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Comment by victoro | Hacker News Reader

Didn't see him complaining when the government was subsidizing Tesla's R&D with cheap loans and tax incentives [1]. The government giveth and the government taketh away. Not saying I agree with this decision by NJ, but its somewhat disingenuous to take a moralistic argument (corruption) at face value from a party that possibly stands to benefit financially from the alternative decision. (Yes I'm assuming that pg is a Tesla stockholder).

[1] - http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732465940...

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Help me understand. Are you arguing that PG (or anyone) cannot take the position that the federal government subsidizing the EV sector is good, while simultaneously taking the position that a state government caving to incumbent political pressure to pass an anti-consumer ruling is bad?

Are those two beliefs internally inconsistent in some way? Are you basically arguing that you can either believe in no government involvement, or accept government's involvement on the condition that one must abrogate the moral right to complain about its anti-consumer behavior; that there is no other consistent position to take?

Maybe I'm not understanding what exactly you are saying.

The second portion of your argument appears to be an ad hominem claim that we should disclaim PG's statements because of the possibility that he may own Tesla equity. Do you have an actual claim beyond that?

The OP asserting that the pg statement in question was "an astute observation" implies that pg is an impartial observer who is in no way biased by his ties to the startup ecosystem. I disagree with that assertion.

The pg quote that OP provides is very brief -- State/city govt ruling against Tesla/Uber == corruption -- and more an opinion than a true argument because no evidence/elaboration is provided. That Tesla's (very different) situation is equated with Uber's further points to a hastily voiced opinion rather than a reasoned argument. Hence, I would argue that an ad hominem approach is appropriate because there is not much else to go on. Pg voiced an opinion and I made a statement that mentioned some biases that he was likely to have that informed said opinion.

Yes, it is known that Tesla is only profitable because of government incentives. But such laws don't do much to correct it - if anything, they make the matter worse by making Tesla more dependent on government whim.

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