This number appears to include the implicit subsidies too. The explicit subsidies seem to average at about 1/5th of the implicit ones. Implicit subsidies appear to be stuff like not putting a charge on the cost for external impacts, i.e. impact to health.
The implicit subsidies to electric car companies could similar or even greater, as it appears that most of the microplastics come from car tires, as discussed recently[0]. The impact of electric cars could be quite big because they are significantly heavier and large part of the emissions attributable to a car come at the manufacturing stage anyway.
It’s also the whole global economy, so kind of hard to compare with Tesla Inc subsidies.
Shows the companies that receive subsidies and how much. I will note that Tesla isn't close to being the largest recipient of subsidies but recieves by far the most outrage.
This may be due to most of the company CEO's receiving these subsidies don't make a regular point of speaking out against government subsidies. It's not necessarily the subsidy that attracts criticism, it's the hypocrisy.
It's not hypocrisy to believe no one should have subsidies including oneself. It just means you want a level playing field, not a distorted one. And taking a subsidy when you don't believe in them, is reasonable too, because you don't really have other options.
It's not hypocritical to believe something, but it is hypocritical to act in a way contrary to the belief you are espousing.
A usable definition of hypocrisy is "the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform".
In this case, a belief that car companies should not be subsidized by government while simultaneously accepting subsidies from government. The act (accepting subsidies) does not match the stated belief (shouldn't accept subsidies).
To take it a step further, he could be less hypocritical if he changed his stance to along the lines of "there shouldn't be EV subsidies unless the company needs them to stay in business", but to my knowledge that is not his position.
In both cases it depends on how the belief is formed and expressed.
To build upon your examples:
Case 1
Belief: "I don't believe student loan debts should be forgiven."
Action: Accepts student loan forgiveness.
Outcome: Hypocritical. Action directly conflicts with the belief, ergo the belief is not truly held.
Case 2
Belief 1: "I don't believe student loan debts should be forgiven for everyone."
Belief 2: "I believe I fall in the category of people who should have student loans forgiven."
Action: Accepts student loan forgiveness.
Outcome: Not inherently hypocritical, provided Belief 2 is expressed alongside Belief 1. Not disclosing belief 2 makes the behavior hypocritical, as to an observer only belief 1 is held.
To link this back to the example of Musk, if he expressed his belief as "I don't believe most firms need subsidies, but the ones to my firm are warranted for reason Y" that would help avoid hypocrisy. To my limited knowledge, that is not the approach he takes.
Agreed. Case 1 is not hypocritical. Hypocritical would be forgiving loans while believe they should not be forgiven.
Accepting a forgiven loan is a different action - you don't believe the other person should have done it, but they did, your acceptance of that is a different matter.
Try rephrasing it into the negative: I don't believe anyone should pay sales tax. Is it hypocritical to pay sales tax when you buy something? No, it's not.
At some point this is banging-head-against-wall grade stuff, so I'll probably stop here. You're in the right area on the sales tax example, but it suffers from the same belief construction and expression issues.
Let's play your example out in a conversation:
1: "I don't believe anyone should pay sales tax!"
2: "But you (someone who is anyone) do pay sales tax, are you a hypocrite?"
1: "Of course not. I have to, it's the law."
2: "So you believe nobody should have to pay sales tax, but they must when legally required?"
1: "Yes."
2: "Oh good, that seems reasonable. I also hate taxes."
> It's not hypocritical to believe something, but it is hypocritical to act in a way contrary to the belief you are espousing
That's not what's happening.
Tesla is taking subsidies because they are available, it would be a poor decision not to. Tesla could take a stand and not accept subsidies but then those subsidies will fall to their competitors and they will lose.
It's like believing the presidency should be decided by the popular vote but not campaigning in California or thinking healthcare should be free but paying for insurance.
One is a belief about how things should be and the other is a reaction to how things are.
Publicly owned companies have a fiduciary duties to their shareholders to pursue all government programs for which they are eligible.
The company, its officers and directors could all be sued by shareholders in a massive class action lawsuit if they did not abide by their legal responsibilities based on personal beliefs.
Also, Elon Musk acquired solar city and then gutted it. Essentially wasting billions of Tesla shareholder dollars and he basically shrugged it off. What he did with solar city is very obviously illegal, yet the consequences have been quite insignificant. If you don't know what he did: he acquired solar city for 2.6 billion dollars to bail out his brother Kimbal Musk at the expense of public Tesla shareholders. That money literally went up in flames for nepotism. You could say that this subsidy money he took for Tesla has all gone into the solar city bailout.
The problem Tesla board and shareholders have with holding Elon accountable is the value of their shares is completely dependent on the belief that Elon the super genius will lead them to new products. Without Elon it's just just another car company and worth a fraction of what it is now.
Since the other comments just say it's easy to find (very much true), I'll give you this link. Here he says the government should end subsidies. There's plenty more, I promise.
The thing is, if the government ended all subsidies it would be a much more level playing field for electric competitors to petroleum and Tesla wouldn't have to go hunting for its own subsidies.
That said the article is interesting because to my eyes he's pursuing the same "pull the ladder up" mentality that all the big players do:
> Musk also said he doesn’t believe the US government should be giving out subsidies to expand charging infrastructure
Of course he'd say that (so says my suspicious brain). In 2021 Tesla had a good lock on charging infra. Subsidizing it makes it easier for competitors to get in on it.
Not sure what it means, but in 2023 Tesla's charging standard is becoming closer to "the standard."[1]
It seems perfectly reasonable to me to want a subsidy abolished and also use it while it exists. Presumably they want it abolished for everyone not just themselves.
I don't think it's the case that discussing X means people are afraid to discuss Y. No cover up, bias, or suspicion needed to explain why that's not mentioned explicitly every time other companies are subsidized. :)
I didn’t say anything about people being afraid to discuss anything. But a search on this site for discussion on subsidies to other companies than Tesla would probably get much less results.
It is a good thing that Tesla got and is getting subsidies same for solar panel and most other renewable tech. Without it China would be the leader in electric vehicles. Looking at how cost of batteries as well as solar panels is decreasing every year. China dominated manufacturing with cheap labor in the last 20-25 years. And as more automated manufacturing comes online it would have dominated that as well as they would have cheaper electricity and transport.
Forget pollution etc with the current trajectory electric cars and solar electricity will keep getting cheaper so if US and other countries do not subsidies and promote manufacturing now they will become uncompetitive in the near future.
What’s the point of the page if the information is incomplete ? For example the number about the 466 million federal loan I believe does not include the fact that it was paid back with interest (so taxpayers made money on that).
That is still a subsidy, no? It's money that materially improved the health of the company. Does everyone and every company who wanted 466 millions had it available? And was the interest and other loan conditions market rate?
I guess the point is listing the public loans and grants awarded to a businessman who happens to be trying to influence the government?
Can be useful in many ways, for example can be a talking point about the wonders of having a federal government. Can be useful for having a context when a businessmen campaigns against taxes and subsidies. Can be used against certain businessmen claiming they did everything by themselves, unlike those unsuccessful poor people or lazy immigrants.
It's something interesting to keep in mind when demanding drastic changes on how the world should work.
A business man, trying to influence government?? You don't say.
In all seriousness, the argument that one benefits from the current system but advocates for a different system is not acceptable is just wrong. We can't all be living in a cabin in the woods. We're allowed to have opinions
How is the information incomplete? The 466 million loan is not counted as a subsidy. And they say right there on the page that there may have been repayments.
> For example the number about the 466 million federal loan I believe does not include the fact that it was paid back with interest (so taxpayers made money on that).
Trump is found guilty of fraud, even tho banks made money of his fraudulent deals.
This video is about fossil fuel subsidies in just one zip code which makes it the richest and poorest zip code at the same time. $2857 per capita subsidies via Industrial Tax Exemption Program. National average is $291 per capita, Texas $89 per capita. Skip to 5:22 for the explanation.
The allegations here are very serious, but it can be simultaneously true that a company is doing important work, and that they need to fix deep problems in their workplace culture.
Automobile-based transportation and city design is inherently subsidized. It’s the biggest form of socialism that American individualism accepts unlike any other: free parking for everyone, free roads for everyone. It doesn’t matter how much weight or size your vehicle has, being charged money for parking or paying a lot of money at the gas pump is seen as an assault on freedom itself.
I believe I read that Massachusetts spends something like $12,000 per capita on public roads and highways. And yet we keep telling ourselves that transit oriented development and mass transit is “expensive.”
in the status quo of typical car-focused urban development, the US government needs to subsidize EV car companies or else other countries with lower labor costs will demolish the US automotive industry and consumers will be forfeiting too much of their earnings on the basic needs of daily transportation as oil becomes more and more scarce.
The big 3 automakers are already propped up by the chicken tax. It’s no coincidence that trucks drive most of the profit of US automakers and that they’ve been moved from utilitarian work vehicles to family cars to maximize sales. If you sell a family a sedan it’ll be low profit margin, competing with dozens of other options. Sell them an F-150 and you enjoy an oligopoly with a small subset of brands that have factories in the US.
I’d like automotive subsidy to be redirected into fixing urban design mistakes and meaningfully reduce car trips per capita. I’m not talking about extreme stuff like eliminating cars entirely, I’m talking about a situation where the majority of people don’t feel the need to get in a car to meet 100% of their daily needs.
Oh yeah. Because most of the tax revenue comes from rural areas, and is only then funneled to support these unproductive city dwellers wasting it on all this pointless infrastructure.
You’re misinterpreting me. What I’m saying is that people in urban areas are overspending on infrastructure when simple adjustments to city planning would mean less of a need for extra infrastructure per person.
This applies to Suburbs as well. Many American cities that people think are too rural for cycling or bus service are actually very populated and only have issues with car alternatives because of planning mistakes like non-grid subdivisions, front-facing parking lots, and human-hostile road designs (no/poor bike lanes, high traffic speeds, dead space allocated for high speed traffic infrastructure like merge lanes and onramps)
That figure also included unaccounted negative externalities, like the future earnings of those who die in car crashes.
The value of a human life in the US is estimated at around $10 million, so if you have 30,000 people dying in car crashes nationwide per year you’re looking at prorated losses in the hundreds of billions.
Also: Boeing 15 billion dollars, amazon 11b, intel 8b, ford 7.7b, foxconn 4.8b, etc.
This organised propaganda against Tesla needs to stop, sure Musk is an a*hole, is he an evil a*hole like some othe CEOs? I don't know...
Electric cars are still something beneficial to the sustainability of the car industry and the environment. And Ford still got more money...
Foxconn uses slaves to make a luxury device that's marketed as environmentaly friendly because it now uses the same cable forced on it by the EU that others used for a decade... and it got more than Tesla.
Amazon is just an online store and cloud provider, and the way it treats its low level workers is as close to slavery as the law permits it to be, and it still got more etc.
I mean you can get away with a post like this on Reddit but you should at least expect HN to have people will enough critical thinking skills to see what your title is suggesting and why what it's suggesting is both wrong when put into context and also politically pushed with how much we see it repeated online.
> Amazon is just an online store and cloud provider, and the way it treats its low level workers is as close to slavery as the law permits it to be
I like your call for reason, but I think your Amazon statement is hyperbole. I’m weaning myself off Amazon, but Amazon employees aren’t anywhere close to slavery. It’s a hard job, but seems to compare really well to other competing warehouse or delivery or whatever jobs.
I feel like making inaccurate statements detracts from the core of our discussion, why is Amazon getting billions in subsidies?
I also think that these subsidies need to have a rate aspect. If a trillion dollar company gets $5B in subsidies that’s very different from a $5B company getting the same. Huge corps are huge and just by existing they are probably maximizing random subsidies so the complaint isn’t against the org, but against the governments that give them.
> This organised propaganda against Tesla needs to stop, sure Musk is an a*hole, is he an evil a*hole like some othe CEOs? I don't know...
In your post, you say that don't know. It seems others do, based on the responses to your post. I recommend those who do not know something, consult those who do, in order to learn, and thus know. As for me, it depends on whether you consider toxic narcissism "evil".
In any case, elmu's words and actions and behaviors are not those of a person seeking less attention, and for every internet plea of "leave elmu alone!", there is a twitter post by him effectively pleading "look at me!!!1", so the cries of "propaganda" ring pretty hollow.
Is pointing out issues in the company that whole tech world was salivating over for almost a decade now a propaganda? A company who repeatedly lied to capitalize on the positive press?
> Electric cars are still something beneficial to the sustainability of the car industry and the environment.
Hard disagree, they're a sidestep at best (batteries aren't made of magic green recycled pixie dust, the electricity to charge them doesn't come of 100% renewables, usually, tire dust still contributes massively to plastic pollution), detrimental at worst, especially when sold as an extremely shitty and inefficient alternative to public transit, as they are in the Las Vegas Loop.
> sure Musk is an ahole, is he an evil ahole like some othe CEOs? I don't know...
I mean, have you heard Bezos or anyone of his ilk actively sabotage a defensive military campaign thus enabling the continuation of genocide, or give popularity to neo-fascist talking points?
Walter Issacson (the author who originally broke the news on this story) later clarified that he was mistaken on the timeline. Calling someone a fascist is a pretty wild accusation, especially when it seems it was motivated by a misunderstanding.
"Hi, Tim. Based on my conversations with Musk, I mistakenly thought the policy to not allow Starlink to be used for an attack on Crimea had been first decided on the night of the Ukrainian attempted sneak attack that night. He now says that the policy had been implemented earlier, but the Ukrainians did not know it, and that night he simply reaffirmed the policy." [1]
So he actively sabotaged an Ukrainian attack against the Russian navy, just as I initially stated? His excuse is bullshit too
> If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation
Refusing to help the defender is siding with the offender by allowing them to continue their senseless war of agression and genocide.
> Calling someone a fascist is a pretty wild accusation, especially when it seems it was motivated by a misunderstanding.
And he isn't flirting with fascism just because he helps Russia or mocks Zelensky having to beg for help from other countries to ensure the survival of his own, but for a whole host of other reasons. Just take a scroll through his Twitter timeline and see him getting scolded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs on migrants' lives, or him commenting, liking, retweeting memes full of racist or otherwise fascist-adjacent dogwhistles.
It's a weapons component in this case. I'll remind you everyone exporting night vision equipment to Ukraine is violating export control laws..enforced or not
Ukraine obviously didn't have control over territory in Crimea, so any use for Starlink there would be about using it as a remote control system for a weapon, which does make it a key component of a weapon guidance system and thus something that the US did not want operating all the way through Crimea at the time. This has only recently changed with the US agreeing to supply ATACMS.
It's kind of funny on many levels that when Musk or his businesses go against the US government or don't stick perfectly to its interests, your types rush out of the woodworks screeching about how the company needs to be seized and forced into compliance. But when they carefully follow the government's position, your types rush out to argue that the company and its CEO specifically are propping up a genocide. It's a lose-lose situation and so no wonder SpaceX et al mostly don't bother commenting on the lie of the week.
I don't understand how people can exist in such a clear dissonance state (Elon provides Starklink to Ukraine as a means to help Russsia, and does not offer it to Russia), and not step back and think.
Like its so clear that your constructed narrative is wrong, but you are so blinded by emotion that you are totally unable to see it. Even worse, you won't even be able to read this comment without assigning it as musk propaganda written by some drooling fan boy.
Seriously, the anti-musk people managed to become just as detached as the musk worshippers. If you want to be critical, get a grip, otherwise its easy for musk to hold up his detractors as idiots.
> If you want to be critical, get a grip, otherwise its easy for musk to hold up his detractors as idiots.
much in the same way it is easy for a clown to dangle a shiny object in front of small children, and receive cheers and applause from a similarly small minority of people, and similarly be ignored by most other people, who recognize that the clown is a clown.
Why are you decided on making things binary? Either you're anti-musk or musk worshipper, or either musk is full on helping Ukraine or full on helping Russia. Things can, and often are far more nuanced. Like for instance, one can easily say that the Soviet Union was crucial in the war against Germany in WW2, while also being brutal genociding maniacs that committed human rights atrocities everywhere they went.
> I don't understand how people can exist in such a clear dissonance state (Elon provides Starklink to Ukraine as a means to help Russsia, and does not offer it to Russia), and not step back and think.
What musk did with Starlink regarding the Ukrainian planned attack was direct and active sabotage of an operation, and impeded the Ukrainian war effort. Other things he has done previously, like allowing Starlink access in Ukraine, has helped the war effort. Is that hard to comprehend? Does it have to be one or the other?
The fact that he has done some good deeds, for whatever reason, doesn't change the fact that he has done far more bad deeds. His sabotage of public transit initiatives with actively harmful efforts such as the loop and hyperloop has a direct impact. His constant lies and embellishments of technological advancements is also harmful to his customers. His sharing and endorsing fascist and Russian propaganda is also harmful to the Ukrainian war effot.
>Invasion of Iraq despite them having nothing to do with 911
Just distributing freedom to the world
>Not let people use your product to kill other people
Facism
>Refusing to help the defender is siding with the offender by allowing them to continue their senseless war of agression and genocide
So by this logic anyone who helped Iraqis kill American soldiers is a good guy and anyone who refused to help the Iraqis by default sided with the US in their senseless war of agression and genocide
I honestly wasn't going to reply because we all know how hard these narratives are pushed by real and less real people, but this feels like arguing with a jew, christian or muslim, there is no way you can convince them moises didn't split the sea / jesus didn't walk on water / muhamad didn't fly on a winged horse, despite how illogical or contradictory the stories are... So yeah go at it, history does repeat itself and there will always reality bending people who push false narratives and out of context words to commit more violence.
But honestly wtf is wrong with you? Just turn off the computer and sit down and think of what you just said, Russia's invasion is an invasion and I am a pacifist so all invasions and wars are evil in the way I see it, but was it unprovoqued? hell no... you can't just interfere with Canadian elections and put a Russian puppet there who'll eventually apply to join anti-NATO and put nukes at your borders and not expect something in return... But whatever I still see war as the epitome of evil so Putin is evil for starting that war, it's not genocidal (you can't just lie) because they're racially the same people, hell I was alive when the USSR existed and Ukraine and Russia was the same country... But me seeing war as evil implies death as evil, so had Zelensky negociated with Putin and accepted to resign or whatever just so his people didn't die I'd have admired him, but the way he went at it makes me view him as more evil than even Putin... it's like me a father, having home invaders with guns invading my house (and we only have knives) and instead of giving up and negociating whatever solution to save the lives of my children and wife, I instead arm them with knives and send them to die...
And the US in all of this? Well the US is going to do what the US always did, violence and death and war, remember in 2003 when you made fun of us (France) for not helping you with Iraq? I won't criticize your country that much since most people here are from the US and I don't want to offend everyone.
And Elon in all of this? The guy is a human he's neither Ghandi or Hitler, that splitting (black and white thinking) is the most important trait in diagnosing clusted B disorders (npd, bpd, asd and hpd) so be careful with that.
I'm a decent guy yet if I sold my shares in Paypal for 170 million $ I'd stop working and go chill in some island, let alone invest/start Tesla/SpaceX etc. he could've started a finance company or whatever if his only goal was going for a monetary high score, and he could've retired at 100 or 200 billion $. Sure electric cars aren't as environmentally friendly as previously thought today but eventually we can expect more sustainable energy production or whatever, and how the fck is SpaceX not beneficial to mankind, well it's risky because we'll eventually have lots of debris out there but let's be honest and say it would've been a hell of a lot easier to make more money in finance or some other domain, the guy at least had good intentions, and if you call him facist you're calling all of us facists as I already explained (I'm decent but still worse than him and given his money I'd be a lot worse). And don't even get me started on Twitter, the guy took a mainstream social media platform and lowered censorship on it, how the fck is this evil? What now all of a sudden censorship is good and free speech is bad? You can't have it both ways after fucking up Iraq to dust and selling it as freedom then now all of a sudden freedom is bad. If the site is full of right wing bigots it's a direct reaction to the left wing authoritarianism that's been going around lately, you can't just argue for censorship and firing people from their jobs for saying X and Y then expect the reaction to be a polite discussion over the philosophical merits of free speech, you are of course going to get the opposite of that.
And also you can't just worship the guy in 2017 then in 2018 call him Facist this isn't a healthy outlook on things. You're showing that you have no idea what true facism is, and that's where the problem is, you become a facist yourself by demonizing others over trivial things while calling them the facists. And it has always happened so you have to be careful of that it's a normal tragic human things we do and have done in all societies. The christians prosecuted the jews because they were heathens and in doing so commited true heathen crimes, the muslims prosecuted the christians because they were heathens and in doing so commited true heathen crimes, etc.
>Wikipedia: Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
So Elon isn't far-right (isn't married, doesn't criticize drugs, dresses in an edgy way, etc.), he isn't that much of an authoritarian either (hard to prove at his level because he has money so if he fires someone over something you'll twist it to argue your point, but then we're all authoritarians when it comes to us, but afaik he doesn't support any single political authoritarian regime or wishes for it to force its beliefs on people), ultranationalist (he's south african who immigrated to Canada then the US), he's not for the subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation (he was anti covid lockdowns, he's against censorship, etc.) and he's not for regimentation of society and the economy being a capitalist who never judged anyone for any habit or anything, even the women he dated were from different ideologies and had different styles.
And I didn't have to go deep to prove you wrong, I'm just an average guy, so while your discourse can fly on reddit, here everyone has access to the kind of logic I used, so why bother lying on a forum like HN if you know people will just read your comment and think "this is propaganda" and move on?
Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reached $7 Trillion in 2022: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022