Reader Question: Elon Ford?

Here’s the latest reader question, along with my reply! 

Derek asks: Will you please respond to this article about Elon musk super genius. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/the-mystery-of-tesla-model-3-demand/

My reply: This is typical boilerplate adulation, free of any economic or practical consideration/analysis. It is childish, in the sense that a child wishes for things and doesn’t think about what they cost (parents will pay) but rather lusts for whatever it is on an emotional (and childish) level.

Elon is to Ford what an AGW is to a peacekeeper.

Ford made cars that people wanted – at a price they were able to pay. He introduced innovations that made cars more practical and affordable, so more people could buy them. He made them simpler, with common/interchangeable parts. Previously, cars had been hand-built and were for the rich only.

Elon is the anti-Ford.

He makes cars only the rich can afford, which – using the government as his Bully – he makes the ordinary person “help” pay for. He rent-seeks, where Ford sought markets.

But his fans don’t acknowledge this. Because rent-seeking is no longer considered sleazy, especially when sexed up by a hip Tech wunderkind, as Elon is marketed to be. His fans also see him in a religious way, as a saint of the “climate change” caravan to glory. The groundwork for Elon was prepared many decades prior to his appearance. Kids have been indoctrinated with the Fear of imminent environmental disasters – one after the next, though they never seem to arrive – and so worship electric cars, which they’ve been taught are The Answer.

Salt that with gadget-worship and general ignorance of economics and how things work (mechanical/functional knowledge) and you come to understand reverential, but imbecilic, articles such as the one you asked me to deconstruct.

. . .