We have a Tesla and most owners love them because they’re good cars. Cost of ownership is next to nothing and our Model Y had next to no issues so far (scratch on seat when we picked it up which they replaced with a service appointed).

It costs less than $2 per 100 km to run while the prior car cost closer to $20 per $100 km in premium fuel. Also no oil changes or other significant maintenance (spark plugs, transmission oil, etc.) We save $3000 of gas per year and we’re in a luxurious/premium car. What I don’t understand is why anyone would buy a GLC/Q5/X3 over a Model Y. Who wants to spend $15k on gas in 5 years?

How do you come to that conclusion, and why would it be different for any other car?

I have both a bmw (330, 6 cylinder) and a tesla m3. The bmw is only 2 years older. Nowadays I prefer to drive the m3 by a wide margin for various reasons.

Musk had nothing to do with that, on the contrary it is more in spite of him than because of him that I bought one. I think that goes for most Tesla owners, as most of them are politically moderate and centrists and do not like extremists like him (or any).

Right wingers are ideologically against it and rather damage themselves by their ideology, and lefists tend to not have the money :) or (in Europe at least) are against any means of individual non-public transport.

Bitcoin can fuck off.

The point here is that car companies already charge for these things. The reality is basically two scenarios when ordering a car:

A: You pay $x, and they offer you heating steering wheels for $y. If you do not get them then, you do not get them ever.
B: You pay $x, and you can pay $y at any time to get heated steering wheels.

The business “bet” that (B) represents is that maintaining additional SKUs for each upgrade-feature and splitting off production lines to include or not include various combinations of features 1-2-3-etc. will cost them more money than just including it in every car. Then they can sell it to you on a whim. The actual feature itself does not cost anywhere near $y in either scenario to include, which is an important component of making this possible.

Now, you can say that (B) is a shitty scenario in a vacuum: if they’re willing to include it in every car, they should just charge every car what it costs to include plus some minor markup to allow the business to operate. E.g. if it costs $50 to include, they can increase the price of every car $55. And in that vacuum I’d agree. But it isn’t in a vacuum. That is not the scenario (B) is competing with. (B) is competing with (A). In (A) you are going to pay $200 or $300 or whatever for that $50-cost feature up front, or you never get it ever. In (B) you pay that $200 or $300 whenever you like.

It operates in a similar world to how Apple charges $200 to go from 8gb of RAM to 16gb of RAM, when that might cost them $10-20 at volume pricing. Or to use a well-liked company, how Valve charges $250 for a ~$10 SSD + ~$5-10 carrying case + ~$5-10 glass coating, on the base Steam Deck vs the fanciest Steam Deck.

This is not a “as a service” model. It’s a simple upselling business model. Profits on base models are low so as to have a low sticker price, and then they try to create profit off of upgrades. In this case, the software locked version is preferable to the consumer over the default version because it’s something you can unlock at any time, instead of only at purchase. It is not a new business model, nor is it even limited to electronics. The overall business model is shitty, but that applies to every instance of it: (A) and (B), and (B) is not differently shitty.

Service based systems are based on recurring revenue, in this case anything with a subscription. Which I specifically called out as something that would make it shitty and pointed to their subscription based or subscription-incentivizing behavior as shitty.

Your analogy doesn’t work at all.

The answer you’re being asked for needs to be a solution (what can replace capitalism?). The answer in your analogy is an observation (the plane crashed).

It’s fine to not have answers, but then your position is pretty useless. A societal system is a mandatory component of our lives. You can’t get rid of it without it being replaced with something else. If we don’t replace it, then one will arise naturally.

To follow your cancer example, it’s like a cancer patient saying they don’t want chemo or radiation because it’s not good enough. When they are asked what they want to do instead they just say “I don’t have answers, I just know these treatments aren’t very good”.

Winston Churchill is quoted saying

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried.

Pretty much the same applies to capitalism.

You’re right. It’s always wise to break a system without having a plan of what to do once it’s broken.

I agree that unregulated capitalism has its flaws but I personally don’t think that capitalism itself (if properly regulated) is inherently bad.

I think these questions are similar to the “I think we should fix society somewhat…” meme. Someone criticizing a thing is somehow expected to know and parrot a complete, flawless fix for the thing they’re criticizing.

How is that their responsibility at all? It isn’t, and even if they did have a perfectly good answer, they’re usually utterly powerless to implement it.