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Comment by aerovistae | Hacker News Reader

Another side note: it always annoys me when people insinuate that Musk using government funds is a bad thing.

The government is literally just US....it's our money and a collection of individuals from among us who we've appointed to handle the general administration of us and the space we take up.

Why should American entrepreneurs, particularly ones doing such an outstanding job of moving technology in a positive direction, not get our financial support (a.k.a. the government's support)?

Who exactly is losing out when we support our own business initiatives with our own money?

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I imagine those loud objectors would take issue with the idea that the government is "literally just US" - it's much more literally a small minority of us who are deciding on behalf of us what we are to do with our resources. There's nothing inherently wrong with that - the US was always intended to be exactly that - but it certainly leaves room for the represented to debate about the way they should be represented. "Us" consists of people with different ideas about what is worth spending money on, both in terms of goals and effective ways of pursuing those goals, and using the government to allocate funding ignores all that.

It's easy to look at Tesla and SpaceX and see a couple winning tickets in the "give money for technology" lottery, but they are not the only tickets our government has purchased. Consider all the other entrepreneurs who are doing an outstanding job of not so much moving technology in any direction at all but rather lining their pockets while cratering their industry's reputation, or those that make reasonable attempts with interesting but ultimately impractical innovations.

The people who object are generally objecting to the playing of the lottery itself. The most commonly proposed alternative is that these companies should earn the money by providing value in the market or convince investors (who have powerful financial incentives to get it right) that they can do so, rather than by convincing a relatively few laypeople with no real skin in the game to risk other people's money on them.

Pre-emptive disclaimer: yes, I know I've not mentioned any of the opposing arguments here. My purpose in writing this is solely to explain some of the key points (including some of the emotional appeals) in this particular side of this particular debate.

North Dakota pipeline is nice example of an operation receiving a good dose of government funding that arguably goes against the best intentions of the future population

Hey now, we need to get that oil out of the US and into a higher priced market ASAP, hence the need for a new pipeline and the removal of restrictions on the exportation of domestically produced oil.

That way, these large foreign oil companies like BP (owned by Britan's public employee retirement funds) and Royal Dutch Shell can make a ton more dough while also raising prices by a few bucks in the domestic gas & natural gas market.

The government is not literally just 'us.' It's a contentious idea: "government is just the word for the things we choose to do together" was oft-repeated by Rep. Barney Frank. He was repeating it because not everyone agrees.

I think the primary problem of government funding is waste and the potential for corruption. Waste because the government is more immune to profit motive and thus can throw good money after bad for a long time. Corruption because you need to convince some bureaucrats v. all your customers (or whoever the market needs). The flip side is that, done well, you can get things done that no business could get done on its own.

So, if Tesla/cleantech succeeds, nobody will remember government funding as some sort of attenuation or 'asterisk' on the win: it was getting the industry over a hump, but into self-sustaining success. Win all around. The problem is if the government support ends up propping up business models that have no hope of actually being viable when that support goes away.

If cleantech ends up failing, then the government backing that which couldn't succeed in the free market will be remembered. But it's all a tradeoff: we're not going to be perfect every time and should be prepared to accept some misses if we think bootstrap government funding of promising but currently non-viable products is a worthy allocation of taxpayer money.

EDIT: sibling comment has great additional point about market distortion being a problem too.

>"government is just the word for the things we choose to do together"

Definitely contentious. A more correct formulation is "government is just the word for the things we are forced to do together"

Perhaps more even-handed libertarian dig is that it's "the things we force ourselves to do together." In that view it's a solution to market failures around externalities and bad game-theoretic outcomes in collective action/decision-making. Free-riders, the tragedy of the commons, that sort of thing.

Go live where there is no government, its great to act so infringed upon by the government in the place in which you currently reside, but you do have choices.

Not saying its a rosy picture to live in an area with no publicly owned infrastructure, or any baseline public services like water, sewer, trash, education, courts, etc, but there are places in Latin America which have legal carveouts for a non-governmentally controlled area to exist, without taxes, laws or infrastructure.

Unless you are willing to live & fight for your beliefs, they are absolutely worthless, Martin Luther King & Cesar Chavez didn't accomplish anything sitting at home, they took to the streets and organized like minded people to stand with them and fight for the way things ought to be, regardless what businesses or government tried to do.

It doesn't necessarily follow from what perilunar or fennecfoxen said that they think 'no government' is the right answer: even if you think the government policy-making wields force, that can just mean the bar for what government should be doing is higher, not that nothing at all ever clears that bar.

Example: one could characterize investment in cleantech as hedge fund-like speculation (other example: US monetary policy), albeit with the dividends paid to the American economy (and some larger proportion to Tesla etc shareholders). I think reasonable people can disagree over whether that is an appopriate action for a government to take (i.e. whether it is in their purview/mandate) separate from whether other issues are (utilities, defense, welfare, etc). A rejection of one is not a rejection of all, and similarly support for one is not support for all.

(Speaking generally: I don't know the specific views of perilunar or fennecfoxen)

More than contentious, tendentious. It's a choice about how to organize your ideology and world-view, but it's presented as an inarguable fact of existence.

It's also what a small left-leaning majority says to defend themselves and shut up their detractors while they inflict their will on the minority over an issue that's contentious (e.g. our recent health care reform).

And you'll notice that when legislation they don't like appears, you'll hear remarks to the effect of "that is not who we are!" (the standard obviously being relaxed when a government does something the speaker disagrees with).

Dude, grow up. You do not have to live under govt rule, if you choose to follow an ideology that would rather see government not exist, you can and should fully adhere to your ideology and move to such an area. They do exist in Latin America and other places, and you are not living your ideology or helping it in any way if you won't support it in the most basic of ways.

>> It's also what a small left-leaning majority says to defend themselves and shut up their detractors

> Dude, grow up

QED. Thanks, dude.

I hope it came through in my comment that I dislike the denial of government aid in the creation of a "bootstraps" narrative when people want to argue against taxes, not the making use of government aid per se(otherwise now it's clear).

One valid argument against government aid is market distortion. One example of abuse is farming, where subsidies create a system(as far as I understand at least) where those that have enough land to tick of all subsidies have an edge over smaller farms (in addition to scaling), leading to consolidation and effectively paying land magnates with tax money.

A different aspect(more specific) is that maybe solar is just not ready and should fail, and only the subsidies make it viable, meaning people will have "junk" on their roofs without Solarcity to maintain it if the subsidies fade. However, that argument is only valid to me if coal/oil does not get subsidies currently, which I doubt

Indeed. Tesla is a stellar example of using government money responsibly and for exactly the purpose it was intended to.

Please do not use the word we in this context. Half of my colleagues are paying very hefty federal and state taxes but do not have the right to vote.

Why don't they have the right to vote? DC?

Probably they are in the US on work visa's.

A big part is how gov't money is doled out. It forces the gov't to pick winners and losers. And since politics always seems to permeate everything the gov't does, people start to question the decisions.

Even if it's something as straightforward as "green credits", the process can always be perverted to advantage one business over another.

It's a tough balance. Often we (in the US) don't invest, then complain when jobs shift to other countries. We've seen so much bashing of $0.54 billion for Solyndra (a tiny gamble); but now most solar panels are made in China. Need to gamble, but wisely.

Not every investment will be successful either, as any person with a basic sense of business will know.

In this case it's taxpayers subsidising high end roofing for nice houses owned by well off people.

In the short term, yes. In the longer term, they're subsidising kick starting a market that can only come down in price once the volume increases.

Some good ideas need a bump through the 'chicken and egg' stage.

Spot on. I'm all for subsidizing industries to incentivize the behaviour we want, but I'm not sure the people who can afford these homes, or $100,000 cars, need it.

They may not need it, but it is worth for the rest of us. Technology becomes much cheaper when it becomes commonplace. If we all pay a bit of that 30% subsidy to rich people, what's the matter? That will allow us to eventually buy it with more than 30% reduction of price without subsidies.

Yes, one is game theoretically stable, and one isn't.

(the one that isn't is individuals voluntarily giving money to things where the benefit is shared by all)

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