The anti-Tesla stuff coming from the left is just stupid.
My ride is a 2024 Model Y Long Range, in whatever grey color they call it—space grey, or slate grey, or dark grey. Anyway, it’s grey. It was the cheapest locally available Model Y Long Range on the Tesla website, and with the discounts and incentives and the Federal tax credit—and including the destination charge and the 10.25% local tax—I drove it off their lot for $42,990.
A year later I’ve got 10,000 miles on it. I’ve added windshield washer fluid once, and I charge it from my house current, which is augmented by the Tesla solar roof I got in 2021. It’s a lovely driving experience, way better than other available EV models, and incomparably better than any gas vehicle I’ve ever driven.
I’m not a car person. I prefer to bicycle or take public transportation. Before I bought the Model Y, I was happy with the two 20-year-old gas vehicles I’ve been nursing for years. I needed something safe and reliable to drive my teenager and her teammates to sports tournaments (which are ridiculously car-dependent). And it’s nice to get about while minimizing my carbon footprint.
The anti-Tesla stuff coming from the left is just stupid—worse than stupid. Here’s why:
First, when you imply that people are defined by the commodities they purchase, or (reciprocally) that purchasing commodities is a meaningful social or political act, you are endorsing the worst aspect of market ideology. As individuals, we have social and political agency. We express that agency through our interactions with other people, by the way we treat them and ask to be treated in return, not by what we pick off the shelf and display as a fetish. If you want to police where I shop or what I buy, you are very much part of the problem.
Second, if you are looking for some cause to blame for the rise of fascism (there are many causes) you’d do well to start with the left’s shift, during my lifetime, from meaningful risk-taking protest to slack-jawed virtue signaling. It takes no courage and little thought to grab a symbol and point at it (as bad) or wave it around (as good). Such action is, correspondingly, politically meaningless. It is narcissistic passivity that wastes your time and the time of anyone who pays attention to you. Get a life. Go organize something. Put some mental effort into a meaningful social and political critique. Then get on a soapbox—or write it and post your ideas somewhere. Trust me, it’s hard at first, and then it feels great.
Third: You’re missing the important point.
The solution to Elon Musk is not to boycott products he’s associated with (and I don’t know how well a boycott would work with SpaceX or Starlink). It’s to constrain Musk’s political influence. And then to expropriate his wealth.
I loved seeing Marxism targeted in the first Executive Orders. It shows the far right understands what Marxism is, in contrast with most everybody on the left, who don’t understand Marxism at all.
In this context, the point of Marxism is: The vast enduring material riches of our society, including its technology, housing, transportation, factories, land itself—all this is the product of past social labor. In the present day, it really belongs to the society as a whole. It’s held in private hands because it’s been forcibly expropriated. Because that is true, then the wealth can be un-expropriated, or better, we can expropriate the expropriators.
That’s why we’re getting fascism. The purpose of fascism is to slow or stop the inevitable trend—as people become more aware, better educated, and break down the differences and barriers that keep them apart and fighting each other—toward people demanding limits and controls on the scope of capital. Even where ownership stays in private hands, we want, through collective democratic power, to have a say in how technology and resources are going to be used, because we want them used in an intentional and organized way—focused on meeting human needs, rather than on simply expanding capital.
In the near term, incrementally, limiting the scope of capital and redirecting it to meet human needs is accomplished, as far as we can make it be, by taxation, regulations, constraints. Right now, fascism is going to push all those back. Way back.
Focusing on commodities and on name brands—and reifying our values into mere commodity fetishes—that just reinforces the illusory legitimacy of private property and the concentration of that wealth in the hands of the few.
I did order a vanity plate for my Model Y, something I’ve never done before. The DMV system wouldn’t let me select F ELON or MUKFUSK so I settled for the milder and more constructive YES2DEI.
