bob13579

Balanced Payments only allows transfers to customers with Wells Fargo accounts, right? Does Stripe allow transfers to all banks?

Can you give me an actual link that explains what you're specifically talking about?

Fisker and Solyndra and several others couldn't pay back their loans. The government didn't arrest any of them and didn't take any of their personal assets. The debt was simply discharged.

Who determines what needs funding? A lobby of People Who Know Things?

If you wanted to curb carbon emissions, there are many more efficient ways to do so.

This is just funny. Which car manufacturers on that $7,500 federal tax subsidy electric car list get $500M loans to build out their electric cars?

"What many of them did instead was to go bankrupt and ask for bailouts."

This is quite astonishing. A few large American car companies with large pension liabilities needed the subsidies (I would have let them failed and let more efficient car manufacturers take over their assets, personally). Every other large manufacturer didn't need subsidies.

"Furthermore, the incumbents had plenty of chance to innovate."

The combustible engine is more efficient than ever. We're getting many more miles per a gallon of gas than we ever had. The efficiency of the engine has done much, much, much more than electric vehicles to curb carbon emissions. Going forward, making the combustible engine and hybrids more efficient will do magnitudes more to curb carbon emissions than all-electric vehicles.

How do you explain the $7,500 subsidy for each Tesla sold?

Also, the government would have gifted them the money regardless of their ability to pay it back. Fisker couldn't pay back theirs, as did many other energy companies that went bankrupt. No one was arrested and no personal assets were taken.

"But to your point, yes it is okay to give them half a billion. I don't see why government should not have supported them."

I find it quite outrageous that we're enriching well-connected billionaires and millionaires, but what do I know?

"And as time has shown it was a right"

Not really. Taxpayers are still on the hook for $7,500 for each Tesla sold.

The federal tax credit of $7,500, plus any state subsidies, for each Tesla sold doesn't ring a bell to you?

"they know what they're doing, and they're not picking winners and losers, they're playing the same game every investor plays: trying to decide who is going to win or lose before it happens."

The government should be in the venture capitalist business funding companies based on the recommendations of the board of People Who Know Things, now?

"As for dealerships, the reason Tesla doesn't have to go through them is because they don't have any preexisting agreements with the dealerships."

Other smaller car manufacturers are having to go through dealerships, even with zero pre-existing relationships. Why should Tesla, which has a market cap that far exceeds those aforementioned manufacturers, get special rules?

So any startup that competes in the pharmaceutical sector or biotechnology industry should be given hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded loans?

No, if you study the automotive industry, you'll see that those car manufacturers have been trying to get around those dealers by building their own dealerships (which are quickly shut) or selling their cars online (which again are prevented). They're not lobbying for dealerships in countries where you can sell cars directly to the consumer. Take Brazil or Germany for instance.