Rebuttal to NYTimes critique of Tesla and potential federal support

Articles — By forcechange on December 1, 2008 11:05 am

Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis has a rebuttal to the NY Times article that was highly critical of any attempts by the federal government to provide financial support to electric car company Tesla Motors.

Calacanis argues that the author’s “points are… somewhere between short-sighted and
outright false, leading me to think that [his] big problem with a
 *loan* to Tesla is that he needs to write a piece that appeals to the
short-term sentiment of the country right now (“damn the
billionaires!”) rather than one that pursues the actual truth.”

As for my opinion, I’m more concerned with the method and process.  Whether Tesla is a viable business, or not, doesn’t change my objection to the government picking a single company to support for policy reasons.  The only reason a bailout of Detroit might make sense, would be to prevent a systemic failure or very deep recession.  Other than that, the government should not be picking which companies survive and which fail.  Instead, it should create policies that encourage clean-tech entrepreneurialism, like a predictable carbon tax or cap-and-trade system.  With that said, we’re still rooting for Tesla to succeed.

Hat-tip: TechCrunch.