Machine Gunning a Tesla

There is an episode of the TV show Top Gear involving a Prius hybrid and automatic weapons. God, I wish I could afford to do the same to a Tesla.

Unfortunately, I (and thee) are too poor to afford a Tesla. But that doesn’t mean we won’t continue to be forced to “help” Elon Musk build these mobile – just barely (and briefly) monuments to crony capitalism.

Against the State: An ... Rockwell Jr., Llewelly... Best Price: $5.02 Buy New $5.52 (as of 11:35 UTC - Details) This is a company that bleeds money like a machine-gunned hemophiliac, yet doesn’t die because fresh transfusions are always available. Just last week it was announced the company lost another $100 million and change while delivering fewer than 10,000 cars. Tesla has yet to earn – properly speaking – a single honest dollar. The money it takes in (a very different thing) is obtained chiefly via carbon tax credits ($130 million from the state of California alone; that is to say, from the pockets of the taxpayers of the state of California) and everyone knows all about the $7,500 per car subsidy Uncle dangles in front of prospects to lure them into buying one of these flashy, yet functionally useless, electric Edsels. There are in addition state-level subsidies (in 23 states) ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 per “sale.”

Do you know what a “carbon tax credit” is? It’s a tax, first of all – only one paid to an entity (I won’t call it a company, as companies are businesses and Tesla is neither) like Tesla rather than to the government. Here’s how it works. I own a business that makes things people are actually willing to buy without being coerced or subsidized. But, alas, my manufacture of this product results in “greenhouse gasses” – carbon dioxide having been decreed the primary one (even though it far less of one than several other gasses, such as methane and also water vapor; but we’ll leave that aside for now). Check Amazon for Pricing.

Well, I want to make the thing and you want to buy the thing, but in order for me to be allowed to make it, I must send money to an entity like Tesla as a kind of (no, an actual) kickback. Because Tesla is “green” while I am not – except of course as regards the color of the money that’s been transferred to Elon Musk’s ever-growing bank account – which is very green indeed.

The argument is that each Tesla built with these kickback dollars amounts to “x” quantity of carbon dioxide negated overall. I’m allowed to build my economically viable product, so long as I “help” Tesla manufacture his not-economically viable products.

But they are “green,” right?

Certainly. In the same way that an outhouse is clean… before you use it. Only with Tesla, it’s the reverse. The finished car may notproduce any noxious emissions, but it took a lot of noxious emissions to build the thing. Do American haters of internal combustion ever stop to wonder why Tesla is building its “Gigafactory” in… China?

Where there is no EPA?

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