I’ve spent a few days thinking about the Tesla Roadster reveal and landed somewhere I haven’t seen much discussion. I’m neither a Tesla fanboy nor a Tesla hater. And I couldn’t care less whether what we saw technically qualifies as a flying car. Three takeaways: (1) The risk of that live demonstration going horribly wrong was real. Almost no CEO would willingly expose their company to that kind of public humiliation for a product with so little financial upside. Elon did. (2) That willingness to attempt the seemingly impossible is what makes Tesla special. It’s also arguably Elon’s greatest contribution to America. He’s helped bring back something we’ve lost. The American spirit of chasing big scary ideas that most people think are impossible. That mindset is spreading across a new generation of founders and its long term impact on America’s future could dwarf anything Tesla ever sells. I think this is deeply underappreciated. (3) Can we just acknowledge how insanely cool that moment was? We’ve reached a strange place culturally where even extraordinary feats of human ingenuity immediately become arguments about why they don’t count. Not everything needs to be a debate. Sometimes we should just be able to stand back together and marvel at what humans are capable of. I’ve been both bullish and critical of Tesla’s ambitions over the years. But watching Elon and his team push the boundaries of what’s possible reminds me why I’m glad we have him. Whether the Roadster ever makes Tesla a dollar or impacts $TSLA stock price is almost beside the point. We need more people willing to risk failure in pursuit of things the rest of us think are impossible. Because when they succeed we all win.
My post about France went viral. Thousands of likes. Many Americans told me: "Democrats aren't socialists. America will never be France." I want to answer that seriously, step by step.
Start with a simple observation. Look at what has gotten cheaper in America over the last 25 years: TVs, phones, software, clothes, toys. Now look at what has exploded: college tuition, healthcare, childcare, housing.
What separates the two lists? The first lives in competitive markets. The second is exactly where government is most involved: subsidies, mandates, licensing, zoning, regulation.
College. Washington lends students almost unlimited money. Universities know the money will always come, so they raise tuition and hire more administrators. The student pays the bill for twenty years. More government money, higher prices.
Housing. Why can't a nurse buy a home in the city where she works? Not because of capitalism. Because of zoning laws, permits, environmental reviews, years of procedure to build a single building. The most expensive places to live in America are the places where it's hardest to build. When building is nearly illegal, prices explode.
Healthcare. The patient almost never sees the price. A third party pays, regulations limit who can compete, and costs climb year after year with no one able to say no.
So here is the trap. The problems you suffer from are not the failure of free markets. They are the places where the market has already been replaced by the state. And the solution you're being offered is more of the same.
That's the Trojan horse. It always works the same way. A real problem. A generous-sounding promise. A program that makes things worse. Then the failure of that program becomes the argument for the next one. People who lived under communism in Poland learned to recognize the lie and the mask the lie wears. The lie never presents itself as a lie. It presents itself as compassion.
In France we are at the end of that road. Debt we can never repay. Young people who can't afford a home. Our best people leaving. And every few years our cities burn. Nobody voted for this. They voted for one more generous promise, fifty years in a row.
If you're a Republican, share this with the Democrat in your life. Not to win an argument. To start a conversation.
If you're a Democrat, I'm not asking you to switch teams. I'm asking you to look at the pattern. Wherever the state took over, life became unaffordable. Don't fix the failures of government with more government.
Stay American. Ask for less state, not more.
@ZacksJerryRig Say what your really mad about. That Elon supported Trump and he shut off the faucet of USAID money being funneled to Democrats. Which is the party you support. Obviously.
There's an entirely new auto market being opened up by FSD.
My wife and I moved into a retirement community last year, and we were joined by my brother and his wife. Our homes are almost next door to each other. Being longtime Tesla owners, we joined the EV group that meets once a month and shares information. I offered to talk about my experience with FSD, and they were excited to hear about it. So I prepared some slides and videos, freely purloined from the great material on X.
The results were pretty astounding. The average monthly meetup usually had, perhaps, a couple of dozen people. Instead, the meeting notice talking about FSD drew a packed house of perhaps a hundred people, and we had to turn people away as the room was full.
Well, that was last quarter's meeting. This quarter's meeting was held last week, to a significantly expanded group. And what did we hear? We heard about a couple that had stopped driving, their car sitting parked because they felt too unsure of themselves to drive. After my presentation, they traded in their vehicle for a Tesla with FSD, and now they are at about 97.5% on FSD and feel that they have been liberated. When I asked "why only 97.5%," they explained that the car lost its way in their underground parking garage (they live in the apartment section of the community). I explained that they could drop a pin on their actual parking spot rather than the address, and that may solve their problem.
What struck me even more than the people who bought new Teslas after the presentation was how many seniors talked about their own FSD experience, and how many of them were achieving mid- to high-90% FSD driving. There was uniform enthusiasm for the product and for what it meant for them in their senior years.
That matters in what is rapidly becoming an aging population.