- May 1, 2016
- 28,839
- 56,210
- AFL Club
- Carlton
- Moderator
- #651
The majority of invention comes from government, not business. Businesses cannot take the risks necessary to work on something that could very well be a dead end (if an interesting one) until said dead end becomes profitable. Businesses therefore funnel innovation down lines of profit; what can be made money from fastest.Honest question: do we really have a problem with Tesla utilising tax breaks in order to develop and produce EVs? In terms of return on investment for taxpayers, they have kept their side of the bargain by successfully developing cleaner EV and battery tech. They've also paid their government loan back early (contrast this with the other major auto makers who received handouts and pissed them up against a wall).
So many attacks over gov subsidies that you would expect from RWNJs but make no sense coming from the left. I know lithium batteries have their own environmental issues, but do we want to just keep running internal combustion engines forever and not move forward? How many more proxy wars for energy control do we want to see? How many more world leaders being bought and sold by the fossil fuel lobby?
I don't have an issue with Tesla using tax breaks to develop electric vehicles. What I take issue with is governments outsourcing research and development to Tesla or other businesses, because that limits the potential of that R&D to merely what is profitable soonest.
I also think you're conflating multiple complaints into a single issue, and they shouldn't be treated as one. Fossil fuel lobbyists should be eliminated from the political process worldwide, but that is an issue with governmental corruption, not neoliberal outsourcing of government function. Only by conflating the two together do you get the discrepancy, and even then only if you squint.