[justin66]

> s it a Governmet loan? I mean like Government taking money from the competent people who know what they are doing, and giving it to ucompetent, hey here you have money so you can compete with competent guys using their money!

Your objection, when applied to the specifics, would seem to make Tesla "ucompetent" and folks like GM both competent and untainted by government support. This thinking has some problems.

[bob13579]

Because we're subsidizing inefficient actors already, that makes it okay to subsidize other actors? Why subsidize any of the inefficiency at all? Tesla is certainly not curbing carbon emissions. More efficient combustible engines however are doing that, despite the lack of subsidies.

[justin66]

> Because we're subsidizing inefficient actors already, that makes it okay to subsidize other actors?

I didn't say that, but I would note that talking about established industries which do not benefit from government intervention in some way is a bit like the dumbed down problems we used to get in high-school physics, where we could just ignore things like friction or inertia when it was convenient.

In the real world, all our industries have a relationship with government. It's fair to say that you don't think a new entrant with a seemingly good idea should receive any subsidies like the DOE loans, but what you're really saying is that we won't level the playing field to neutralize the effect of subsidization of the existing players, and there will consequently be less competition.

> More efficient combustible engines however are doing that, despite the lack of subsidies.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. The companies making those engines - American, German, Japanese, Korean, whatever - are subsidized and supported by their governments. The companies making the fuel are similarly entwined with government. It's not a comparison that should cause a libertarian-minded person to immediately want to pick on Tesla specifically, which is why this line of argument strikes me as so odd.

> Tesla is certainly not curbing carbon emissions.

Certainly. Yeah...