It must suck to live in Utah.
Sure, it’s a beautiful state with many wonderful people. But for a state that aligns itself with conservative values, it comes off more like a leftist enclave of socialist policies and religious persecution.
The one thing I’ve never fully understood is why the state of Utah continues to ban polygamy when so many of the folks who live there seek it out as a religious obligation or choice.
And imagine if you’re a polygamist in Utah and you want to buy a Tesla. Not only would you be forbidden from marrying more than one person, but you also wouldn’t be able to buy one of the most impressive cars on the market that just so happens to be made in America.
That’s right.
After being sued for the right to sell a product, the state of Utah decided that it’s perfectly acceptable to deny consumers the “privilege” of test-driving, discussing the price or buying a Tesla vehicle.
Just as we’ve seen in a few other states, Utah doesn’t want to allow Tesla to operate within the state because it doesn’t go through the dealership model, which is only in existence to placate the big money donors from the dealership lobby who service lawmakers like truck stop hookers with meth addictions.
Now last year, Utah state legislators, local dealerships, and Tesla did attempt to find some common ground, but none could be found through a proposal that would’ve prohibited Tesla from keeping any inventory at its stores.
Some great proposal!
As the good folks over at electrek.co pointed out, the proposed legislation led to ludicrous exchanges on the assembly floor, like one state legislator making the argument that Tesla shouldn’t be allowed to let people test drive its vehicles and then buy them online because his wife can’t try products from Amazon before buying them.
Yeah, that really happened.
Tesla’s legal team responded, saying …
“I think the fundamental problem is, as Representative Coleman explained, people at the negotiating table wanted for us to not be able to sell cars in the state of Utah. They wanted to dictate the terms their competitors would be able to sell cars. In that dynamic it’s very difficult to reach an agreement. At points we were very close to an agreement, but when pen got put to paper … there wasn’t a deal to be had that was good for consumers in the state of Utah.”
As an advocate of free markets and the basic fundamentals of liberty, I find the state of Utah’s attack on Tesla to be nothing short of the same types of heavy-handed tactics used by some of the world’s greatest anti-free market dictators, like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.
That being said, I’m still hopeful the good people of Utah will one day be able to buy a Tesla if they so choose. And in the meantime, I can take some comfort in knowing that the scumbags who continue to disallow Tesla to operate in the Beehive State were never smart enough to buy Tesla when it was trading for $20 a share.
The stock crossed the $300 mark yesterday, and will likely climb to $340 by the end of the year.
Invest accordingly.
