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by ryandvm 1315 days ago
The biggest difference between Twitter and every one of Musk's successful companies is that his typical ventures absolutely depend on US federal largesse to survive. Unless Twitter can start selling carbon credits or secure some bloated federal contracts, there is no chance in hell that Twitter is going to be in the black any time soon.
3 comments

Could be like Palantir and provide a bunch of citizen tracking analytics to govt.

If you don't already know Elon's govt scheming, read about Mike Griffin and Elons missile defense contracts with the US DoD.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

This is just completely untrue for Tesla. Carbon credits make up less than 10 percent of Tesla's profit. They had 250 million in carbon credits last quarter and 3.3 billion profit.
Government incentives helped them get to their current level of profitability. Not just in the US either: in Norway, for instance, there's a huge environmental tax on gas-burning cars, but EVs are exempt since they don't burn fossil fuel, so Teslas end up being quite cheap by comparison and are therefore very popular there.

You're being disingenuous by claiming carbon credits are the only form of government largesse or incentive.

Sure they helped the company, but it's not like they handed them 10 billion dollars. And at this point they make up so little of the cost. Every car company had this same opportunity but they passed it up.

Don't fault Tesla for that as if the government is propping them up. At this point very little of Tesla's money comes from.

You using Norway is disingenuous they have just over half the population of New Jersey. They are incredibly small. Meanwhile Tesla is #1 in all of Europe.

The Federal government, and state governments, and various EU governments have given tax credits to buyers of Tesla cars since almost the beginning of Tesla.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/what-you-need-know-about-federal-...

https://www.tesla.com/support/incentives

Tesla claims they pay up to 7500 for every Tesla (depending on the time bought), up to 30% + 400$ for every powerwall for example.

They give them to all car companies that produce Electric cars.
Charge the US government to censor posts like they are currently doing for free?