Reader Question: Interview Request?

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

Adam asks: Have you considered sitting down with Rich Benoit, aka Rich Rebuilds, aka “The Doctor Frankenstein of Teslas”? Benoit is doing some enterprising and controversial work, scavenging wrecked Teslas and putting them back together again. He routinely encounters resistance and ire from the Tesla corporate autocracy, so he has to be doing something right. I think you and your readers would find the dedication and moxie of this Tesla hacker extremely interesting. Benoit represents rogue capitalism at its finest.

My reply: While I appreciate Benoit’s efforts to make some productive use of Teslas, I regard what he’s doing as more or less the same as putting Social Security payments toward some productive use. In both case, the raw materials – the cars and the cash – are derived from unproductive sources, and via the use of government force.

I understand the making of lemonaid from lemons argument and am not faulting Benoit on moral grounds.

It’s simply that I despise Tesla and Musk and everything both stand for.

And not just on account of the fraud, rent-seeking and obnoxious virtue signaling. There is the additional grievance of Musk/Tesla having completely perverted the market incentives for electric cars – which could have been developed as low-cost alternatives to non-electric cars for short-range/low-speed driving – as “city” and “commuter” cars. Instead, that frog-faced SOB has given us – has forced upon us – the effrontery of the government-subsidized high-performance electric car that is economically inferior to the humblest IC economy car.

He is the oil down the sewer drain of mobility. His energy-guzzling cars  – which suck money as much as power – are the equivalent of 6,000 sq. foot McMansions with triple-paned Pella windows subsidized by the government using taxes taken from people living in apartments.

If Karma is a real thing, I hope it runs him over someday.

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Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!