Let rich people get the buggy version 1.0 stuff and help the technology mature for everyone! I'll wait a few years and get the debugged version 2.0 or 3.0 for 1/10th the price.

Look at 4K TV sets, for example.

Or cellular phones, computers, refrigeration, microwaves, electricity, AC and a thousand other things that only rich people used to be able to afford.

Just about any luxury of the rich that can be produced more efficiently over time makes its way to the average consumer.

Out of the loop here, what were the big issues with early 4K TVs?

4K resolution, but only support for HDMI input at 30hz, or having to use some incredibly fiddly solutions where two cables had to be used at once. Internal image processing was too slow, so you would see 100ms delay which made them too slow for playing games. And then the quality of 4K panels was frequently far below good 1080p, but for more money.

No no. That's not how it works. Rich people have money, so they are perfect early adopters since they subsidize new technology until the technology gains economies of scale. But that's the key thing, they are using their own money to do that. It's not the same when you have the government subsidize their purchase.

People who pay more than $8500 in taxes can benefit from the tax break. I'm not sure I'd consider that rich.

That represents an income of at least $70,000/year, assuming only the standard deduction and single. If you are married, it's closer to $100,000 income. That puts you at the 62th and 77th percentile, at a minimum to get the full tax deduction.

>I'm not sure I'd consider that rich.

People who are installing $40,000+ roofs on 2000+ sqft homes are not rich by your standards? Or do you truly believe these panels will "print money"?

every home has a roof, and none of them are cheap to replace. it's a small factor difference in amount you're financing.

>it's a small factor difference in amount you're financing.

This is a magnificently out of touch comment.

You think the difference between an asphalt shingle roof vs a 100-year slate tile roof is a "small factor"?

Even if your taxes aren't that high you can roll the remainder of the credit forward to next year.

that can't be true as rich people are by definition a small minority. why not just give the subsidies directly to the companies

Because that disconnects the company from actual demand.

Production of early versions is always more expensive because of the research & development, creation/configuration of the machines, etc, etc but the marginal cost goes down drastically. The numbers work out even better as you can amortize those early costs over a larger and larger production run. This means v2 and later editions are cheaper.

It's text book "economies of scale"

I would also say that Rich people pave the way for adaption.

For example, look at prices of flights. Before there was no "first class" everything was first class, now there are cabin options.

While that example is a service, more proliferation of service == wider adaption == increased scale of economies == eventually prices come down for everyone.

There is nothing left wing about this...

> This is exactly what is meant by trickle down economics.

This is not true. Trickle down economics is the theory that money given to rich people will enrich poor people because the rich people will use the money to buy goods and services the production of which will require the labor of poor people. That is, this extra money at the disposal of rich people will create an economic domino effect such that money will ultimately end up at the disposal of poor people. In a trivial sense this is true. The theory is only interesting if this is an efficient way to increase economic activity generally without deleterious side effects.

But it never was the theory that giving money to rich people would spur research and development such that services ultimately were cheaper.

As to whether it's a scam, that is another matter. The allegation then is that the boosters of trickle down economics do not believe their own claims as to the efficiency of this process. That is, they believe, because it is tautologically true, that this will enrich those who are already rich, and they desire this, and the story about the efficiency of this process is a tall tale to salve consciences or win over rubes.

Except that time and time again, it has been shown that it absolutely does not work.

"[I]f the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. [1]"

[1] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/I...

Except you don’t need that much GDP growth if the price of everything is going down, so that argument is flawed.

This does nothing to bolster your claim. Your arguement is moronic.

Lol, the right went so extreme that the left is what would have been the right in Adam Smith's times?

That would be true if solar roofs were some novel technology that the rich would adopt first, and then the rest. This is a remix of existing technology, much like the iphone. The rich don't have roofs, they have domes or yachts. The poor don't own roofs. This is directed at the middle class squarely and only. To the extent that richer people adopt this, it's mostly for signaling reasons and not because it affords them some luxury they didn't have (like flights did).

Your analogy is more appropriate for space tourism.

> it's mostly for signaling reasons

This presumes rich people never have good motives and any appearance of morality or civic-mindedness they might show is a self-aggrandizing sham. This seems unlikely.

Why not just do unit tests instead of integration tests? Because you want to create a system that provides feedback on the entire end to end process. You subsidize purchases because The thing you want to incentivize is not making solar panels, but bringing solar panels all the way to market. You are trying to get the market off the ground, not just the technology.

That wouldn’t account for demand.

They have to make the sale this way

>Incentiving rich people to buy expansive tech (and still at lost for the riches) help the technologies to ride the cost curve and bring it to the masses.

Ah yes, trickle down never fails.

The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on. Because of concentration of wealth and return on capital exacerbating that concentration. Because of rent seeking pyramid schemes. Which I imagine artificially restricts demand for improvements like solar panel roofs: who has more inventive to invest in things like solar panel roofs? Owner occupants who are in it for the long term, or rent seeking landlords just trying to make their mortgage payments on time and turn a buck?

>The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on

Is this based off an SV mindset? There are plenty of homeowners that aren't rich around the country.

Plus less pollution in the air helps the masses too, with fewer health issues and less extreme weather on a long term basis.

Of course it is, and unfortunately you see it a lot on HN - apparently no one in any country can afford houses anymore. It's like this Futurama joke - "no one drives in Manhattan anymore - there's too much traffic". On this side of the pond it's the London residents saying that no one except for the ultra rich can own houses, forgetting that in other parts of the country you can buy a (new!) house for as little as £100-120k.

Yeah it's true inside London. I was there a few years ago looking at house prices. 500k pounds gets you a two bedroom studio flat in the London and a 4 or 5 bedroom fully furnished family home 1hr outside of London. That same 4 bedroom house inside London was between 3 and 5 million pounds.

But for the working class/lower middle saving up 10k pounds for a deposit is real work.

As little as? For many people living in those parts of the country that isn't as magically affordable as you might think!

No? Because I live in one of those shitty parts of the country and since minimum wage laws still apply here turns out that saving £5k for a mortgage deposit isn't as impossible as saving £50k down in London is.

I live in the Midwest.

>The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on.

64% of Americans own the home they live in.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United...

I’m not sure that is a useful number. Don’t most of that 64% own only a fraction of their home? How many homeowners are not paying off a mortgage?

This is vastly moving the goalposts of the discussion. The point is 64% of Americans are dealing with issues like deciding when to replace their roof, and what material to replace it with.

Yes, for purposes of the discussion about installing roofs, you are correct. I am just bemused by this statistic. The vast majority of “homeowners” are paying a lot of interest to lenders.

Is it though? When the money that could be going to solar roofs is mostly just going to the rent seekers?

Outside some strips of land on the coasts much of the masses do own homes. Some people get them at 30, some people get them at 50 but for the most part everyone who isn't just bouncing around minimum wage jobs will be a homeowner. That's not to say that the home isn't just a trailer on land and that the location and/or upkeep of the home won't make most upper middle class HN-ers recoil in horror but the fact of the matter is that a heck of a lot of people are homeowners and most of them aren't rich by any stretch.

Home ownership in the US is north of 64% currently.

Even if everything you say is true, it still doesn't negate the fact that it's a new technology which is expensive and needs investment in order to bring down the cost.

When computers were new, only rich organizations like governments, banks, and large corporations could afford them. Now you can buy a raspberry pi for close to nothing.

Photovoltaics (PV) is not a new technology. It’s been in production-state since the 50’s and powering percentages of some countries for at least the past ~5 years.

Adopt the existing, proven and cost-effective implementation of PV (~3’ x ~5’ aluminum framed panels).

Waiting on Elon to figure out boutique solar so the affluent can all install it first and drive mass adoption (decade?) stalls PV development as much as the US tariff on Chinese-made solar!