NY auto dealers trying to shut down Tesla Motors in NY
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There's a pretty good doc on Netflix, "Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream", which covers some of the financial backing of congress and how it affects things (although that's not the primary focus). I'm sure this plays out at a state level, too. I witnessed it first hand growing up in Eastern Kentucky and how the coal companies threw their money and weight around.
It's like an amoeba throwing itself around or a small multi-cell organism doing the same. The details might differ but the effect from the outside is pretty similar.
It is only a matter of scale (this is a state senate, after all).
It's not a dictatorship after all.
"The tax benefits/rebates/carbon trading shit that Tesla benefits from is available to any car company that wishes to participate."
?
In any event, given that they were neither the only green company to get loans under this program, nor the only car company to get loans of any kind in light of the bailout, this hardly strikes me as a "special deal from the government." The grant program existed, they applied for it, they got an award.
-- Bastiat, Sophisms of the Protectionists
"To rob the public, it is necessary to deceive them. To deceive them, it is necessary to persuade them that they are robbed for their own advantage, and to induce them to accept in exchange for their property, imaginary services, and often worse. Hence spring Sophisms in all their varieties. Then, since Force is held in check, Sophistry is no longer only an evil; it is the genius of evil, and requires a check in its turn. This check must be the enlightenment of the public, which must be rendered more subtle than the subtle, as it is already stronger than the strong."
-- Bastiat, Sophisms of the Protectionists
"Hi, I'm calling to defend Telsa Motors because its CEO told me to. No, I do not know anything more about the topic I am calling about"
http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=S05725&term=2013 http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A07844&term...
Further, the diffing format used there is atrocious.
Law is code. Why haven't we fixed this yet?
Because lawyers love buggy code.
Compared to what, exactly?
> Further, the diffing format used there is atrocious.
That's a really common problem.
> Law is code. Why haven't we fixed this yet?
Mostly, because there is no first party money in it, and there's considerable expense to do it as a third-party solution, because of exactly the problem that this is directed at solving.
There's quite a bit of money in third-party solutions, which are provided by several vendors to the people who have the money and motivation to pay for them (people who professionally deal with the law), as components of wider research suites that cover more than just statute law (including many copyright-protected sources).
Third-party solutions that use only the free-of-copyright public information don't have a lot of market, and would have a lot of expense to create and maintain (not the system, so much as keeping the data current.)
1. http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1994/en19940543.pdf
For RM, the 'broken' differencing format was a feature, not a bug. It allowed him to slip though all kinds of law changes without people understanding what he was up to. The book has many, many examples of exactly this differencing format being put to use to gain power.
The point about the differencing format is more broadly true - prior to reading the book, I thought politics was about having the right ideas, and explaining them clearly. But the book compellingly argues that politics is really about obtaining and wielding power. The people who thrive in politics are more interested in power than ideas.
It is a book that is well worth reading, especially if you are an idealistic programmer (like I was) who cannot understand why we can't just 'clean politics up.' (Also, Caro's LBJ biography is awesome, with similar themes.)
This should be the preface to every history book. BTW, s/politics/business/ and it is still true.
Not to say that politics and business are not interested in ideas... they are, but not fundamentally. Ideas are only a means to power. Understand this and you will understand much about an idea you wish to see implemented.
Properly drafted English-language laws do read as code. It's like how you can describe formal logic in English: "All Americans wear hats. I am an American. Therefore I wear a hat."
I take it you're arguing for something like Lojban, though. I see two problems there. First, it's not the (de facto) national language, which infringes on one's fundamental right to read the laws of the land. Second, and probably more incurably, these types of languages don't remove the most important kinds of ambiguity in laws.
Most disputes over ambiguity in legal text do not arise from syntactic ambiguity. It's not usually confusion over what words the "not" modifies, or which "if" is nested within which. Rather, most problems arise from semantic ambiguity, i.e. the meaning of the individual words. What constitutes a "bank," exactly? What does it mean to do something "in a reasonable period of time?" If you're "bearing" arms, where exactly are you bearing them?
You might argue that the problem then comes down to defining your terms well. That's certainly a noble goal when drafting legal text. But one of the principle goals of legal drafting is to make the text flexible enough to apply to specific circumstances that the authors could not have foreseen. This, of course, is in constant tension with the need to be precise. The more precise you are, the easier it is to interpret the law, but the more likely it is that someone will find a loophole arising from the excessive narrowness of your language.
A language like Lojban won't alleviate these difficulties, unfortunately.
Legaleese requires you to take years of law classes to even understand, and makes the same problem. I think it's more accessible to run something through a compiler...
This is why I'm against EULAs. As a non-lawyer, it's an asymmetrical game--I have no idea what the legaleese I'm agreeing to actually means in a court.
No it doesn't.
Does that mean all legal drafting is clear? No. But much of it is sufficiently clear for a literate person to understand. By way of example, I've chosen a passage from the Illinois criminal code, more or less at random:
"Theft of property not from the person and not exceeding $500 in value is a Class 4 felony if the theft was committed in a school or place of worship or if the theft was of governmental property."
This is a typical example of legalese. It bakes several conditions into one sentence: 1) not from the person, 2) value under $500, 3) in a school, 4) in a place of worship, 5) on government property. Most legal writing I've encountered is at roughly this level of complexity.
Certainly, there's a lot of logic packed into that one sentence. There's much more to parse out than there is in a typical newspaper sentence. But I'm willing to bet most people can read that law and understand what it means. (Not that you'd necessarily know what a Class 4 felony is. But you'd know some of the circumstances under which a theft qualifies as one.)
If we were to make everything be written in normal English, the same problem would eventually re-emerge.
You might be interested in this experiment:
https://github.com/divegeek/uscode
(Federal code, not state.)
[1] http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/A7844A-2013 [2] https://github.com/nysenate/OpenLegislation
"Tesla Clashes With Car Dealers" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732404950457854... or http://bit.ly/16UCd7s
So basically the status quo is that manufacturers are legally forced to go through franchised car dealers to sell their cars. And this is because Ford used independent car dealers to sell their cars initially; but as time went on and manufacturers wanted to sell directly, these laws were passed to protect existing franchised car dealerships.
Hence manufactures would produce cars in volume and sell them to the dealers. The dealers who made that investment in buying those cars then sold them for a profit. Dealers are protected by these same laws usually geographically. This in some way insulated the manufacturers from market fluctuations and allowed more efficient factories.
Plus you cannot pass up the test drive. Really, would you buy a car without a test drive? Dealers took that job which does incur some risk of loss. It was a good idea at the time. Society was not as integrated as it now, you could not just look up your car in any sense of the word we do now.
Just like other franchise setups, they are entrenched and not necessarily bad. Would you rather be beholden to a large auto maker or have a small shop to talk to in the event of a problem? A sole dealership will be more likely want to create a long term relationship and would work to solve you problems, a distant manufacturer who is large could afford to blow you off.
I honestly I can't see a good reason for labor unions to exist anymore either, but they're still around and have plenty of politicians on their side.
As "lower prices" tells you, the customer was not considered in the equation.
Cars are different. If the manufacturers sell direct-to-consumer, then they can always undercut dealerships (no property/staff/service overhead); there will be no profit in buying new vehicles to resell on a lot. There either won't be "new car" dealerships anymore, or they'll essentially become showrooms earning a small commission referring orders to the manufacturer.
Either way, the current business model cannot persist without the dealership laws simply by "enforcing contract law". The dealers have no contracts prohibiting manufacturers from selling direct-to-consumer, and they have no leverage to get them to sign such contracts. The dealers need the manufacturers, while the manufacturers need far fewer dealers than there are for service centers.
Mail-order isn't the issue. McDonalds can own their own restaurants right now if they want to, instead of franchising. This is similar to how Tesla wants to operate.
> If the manufacturers sell direct-to-consumer, then they can always undercut dealerships...there will be no profit in buying new vehicles to resell on a lot. There either won't be "new car" dealerships anymore, or they'll essentially become showrooms earning a small commission referring orders to the manufacturer.
Good? If they can't add value and only exist because a law creates a cartel, then good riddance. If they actually add value, I'm sure we'll see that represented by people choosing to buy through dealers anyway.
> The dealers have no contracts prohibiting manufacturers from selling direct-to-consumer, and they have no leverage to get them to sign such contracts.
If they have no leverage, why is it acceptable to force them via the law? They could draw up fair contracts where both parties are happy and if they aren't they can walk away from it. It sounds like you are saying it's unfair because the dealers don't have to worry about the value they add to the manufacturers. You readily admit that the current arrangement is inefficient.
Not to say they don't, but the admirable qualities about the McDonald's corporation is that they are hyper-rational about business efficiency and public image. I don't see anything in the article illustrating that they were acting in a dirty manner.
I've read the bill (http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A07844&term...) several times now, and it only seems to prohibit the franchisor from forcing franchisees from doing certain things.
I'm not seeing text in here like, "We hereby force all franchisors to sell cars through franchisees." or "Selling directly to consumers is prohibited." or anything of the sort.
I am not a lawyer, perhaps someone more familiar with how selling cars works want to explain?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buyi...
Basically dealers have codified protections via the franchise laws(even in places like Texas, North Carolina, etc), and this hinders the direct sale of autos. Not just from Tesla, but also CarsDirect, Costco, etc.
"The commissioner shall not issue any certificate of registration authorized by this section to any franchisor, MANUFACTURER, DISTRIBUTOR BRANCH OR FACTORY BRANCH..."
The rest of bill then talks all about franchisors, and mentions manufacturers very little. So perhaps there's something in here that doesn't allow New York to give registration to manufacturers, and only makes rules for franchisors.
Still, this stuff is arcane. It's like reading assembly code.
The commissioner shall not issue any certificate of registration authorized by this section to any franchisor, MANUFACTURER, DISTRIBUTOR BRANCH OR FACTORY BRANCH,
(caps are additions)
I think the way Tesla has been doing business in many states is that they have just applied for dealership licenses.
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084963_new-york-auto-de...
Pretty soon things like this will become so commonplace they will be ignored (by people or the people being contacted) the same way 10 tornados a day would fail to get the attention of anyone but those directly impacted.
How come? In my experience dealerships provide a horrible experience, where you're always thinking "how am I being ripped off here?". What value do they provide that is suddenly required once you reach scale?
Note: This has nothing to do with good/bad experiences. That's not what defines a dealership.
I completely lost you there. Where are these competitive new entry level models?
e.g.: The Nissan Leaf absolutely does not compare with the Model S in range, speed, style, ecosystem, internals, etc, etc.
There really is no EV competition for Tesla. There is competition from non-EV luxury vehicles, but Tesla is beating most of them in price/performance and customer satisfaction.
Would you be impressed if I told you all the ways a BMW 7-series was superior to a Corolla?
Besides, your parent said:
... entry level entrants ...
I would argue that the Leaf is far, far, FAR more of an entry level electric car than a Tesla. Silicon Valley sometimes makes us think otherwise, but most of the USA isn't full of people who can easily afford a $70k+ vehicle.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-...
and this paper (PDF)
http://faculty.som.yale.edu/FionaScottMorton/documents/State...
Should be a useful primer. It explains how the dealership/franchise structure came to be, and why automakers prefer this model today.
Though I didn't get the part that fighting that now is futile (there were not enough details in the story). If enough people will be against these laws - they'll be cancelled, no matter how much power these dealers wield.
In a lot of political districts, the local auto dealer contributes more in taxes to the state/district/municipality than any group of citizens does. When these dealers call their congressman, the call gets answered.
While you are at it, ask your senator to protect pedestrians. http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/06/21/marty-golden-needs-to-...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/05/13/north_car...
UPDATE: Actually it appears Tesla is having a rough go of it in a lot of states, Colorado being the first one to oppose their efforts:
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20130525/APF/130525068...
Auto dealers are basically the guys trying to screw you over on the price of a new car. In other words, NOT Ford, or Toyota, or Volvo. But the guys selling the cars.
This is equivalent to, for example, mistaking the guy who runs a BP gas station with BP the company. Boycotting the gas station does jack shit to the bottom line of BP, though it does make for nasty public relations.
On top of that, he does so with no evidence that 'auto dealers' are even behind this bill being pushed through. Maybe it is the auto makers and not the dealers. Maybe it's a different source entirely, like the oil industry. Who the fuck knows?
And that's my point - this is an ambiguous incendiary tweet alleging something we don't know and can't prove. The only thing that's a real fact is there's a bill in New York and Elon Musk wants you to get mad about it.
Anyone who's following this issue, even cursorily. In my state of Virginia, it's no secret that the auto dealers have formed a cartel and are leaning on every level of government to forbid Tesla from selling cars here. This activity is not remotely secret, and is known to be happening in several states. There may be other groups pushing this anticompetitive legislation in NY, but the chance that the dealers are not is vanishingly small.
In New York, the legislative session is winding down, so it is a particularly dangerous time for bad legislation to be introduced.
That being said, I doubt a low volume car constitutes any significant amount of tax revenue.
Is there any other source who speaks this dialect of legalese and has concluded that that's what the bill would do? Have the bill's sponsors had a chance to explain the bill?
Read the bill. Line 11-17 of the bill text linked to in this thread.
"The commissioner shall not issue any certificate of registration authorized by this section to any franchisor, MANUFACTURER, DISTRIBUTOR BRANCH OR FACTORY BRANCH, as such [term is] TERMS ARE defined in section four hundred sixty-two of this title, OR TO ANY SUBSIDIARY, AFFILIATE OR CONTROLLED ENTITY THEREOF, except that the commissioner may renew such certificate previously issued or otherwise approved to operate to a franchisor prior to [May second, two thousand two] JULY FIRST, TWO THOUSAND SIX."
In other words, if you are a manufacturer (or subsidiary) of automobiles who wasn't in operation prior to 1 July, 2006, the Commissioner of the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles shall not authorize your registration as an auto dealer. If enacted, this bill would not allow Tesla to operate its outlets in New York.
Or not an exclusive, but add an outrageous fee to become a member of "Tesla Dealer" club.