And you think I'm doing nothing politically?

Geez, you prove my point, don't you?

You miss the whole point of Article I, Section 8 in your reply. It is there to tell the federal government to stay out of making these kind of regulations in the first place.

I won't go into the argument about what the interstate commerce clause actually says and what the Federal Papers said it was supposed to do, because that is pointless so far as to fan a whole major sub-thread on that topic alone. At least you acknowledge there is something that the federal government might be able to do to Michigan so far as to smack them down with constitutional authority when Michigan refuses to register a Tesla automobile sold to one of its residents.

Still, who gave the Michigan state legislature the authority to make this law prohibiting the sales of Tesla automobiles in the first place? I assert it is something claimed by the Michigan state legislature, with about the same level of credibility as if they were trying to regulate the value of pi through legislation.

Sorry, there are many legitimate worries about digital divide stuff, and there are even more about ISP business practices. But this red herring about your education being compromised because your video link is only 1080p, that's just stupid. Why not worry that rich people's cars accelerate faster than poor people's cars? Is that causing a "kinetic divide" that we now have to worry about? The difference between the "poor" 171/122 Mbit/s connection and the gigabit connections will basically turn out to be just as unimportant to society. Let's focus on solving the real social problems, which are still many.

Tesla is opening up stores and has repair shops in many of them (where it can legally be done). They just don't see the point of paying somebody else for the privilege of opening such a store that they will also have to pay to have constructed that will get a cut of the profits simply because they are an existing businessman in that state (ordinary citizens need not apply BTW.... you need to already possess the dealership license or pay a huge deposit to the state government that mere mortals need not bother with).

What advantage is there again for a dealership?

On the contrary. There are several dealerships (especially the mega auto mall groups in major cities) who want to sell Teslas. A couple of them have even been blunt to Elon Musk basically saying that he can't sell a Tesla without cutting them in for a piece of the action.

That is all that is happening here, where these dealerships in the big cities (it was a dealer in Boston who threatened Musk) just want to get a cut of all of the sales... including the on-line sales where the dealer doesn't have to do a damn thing except collect the royalty checks for a company he neither invested in nor even bothers promoting. Oh yeah, he even expected Tesla to pay him for the privilege of selling Tesla cars on-line in Massachusetts with an annual dealership fee.

Profit margins can certainly be derived from the whole endeavor, which isn't the real problem. I do think Elon Musk's assertion that by going to these dealers who also own sales distribution rights for other manufacturers will sideline the sales of Tesla vehicles by shoving a couple Model S cars in a corner and only use them to get customers in the door for sales of other vehicles. It would ultimately hurt Tesla sales to use these dealers in the first place.

As a matter of fact, those states allowing fracking have reaped huge tax benefits and for the most part has helped out ordinary citizens of those states too.

If only it was as simple as you suggest... and perhaps Detroit might not be so broke as it currently is. If only Detroit could become a major oil producing region of America, as it might do them some good.

I'm not saying there are so consequences to the practice that needs to happen as well, where the economic costs of the practice certainly need to be examined beyond the straight extraction of oil, but your illustration here only backfires and reinforces the GP post even more.

The question that should be raised here is not demanding a repeal of this law, but to question why the government thinks it has authority or purpose for regulating this activity in the first place? In the federal government, Article I, Section 8 explicitly states what Congress has the authority to regulate or control (like setting up laws for copyright, regulations for the military, controlling immigration policy, etc.) and the implication is if Congress doesn't have that authority explicitly granted by the Constitution, they are exceeding their authority to act. Not like that stops Congress from pushing boundaries on those limits in a huge way to absurd directions, but that is at least the original theory.

State legislatures similarly have defined limits on their authority according to their respective state constitutions. That state legislatures often exceed that authority may be true as well, but the voters in Michigan sure can question why they have that authority to act in the first place. It really makes no sense at all.

This is a classic situation where there is a very narrow constituency who wants to have a particular law or program in place, but no comparable counter group opposed to the idea. Corn subsidies is another really good example.

Just watch this video to see if it makes sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8JDx7FwdHk

Or if you want something less dramatic but still more of the same... and tries to explain why this happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGOj8kBpsD4

The same thing that got Coca-Cola to make their products out of corn syrup is what got this legislation passed to prohibit Tesla from direct sales.

Florian, I was anything but wrong about you! Look at all of that self-justifying blather!

Anyway, I have better uses of my time than to waste another minute with you.

I'm really not interested in hearing from you any longer. It's very clear that we'll never agree on anything, and the fact is I don't consider you someone whose opinion I value or who is worthy of any of my time.

That should be "SCO and MS arguments".

We knew what was going on when you ran your anti-IBM campaign, sometimes even positioning yourself as arguing on behalf of our community. It was a way to lend credence to IBM and MS arguments during the SCO issue. To state otherwise is deceptive, perhaps even self-deceptive.

Florian, you would not be devoting all of this text to explaining yourself if you didn't feel the need to paint your actions in a positive light. That comes from guilt, whether you admit it to yourself or not.

Go write your app, and if you actually get to make any money with it you can give thanks, because it will happen despite what you worked for previously. Keep a low profile otherwise because your credibility is well and truly blown and you can only make things worse. And maybe someday you can really move past this part of your life. But I am not holding out much hope.

That happens to me when fixing bugs in a particularly old piece of code (usually the stuff done by overseas consultants... friends don't let friends outsource programming)... once getting the thing fixed, I often fail to understand how it could have ever worked in the first place.