Gov't Funded Electric Car Company Goes Out of Business 195
thecarchik writes "Consider yesterday's collapse of electric car company Green Vehicles an object lesson in why it's a bad idea for cities to invest in the risky business of start-up car companies — perhaps especially start-up electric car companies. Even such companies with a viable product have seen their fair share of financial troubles, but Green Vehicles did not even have a product to sell off at a fire sale. The city of Salinas, California learned that lesson as Green Vehicles shut its doors, costing the city more than $500,000."
Just cities? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say it's a bad idea for *anyone* to invest in a company that has no product and/or does not make money.
Business plans are a dime a dozen; ability to execute is an uncommon skill.
Shocking (Score:2, Insightful)
A "green jobs" investment that went sour. A car without a market. Socialists everywhere scratching their heads.
Yes the pun was intended.
If you can't afford to do it, don't do it! (Score:5, Insightful)
It may not be an impossible task, but if inventing the next generation of EV were easy and cheap--and in this context, I'd suggest that a $500,000 investment is cheap--then everyone would be doing it.
Meanwhile.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad they wern't 'too big to fail' while making nothing.
Re:Meanwhile.. (Score:2, Insightful)
You realize it's hundreds of billions, right? And over short term, bailout loans of several trillion dollars were made as well.
You realize virtually all of it was payed back, with interest, right?
Re:half million? (Score:2, Insightful)
But I'd rather fund a new startup that fails, rather than fund the good-ol boy network that siphons money off the top to fund their retirement account.
Or they could refrain from confiscating people's hard earned money at gunpoint to hand out to favored group, whether it's the good-ol boy network or some green nonsense.
Government is the probelm (Score:2, Insightful)
A little is lost on where the tax money came from. A homeless man buying booze. A retired man on a fixed income paying more for his food. People who really cannot afford to give a cent. Taxation in the name of government tampering with the free market is the most insidious device yet conceived by the mind of man.
Forever will these well meaning busy bodies toil in the name of our betterment, because they do so free of guilt, thinking honestly that the strong arm of government is the way to prosperity. How can it be that the wants and desires of the few people elected to office know better than the many individuals and industry from whom they take? How can you tell me you have a better idea for .30 cents on every dollar I make? Look at what the government does with your money! They treat is as if it was theirs to burn! They call steeling less from us a "tax expenditure".
Just think about what that means for a second. Tax expenditure.
For a tax break to be a tax expenditure all profit must first belong to the government. What form of government are we running here? We do not serve at the behest of these temporary politicians. They serve at our will, and we can dismiss any of them any time we desire, and do so in a lawful and peaceful manner. As Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America(1835) [wikipedia.org] said, and I'm paraphrasing: "The difference between the American and European democracies is that in Europe the government cedes a portion of its power to the people while in America the people cedes a portion of its power to the government. " For too long have we imported the top down aristocratic style of rule from Europe. We are a free people and we demand freedom! Government is a necessary evil, the problem, not the solution.
The free market does not need a government solution. Read I, Pencil My Family Tree: [econlib.org] written from the point of view of a pencil detailing the process involved in its construction. It talks about the hundreds of processes required for the creation of the simple pencil, and the lack of government control and the harmony created in the absence of such control. The author talks about the "Invisible Hand". This is the invisible force that guides you to get a job, or get a better job, or buy a car, or a candy bar. Basically the desires of society. The government cannot know your desires and cannot want to fulfill them more than you yourself want to. All the government can do is take away from your desires, guide them in new directions you never wanted to go, all the while claiming to do so because they "know better than you" and with the threat of violence if you don't comply. This is a fetter on the invisible hand that can and should be removed!
A free economy is a prosperous one. A happy free people is a prosperous one. The strong arm of government cannot force people to be prosperous and happy, it is the greatest folly that can befall man, destruction in the name of prosperity.
Re:Government is the probelm (Score:2, Insightful)
You're deluded. To just pick one of the many obviously wrong things in your post: you claim that it is offensive to think that the government is entitled to some share of our individual profits. But we wouldn't have those profits without a functioning government.
To paraphrase a wise man, taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.