This is a good insight. I'd tweak it slightly, and say that people are looking for an unsophisticated win that doesn't feel like a shell game.

What would settle this is if Tesla were to "pull it off", then we could see if it's blind nostalgia for what you mention, or a preference for simple and obvious utility and productivity.

Detroit churning out cars that move and employ Americans is a simpler win to process than the perpetually-almost-here future Musk may or may not be selling.

I think it's a much tougher problem. There is an unbridgeable cultural gap between groups on what "progress" even means.

I bought a Model 3 and it is incredible. It is the only new car I've brought because I've never been excited enough about a car to take the depreciation hit. Driving this case makes me feel like I'm living in the future where everything makes sense and it makes me happy. But that's just me.

A lot of other people look at this car and see a dystopian nightmare of oppressive degradation and downfall. It makes them feel anxious, resentful and emasculated. For some, it is even a threat to their livelihoods.

So, same object, two opposing views. A utopia for some, a dystopia for others. In the old days there were a broad societal agreement on what "progress" was. Not so anymore.

I hope society once again agrees on what progress means some day, but I don't know if it will happen, nor how.

I suspect that every utopia is someone else's dystopia.

Or if could just be that it’s a fact that the success of these businesses isn’t resulting in shared increases in prosperity, and that things that were attainable for more people in the past such as healthcare and housing are increasingly unaffordable.

You don’t need ‘nostalgia’ or whatever other descriptor will make people seem backward when you have the basic facts.

> it’s a fact that the success of these businesses isn’t resulting in shared increases in prosperity

While, Ford substantially differentiated himself by realizing the pros of benefits for workers, the company existed in some dark times (WWI, Depression) where there would have been certain FUD. Moreso, Ford espouses its realization that it is at least part responsible for the suburbanization and ruin of Detroit.

Yet, few people today hate Ford.