I've met some good car sales people, and service people. I would give them repeat business if I could, even if it meant driving out of my way. I also met a lot of crappy sales people, who will tell you whatever you want to hear just to sell a car. Some would even wink and say "Hey, I gotta try to make money!" when caught on an obvious attempt to extract money from me. I even came across one dealer who made a deal with me for a car few days out in transit, took a deposit, then called me a couple of days later saying unless I pay more they won't sell me the car - I said no, they refunded my deposit, I never bought or serviced a car there since. The COVID-19 pandemic brought out a lot of really shitty car sales people, primarily because cars sold themselves, i.e. they had more customers than cars so why care about the customer. I had so many sales people lie to me, or try to scam me with "$15K non-refundable fee to get on a wait list for this car" with zero guarantees I'd ever get a car, LOL. Others would string me along, telling me I will get a get in 3-6 months, then ghost me after 6 months. I ended up getting a car from honest one who told me the truth, like "we have no idea when we're getting more allocations or cars, but we have a wait list, no charge to be on it" - those I would leave my name with. I could write a book on the different scams dealers tried to pull on me during my lifetime, like adding last minute charges that "the sales person doesn't know about, why are you so cheap and don't want to pay $3 per month more!?!", or telling me their computer made a mistake and my monthly payment is $100 lower than it should be, but they will honor what the computer spit out because they like me, but then get mad at me for not buying a $50 a month protection product saying "you're are already saving $100 a month because of our computer error, why are you not wanting to pay for this!?!" (in that specific case I told them I don't want to rip them off because of a computer error, so made them print out the finance paperwork and we worked thought it with a calculator line by line, there was no computer error). A funny one was a sales guy a couple of years ago telling me I will be arrested and go to jail if I pay-off my car early (and since we were in a complete lie and delusion territory, I told him I have the district attorney in my pocket so I am not worried about this, you should have seen his face, LOL).

What makes you think AI won't be as effective or even more effective? AI has already been shown capable to convince people to commit suicides, a car purchase seems much easier, no? AI can be trained on every trick in the book, and it never gets tired, I see no reason it would be less effective than any salesman.

Dealers in America spend many millions every year on political campaigns and lobbying (read: bribes) to ensure this will never be legal. Some companies managed to do an end-run, like Tesla, but dealers caught up quick, making sure others (like Rivian, Lucid) don't get to do the same thing. When exiting manufacturers try, politicians are paid plenty to throw fits, "think of the children" wailing, all to keep the dealer business alive. VW's Scout brand will be an interesting litmus test, though it's already attracting millions in lobbying and legal challenges from car dealers.

While I've experienced both dealer and direct sales and service model, I must tell you there is no clear winner - both have their advantages and disadvantages. I think both should be legal, and customers should be able to choose.

Not if trained on enough car salesman.

And that is one reason why I would not deal with AI, I never negotiate with anyone, human or computer, who cannot commit to the final price. If they tell me they have no authority to agree to a sale price, I tell them I have no authority to agree to a buy price, so our negotiation would have to be purely hypothetical and non-committal - so pointless really (Will you take a billion dollars for this Corolla? Yes? Ok, then will you take half a billion? And so on until we get to converge by bisection to the lowest price AI is able to accept).

It's not the only reason, another one is humans get tired, so 4 hours into negotiation they become more flexible on the price, AI never gets tired.

They don't define what "some" means, nor are they providing any specific timelines. Sounds like just another empty political posturing statement, with no plan nor budget behind it.

The effect seem consistent with perma-connection to social media.

Gambling and prostitution - oldest professions in the word. Many governments have tried to stop them and all failed miserably despite resources committed. If it has been proven that it cannot be stopped, is it worth spending the taxpayer's money in futile attempts? Human nature, however flawed, cannot be denied, so one sensible alternative is to to regulate it and tax it like any other business. At least prevent people from being taken advantage of by dishonest players, have some control over it as far as non-adults are concerned, and have them pay taxes so the regulation enforcement is funded - minimize the damages if you cannot elimiate them.

The gist of the story is that a young student was good at extracting information from young hackers using social engineering. It yielded better results that law enforcement agencies.

Of course they did. Wouldn't you, if you could? Say you could get a guaranteed cut from every gallon of gasoline sold in a particular state by lobbying politicians that every single gas station in the state has to belong to your organization, and they you can set a per gallon "membership fee" for any gas station to belong.

If you're looking for a new racket currently in process of getting enshrined into laws, 3d printing validation laws are being pushed in a few states already, where in order to sell a 3d printer, that printer must send all designs to some company to verify if it is dangerous to society or not. Now imaging the money you could make if it was your company that every single printer in the world would have to get approval from before printing any design. A freakin' gold mine!

No argument there, but then again I've always considered Elon Must a 21st century car salesman. So he doesn't call his showrooms and service centers dealers, so what?

I live in Washington too. I've owned many cars, including multiple Teslas between 2013 and 2024. I will tell you that there is no clear winner between direct sales and dealer system. At first (think 2013-2018) Tesla service was amazing, they would bend over backwards to help the early adopters, then then Model 3, and then Model Y came, profitability became the top priority and they wouldn't even cover a yellowing screen under warranty in a less than one year old six digit priced Model S. I saw people coming with videos of their Model 3's malfunctioning, and Tesla service saying "we cannot reproduce it, therefore the problem fixed itself". That is also when I realized that the manufacturer owned service service means there is no competition, so they can charge whatever they want - for example an $8 chip that failed in one of my Teslas causing the main screen no to boot costed $3,000 to fix (eventually there was a NHTSA forced recall, but not when I needed the fix, luckily I am capable of replacing a BGA EMMC part myself, but that is not within an average owner's capabilities). I now own dealer sold cars, and have to tell you I am getting great service from the dealer (4 cars, 3 different manufacturers), despite the manufacturer's inadequacies with modern technologies (yea, they suck at software). In the past I've owned many dealer sold brands, and my service experience varied. I've had some great experiences, and some horrible ones too. I remember long ago having an issue with a 2 year old Honda for which the dealer wanted a bunch of money to resurface the rotors, eventually getting new rotors replaced under Honda warranty, the service guy literally winking at me saying "hey, I gotta try to make money, eh?" (yep, he was Canadian ;-) ). On the other end of the spectrum I had a Lexus once which the dealer was willing to go to mat for me to lemon my car over a bluetooth hands free issue that Lexus (Toyota) was unable to resolve. Lexus actually sent an engineer from Japan to repair the problem (turned out to be a bent pin in one of the harnesses) tp avoid the car getting returned as a lemon.

Bottom line is that direct sales vs. dealer experience does not have a clear cut winner for consumers. I do however strongly believe that both should be allowed by law. This explicit allowing one manufacturer at a time political bribing shit in WA state is just government corruption (happens in other areas to, check out automatic card shufflers allowed in WA as an example, or charter school licenses). I say let people choose, do they wan to buy from a dealer or direct from manufacturer, let he market decide what the people want. Heck, allow the same manufacturer to sell via dealer and direct, see what people choose. I bet such a choice would spurn competition for dealers to show people why it's worth it buying from them. And yes, I get that it would cost some dealers profits, in situation where they require people to buy a bunch of their cars to qualify for an allocation for a special car (e.g. Porsche 911 GT3 RS), or charge Additional Dealer Markup on top of MSRP (e.g. Corvette).

By this logic copyright holders could not go after sites facilitating pirated media distribution, instead they would have to go after each individual consumer of said media, no? After all, the pirate sites do not damage the copyright holders, they only create a new pay-per-view/listen/read royalty stream or them.

They have their uses. I got one few years back, 50" 4K UHD for $249 IIRC, which was a really good price for a screen that size at the time. I never connected it to the internet (maybe once, out of the box, to get latest firmware), but have been using it for years as an HDMI screen for some security cameras. It's held up really well, especially given it's ON 24/7.

Have you confirmed this?