100% real ha. The fan suction part that let it wall ride will actually ship. Should be bonkers fast on a race track. The actual flying version is invite only though. But it's real!
But tbh, I don't see it being really that usable. Decent suction requires an immaculate track.
It would need active hydraulic suspension and the ability to drop the car down into sport mode for the suction to work, possibly including active skirt.
You guys understand that Tesla's success isn't an example of free market capitalism, right?
It's a kind of market socialism.
Tesla is successful because of Federal and state subsidies and mandates. Musk's billions are almost entirely because he exploits the socialism of the US economy. NASA billions, electric car billions, monopoly grants and Federal contracts for Starlink, et cetera.
Elon Musk is just another statist crony in the political class.
Well, it's not "free market capitalism". Capitalism originally, and as it is today, IS cronyism, corporate chartering, cronies collaborating with the state.
It's Marx who mutilated the term to associate free markets with it. Originally, capitalism was coined by Proudhon and Blanc to refer to the political class monopolizing capital using the state, the way Musk and Trump do.
EVERYONE, except the political class, recognized that this control of capital is evil...so Marx, in order to get support for his own brand of tyranny, claimed to be advocating against capitalism, even though he specifically wanted to control capital, himself.
All of which would be a silly history point, except that people on the "left" and the "right" actually both hate THIS kind of capitalism, the kind Musk and Trump engage in. If we started using the same terminology, we'd find we can team up against the political class.
I'm not so sure about that. We can absolutely agree that the existence of subsidies and mandates is illegitimate, and that they should all be repealed.
However, it's precisely the state having the power to offer subsidies and mandates that creates a kind of prisoner's dilemma for firms in the market: if they don't take the subsidies, but their competitors do, then they have now been artificially disadvantaged by state intervention.
The only way for the market distortions to actually be avoided is for every participant to willingly refuse the offer, but that creates a coordination problem that seldom results in the best-case outcome.
And the state has a strong incentive to offer subsidies and mandates precisely because of this phenomenon: it shifts accountability of firms away from the market to the political state, and has significant financial and reputational rewards for the politicians advancing these programs.
Simply put, the existence of "crony capitalism" is itself the consequence of interventions and distortions initiated and maintained by the state, which create conditions that essentially require firms to participate in it in order to remain competitive in the politically distorted market.
If we imagine a world where the state was sufficiently restrained, and no subsidies and mandates were ever on offer, things would absolutely be better, but it's not clear that the market leaders would be some entirely different set of firms from the ones that are most successful today.
Arguing that Tesla is the market leader in EVs because of government favors implies that the company has no other operational, engineering, or marketing strengths that would lead them to success in an undistorted market, and I don't think that's remotely the case. They're still designing and manufacturing products that people willingly purchase, and they're still making profit from each sale regardless of government subsidies.
He is just playing by the rules in the system he lives in.
I hate taxes and tax credits but I utilize everything legal to reduce my burden if the system had other government benefit programs that I qualified for I would probably use those as well. I donāt think the government should give away any of our money to anyone for any reason but if they are going to I guess getting more for less is good and innovation is good. Trying to be an optimist about a flawed system while still advocating for reform.
There is a difference between someone like you and me using every tax credit we can and a person so rich they can buy influence to make sure the rules benefit them and buy them more access and projects to further enrich themselves. Not the same thing.
I disagree. If you vote the Mortgage Interest Deduction because it saves you thousands of dollars in income taxes, you're exactly like a billionaire bribing the Federal government, just on a smaller scale.
That's one of the big reasons we don't at least have a flat income tax, because of people who are for lower/flatter taxes...but don't touch their Mortgage Interest Deduction.
Likewise, you using a tax credit is the same as a billionaire taking government funding, just on a smaller scale.
My point is that when you exploit the system to get free tax dollars, you ARE NOT contributing to the economy. It may be reasonable for you to do it, but nobody should lie and claim this makes you brilliant, or even one who benefits the community.
If you get "free" government cheese, you're not making society richer. If Musk gets tax dollars to put more into electric cars than the market would allow, then he's not making society richer, either.
My point is that when you exploit the system to get free tax dollars, you ARE NOT contributing to the economy.
Surely that's a matter of specifics, no? If I spend my day doing work that generates $500 worth of value, then I go and throw a brick through a window, causing $100 worth of damage, my activities of the day have still generated a net gain of $400 in value, haven't they?
Most of your arguments in this thread are rooted in this absolutist idea that a single illegitimate act invalidates every legitimate act for all time, or that if a category contains a single element that produced of a bad outcome, then every other member of the category is implicated in that outcome. This is just bad reasoning.
Because he came up with ingenious ways of doing things at lower cost and more efficiently and all other bidders aka NASA couldnāt compete and he won contracts and bettered the world 100 times over. Government investment happens and Elon exceeded. Donāt yell at the clouds about Elon if you donāt want government investing in things.
Nothing the state does improves the world. At best, they can be restrained to do less harm.
But your argument is irrelevant. The point is that Musk didn't get rich producing well-being for the society, he got rich because he was the most successful crony, exploiting the state's legal plunder of the community.
No your argument is irrelevant because you are arguing about something that doesnāt exist. Be mad at the system then change the system and stop bitching about people who take advantage of the system. You are trying to sound smart but you just sound ignorant.
No, Musk is an example of the corrupt political class picking the winners and losers. We have no reason to assume that the particular ventures Musk engaged in would have ever succeeded at all if not for that.
Would Musk have chosen well and created actual wealth for the community in a free market? We can't know. Maybe he would have. But as it is, all we know is that he cronied his way to the top.
I was more impressed with SpaceX before it became nothing but a glorified NASA contractor.
You donāt even know what youāre talking about. They got a big contract from NASA likeā¦ 20 years ago? The vast majority of their revenue is not from them. The guy is just a good businessman and thereās nothing he could do that would convince the demographic that contributes the absolute least to admit that.
They are the only ones still selling EVs without the credit. The credit was not at point of sale but a credit on taxes after the fact. It just subsidized the rich customers more than anything. Bad policy for sure but definitely not the only reason tesla worked.
For a small window, yes. But not any more and wasn't that big of a number overall. Don't get me wrong, stop all that shit. But tesla would be in a better spot in an ancap society not worse.
You are arguing that Tesla and Elon, the richest man in the world would be better off in a society that didnāt create the easy monetary system that made him the richest man in the world.
In an ancap system Tesla isnāt worth more than the entire auto industry combined.
Elon has been a government project since at least 2006.
SpaceX got money from NASA's COTS program which was created because Musk complained he couldn't get a contract with NASA. Michael Griffin is the person who created the COTS program.
Michael Griffin, formerly worked for the CIA and also traveled with Musk to Russia when Musk was starting to make SpaceX.
SpaceX was saved from bankruptcy both by the COTS program as well as by a billion dollar contract afterward. These pograms primarily awarded money to SpaceX (the company that Musk took Griffin to Russia to found) and Orbital Sciences Corporation, a company for which Griffin previously worked.
Musk used his good fortune as Griffin's favorite money pit to loan money to Tesla and to buy junk bonds issued by SolarCity (which would be bought by Tesla).
Musk's entire fortune was set for failure without government intervention.
None of this is talk about how SolarCity or Tesla directly interacted with the government as well.
Because that's where the cash is. Without that system you can't say what would or would not happen. If you think someone like Elon would not win in an even more merit based system, you are not paying attention.
I agree, being friends with government officials handing out billion dollar contracts is where the cash is.
And I never said he wouldn't succeed at something, but his current family of companies in their current form exist because of tax payer dollars and government contacts.
Would he have done something different? Sure, probably.
Would his companies look anything like they do today? Probably not because they depended on him having that nice government cushion early on, so maybe they'd be more limited, more focused, or in different fields altogether.
We are so far from what an ancap would would be talking about what would be vs now is just silly. Of course everything would be different. That's the point. But people like Elon would be MORE successful with less government not less. Sure that success would be different. But we would have colonies all over the solar system if we had gone ancap in 1913 instead of the hot mess direction we went.
I get that you really like Elon Musk, but I am far from assuming that someone who gambled his entire success on his government buddy giving him a ton of cash to stave off bankruptcy would be the most succesful man in a counterfactual ancap world.
That doesn't mean he'd be a loser, but he would have been free to fail when he made the gambles he did, too, so it is impossible to predict.
All I know is that in our current world he is a DoD project and a leech.
"Starlinkās contentious relationship with broadband subsidies began at the federal level. The Federal Communications Commission initially awarded SpaceX $885.5 million through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) in 2020, one of the largest allocations in the program. However, the FCC reversed that decision in 2022, rejecting Starlinkās application on the grounds that the company had failed to demonstrate it could deliver the promised service at the required speeds and that satellite technology was not the most cost-effective solution for many of the designated areas."
Wait I thought we were talking about tesla? Also the thing you are talking about was reversed. And the people that did get the cash wasted it. Yes government programs suck but that's totally unrelated to this thread.
Elon isn't above socialism is the point. He didn't become the richest man on earth by capitalism alone. He's not some genius capitalist success story like you wish. He's just a nepo baby who throws money at things and is happy to take government handouts and play politics if it suits him.
I used to think this until I saw private companies become inefficient and more expensive as soon as they get government money. Often with roadwork jobs, the owners of the contractors are friends with the politicians and will bid low and then go over the bid and get granted more money
Trump has made this donor family extremely rich. With no bid contracts, they've only built 3 miles of wall. And what they have built is getting eroded quickly by the weather.
You seem to be describing well regulated capitalism.
That's not the software we're running, we're running crony capitalism.
Crony capitalism is worse than being directly government run because now, lobbies exist, and kick money back to politicians, and have to support corporate infrastructure and buildings and executives with no standardized pay rates.
Even if you accept that a civil servant isn't as motivated as a private hire, which I would dispute but let's go with this theory, there's no reason to believe you are saving money after you consider the millions that are spent on lobbies and bribes that simply doesn't exist with in house government workers doing a job.
Seriously, think about it, if your spending 10 million on any project which system results in more dollars going to the average worker vs being concentrated at the top by people who aren't really working?
One of these systems just has a marketing department and a rich guy at the top whose whole job is convincing people that the way that enriched him is the best way while you never have to see the people at the bottom who got screwed over, and contractors he never paid.
What makes you think governament corporations wont have lobbies? All the the ineficiencies that you talked about also exist in the governament but its worse because they dont have competition so there is no punishment for such ineficiencies.
lol no it wouldnāt. You could argue that Tesla wouldnāt be where it is today without tax credits and loans that were paid back with interest but in no world would it go bankrupt without them today. Arenāt you guys all about subsidies for green companies or do you just hate this because Elon owns the company?
Why is it when a private business is required to update the road infrastructure itās always on budget and in time while when the government does a road project it is over budget and takes decades?
When BMW opened up their SUV plant in SC they had to build off ramps on interstate and redo the hwy its off of. The roads are all better and nicer than the rest of SC roads. Go look at Disney world. How did they put in all that asphalt without government central planning?
I'm not arguing in favor of state roads. I'm simply pointing out that calling Elon a socialist for benefitting from the state for person game applies to many of us as well
I'm not sure how this "achievement" benefits anyone other than a pr stunt. It's not a "flying car" it cannot take you anywhere by flight. It's a stunt vehicle. It's like a nerdy monster truck show without the smashing just stunts and barrel rolls. If and when they achieve sustained flight at an affordable price point I will be impressed. Give me functionality not a stunt show.
It's an engineering statement -- they're showing off that they actually managed to incorporate fully functional rocket thrusters into the form factor of a normal car. That's a significant technical achievement, regardless of whether the specific demo is viable as a marketable product.
Even if this was an actual flying car, which it isnt, ain't no way it would become commercialized with how much bureucratic tape is attached to air travel. If you think the FAA will let any normal citizen get a flying car, you'd be insane. Air taxi prototypes have been made since the world wars. We likely would've had flying cars before the 2000s if the government actually would allow for such a thing.Ā
That video was AI, I donāt care what they say, and this vehicle will be delayed by āproduction problemsā until the end of time because itās physically impossible and Musk just made them announce it because he will bully and overwork his staff until āthey get it right,ā but they never will because itās impossible and obviously by this post it was just meant as a political ploy to help Republicans in the midterms.
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u/DeltaSolana Recreational McNukes 1d ago
Wait, that cybertruck with RCS thrusters was real??
I just immediately dismissed it as AI.