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"
Well, don't you think he SHOULD be able to wear his gold jewelry out in public?
Well of course he should.
He should also understand what the word "risk" means, and how to mitigate it.
For example, people SHOULD be able to ride a bicycle on the shoulder of a busy interstate, but that would be mind-blowingly idiotic because of the risks involved.
One SHOULD be able to take a walk through the 'Brews neighborhood wearing an Adolf Hitler costume, but again, that would be insanely idiotic.
Same goes for strolling through any low-income, crime-ridden neighborhood flashing a shit-ton of expensive stuff that's easy to steal. Like jewelry.
I agree, I'm an atheist but I thought that anti-Christian comment at the end was totally out of place and painted the writer of the article as an intolerant bigot. It was totally out of place in the article and really undermines his point.
I see this is your first time reading a BH blog post masquerading as a news item.
Yea, they all pretty much end up the same way - with the audience wondering what the hell he just wasted 10 minutes of his life reading.
But with the ubiquity of cellphone cameras, a lot of people find the thrill to be difficult to resist.
Boudoir photography is as old as the camera itself, and every American household has owned once since about the 1960's or 1970's. Cellphones have jack to do with it.
Your advice would certainly be effective, but isn't it akin to telling teenagers to abstain from sex in order to protect themselves from STIs and pregnancy?
Pretty much. Probably just as effective, too.
Unless you make yourself crazy ensuring that you never appear naked near anyone who might have a camera (and everyone has a camera these days), you can't really guarantee that this will work.
Well, you can do a lot if you would stop frequenting orgies and stripping to the buff in the middle of the public library...
Seriously, are there a lot of places where one would typically get naked around groups of other people? I can only think of 2 places where I strip down to my birthday suit, and both of them are in my own house.
I only came here for the "what a massive douche this guy is" comments....
If you write your pin number on your ATM card are you not at least partially to blame when a thief finds the card and cleans out your account? Of course the thief is wrong, but wow you were stupid!
Yes, that's called "negligence."
It's why, in that situation, the bank would refuse to reverse the charges, and probably get away with it.
Right. UK, Israel, Canada, Switzeland, German, Japan, etc., are all totalitarian states.
I never so much as implied they were. You inferred what you wanted, because you don't want to accept the truth of my statement: Every society that has forcibly disarmed the populace turned into abusive, totalitarian states.
Although, I wouldn't use the surveillance state of the UK, nor the police state of Israel, nor the heavily-armed-populace nation of Swizerland in your example. Really, the only one on that list I consider historically clean (we all know what Japan and Germany's past sins are) would be Canada. But then, you can legally own guns in Canada, too.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?
