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China’s Abandoned, Obsolete Electric Cars Are Piling Up in Cities (www.bloomberg.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A subsidy-fueled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered vehicles.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Subsidies are by definition not a restriction on bad behavior but an incentive. There is no reason a company can’t ignore a subsidy if it doesn’t want to.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Subsidies skew the market toward specific sectors, technologies, or actors. A company that do not benefit from subsidies is at a competitive disadvantage vs a company that do get subsidies.

A totally free market wouldn't have any subsidies. But markets aren't totally free in practice.

Subsidies are typically a good thing when it benefits cleaner tech or improving energy efficiency. It's the fossil fuel subsidies that do the most harm.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Reminder that capitalism doesn't mean free market.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's part of it, even if that's not the only part.

Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Sure, in the same way that a central characteristic of Communism is being a Stateless society, even though that part never seems to happen either (thanks, Lenin). "True Capitalism has never been tried before!"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would argue that being horriblely disadvantaged by not getting free money is not in fact a restriction on the market.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's technically correct. It's not a restriction. But it's not a neutral for the market either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Of course it’s not neutral, but we’re talking about wether or not it is comparable with unrestricted capitalism.