Not sure why you phrase it that way. Paying people to buy a product is equivalent to selling said product below actual cost at that time. ...
I think you are shifting the context of those quotes. I was responding to comments about subsidies being responsible for speeding up the technology itself. But as was said - if a company can sell the current technology because a government subsidy artificially makes the current product a decent value for the customer (after the subsidy), it reduces the motivation to improve the product. They can sell it as is!
Sure, companies amortize costs over a production run. The first vehicle off an assembly line, whether the first Tesla, or the first new model year Ford is sold below cost, depending how you look at the amortization. But that's different.
And some products require a 'critical mass' to reach a scale where they can make a profit. Amazon might have sold books below
their cost of doing business, just to build up a brand name, and develop cash flow to justify infrastructure (with the business plan that costs will come down in the future, with a path to profitability). But I don't think they sold the books below what they paid for them, did they? It was the delivery and infrastructure that they were 'giving away', not the books. At any rate, it is the business making those decisions internally. Let them sink or swim with their decision.
Selling below cost can get a company in trouble for 'dumping', though I don't know how they calculate that cost and amortization of tooling, etc.
And I think we can understand those investments. I don't see how having someone else pay for 1/2 ~ 2/3rd of someone's solar panel installation is reducing costs significantly. I think we know a lot about making silicon wafers, and inverters.
I'll repeat me earlier message:
For the most part, technology can only move so fast. Engineers need to learn along the way. We could not have made the leap from an 8080 to a quad-core i7 just because someone threw money at it. Each step, the tech gets better, making it valuable to a larger base. And that keeps going, step by step.
Solar initially was $$$, so had a very small niche (space), and as the technology advanced, the market grew. Let the market grow as the technology improves, rather than trying to create artificial demand to push the technology (which it most likely can't do).
-ERD50