying their own cars is a species of obnoxiousness akin to rent-controlled luxury apartments in Manhattan. Marie Antoinette is said to have suggested that starving Parisians ought to eat cake – but she at least had the decency not to insist they pay for her cake, too.

The source.

PS

I disagree with the following proposition made in the article I quote from:

One can make a blanket moral indictment against any subsidy for anything since a subsidy is by definition the giving over of money not earned by free exchange to a thief-by-proxy – in order to benefit him at the expense of unwilling victims.

There are two things about the above statement that deserve to be challenged:

(1) A sovereign currency issuer does not depend on the money of anyone, including taxpayers, to be able to engage in spending in the form of subsidies or for other purposes. Thus, there is no theft involved on the financing level.

(2) Assessing the economic impact of subsidies is another issue, and a tricky one at that.  I do not think, it will ever be free of controversy. Which is good, because open and informed debate will tend to help discern costs and benefits more accurately. It is a bad thing, however, when political correctness takes over, effectively placing the power of the strongest players, the politics, the state and the media, behind a uniform set of beliefs and projects.

Also, subsidies can be detrimental when they compulsively redirect economic resources to inefficient and ineffective ends, channelling valuable means from productive to unproductive projects — as when  an inefficient source of energy such as wind power is favoured by dint of state coercion over a highly efficient source such as nuclear power.

Furthermore, increasing taxes to reduce the purchasing power of the non-governmental sector and thereby leaving more resources to be mobilised for the state's purposes can also bring about serious distortions. Interventions of this kind may be likened to theft, but it is often hard to establish and intrinsically debatable whether or not such action is socially irresponsible (representing an unlawful retention of purchasing power and available resources on the part of government).