In ordinary life, if you want to sell your car, you can go about it pretty much any way you like. Options include placing an ad online or taping a For Sale sign to the windshield and waiting for someone to give you call. If you don’t want to deal with calls, you could also sell it to a car store such as CarMax. The point is, there aren’t – yet – any laws prohibiting you from selling your car any way you like. Including, specifically, directly – to the person who wants to buy it.
Nor are there laws – yet – prohibiting people from buying cars any way they like. Including, specifically, directly – from you.
Well, as far as used cars.
With new cars, on the other hand, there are all kinds of laws dictating how – and where – a sale may be transacted.
As at a dealership.
For the most part, you are not allowed to deal directly with the manufacturer, the company that built the car. Which you might wish to do, in order to cut out the middleman – and save yourself some money.
Minimally, the “destination and delivery” costs – typically at least $800 or so and sometimes more, depending on how far the vehicle had to be shipped – that are otherwise added to the base price of the vehicle. If you could simply pick the car up at the point of final assembly instead, there would be no such charges – just the same as there aren’t any when you drive to see a used car and buy it from the seller, right there – as opposed to buying it from afar and paying a shipping company to truck it to where you are.
But that’s small potatoes compared with what you could save if you didn’t have to pay the car dealer on top of the manufacturer. There is the cost of the car plus the profit – for the dealer. Not, as Seinfeld used to say, that there’s anything wrong with this. Dealers perform a number of services you may want, such as removing the plastic protective covers from the car’s interior, stickers applied to the vehicle during assembly and so on. They also usually clean the car up and deliver it to you “showroom new.” They also handle the paperwork attending sale, which many people understandably find impenetrable and forbidding. These services merit compensation, if you want to pay for them.
There are also the legitimate costs – transferred in part to you – of maintaining the dealership, itself. Including rent, carrying costs of staff and so on. Just the same as the cost a restaurant owner folds into the price of your dinner.
But the issue is – should you be required, by law, to pay them?
Put another way, why shouldn’t you be free to make the choice to pay for a dealership’s services – or not?
The answer, of course, is no – because the dealers don’t want you to be free to not pay for them. Car dealers are a powerful cohort, meaning they have a lot of money and having a lot of money can buy a lot of government. And so it did. Dealer “associations” bought laws – by buying politicians, which is how big money interests own the government (see Pfizer, et al, to understand the most etiolated example of this transaction). These politicians then did what they were paid to do, which was pass laws forcing people who wanted to buy a new car to buy them only through a dealer, paying for the honor.
An oddity – or incongruity – is that the one car manufacturer that has bought the most government – Tesla – wants to be able to sell you its cars directly without the dealer middleman. As via online stores, which work like other such stores in that you go there – figuratively – and shop (virtually) for the item you want and then buy it. No salesmen, pushy or not. Many people just would prefer not to have to – what’s the word? – deal with them.
And why should they have to, if they don’t want to? One is not obliged to deal with computer salesmen in order to buy a computer. Or tires. Or many other things, besides. You are still free – for now – to go to a tire store, if you prefer. Or (as I just did) you can go to an online store and buy tires directly and have them shipped to you and then it’s up to you to have them installed.
It’s a good job – as the Brits say – that the tire chain stores haven’t formed “associations” and bought themselves some government, to make sure you pay them and only them for a set of new tires when you need them. They might hire PR heavies – as the dealership associations do – to spread unction about the necessity of tire stores to assure people make the right and safe choice with regard to tires.
This is essentially the PR emitted by the dealer associations in their fight against dealer-less (direct) sales, as Tesla has been doing in states where it’s allowed. In italics to emphasize the sickening, idiot-child paternalism of this permutation of tyranny. You are too stupid to handle buying a car directly. You need assistance. Which, of course, you’ll be paying for. Need it or not, like it or not.
Weirdly, it’s Tesla that’s in the vanguard of ending this – as a requirement, at any rate. In italics because Tesla, more than any other car company, has bought the government. Not just some of it.
Its investment has paid off to the tune of billions.
But at least you can pay Tesla for one of its cars directly – and maybe save a few hundred that way.
. . .
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The reason many states require dealerships to be the consumer endpoint is they can then mandate laws upon these same dealerships. This allows the states to require dealerships to comply with the states titling regime. When an automobile is created the manufacturer proof of ownership is called “Manufacturer’s Statement of Origin” or MSO. You or the dealership converts this MSO to a title from whatever state you intend to register the automobile in. Now the state is a party to owning your automobile.
If the globalist technocrats have their way, the masses won’t even be ALLOWED to buy a car, not even an EV. Of course, they’ll use the excuse “Cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change” while they continue flying around in private jets and demanding being driven around in gas powered vehicles. It’s astounding how many people fell for the HEAVY propaganda from these psychopaths and their puppets in government about COVID, climate change, etc., and react harshly against dissenters.
3,638,901 Teslas sold as of January 2023.
Times 50,000, some money has been spent on Teslas.
Almost 185,000,000,000 dollars so far if you use 3,700,000 Teslas. Probably there today.
After you pay expenses, there’ll be some left over.
7500 dollars credited by Uncle Sam, 7500 x 3.7 million Teslas, 27,750,000,000 dollars the taxpayers dole out to Elon.
Probably what Musk has in the bank.
No complaints from Musk.
I’ve done a couple of private sales and several dealer sales. Of the two I’d say the private sales were far easier although one involved driving to a notary. The other was a $1 transaction with my employer who had an in-house notary.
One pet peeve of mine is the dealership stickers they add to the trunk lid as part of that $800 dealer prep. Last two vehicles I told the salesman I’d be happy to advertise for their dealership if they paid me $1500, which I considered a bargain, only $150 a year if I kept the car for 10 years. Both of them laughed, but when I picked up the vehicle there were no dealer logos on them.
I take them off. You tube videos on the different types and techniques. Then again $1500 would not have been bad either.
As I’ve speculated before, when car ownership becomes “caviar” (e.g., for the rich and famous) and us peons only can rent them, there won’t be much “dealing”. There’s gonna much renting instead. And that is gonna change dealers dramatically. Instead of making all that beautiful markup on warranties and service contracts and add-ons, those jokers are gonna be holding the bag on keeping those piece of shit EVs on the road!
I think that is gonna take out a whole lot of dealers but maybe not. Seems like it would. Seems like the corporations will have to own the “rentalships” too. And then they’ll be the ones holding that bag.
Further along those lines, it sounds like that would mean the return to the bare minimum appurtenances and spartan accoutrements for all! No you don’t get 7-way adjustable massaging seats, Bose sound system, and ambient lighting! You get drunk driver detection, speed limitation, governors, and bare bones climate control for the low-low price of way more than you want to spend (or probably can reasonably afford).
‘… where it’s allowed. In italics to emphasize the sickening, idiot-child paternalism of this permutation of tyranny.’ — eric
Tyranny of a different stripe — climate change tyranny — has gone farther than one might have imagined:
‘On cold mornings in New York City, boilers in the basements of thousands of buildings kick on, burning natural gas or oil to provide heat for the people upstairs. Carbon dioxide from these boilers wafts up chimneys and into the air, one of the city’s biggest sources of global warming emissions.
‘But there is one exception.
‘At the Grand Tier, a 30-story apartment tower on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the carbon dioxide from its two giant gas boilers is captured, cooled to a liquid and then trucked to a concrete factory in Brooklyn. There, the carbon is mixed with cement and sealed into concrete blocks, where it can’t heat the atmosphere.’ — NYT
https://archive.ph/xsCqM#selection-471.2-479.321
Deadly CO2, comrades — it must safely entombed, like asbestos or radioactive control rods from decommissioned power plants. /sarc
Another ‘compliance’ solution discussed in the article is heat pumps. One need only recall NYC’s major power blackouts in 1965 and 1977 to realize how stuuuuuuupid that is.
NYC’s idiot-child paternalism only drives rents higher in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. No wonder New York’s population is dropping, as sensible people BAIL THE HELL OUT of its tax and regulatory nightmare for freer parts of the country, where you can heat your building as you damned well please.
Carbon dioxide is heavier than oxygen. So it tends to sink and then dissipate — that is, unless there is some specific mechanism to expel it outwards/upwards. But, since it isn’t toxic the only worry would be for large volumes of it to displace oxygen where humans or animals intend to keep breathing and living. TBH, I’ve never heard of any such danger. We have carbon monoxide detectors because that is toxic.
The entire idea that all this CO2 is “[wafting] up” is ludicrous. They don’t fill balloons with CO2 for a good reason. It wouldn’t do much floating.
Hey, XM,
>Carbon dioxide is heavier than air.
Correctamundo.
CO2 is emitted in significant quantities by volcanoes. The heavier than air gas then rolls down valleys @ ground level, which poses a deadly threat to wildlife. If you look around, you can probably find videos of animals struggling to get their nostrils above the level of CO2, so they can breathe oxygen.
If the CO2 layer is thin, it poses a threat only to small animals; if thicker, it can potentially kill larger animals, such as deer or humans. I have seen a video of a snake attempting to raise its head above the CO2 layer in order to breathe. No doubt other videos exist.
Article from 2009 on if/how CO2 can be converted to CO + O2. “Sunshine to Petrol” they called it:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/splitting-carbon-dioxide/
Hi XM,
This is what Porsche is going to do, apparently – in order to keep Porsches from becoming EVs and so irrelevant. The downside is that while most people who could not afford a Porsche could afford gas soon most people won’t be able to afford that, either.
>At Sandia National Laboratories, we are working to apply concentrated sunlight to drive high-temperature thermal reactions that yield carbon monoxide, hydrogen and oxygen from CO2 and water.
I hate to tell you, folks, but carbon MONOXIDE is an actual DEADLY GAS, which results from incomplete combustion. In fact, houses in the U.S are typically required to be fitted with carbon monoxide detectors, because CO is odorless and colorless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning
>Carbon monoxide primarily causes adverse effects by combining with hemoglobin to form carboxyhemoglobin (HbCO) preventing the blood from carrying oxygen
FWIW, HCN (hydrogen cyanide, a.k.a. prussic acid) works the same way, by binding with hemoglobin, thus preventing molecular oxygen (O2) from doing so.
I’d like to see them mix that cooled CO2 with concrete.
——————————————————————–
From Answers dot com
At standard pressure, CO2 does not occur as a liquid, the solid phase turns directly into a gas.
Liquid carbon dioxide only forms at pressures higher than 5.1 atm. The actual boiling point depends on the pressure. At a particular pressure the liquid may have any temperature between the melting and boiling points. At the lowest pressure where it can exist, liquid carbon dioxide would have a temperature of -56.6 degrees C, or -69.88 degrees F.
Under normal pressure conditions, carbon dioxide goes from gas straight to solid when the temperature reaches – 78.5 degrees C.
——————————————————————
They never tire of the bs,,, do they.
Hi Jim,
They’re really pushing heat pumps around here, which is stupidity squared. My gas furnace could barely keep up with the sub-zero temperatures we had a month ago, a heat pump is totally useless in those conditions, not to mention the grid being totally inadequate for the load. Not a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket. I also have a small inverter that can run the furnace off the car battery if I had too and never let the cars get below 1/2 tank in the winter so I won’t freeze to death during an outage.
I saw a news item about a woman who stayed alive by staying in her kitchen with the burners on her gas stove on while she was trapped without power during the recent California snowstorms. Score one for natural gas. I wish these climate hysterics would freeze to death themselves and let the rest of us go on with our lives.
Hi Mike,
Amen. My house has a heat pump – which I almost never use except for the occasional really hot/humid days in summer. Fo heating, it is both useless and wasteful in cold weather. The wood stove keeps the house toasty and there’s no worry about the wood being “turned off”!
Well, thank your lucky stars you do not live up north, Eric, where we have “burn bans” on the days when the air quality sucks. Which is a lot of the time due to lack of wind, 2 military bases, the town sitting in a bowl, and temperature inversions. In addition to sub zero temperatures during the looong winter. On those days, unless your primary source of heat is wood, you are not allowed to burn on what would be called a “red day”. We are constantly being dinged by the EPA, but if the bastards had to live up here with 9 month winters and the old fashioned, -70 below temperatures for weeks (or months) at a time that we used to have, the fools might appreciate wood heat. Or not…
Hi Shadow,
That is terrible. I could not live in such an area; it’s why I moved away from one such – Northern Virginia. And will, again, if I have to.
‘stayed alive by staying in her kitchen with the burners on her gas stove on’ — Mike in Boston
The US Energy Department plans to put the kibosh on such selfish stunts by phasing out gas stoves.
Reply I got from my ‘Senator,’ the communist astronaut Mark Kelly, after bitterly complaining about the fedgov’s gratuitous attack on gas stoves:
‘I’m proud to have delivered these historic investments that respond to the growing threats posed by a changing climate, and I know more must be done. As a member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, I will continue to work on legislation that boosts renewable energy to reduce harmful emissions and makes our state more resilient to the impacts of climate change.’
Aaargh … what a dupe. How much CO2 did he emit, jetting about the cosmos in his fighter jets and rockets?
Hey, Jim H,
Looks like ya’ll bought yourselves the wrong “Senator,”
Maybe look for someone like this guy, next time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt
>Education
California Institute of Technology (BS)
University of Oslo
Harvard University (PhD)
>Schmitt has rejected the scientific consensus on climate change, which states that climate change is real, progressing, dangerous, and primarily human-caused. He has claimed that climate change is predominantly caused by natural factors, as opposed to human activity. Schmitt has argued that the risks posed by climate change are overstated and has instead supported the notion[42] that climate change is a “tool” used to advocate for the expansion of the government.
But, what does he know?
hi, mike,
>Score one for natural gas.
Or, possibly, propane. There was an article in the local press about propane trucks being unable to deliver to mountain communities because of road closures due to heavy snowfall.
For those who live out beyond the power lines, propane may also be what powers their refrigerator. And in any case, prudent people will have a supply of kerosene for lamps, as well as dry firewood for heating.
Just sayin.
>captured, cooled to a liquid
Really?
Have a look at the phase diagram:
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/CO2-carbon-dioxide-properties-d_2017.html
‘Tesla, more than any other car company, has bought the government.’ — eric
Case in point:
‘Tesla sells vehicles in person at one facility in Mississippi that is classified as a store, not a dealership. The distinction allows the company to operate outside state laws governing franchise businesses.
‘The Mississippi Senate gave final approval Thursday to a bill to restrict electric car manufacturers from opening new brick-and-mortar dealerships in the state unless they comply with the same laws traditional carmakers follow.’
https://apnews.com/article/mississippi-electric-cars-sales-tesla-31c06e7ecb9693f15bc578623b56fd9c
Certainly some protectionist pressures from traditional dealers are at play here. But it’s astonishing that Eeeeeelon can just brashly set up shop and ‘identify as a store’ rather than a dealership, to skate around all the ‘laws’ that apply to other businesses.
It’s good to identify as king (or queen, if you’re feeling girly) … and get away with it.
Elon, for all his faults, gets props for this. Anybody subverting the corrupt system, going around, behind, or over it is doing something everybody should be doing….
Even buying a used car from a dealer is a monumental task. The last time I did so it took nearly half a day to get it done, with no financing involved. And they STILL didn’t get it right, failing to do a State “safety inspection” before delivery, which I discovered while preparing to register it, and found no “safety inspection” certificate. Buying one from a private seller, maybe an hour.
Politicians are nothing more nor less than very well dressed whores. They will do whatever it takes to enhance their wealth, power, and prestige. In that order. The general order of the day is “you need us to do this because you’re too stupid to watch out for yourself”. While what they really mean is “you are so stupid we can take bribes to make your life more difficult”.