> Monopolies are inherently bad because not being subject to competitive forces
Some companies are a "monopoly" in a small sector, but there are substitute products which are close enough to provide market-like forces. Don't want to pay for a Tesla? Buy an internal-combustion engine car, a gas-electric hybrid car, pay a premium for a Fisker Kharma, get one of the less desirable tiny electrics from any one of a dozen tiny-production manufacturers, or simply buy a Tesla used.
If Tesla was a monopoly, they could (would?) charge far more now than they are for the early delivery units (time-price discrimination). As far as I can tell, they have biased early delivery Model 3 cars to premium features, but they are charging the same price in delivery month 1 than delivery month 3.
> If that makes you sound like a libertarian it speaks poorly to their general economic literacy.
I'm reasonably well versed on the basics of economics (both classical and behavioral). "Libertarian" comes with a connotation, which I don't prefer to adopt. Some of it comes from Ayn Rand acolytes, some from the ignorance/naiveté of AnCaps (although I admit that there's enough ignorance on all sides of economics).
But more extreme libertarians tend to think that the market will correct itself faster and better than any government intervention, so "monopolies don't exist for long in free-market conditions" (although this assumes perfect information transparency, which never has and never will exist).
> On the flip side, Tesla is also treated a lot better than smaller competitors, because its size enables it to play states off against each other
Every big company that has already raised the funds (or promise of funds) can get similar attention and courting when shopping for a cite for jobs. It's not unique to Tesla, or even large companies:
* Amazon is shopping with HQ2 to major metro areas
* Google Fiber had cities put together competitive bids, including cutting red tape and cheap access to utility poles
* Wisconsin just offered a *massive* tax discount package to woo FoxConn to build a factory in the US
* Almost *every* auto manufacturer gets courted by different states to build plants (incl. Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, etc) in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama
* Boeing gets many bids on their plants and Airbus recently got similar incentives for building a plant in Alabama
* The Kansas Cities (two adjacent cities in two states) have long been at economic war, offering unsustainable tax incentives to keep companies from "crossing the street" into another tax jurisdiction[1]
* Video Effects ("VFX") is in a tax-free treadmill[2]
[1]
https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599368-missou...[2] http://www.studiodaily.com/2013/04/ending-the-vfx-crisis-wha...