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Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

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Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#161

Post by talmand »

bobwaycott wrote: post #110
cobrausn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems he was sentenced not for stealing ribs, but because the threatened the store owner that confronted him, which is, in fact, a violent act. It also appears he was somewhat of a habitual offender, having been convincted of various violent and non-violent crimes many times previously. The sentence is somewhat harsh (eligible for parole in 12.5), but your comparison to the Taliban is absurd. EDIT: somewhat harsh…

The clarification here on the details is certainly nice to have. However, are you seriously suggesting that 50 years imprisonment is only somewhat harsh?! Taking 12.5 years at the minimum before being eligible for parole for stealing $35 ribs and "threatening" someone? By the way, saying "I've got a knife" and calling that a threat is both a stretch of what it means to threaten and what it means to call something a "…

I would think the sentence reflects more his continuing criminal career than the immediate crime at hand.

I'm not sure about this case, but it could much like the three strike laws mentioned above. He only got five years for the robbery, five years for the threat, and forty years for his habitual criminal activity. As stated, in three-strike territory he possibly would have gotten life simply for the robbery of $35 worth of ribs.

I agree with the above, singling out Texas as some kind of outlier for this type of thing doesn't seem quite right.

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#162

Post by protomyth »

Already__Taken wrote: post #149
protomyth wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just a car issue, it is a "protecting local business" issue. Every state has some industries that they mandate a middle man. They either do it through licensing or just straight up saying the manufacture cannot sell direct. Shallow articles like the link don't really help the situation. We really need to start looking at removing the government from business models when there is no actual public safety asp…

Not to nitpick but that law can go so long as interior decorators aren't going around moving walls in houses.

Moving walls actually requires a construction permit since it is generally not an interior decorator's job to move walls.

Hard to tell if you're trolling or showing what wrong-headed arguments are used by the industry to justify anti-competive laws.

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#163

Post by saraid216 »

crapshoot101 wrote: post #114
maeon3 wrote: post #31

Tesla said it best: "Tesla will sell its cars the way it wants. If some states don't allow that, then Tesla will simply sell them elsewhere." When a piece of a neural network becomes corrupt and entrenched beyond repair, (cancerous) the tumor or cancer fights to protect itself, there are two solutions to these kinds of problems. 1. One solution is what Musk is doing, treat the dealerships as a cancerous growth in the…

Oh dear god, this is overwrought. Elon Musk is not the righteous cause, and everyone opposing him is not the devil, and this is not some dramatic showdown (to paraphrase a line from Serenity). I support changes to the dealer system, but when you start the arguement by suggesting your opponent is akin to a cancer, you're not showing any interest in that. If the dealer system changes, it should do so for everyone, not…

Completely OT, but what was the original line? I don't recognize it and it's making me feel like I'm letting down my Browncoat cred. :(

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#164

Post by hotpockets »

thedufer wrote: post #119
blktiger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas has a little over 3x the population of Virginia with 4.5 times the number of executions. Keeping in mind that crime isn't necessarily consistent from place to place I don't think that is a drastically larger number proportionally.

That's assuming, of course, that Virginia is at all representative of the US as a whole. The median execution rate by state is about 1 per million residents since 1976. Texas's, while not the highest, is almost 1 per 50,000 residents. Its not the worst, but its still something of an outlier. The worst, incidentally, is Oklahoma, at about 1 per 40,000 residents.

Restating your numbers in consistent units (number per million) for easier comparison:

Median 1

Texas 20

Ok 25

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#165

Post by alexqgb »

nsxwolf wrote: post #148
alexqgb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear it. Just consider this poor bastard, who was recently sentenced by said morons to 50 years for the entirely non-violent act of shoplifting a package of ribs. www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/willie-smith-ward-rib-theft_n_3365554.html That's "justice", Texas style. Better than the Taliban's, I suppose. But not by much.

The charge was not shoplifting and that headline is preposterous. When will people get the difference between theft and robbery through their heads? One is a property crime. The other is a violent crime. But sure, just go ahead and say you'll get 50 years for shoplifting. You get more clicks and you can be seen as indignant and virtuous. EDIT: Ok, so I'm wrong about Ward actually threatening the clerk. But he was a m…

Uh, you didn't actually read the article, did you?

If you did, you'd understand that yes, it was shoplifting. He was apprehended after the fact, at which point the shoplifting was discovered. When asked if he had anything else, he replied that he had a knife, but didn't actually show it.

In other words, there was no violence committed or even threatened in the course of the crime. There was no violence committed or credibly threatened after the fact. There was simply a statement, which could easily be seen as a confession, that he had a knife in his possession.

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#166

Post by ajross »

bobwaycott wrote: post #160
shardling wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is true. However, are you actually arguing in fact? The whole point of arguing in fact is that you can prove someone wrong! The poster makes specific claims and you rebut them -- if I cared enough, I could do some investigation and see who is correct. That's not true when an argument consists entirely of a metaphor.

And the whole point of my question (re: arguing in fact) was that the parent was not arguing with facts, but was advancing suppositions with no provided factual basis. I was not rebutting any claims made. To that end, and as I stated clearly, I did the same, offering guesses at what might be going on in the dealer opposition based on experience working with dealerships before. But, ultimately, even my surmising lacks…

Good grief. I said "argue in fact", not "with facts". The point is to have a discussion about reality, using concepts from reality. Clearly you see the value in that becuase as shardling points out that's exactly what you did.

I don't see why you are willing to discuss the specifics of car dealership gamesmanship in Texas yet demand that I do so within the framework of an analogy to self-healing neural networks.

Basically: you're strawmaning like crazy. Stop it.

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#167

Post by codex »

ajross wrote: post #51
maeon3 wrote: post #31

Tesla said it best: "Tesla will sell its cars the way it wants. If some states don't allow that, then Tesla will simply sell them elsewhere." When a piece of a neural network becomes corrupt and entrenched beyond repair, (cancerous) the tumor or cancer fights to protect itself, there are two solutions to these kinds of problems. 1. One solution is what Musk is doing, treat the dealerships as a cancerous growth in the…

The metaphor is cute, but maybe overstated. Tesla isn't doing this because it's what a self healing network would do. Tesla is doing this because it's a rapidly-growing startup whose production facilities are heavily oversubscribed already. They have no net downsides to giving up the "Texas" market for now, because they don't have enough cars to sell even without Texas (and the handful of other such states). Eventual…

At a Tesla store last week, I was quoted 6-8 weeks for a Model S. How does that jive with being massively oversubscribed?

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#168

Post by bobwaycott »

ajross wrote: post #166
bobwaycott wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the whole point of my question (re: arguing in fact) was that the parent was not arguing with facts, but was advancing suppositions with no provided factual basis. I was not rebutting any claims made. To that end, and as I stated clearly, I did the same, offering guesses at what might be going on in the dealer opposition based on experience working with dealerships before. But, ultimately, even my surmising lacks…

Good grief. I said "argue in fact", not "with facts". The point is to have a discussion about reality, using concepts from reality. Clearly you see the value in that becuase as shardling points out that's exactly what you did. I don't see why you are willing to discuss the specifics of car dealership gamesmanship in Texas yet demand that I do so within the framework of an analogy to self-healing neural networks. Basi…

Seriously? Strawmaning like crazy? How so and where? I've set up no straw man here.

Your phrasing "argue in fact" was ambiguous to my reading, which is why I asked what you meant. And yet I didn't dispute or oppose anything you said. All I did was point out that, just as I was about to do, you were making some guesses at bets/motivations as an outsider. Since I'm not refuting anything you say, how can I be proposing a straw man?

Relax, friend. I made no demands that you discuss anything within the framework of an analogy to a self-healing neural network. Moreover, I was replying to shardling's comments that there specific (implicitly factual) claims made that could be determined correct or not with some investigation if he cared--to which I simply pointed out there were no factual claims made, but that we were both positing potentialities and guesses, not factual claims.

Can we take a step back and see there was an apparent misunderstanding of intention? We were not having a disagreement.

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#169

Post by wwweston »

bobwaycott wrote: post #158
refurb wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A question about floorplans: Is the floorplan cost flat? I ask because if you take into account both sunk costs and the fact that two identical models would have the same floorplan cost per day, why would they care to sell the older car first? Let's say you have two cars on the floor: Car A - just arrived Car B - sitting for 100 days The cost of the floorplan is $10/day (let's say) If a customer comes in and buys car…

Well, floorplan financing is a finance vehicle like any other, so terms are different among participating providers. Also, I'm a bit unsure of what you mean by "sunk costs". Each vehicle ordered into inventory is an advance on the line of credit that has repayment fees and interest. Each vehicle sold then translates into paying the floorplan provider the advance amount + fees. In your example, I'm unsure of how you f…

> Car A just arrived. Car B has been sitting for 100 days. > Car A cost $20,000 and is on the lot for 0 days @ $10/day. > Total repayment? $20,000. > Car B cost $20,000 and is on the lot for 110 days @ > $10/day. Total repayment? $21,100.

I still don't know if I see the difference between the two. We're at Day N (where Car A has been there 0 days and Car B has been there for 110 days). If we sell Car A but not Car B, on Day N+1 we will pay an additional $10 in financing. If we sell Car B but not Car A, on Day N+1 we will pay an additional $10 in financing.

It doesn't matter which bucket we put the additional marginal cost of keeping a single car on the lot, it's the same overal expense to the dealership. Unless the marginal cost increases for a car over time, which, for all I know, it might.

Re: Texas won't allow Tesla to sell electric cars directly

#170

Post by maeon3 »

crapshoot101 wrote: post #114
maeon3 wrote: post #31

Tesla said it best: "Tesla will sell its cars the way it wants. If some states don't allow that, then Tesla will simply sell them elsewhere." When a piece of a neural network becomes corrupt and entrenched beyond repair, (cancerous) the tumor or cancer fights to protect itself, there are two solutions to these kinds of problems. 1. One solution is what Musk is doing, treat the dealerships as a cancerous growth in the…

Oh dear god, this is overwrought. Elon Musk is not the righteous cause, and everyone opposing him is not the devil, and this is not some dramatic showdown (to paraphrase a line from Serenity). I support changes to the dealer system, but when you start the arguement by suggesting your opponent is akin to a cancer, you're not showing any interest in that. If the dealer system changes, it should do so for everyone, not…

The dealer system cannot be salvaged, it is using the law to subvert Justice. You are part of the cancer by suggesting we try to massage the cancer instead of removing it as the useless appendage it is that only hassles customers and provides no useful service other than putting up a barrier to buying cars at the expense of people who want to buy them.

When I see a thug standing by the pool of water, and punching everyone who comes and gets water for their lunch money, I don't enter a dialog with the thug for proposed changes. I remove it, for the good of all.

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