danhak

They've taken one of the most walkable, lively communities in LA--where you could just wander around ambling into funky shops, cafes and bars--and turned it into their private, cordoned-off distributed campus.

One of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the city has turned dead and boring. I lived in Venice when I first moved to LA and absolutely adored it, but there's literally nobody left except techies and tourists. If that's the sort of place Snapchat employees want to live then more power to them. Let them stay by the beach as LA's center of gravity continues to shift to DTLA and the eastside.

-Peter Thiel, 2016

I guess to Thiel, a saner, more sensible immigration policy involves invoking 9/11 to ban people from 7 countries not involved in that attack from the U.S, including permanent residents on a legal path to citizenship and holders of valid visas. All done with zero warning via executive order and without conferring with DHS or DOJ.

I must be missing the part where people are being forced to work for founders they disagree with. "Free market" and all that...

Like it or not, companies operate within a policy framework. The decisions and actions that are being undertaken absolutely are affecting companies in material ways and it's entirely appropriate for leadership to publicly advocate for / against policies according to its interests--whether it relates to trade, recruitment, culture / morale. Hell, even for pure PR reasons as is surely the case at times.

Therefore, if you're opposed to the death penalty and intend to vote yes on both measures--reasoning, for instance, that the reforms on 66 such as expedited appeals for death row inmates are an improvement regardless of whether 62 passes--you're undermining your own vote.

That's exactly backward though. The Ivy League schools all have need-blind admissions and meet 100% of demonstrated financial need (for U.S. students)

The Federal tax credits for plug-in cars, for example, are available to all automakers (or more accurately, the customers of all automakers). You could start an electric car company today and your customers would be eligible for the credit. Nissan Motor Co. is the #1 beneficiary of the tax credits to date.

All automakers were eligible for the DOE's ATVM loan program. Tesla received (and paid back) about $500 million under the auspices of the program. Ford received $5.9 billion and Nissan received $1.4 billion. Neither Ford nor Nissan have paid back the loan.

The Federal government bailed out GM and Chrysler to the tune of about $20 billion.

We've spent trillions of dollars to secure our interests in the middle east, which keeps oil supplies stable to the benefit of ICE automakers.

People always complain about government subsidies when there are articles about Elon Musk, but it is hardly ever even-handed.

This article is 100% spot on though--it is a completely regressive policy and privileges those with enough capital to purchase real estate at the expense of those who have no choice but to rent.

But you're really just throwing around a bunch of innuendo and five-dollar words to suggest the incentive structure that Tesla (and all other automakers) have at their disposal is bogus. You've provided no evidence, and Occam's Razor offers a much more reasonable explanation: becoming energy independent and sustainable would be in our national interest in a massive way, and policymakers decided these incentives offer a reasonable risk / reward for accelerating that goal.

If you object on some philosophical / libertarian grounds then fine, I disagree with you but can understand where you're coming from. But don't throw around unsubstantiated claims of corruption and "insidious realities" and expect anyone to be sympathetic to your argument when you're not actually saying anything of substance.

That's like saying the top VC firms are all inept because most of the startups they fund fail.

It has often been the role of our government to make risky bets in order to advance step-changes in our society's progress. Those bets have resulted in such things as spaceflight, modern telecommunications, lasers and the internet to name just a few.

If Tesla indeed transforms the world as they are poised to do, their success will far exceed the cumulative failures of Solyndra and the like.

Not to mention, Tesla's competition are subsidized in many ways, most of which are more subtle than the tax credits for alternative fuels that you allude to. Failure to price in the health and climate externalities of fossil fuels amounts to subsidy, as do the trillions of dollars spent on overseas entanglements to secure fossil fuel supplies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf15nMnayXk

All he's got is a very hand-wavy argument and a chart that abruptly cuts off circa 1994.

> The driver in Montana was headed from Seattle to Yellowstone National Park when he crashed on a two-lane highway near Cardwell. ..."It's a winding road going through a canyon, with no shoulder"

From the Tesla Owners Manual:

> Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is primarily intended for driving on dry, straight roads, such as highways and freeways.

...

> Autosteer is particularly unlikely to operate as intended in the following situations:

• When driving on hills.

• The road has sharp curves or is excessively rough.

I'm also skeptical of the long-term prospects of this business model based on the rise of transportation-as-a-service and the inevitable demise of gasoline in favor of EV's. Both of those factors will be especially pronounced in the Bay Area, where this startup hopes to gain a foothold.