[...] If you don't want two cars you could/should have just cancelled the reservation on one so that someone on the Sig wait list could move onto it to buy a sig at the manufacturer's price. I think what you're doing is selfish and greedy and inconsiderate of the Tesla community at large...
Yea, it's capitalist, but it's also greedy. [...] We can still be capitalists and honorable and ethical--this is neither of the latter two.
Maybe it's greedy. Maybe it's selfish. It's not unethical because it's not depriving anybody of food, shelter, medical care, or basic human rights. Hoarding necessities in time of scarcity is unethical. Speculating on luxuries is not.
This country was founded on greed and selfishness. Capitalism rests on the profit motive: Making a profit any way you can, often illegally when you can get away with it. But there's nothing illegal about buying a car to sell it.
Note that he won't be able to claim the $7,500 tax credit, as that is specifically denied if the car is bought in order to sell it, and does not apply to used cars.
Consider the wholesale slaughter of the people who lived here before the Europeans arrived. Consider slavery. Consider the tobacco industry. Consider a health system which denies routine wellness care to the working poor who cannot afford insurance. Consider that if you don't have money you don't eat. Consider day traders who speculate on the stock market, extracting wealth from the system without doing any productive work. Consider bankers who ruin their banks and then walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars and leave the public to bail out the banks.
Consider all that and then tell me that Red is doing something wrong by buying a luxury car that maybe 3% of the population can afford, in the hopes that he can sell it for a profit. And taking the chance that he can't sell it for a profit and ends up taking a loss. I certainly wouldn't buy Red's car. I'd want a proper new car from the factory, and the certainty that everything was in order and the warranty was good and nobody else had driven it. But as long as we live in a Capitalist society, and he's not hurting anyone directly or indirectly, he's doing nothing wrong.
Now, if your argument was that every child born should start out as well off as any other, and all labor, be it field work, garbage collection, or corporate CEO should be paid at the same hourly rate, so that either everybody or nobody could afford to pay $100,000 for a car, than I'd be hard pressed to present a valid argument against you. I know that you work long hard hours, in the noblest of professions, to earn your money; but in N.D. I saw plenty of people working 14 hours a day wielding a hoe under the hot sun, and being paid so little they drove a junker and had no health insurance. As long as we tolerate this, nobody can criticize Red.
Nope. Sorry, Evan. Red is just showing good old American initiative, making an investment in hopes of a profit. He's taking a risk just like the day traders on Wall Street. But unlike them, he'll only be taking money from someone who's willing to hand it over.
