Tesla Faces Tough Regulatory Hurdle From State Dealership Laws 309
First time accepted submitter vinnyjames writes "States like Arizona, Texas, Massachusetts and North Carolina either have or have recently added legislation to prevent Tesla from selling its cars directly to consumers. Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov to allow them to sell cars directly to consumers." Laws that protect auto dealerships aren't newly created for Tesla, though, as explained in this interview with Duke University's Mike Munger.
Middlemen: the official plague of the modern age (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we've just figured out what the next big thing is. Mercantilism should have disappeared centuries ago.
Protectionism... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen your face before .. back when Michigan fought Japan through legislation in Washington DC. How have you been? I see you are on the rise again as people pretend you're their last, best hope.
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't really matter since the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction anyway. It wouldn't be much different from the federal government telling states that they can't have their blue laws. In this case it just happens to be car dealers rather than bar owners.
I'd be the first to agree that the feds(the executive branch, no less, get your fucking civics in order, people...) are the wrong place to go; but I'd bet a nontrivial amount of money that the Interestate Commerce Clause is 'elastic' enough to handle this one, if Congress felt like it.
It would be bad form, and strikes me as unlikely to happen; but I suspect that if the feds felt like trying, they'd probably get jurisdiction.
Re:rich car buyers vs rich dealership owners (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:rich car buyers vs rich dealership owners (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of people who would like to purchase a Tesla if they had the means, and Tesla has lower-priced cars on their roadmap. Just because this wouldn't affect someone right now doesn't mean they shouldn't support it for when they need it. It's the "first they came for X, but I said nothing" scenario. Just because you're driving a gas car now doesn't mean you shouldn't support Tesla or any other EV maker. I'm sure the various auto dealer associations would love to get a bunch of laws passed in their favor before Tesla releases their lower-priced models in a few years. If you don't want to see that happen, then now is the time to speak up.
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a federal judge can strike down [nytimes.com] Virginia's ban on out-of-state trash processors shipping their trash to Virginia landfills, striking down barriers to Tesla selling direct to consumers across state lines seems like a no brainer to me. And I'm a states rights advocate.
Everybody has a horse in this race. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Middlemen: the official plague of the modern ag (Score:5, Insightful)
Three things,
Middlemen don't like being cut out. those that try find themselves cut.
Manufacturers, factories, etc don't want the headaches of dealing with uniformed idiots. Ever work a computer Hell desk? yea that has been going on for as long as we have had machines. The average person is barely above being an idiot and half the population is dumber than they are. I have explained the same thing to the same person 30 times in the last 3 months she still doesn't get it. She can't open her mind up to possibilities other than what she already knows.
Lastly, Middlemen provide slack, and options for the supply chain. In today's tight supply chains they are even more important than ever. As if the factory doesn't have your part your stuck unless your lucky enough to have a middleman with extra.
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:1, Insightful)
I do love the hypocrisy of Slashdot.
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
Typo... 74K short. Although now it's only 72K short, seems it's working...
If there's one thing business can't stand it's competition - given that the Big 3 conspired to kill the Tucker, you have some idea where the original legislation found its roots and monetary $upport (when it came to buying votes to pass the original bill). Every business would love to be a monopoly, barring that, they settle for an oligarchy.
Re:Middlemen: the official plague of the modern ag (Score:5, Insightful)
Manufacturers, factories, etc don't want the headaches of dealing with uniformed idiots.
If manufacturers don't want to deal directly, they why do we need laws prohibiting them from doing so?
Middlemen provide slack, and options for the supply chain.
If middlemen really added value, then customers would be willing to pay for that value, without government coercion.
Re:Middlemen: the official plague of the modern ag (Score:5, Insightful)
So, why not allow the option of middlemen, and the option of direct sales. If what you say is true then middle men will foster a better experience, capitalism will prevail, and companies dependent on direct sales will falter.
Right?
Re:Repeat ad nostrum. (Score:5, Insightful)
And where was the political outrage towards Apple when they opened their own stores, for causing "unfair" competition with the other retailers?
(Obligatory computer analogy in this car thread.)
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the times that we see the interstate commerce clause treated as a blank check for federal power, this is one time when it would actually be appropriate. Preventing one state from erecting barriers to trade with another is exactly what that clause had in mind.
Guess Washington is too busy regulating everything else they can see to even notice when an opportunity to wield power constitutionally comes along.
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't see how anyone can perceive this as stretching the ICC. This is precisely the kind of thing it is actually for! States are erecting unconstitutional barriers to trade of goods from other states, that's exactly when congress should invoke the ICC.
Re:Middlemen: the official plague of the modern ag (Score:5, Insightful)
If middlemen really added value, then customers would be willing to pay for that value, without government coercion.
Well, there are middlemen that add value, but they're not typical auto dealerships. They're facilitators that help you locate the car you're looking for. Many of them have agreements with dealerships that will get you the best price or near it without having to dicker, and you only pay a [relatively] small commission to the "dealer" that you're actually dealing with. This only really makes sense when buying a fairly new vehicle, otherwise the commission can be disproportionate. Of course, their value would fall without this sort of protectionist nonsense.
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:4, Insightful)
Please Mod the parent up. He's the only one that got the Tucker reference to where the laws originally came from.
Laws that protect auto dealerships aren't newly created for Tesla, though ...
Nope, a lot of them were created to kill Tucker in the late-1940s. Luckily, Elon has a few other hits to back him up so even if the automotive industry quashes Tesla's dreams he's still got rockets and Paypal.
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
The SC has ruled that people aren't citizens because of the color of their skin (Dred Scott), that corporations are (Citizens United), and that personal crops are interstate commerce (Wickard v. Filburn). None of which stand up to plain reading or common sense.
The Supremes are in contempt of simple logic and common sense. They're illogical - as political as the Legislative and Executive.
The SC is the biggest flaw in our system - it should have consisted of a rotating chamber of state justices to provide a true "check and balance." The Feds deciding what the Feds can do is ludicrous.
Re:Middlemen: the official plague of the modern ag (Score:5, Insightful)
I think of that fact every time I sit in a doctor's office. Half of them are below average, too. :-(
Yes. They are called general practitioners. The other half tend to specialize in higher paying fields, like surgery or anesthesiology.
For better or for worse, medical schools set their standards so high that only the most qualified (typically overqualified) ever get the opportunity to even study medicine, let alone practice. You may have a physician who was at the bottom of his class, but he's still likely to have more knowledge and intelligence than anyone else working or waiting in his clinic. It's not like IT, where there is a job for everybody, with a very wide spectrum of credentials or abilities (or lack thereof). Nor is it like those with a liberal arts degree, where employers just presume the degreed applicants don't know a thing about working life and have them start at the lowest position in the company, most often side-by-side with non-degreed hourly employees, and then only promote those noobs who show some potential to figure it out and actually make some effort to show up on time, properly dressed, and without a bad attitude.
Given that the student loans for the professions can easily top $100k, success is the only option. There is no bankruptcy allowed, and without a physicians salary there is little hope of ever having more than a Spartan existence, regardless of how earnestly one tries to pay off such loans by any other means.
Re:Now there's a petition on whitehouse.gov... (Score:4, Insightful)
Saturn was a subsidiary of GM and, because of that, considered to be under the same set of rules as GM.
Thanks for this, but the matter is still not clear to me. How was GM able to circumvent the manufacturer != dealer rules?
They didn't. Saturns were sold at GM dealerships, just they tricked some hapless suckers into thinking that they were buying them direct form the manufacturer. Want a Saturn part today? Call your local Chevy dealership.
Re:Middlemen: the official plague of the modern ag (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Middlemen: the official plague of the modern ag (Score:4, Insightful)
In which case you don't need a law preventing manufacturers from doing so - they'll use resellers because it is cheaper/better for them. That there is such a law is usually evidence (not proof, there are other possible explanations) that manfacturers do in fact want to sell directly. If no one wanted to speed we wouldn't need speed limit laws after all.