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Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by gwright on Wednesday April 24, 2019 @09:07PM (#19744060)
You have a point about the negative externalities, but insisting on using the word "subsidy" for that concept is just going to confuse people. That isn't the accepted meaning of "subsidy", in casual conversation at least.
Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by jwr on Wednesday April 24, 2019 @10:04PM (#19744392)
Hmm — how else would you call it? As I understand it, future generations are subsidizing the price of our fossil fuels and internal combustion engines, making ICEs artificially cheap by not considering their environmental impact.

Subsidies do not have to be in the form of cash: many come in the form of tax breaks and I would consider this to be one such case.

Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by gwright on Thursday April 25, 2019 @12:36PM (#19749840)
It is just confusing to use the same word to suggest explicit assistance (cash, tax breaks, etc) and "failure to penalize". I guess mathematically they both represent a reduction in cost when compared to an alternative scenario (no subsidy and some sort of tax/fee for the externality) but they are different mechanisms and so it makes sense for them to have different words to describe them if you want to communicate clearly.
Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by Consultant32452 on Thursday April 25, 2019 @12:28AM (#19744980)
It gets far worse when you consider the total cost of wars to protect the flow of oil.
Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by camjohnson26 on Thursday April 25, 2019 @01:59AM (#19745428)
There were still wars before oil was a thing.