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The Missouri Automobile Dealers Association sued the Missouri Revenue Department and now a judge has ruled in their favor on part of their claims in Missouri.
Cole County Judge Daniel Green ruled that the Missouri Revenue Department violated state law when it gave the California-based manufacturer a license for a University City dealership in 2013 and a franchise dealer license for a Kansas City dealership in 2014. That allowed the automaker to sell cars directly to customers instead of through a dealership serving as a middleman.
[...] Tesla has faced similar roadblocks to selling its cars in several states with dealership laws similar to Missouri's. In some of those states, legislators have been looking at ways to tweak laws and let the company operate.
Previously: Tesla Direct Sales Blocked in New Jersey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @05:03PM
The free market at work, yay human vice #2 (greed) allowed to run amok. You can't have a free market and then complain when people manipulate it. We need a new market type, where malicious human activity is curtailed and made less likely to succeed. Oh wait, we call the regulation and government oversight... In the mean time we get stupid shit like this where middle men throw their weight around because they don't like the idea of becoming obsolete. They never should have existed in the first place, just a massive overhead bill for buyers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Friday September 02 2016, @05:36PM
It is not a free market if the local dealerships are sheltered from open competition by law. The malicious human activity here is by those who wish to use the force of the government to protect their inefficient and dishonest system, not by those who are for removing outdated regulations that limit consumer choice.
Most of the hot-button issues today are direct results of government interference.
Cable companies and ISPs are granted government monopolies on the state and local level.
The shortage of medical doctors is caused by high barriers to entry and restrictions on what PAs and NPs can do, like prescribing medicine.
Endless copyright to protect Big Media.
Requiring full cosmetology licenses for braiding hair, thanks to racism.
The War on Personal Freedom to protect enforcers' jobs.
There's probably more that aren't immediately coming to mind.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday September 02 2016, @06:22PM
What the fuck are you talking about? Are you insane?
This is NOT an example of a free market in any way, shape or form, and is absolutely a great example of what's wrong with government regulation. The laws requiring carmakers to sell through independent franchised dealerships is a form of government regulation; in a free market, the automakers could just sell directly to consumers without the middlemen.
And before you confuse me with one of those anti-government libertarian nuts, I'm all in favor of good government regulation, like that which various European nations use to have high-quality, low-cost cellular service and healthcare unlike here in the US. But this is not an example of it, it's a great example of the dangers of favoritism and cronyism being passed off as regulation, and not much different from the laws that prop up the taxi industry and allow high prices and terrible service there. In the hands of a good government, regulation can do great things; in the hands of a corrupt government, it does terrible things. Unfortunately, here in the US we only seem to have corrupt governments, judging by the quality of regulation we have.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday September 02 2016, @08:27PM
In the hands of a good government, regulation can do great things; in the hands of a corrupt government, it does terrible things. Unfortunately, here in the US we only seem to have corrupt governments, judging by the quality of regulation we have.
The trouble is that every jurisdiction wants to gets its fingerprints on it. Politicians rail against Federal regulations, but it is almost always the state, county or municipal governments that cause the most problems for small businesses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Sunday September 04 2016, @09:43PM
That's a good point. I'm not really sure why this is either; you'd think that the national government, being farther away from the voters and having more voters per politician (e.g., some federal legislator who writes laws that affect your isn't likely to live down the street from you or come knocking on your door while campaigning, while your town council members probably live within a few miles or less) would have more problems with corruption, but this doesn't seem to be the case. The laws prohibiting municipally-owned broadband, for instance, always happen at the State level (and seem to be entirely contrary to what the Federal government pushes for; as an aside, I'll hand it to Tom Wheeler; I was totally wrong about him). The laws against Tesla and propping up independent dealerships always come from State governments. And really corrupt, backwards deals (like the one that went to the SCOTUS about municipalities using Eminent Domain to seize property for private interests) come from local governments. And as we all (hopefully) know, it took the Federal government to pass the Civil Rights Act and allow black people to vote, as it was the local and state governments that had all kinds of ridiculous voting rules and poll taxes designed to prevent their suffrage.
The whole idea of "States' Rights" sounds good in theory, and once in a while turns out good (see: marijuana legalization in a handful of states), but most of the time giving power to state and local levels seems to result in more corruption and less freedom.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @06:26PM
These laws have been around for a *long* time.
Tesla is not the first to try this model. Pretty much all of the other car manufactures did the same thing at some point. You dont think we just magically got these laws because someone wasn't doing something shady?
They would come in buy all the local dealerships then close most of them. Leaving you with 1 'dealer' if you were lucky. Understandably most people were upset with the poor competition.
Take for example the town I live in. It is the home of Krispy Kreme. You figure there would be several dozen stores in the area selling doughnuts right? For about 50 years there was 1. Now there are 3. After they figured out people were not going to drive for 40 mins to get a doughnut. They very carefully control the stores to make sure there is low competition but high margin. Car dealers have even more on the line.
They do this because lets say I want to buy a Ford. I can go to 4-5 dealers in my area and pick something and even make the dealers compete on their margin to get me to buy. I can substitute a Chevy but it is not quite the same thing. The car manufactures figured out they didn't have to compete on margin. They could just mark whatever because the market for a 'ford' is a monopoly market. But the market for cars is not.