this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2020
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He is a capitalist applying capitalist solutions to problems. You don't have to like capitalists but for all its flaws the system does function, and taking a profit is table stakes. The consumer who opts in to his way of doing things gets a car with a reduced dependency on fossil fuels, advanced safety features, and some level of self-driving capabilities. On the flip side they are deeply proprietary, in constant communication with the mothership and very expensive. For everyone else, Tesla is pushing the industry along so we will get more EVs to choose from sooner than we might otherwise have done. Can you really say his activities are anti-consumer? I don't think so - it's just that you and I are not his target consumer.
The real damage of Facebook is their monopoly created through network effects. I am not anticipating a monopoly on electric cars or internet access any time soon.
I would argue against the Capitalist system being functional. Capitalist propaganda has created a mythology of attributing to itself many accomplishments which should really be attributed to human labour. All of its flaws are cast off as “simple facts of life”.
Much of the foundational technology in communications, the Internet, and medicine were initially developed in government (public ally funded) labs, where profit was never a motive. All capitalism has done is give us thousands of variations of similar technologies, at the expense of countless other technologies - and in the process has forced humans into wage slavery / actual slavery, destroyed our coral reefs, and is heating up and polluting our planet - driving us toward extinction.
Even if we build the perfect solar panel, or do make it to Mars - where sustaining life will be much harder than sustaining life on Earth - that won’t save Earth, and it won’t solve the problem of the endless commodification and exploitation which is the capitalist system.
At some point we need to stop acting like mindless automatons and abandon capitalism, and work toward an actual sustainable system which isn’t hostile to life.
— Posted from my iPhone (which was created by exploited human labour and natural materials, not capitalism)