Comment Re:Nothing says luxury... (Score 2) 158
Nothing says luxury like simulated wood grain accents.
... and Bose stamps on your cheap Chinese speakers.
Nothing says luxury like simulated wood grain accents.
... and Bose stamps on your cheap Chinese speakers.
ordinary quantum optics lab
Something about the wording in that phrase gives me the urge to search Instructables for a how-to...
That's what I was thinking. Sure beats some manufacturers, whose idea of a "premium" vehicle is a base model with nicer trim and a few extra parts.
We teach our children that making money is more important than being happy, ie 'that degree is useless' or 'don't go into that field, you won't get paid much.' Our economy is based on wealth (gotta have money to make money), and our media is obsessed with how great the rich have it (next on Cribs, some athlete's ridiculously huge mansion and garage worth more than the GDP of a small nation).
The schools, the media outlets, hell even the sports teams are owned by the same cabal of very, very wealthy people.
So, if there's a 'wealth envy' issue in America, it's cultural, and the rich have no one to blame but themselves.
Can't believe that to be the case, because that would mean the people in charge of Tesla's Marketing Department are complete morons - never has a new car salesman tried to "steer" a potential sale to their competitors.
Remember - most dealerships sell multiple makes.
Right, but from the same manufacturer. That's why the signs say things like "Ford-Lincoln-Mercury" not "Chevy-Dodge-Ford" on the sign.
Look. Tactics like these laws are simply fear. Dealerships suck. Everyone knows they suck. The only people I know who defend dealerships are people who work there.
I know that's precisely the sort of emotional response I didn't want to see. And judging from your description regarding how you think dealerships work when it comes to pushing this model or that, I'd say you don't know nearly enough about new car dealerships to make an informed judgement on the topic.
Indeed, it sounds like "Oh no, economic crisis! Not enough prisoners! We need to do something to reverse this trend and get the prisoner counts growing again!"
If you read the prospectus for one of those for-profit jails, it basically says just that - we need more laws so we can incarcerate more people so our shareholders can turn a quick, tidy profit.
Voting for evil scumbags means you're an idiot
But if all the candidates are evil, that means the only non-idiotic (smart) thing to do is: don't vote.
No, no, it just means that putting Mickey Mouse or Hitler down as a write-in candidate is actually a much smarter joke than we thought it was.
Because, generally speaking, human beings aren't nearly as intelligent as we tend to consider ourselves; creatures willing to sell their entire species into slavery for the price of some petty, selfish desire, and the delusion that "maybe someday I'll be a stupid rich, avaracious fuck myself!"
Were we the pinnacle of evolution we fancy ourselves, one would think we would have overcome our instinctual urge to smash the other cavemen with rocks and take all their stuff.
They feel that existing franchised auto-dealerships will not give them a fair shake. They'll steer customers unfairly to buy the Ford, Chevy, Nissan, whatever else they're selling if Tesla doesn't give them a bigger commission.
Can't believe that to be the case, because that would mean the people in charge of Tesla's Marketing Department are complete morons - never has a new car salesman tried to "steer" a potential sale to their competitors.
Ever.
1) It forces dealerships to price things locally and in competition with other dealerships, instead of based on the manufacturers' global strategies. Dick pricing moves are therefore local rather than global, prices aren't fixed everywhere across the country, sales actually happen. Also, a third-party dealership is more likely to want to sell you a used car. Manufacturer owned dealerships have a huge incentive to push new ones. If third-party dealerships had to compete with first-party ones, they would all get priced out of the new car market very quickly and likely go out of business, and then the used car market would suck.
Well said.
Also, theoretically anyway, it should protect some smaller manufacturers. If a big manufacturer had the infrastructure to do direct sales to everyone, but a smaller manufacturer had worse infrastructure and had to go through dealerships, then the big manufacturer would take its lack of a middleman and price the smaller one out of business. The market doesn't seem to be working like that right now though.
Can't really answer 2).
I think you just did.
1) "Because politicians are greedy!" is exactly the sort of emotional response I was looking to avoid.
2) Good link; I was expecting a "Tesla == teh shit" fluff piece, but the guy actually did have some legitimate bitches about the process of buying straight from the manufacturer, and well-reasoned explanations for why a dealership model would have been impossible for Tesla in the beginning, and would still be unprofitable today.
I find the it curious that the extravagantly wealthy are so resistant to even modest social reform to improve the life of the poor. Were I a billionaire,
But you're not, and with an attitude like that you never will be.
Yes, there is subtext in that statement, and yes, the subtext is that billionaires are greedy assholes.
I have 2 questions I'd like answered by someone who's not financially nor emotionally invested in the whole "Tesla vs the Gobermint" debate:
1) For what reason would a state legislature want to make it illegal for a manufacturer to own their own dealership?
2) For what reason would a manufacturer not want to franchise their dealerships?
Thanks (to the probably 2 out of 100 responses that will actually fit my criteria) in advance.
Oh no! Rednecks! Gun owners! Homeless people! Libertarians! Get me my Unconstitutional ban on things I find scary!
FTFY
Your opinion has been noted. I argue that human behavior in general (ie, as a species) is not confluent with the aforementioned belief, and submit pretty much every news broadcast I've seen in my lifetime as evidence.
Agent K said it best: a person is smart; "people" are dumb, panicky animals, and you know it.
The only attribute he left out was "violent"
Where there's a will, there's a relative.