He deserves respect just for that — looking beyond the next quarter's bottom line. Just look at the contrast this creates with all the managers whose plans for the next quarter are "let's spend slightly more on marketing".
I just don't think it has anything to do with Ayn Rand and her philosophy.
Strangely I just had a discussion about rational thinking and I kind of failed to make a point. Rational thinking is better than irrationality and crazy Bible-thumpers, but you really need to get over that. You need to see past this, you need to pass it by and leave it behind as a neat idea born out of the greatest misconception there ever has been: "I think therefore I am". The reality is - I am, therefore I can think.
I think you don't know enough about the world's industrialists. (And neither do I.) Most of them are less well known than Elon Musk. So just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist. My guess is that China has quite a few people with grand ideas and capabilities.
It's still a good company, doing good things, etc etc.
(b) They got the sweetheart-deal to end all sweetheart-deals: a gigantic cash infusion structured as a loan with a market-beating interest rate, rather than as equity which would have entitled the government to a share of the upside.
How were they incentivized to repay early? Having a below-market interest rate seems like it would do the opposite.
Still, compared to the other similar loans offered by the US government, I have to judge the Tesla loans as a success.
There's also the taxes the government collects through suppliers to Tesla, as well as sales taxes generated when consumers purchase electric vehicles, etc, taxes from capital gains and dividends of tesla stock, taxes from salary taxes.
I'm simplifying here because I haven't talked about the opportunity cost of the taxes from a petrol car the consumer didn't buy or the other job employees could have held. In general, however, the government will profit as long as value of taxes from economic growth and other benefits exceed the cost of the loan. And remember, for the government, the cost of the loan isn't for taxpayers to bear, but for all holders of US dollars, which include foreign nations and other non-taxpayers, through temporary inflation; Since the government can always print money to lend, and destroy money when the money is repaid, unless the business fails, in which case every US dollar holding person suffers.
Overdoing it, however, will mean displacing existing investors who are arguably better posed to select winners and negatively affect the economy. What I am saying is some level of government intervention may actually be profitable for taxpayers, even if the investment structure doesn't appear so on the surface.
It's like the "Why do governments invest in loss-making airlines?" The answer of course is to bring more tourists to their country by undercharging plane tickets.
Ayn Rand said that of all the things public funds were ever spent on (outside of judicial and national defense), NASA was the most worthy. She wrote admiringly about NASA, revealing a deep respect for its technology, scientific pursuit, and its Apollo launches. They even specifically invited her to an Apollo launch.
I don't think someone that hated NASA - or supposedly would dislike a private SpaceX - would write: "Apollo 11: A Symbol of Man's Greatness." Clearly since Ayn liked NASA, she would love SpaceX as a step in the right direction over public space exploration.
Because she was against it?
Those things are based in principles. In principle I have the right to state funds for all of my children. Because I am against such subsidies I have decided not to request them, even though the state continues to insist that I should and that it is my right. And even though I pay for other people exercising this right.
For Ayn Rand to rail a life long in many different pamphlets against state run entities only to turn around and to use them when times were a bit tougher seems hypocritical to me.
Ayn Rand ended up taking government benefits because she had to, not because she was trying to get back what she paid in. That's the key part.
Even if she could afford to take care of herself and was just trying to game the system to get her money back, that's morally pretty suspect, too. Imagine trying to mount the same argument about someone who deliberately crashed their car to "recover some of that money" they had to pay in insurance premiums.
Rand spent her whole life decrying people who are dependent on government assistance as looters and parasites, and then she spent the last few years of her life completely dependent on government assistance without it changing her stated beliefs. If you don't see the hypocrisy there, you're trying awfully hard not to.
She is an illustration that you can lead a successful, productive, non-moochery life and still end up needing government assistance at some point.
They are subsidized, but I assume she was at the end of the income spectrum that is doing the subsidizing.
Not a Rand-lover or libertarian (in fact, quite the opposite) -- but this is how I always looked at it.
She didn't buy her own insurance. She got sick and in order to avoid bankruptcy and continue living, she got on medicare just like all the "takers" she so famously railed against.
She certainly didn't pay her fair share for the insurance. Heck we don't even know if she paid any taxes during that 5 year period which was after she stopped writing and Objectivism had ebbed quite a bit.
Pick another example if you don't like mine — my point does not depend on this particular choice.
The "you didn't build it" thing kind of makes my point for me, but I don't want to just call you an idiot and move on since I might be misunderstanding your intent. The speaker had a long, well-presented message with that one line that became a slogan for the more idiotic of anti-government talking heads and their followers, and it's a gross mis-representation of the truth to present it without context [1]:
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn't – look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)"
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."
"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires."
You are of course free to disagree, but at least show the basic respect of not misrepresenting the statement or the people who agree with the overall message. Yes, it sounds a lot like he meant it as he worded it in the heat of the moment--by many accounts, he often goes off-script--but you can't possibly believe he meant it the way it's been taken given the speech that surrounded it.