“For us small businesses, we have no choice but to follow the party,” says Li Jun, a 50-year-old owner of a fish-farming business in the eastern Jiangsu province. “Even so, we’re not benefiting at all from government policies.” [0]
"The party’s efforts to place itself inside private companies have been, according to its own figures, very successful. One recent survey by the Central Organisation Department, the party’s personnel body, found that 68% of China’s private companies had party bodies by 2016, and 70% of foreign enterprises. Although these figures sound high, they don’t match the targets the party has set for itself. In Xi’s old stamping ground of Zhejiang, for example, officials set a target in August 2018 to have cells inside 95% of private businesses. There was a need, the survey said, to retain the revolutionary spirit inside the companies as their ownership was handed on to the next generation."[0]
I don’t mean to be blunt, so please don’t take offense when I say this in response:
>And as a high margin buyer it doesn't sit well with me knowing Tesla is subsidizing free HW upgrades out of my purchase price so it just feels like moving the problem around not actually solving it.
You shouldn’t buy high margin products if you care what the company does with the high margin. The same goes for Apple products. Apple’s high margin goes to pay devs and for decades long R+D products, many of them will fail. It also goes to pay settlements when they fuck up. Them’s the breaks.
Amortizing the cost would be better, without telling the user. Just charge everyone the same and factor in the cost of the free upgrade to the users with HW2.5. It’s not like this isn’t how it’s done elsewhere. High margin buyers subsidize low margin buyers all the time.
>Things are not the same as they were in 2016 with the introduction of the 200/mo subscription.
This does not change the fundamental fact that Tesla promised something and then did not deliver it. That is, they promised that the hardware shipping with the vehicles 2016 onward were FSD capable. They are not. Remember —- they took investor cash after this announcement. That matters.
> It doesn't make sense for Tesla to just ship out a bunch of the more powerful chips to people who never intend on using FSD.
By this you mean: “It isn’t in Tesla’s best immediate financial interest.” But we have laws and norms in place in the US to counter balance the interest of corporations vs that of customers. Two of those laws and norms is not lying to your customers and making them whole whole whenever you make a mistake.
As well, cars go through several owners. People purchased Teslas after the announcement with the value calculation that it was FSD capable. Tesla essentially robbed those customers of $1500 of resale value. That is, the customers expected to buy a car they could resell as FSD capable. Now they can’t.
>When everyone gets a degree it doesn’t make you stand out any more.
Then let’s talk when we get closer to everyone having a degree. 33% is not everyone and “a degree” is not a single product that can be compared 1:1 across each instance.
> most kids in the US need to take on a lot of debt just so the don’t get left behind
The average student loan debt for undergraduate degrees is $28,950. This is not “a lot of debt.”
According to the valuation analysts at Kelley Blue Book, the estimated average transaction price for a light vehicle in the United States was $37,876 in 2020.
That is to say, on average, students are taking on the debt for a 4 year education, that sets them up on average to earn a million dollars more in their lifetime than their peers who don’t, for less than the average transaction price for a light vehicle — an asset that depreciates ~20% when you take it off the lot.
And you get the keep the credentials a lot longer.
Except there is no 3rd party license to make software for Tesla. To make your metaphor apt, it would have to be “Selling you an Xbox that they claim can play Witcher 3 but then requiring you to buy Xbox 360 to play it.”
> They told you it had hardware that could support a full self-driving system that is safer than a human.
And this turned out to not be true, because if it were, they would have released FSD on this hardware.
Just imagine if Microsoft sold you PC hardware that they claimed would support windows 11 back in 2016, but now require a processor upgrade to support it. This is exactly the same situation.
There’s a confusion in terms here that is worth clearing up.
To have FSD requires the purchase of two products: the hardware and the software.
Cars purchased from 2016 onwards were claimed to already have the hardware. It is possible to purchase the car with the hardware for FSD only, and not the software. People in this situation were told that they already had the hardware for FSD. Now Tesla is saying that they don’t.
As the owner of two Teslas, as an investor, as a True Believer I have to say that Tesla fucked up here and need to be sued to make it right if they don’t fix this. Not with a “subscribe for two years and get it free.” They should just get the chip installed for free.
> We were sold something that hasn't held true, and I think a lot of people are very bitter about that.
In what way has it not held true? 33% of Americans have at least a four year degree and earn an average of $1m more than their peers without over their lifetimes.
By all measures, university is a gateway to easy money after. So long as you finish.