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Re:Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to M... by shalmanese on Thursday August 03, 2017 @01:33PM (#14921703)
People misunderstand corporate debt because they analogize it to household debt but the analogy doesn't work because most household spending is consumption whereas most business spending is investment.

When a business makes $1 of profit, it's that business saying "we couldn't find a single project across our entire organization that we believe would have given us a higher expected return than that dollar sitting in a bank account."

Re:Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to M... by adamlett on Thursday August 03, 2017 @02:21PM (#14922230)
That's oversimplified. Expected return is not the only factor to consider when deciding whether to invest or not. There is also risk to consider. A 51% chance to to either double up or lose your investment has a positive expected return, but if losing could mean catastrophe, it would be foolish to make that investment.