Eff, what kind of sucker [1] are you?
"You" (not you) already took a risk which failed. Now you are talking about taking on more risk with the same person who cheated you, like a lallu (Hindi term for a sucker)?
You're promoting wrong ideas, which are harmful to everyone here who is a supplier.
You need a principle from Econ 101:
Don't throw good money after bad.
I learned to understand that -risk- has a value. All transactions have risk, maybe I don't deliver, maybe you don't pay.
I now explicitly factor risk into quotes. We can share risk (you pay some, but not all, up front, coupled with progress payments), or I can take the risk (I'm pricing it higher, and assuming you're skipping the last payment), or you can take the risk (pay up front, but pay less.)
Treating risk as a line-item in the budget helps both parties understand the pricing better. Having a track record (of paying or producing) helps the other party accept more if the risk.
I've had some clients prove to be unreliable payers. For them I accept no risk. All work us done on a "pay first" basis. Some choose to find another supplier. I don't consider that a loss.
One tactic I've seen OEMs use is to buy for multiple products and stop payments for one as a test. If the vendor complains, they lose all the unrelated business (possibly including clawbacks!) and the OEM moves to the second source. This can kill the supplier.
The winning move is not to play.
It's practically standard policy for OEMs to stiff smaller vendors with flagrant disregard for their obligations, because every day of delay and every dollar they don't have to pay is more margin for the OEM. In many cases it doesn't even matter if doing so it's detrimental to the long term health of the OEM, as happened during the COVID supply shocks. Finance gets their way.
As an engineer, I've found out from more than one vendor that the delivery I was expecting to start production isn't happening because finance just decided they didn't want to issue payment.
I keep coming back to a study I read a long time ago where they administered college students a test to score sociopathy as freshmen and again as seniors. Not surprising seniors scored lower then freshmen, except business and economics where they scored a lot higher. Makes me more receptive to the old school idea that college is partly there to provide a moral education.
p.s. Tesla is not indebted like every other business (10-15x less debt, 5-6x more cash), so interest doesn't really count for them.
Soap box:
Having A LOT of money can suggest to a person that Everyone Else's Rules Do Not Apply To ME. Because they don't, largely. The trick is not letting that idea infest your mind with fallacies, such as YOUR Rules Do Not MATTER.
Not just in USA but many other countries too.
dbg31415•6mo ago
The news is full of stories about him settling cases because his actions were either illegal or in breach of contracts.
He comes across as supremely arrogant—someone who refuses to play by the rules and probably never will.
At this point, if you extend him credit or don’t demand full payment up front, that’s on you for trusting him.
philips•6mo ago
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/cities-seek-7...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/...
hn_throwaway_99•6mo ago
But agree with your statement, which is why I always gag a little when I see working class people lionize these two as "champions of the working man".
ujkhsjkdhf234•6mo ago
exasperaited•6mo ago
This, precisely. It's Fred Trump's mantra, inherited.
It's also bound up with his malignant narcissism; no deal is ever closed, it can always be renegotiated and he can always decide it was bad for him even when it was his deal.
People did refuse to work with him, though I am sure the rest came to realise you overbilled so you got paid at all.
And he made some hilariously bad deals when he was desperate (the ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal got comically good terms because Trump was so desperate to have a book).
Famously his lawyers would only meet with him in pairs. He is that untrustworthy.
All of this factors into how the tariff deals are going; any diplomatic department anywhere in the world understands all of this.
hn_throwaway_99•6mo ago
NYTimes (I think it was) just had an article that talked about how these other countries made these outlandish commitments to buy way more gas from the US than they'd ever need, or make insane amounts of investments in the US that they would never need to do, but the agreements were "light on implementation details". That shit is never going to happen.
exasperaited•6mo ago
He has a tendency to agree with the last person he spoke to who was nice to him, and he's also extremely vulnerable to flattery generally. If someone is making him happy he doesn't much care what they are saying.
The EU "deal" has convinced Trump that things have been committed by the EU that they literally do not have the power to commit.
The right wing press in the UK, even, was like, "haha, EU suckers, we got a better deal than you". And it is true, we've done very well by blowing diplomatic smoke up his arse, offering him a second state visit, generally Mandelson-ing them all.
But right wing media still tends to believe he's a great dealmaker when he is actually not; they simply didn't notice that he'd been fobbed off with undeliverables. And that means he gets the coverage from them that he is looking for.
exasperaited•6mo ago
(Musk has the small advantage of being able to express his feelings about his father’s behaviour; Trump still worships his)
DFHippie•6mo ago
exasperaited•6mo ago
Maryanne Trump Barry —- a federal judge —- was nevertheless part of the family tax cheating scheme.
Robert Trump cheated on his wife and his egregious behaviour seemingly drove her to an overdose.
Fred Trump Jr (Mary’s dad and Fred’s eldest, intended to run the business) drank himself to death, unable to survive the unbearable pressure his father put on him.
DJT is in a different league for sure: he is a malignant narcissist which is already a very unusual personality type, and he was also shaped and protected by Roy Cohn.
Either way, evil dads are always in the back stories of these guys (Emory Tate was a cruel, diagnosed narcissist, a misogynist and adulterer, and often absent too)