Since most of Musk's cash comes from selling Tesla shares, perhaps this downward trend is a good opportunity for the U.S. government to buy SpaceX from him at a discount (or for the SpaceX investors to push for an IPO).
a good opportunity for the U.S. government to buy SpaceX from him at a discount
The only real reason why they'd want to do that, is to get rid of actual innovation in space to get back to the wasteful go-nowhere days of cost-plus contracting as a jobs program.
NASA had been lagging because of personnell, the same readon Space X succeeded. The people that were around during apollo are just now retiring. It was not because of JFK they accomplished so much and it was not because musk overworked or challenged his people they accomplished so much. Blue origin and others are also doing ok, they just were not contract winners or with the best people. DARPA still has the best minds possibly and best inventions as well. Risk taking by leadership is the big difference here.
That said, no way musk gives up his desire to rule over mars or control asteroid mining industry over a few billion dollars.
Frankly, he seems trumpish by the day. I don't think he has anyone close to him who cares for him and isn't afraid of upsetting him. Surround yourself with yes men and never apologize for anything, the true way of insecure and isolated powerful men.
NASA is lagging because of personnel? If by “personnel” includes incredibly, weak leadership, then I agree.
NASA leadership seems to think NASA’s job is primarily to set requirements and distribute funds to contractors and to avoid managing, building, or operating anything if it can possibly be avoided. They just want to pay someone to do something and slap a NASA logo on it and pat themselves on the back for their “achievement”.
NASA has always set requirements and distributed funds. They've always used contractors. PIs on projects are usually full time university professors and their researchers are PhDs (or candidates) working for them. NASA is mostly setting goals, administering projects, and running the projects with contractors turning the wrenches.
The point I was trying to make was that politicians would opt for a more conventional, politically expedient move regardless of its cost to the federal budget.
Ah I see. Ok, but the world has now seen 'reusable rockets with a low cost to orbit', if that advantage gets lost then ultimately someone else will duplicate it and own the market. Customers don't care about politics, they care about costs, and reliability. SpaceX has both of those, right now. Anything recycled or warmed over is not going to satisfy the demand that exists now.
The point that is being made here is that cost-to-orbit is not the primary selection metric being used.
Take a look at the Space Launch System, for example. It's not the best and it sure isn't the cheapest, but reusing factories built for Space Shuttle components does get politicians re-elected!
It’s relative and overlooks ten+ years of trading.
Tesla stock is only at the lowest since the start of the pandemic when everything wildly inflated due to the massive influx of money into the system. It’s still radically up since 2017. The last two years were a severe anomaly.
It would be odd if Musk's antics had no effect on the desirability of the Tesla brand, given that EVs primarily appeal to environmentally aware progressives.
Perhaps that's the reason why Tesla is offering big discounts right now.
I'm pretty sure that it has exactly that effect. I wouldn't want to be caught dead in a Tesla at this point, never mind driving one. And with FSD who is to know which one it would be...
> The good news is that this rate of descent can't be maintained for much longer.
Actually, a stock can fall 11% every day for an infinite number of days (discreteness of pennies notwithstanding)!
In all seriousness, though, I would be very wary about thinking that "this rate of descent can't be maintained for much longer." Many stocks have lost half their value, only to then lose 50% more shortly thereafter, and then 50% more after that.
Yes, if you want to express it as a percentage of present day value, then sure, the limit is '0'. But at $73 / month it would make sense for it to bottom out at some point.
Sure but another $100 in three months isn't going to happen. At least, I don't think it will, no matter what idiocy Musk will pull next. There has to be a floor somewhere.
It can if the SEC figures someone (rich white guys and their companies) is being materially harmed and can justify it via "suspicious trades" (which can mean anything).
> The good news is that this rate of descent can't be maintained for much longer.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
~Confucius (probably)
Seriously though, there's no natural law, perhaps other than greed, which can stop a descent. Especially for something which was (is?) irrationally overvalued.
Well, '0' would seem to be a hard lower limit. But I expect a floor at least somewhat above that unless even Tesla's assets end up being worth nothing. But that does not seem to be realistic to me. Even so, no matter what price: I'm not buying this stock because all it would do is give Elon tacit support.
> But I expect a floor at least somewhat above that unless even Tesla's assets end up being worth nothing.
That's the thing though, the value of stocks is only tenuously related to the value of anything Tesla (any company, really) actually does, owns, or sells. It's value is solely based on what it can be sold for. And its sale price depends solely upon what someone thinks they can sell it for at a later date.
So, aside from not going away (and buying its own stock), there's not a company can really do that can have a predictably effect on the stock price.
I've seen too many stocks move solely based on the feelings of a few stock analysts, regardless of the company's achievements, to believe otherwise.
That's the reason I'm not in this game. I see no rational approach to trading in Tesla stock, it is bought and sold on sentiment more than on the underlying value.
Ford is trading at 108% book value, GM at 75% of book, Mercedes is 80% of book, and Volkswagen is trading at 1/3rd of book value (!?), assuming Yahoo Finance's numbers are correct. In contrast, Tesla is at 976% of book value. I think it has the potential to fall quite a bit more.
I think the issue is that investors are losing their faith (or patience?) on Elon Musk. Almost half of the value loss happened just in a single quarter, largely after his Twitter acquisition. Most other US stock indexes have been either flat or increasing during the same period. I wouldn't say this is a permanent loss, but still skeptical on possibility of natural recover without giving up his obsession on Twitter.
Tesla is underperforming the market so macro issues aren't that relevant.
And given they famously don't do marketing they have relied entirely on the click bait loving finance media. Can't complain now when it turns against them.
Tesla is underperforming the market so macro issues aren't that relevant.
If you look back at the actual history and the actual numbers, when Tesla is punished due to macro, it's always out of proportion to what the actual business is doing. Those who have been actually following the stock know this well.
And given they famously don't do marketing they have relied entirely on the click bait loving finance media. Can't complain now when it turns against them.
Here's the thing: The finance media is generally pushing a Tesla narrative based on fear, which would be contradicted by the facts, which they never present. So there's plenty of room to complain about the accuracy and truthfulness of the media.
> The finance media is generally pushing a Tesla narrative based on fear
Tesla stock has been crazy high until recently relative to other automakers. Who is to say that this narrative is truly fear, or simply the absence of a previous hype narrative that inflated the value of the stock? Did anyone truly believe that $TSLA was worth more than the rest of the industry put together?
> when Tesla is punished due to macro, it's always out of proportion to what the actual business is doing
This is called beta [1]. Tesla’s beta is 1.9 [2]. Tesla has been falling more than 2x the market. There are obvious, firm-specific and novel risks that have emerged in the last year that are being priced in.
It's a radical way to squeeze a ton of money out of investors. Sell at the peak, drive down the price with antics, buy it all back with a tender offer at discount.
The resulting unfounded accusations of pedophilia and whatnot against all parties to those lawsuits would be endlessly entertaining, and of course the resulting defamation lawsuits.
I forget where I read it, but whenever I think of lenders in this situation I remember the quote, "When you owe the bank 10$, that's your problem. When you owe the bank a million dollars, that's the bank's problem."
Only if you do not own liquid assets worth $1M that are easily acquired via court judgment.
Equity in an established and profitable business like Tesla is not a bad deal in the event of default, so I do not see what incentive lenders would have to renegotiate.
When the parties you borrow from cut up journalists with bone saws the court isn't what you should be worried about. I'm pretty sure Elon is safe from that kind of treatment but at the same time it already happened and in plain sight and nobody was held accountable (at least, nobody that wasn't a scapegoat).
This seems more like a reversion to sane valuations. Peak market cap exceeded Toyota + GM combined, completely decoupled from Tesla's economic realities
The reality is that the dealership model is a scam and ICE car are going to have a lot less demand in 10 years. Maybe GM and Toyota can pivot into that world, but it is not guaranteed at all.
So did early printer manufacturers. Hooking users on cheap products to get them bought into the ecosystem, only to hike rates later, is an incredibly common business practice.
If Tesla owns a large percentage of the charging stations—particularly ones in otherwise-underserved areas—they can hike the prices for the people who have to charge there.
I wonder how many places there are with only Tesla chargers. Usually I find that an EA charger will fill gaps in the Tesla coverage out west, they're sort of complimentary. And since a Tesla can charge at a supercharger OR a CCS charger, they don't really have a lot of leverage to indiscriminately raise prices.
Musk guaranteed $0.07 kw to charge the semi but now its $0.50 making it two times more expensive then diesel so not sure how that will dominate the market?
They can make their own charger since he opened the patents: all they have to do is agree to let Tesla have license to all of their own patents and they also agree to not copy any of Tesla's designs that aren't even covered by patent or copyright or provide "material assistance" to anyone who does.
Essentially they can use the patents if they accept something stronger than patents: no copying Tesla's unpatented designs or they can go back and get you for the patent violation in perpetuity (or statute of limitations).
that's what you get from that? he tells you they will guarantee $0.07 kw and that it will be cheaper then diesel to run to me this was a scam for PR and the getting people to preorder. Then we have the AI driving the trucks and in "convoys" that we now hear nothing about, yet he said it was already able to do today "2017"
what we got is a truck that no one knows its weights so you can't tell how much it can move in cargo, that costs two times more to operate with a very limited range unless you want to destroy your batteries really quickly but hey they did engineer the best phone charger for it....
I can't charge at work. I can't even plug in a block heater. I imagine most folks everywhere can't charge at work.
Plus, charging at home depends heavily on the ownership of a garage. For one, power sockets (let alone charging stations) are pretty rare at most dense housing. Secondly, charging cables contain enough copper that they are rich targets for thieves.
Currently, most apartment owners are not interested in providing charging stations, even if their tenants want them. The cost of putting them in and maintaining them is too high to justify it. Or the laziness quota, either/or.
If you can't afford a house but you can afford an EV, but you also live in a high crime area where extension cords are severed for their copper, then I am very confused about your finances and living situation.
In most states with high housing costs (such as California), landlords are required to let tenants install EV charging stations.[1] Also there are companies such as ChargePoint that go around to apartment complexes and sell them charging stations. The stations bring the apartment complex revenue and attract higher-end tenants.
I think the concerns about charging are overrated. Yes, some landlords will drag their feet, but that's true for all tech adoption. I'm sure the same thing happened with cable TV, telephone lines, and dishwashers. The fancy places adopt the new thing first, then the average places, and finally the low-end places.
A house, with a garage, starts at $450k where I live (Montana, FWIW). A BEV can be had for under $40k. Plus rebates.
And charging cable theft is like bike theft. Combine exceptionally low risk with a fairly high reward, and it will happen everywhere, no matter how “low” of a crime area you’re in. A quick application of bolt cutters nets them hundreds of dollars, and may cost the owner thousands, depending on the250 per battery. Now imagine this applied to charging cables with their excess of copper and data lines and occasionally cooling jackets.
Downplay the problems as you like, but they are problems.
You must live in a very nice part of Montana if houses are that expensive. I live in a suburb of Portland and paid $350k for a home with a garage.
Stealing a charging cable is extremely high risk. A thief would be dealing with lethal currents. Also almost every EV has a phone app that notifies the owner if charging is interrupted. If you're home you'll almost certainly be able confront the thief. If it's a Tesla, sentry mode means you'll also have camera footage of the thief.
If you're worried about thieves, you should get an EV. Combustion vehicles have catalytic converters. In terms of risk-reward they are much juicier targets than charging cables. I don't know a single EV owner who has had their cable stolen. I know plenty of people who have had their catalytic converters stolen. (Yes, far fewer people have EVs, but you'd think I'd have heard of it happening at least once by now, especially in the Portland area.) EVs don't have cats, and they're basically rolling iPhones that record their surroundings, so they're less likely to be messed with.
The other issue is having capacity in your panel. Most level 2 chargers are at least 50A and the average house has a 100A to 200A panel. Depending on your appliances, you may or may not have enough space left in your panel without doing at minimum a panel upgrade if not a service upgrade. Just adding an L2 charger is like $2000 or more depending on labor. Switching from 100A to 200A or 200A to a second 200A panel is about $5000 or more in parts and labor (this is on top of the parts and labor for the charger). If you also have to get the utility company to upgrade your service that’s another $5000 or more depending if you need to buy a new transformer for your pole.
This stuff can add up fast if you don’t already have capacity.
The feed size isn’t a limit on how many circuits you can have, just how many are running at the same moment. I have 200A of service like most houses built since 1970 but 500A of circuits. I never go above 80A at any given time though.
As others have mentioned, most charging is done at home. EVs can plug into many types of outlets. You can even charge off a standard 120V 15A plug (albeit slowly).
For fast charging on road trips, Teslas can get CCS adapters and charge at competing stations. (Although considering the current state of Electrify America, I don't know why anyone would do that.) Also Tesla is starting to open their chargers to non-Teslas. Charging is becoming a commodity. The main advantages of the Supercharger network are reliability and integration with the car's built-in trip planning. In the long term, Tesla's Superchargers will be like Apple's AirPods: compatible with pretty much everything, but nicer for those who use the company's other products.
GM have been doing really well with both the crossover Bolt and the Cadillac Lyriq. I’d happily buy either of them over a Tesla.
Ford has the Mustang and the Lightning.
I’ve seen all of these on the roads recently. As many, if not more than I see Teslas. I am not in California where Tesla probably has a locational advantage due to the infrastructure being better for EVs.
Thinking Tesla is the only company investing in electric is insane. GM and Ford’s body panel alignment embarrasses these Teslas too.
I've had a Bolt for more than a year (it's a great car) and I don't know what Electrify America is. (Looked it up, it's a network of charging stations)
From what I've seen on youtube / auto magazines, towing with an EV takes a massive hit to its range, way more than a diesel truck. If it's only an occasional thing (e.g. take the boat to the lake on the weekends, now with an extra hour sitting at a charger), then it's probably a good tradeoff. If hauling is your job, it might not be there yet :(
Chevy is lying. It will tow 20,000lbs, but for 50 miles only, and it will cost $40k, but for a nonexistent trim that comes without battery and wheels. Real specs will be 5,000lbs x 250 miles @ $100k (with taxes and other bs).
Actual official starting price is $52K. But still - I have a deal of a lifetime for you. Ill buy 100 of them from you right now paying $62K cash money. You have a chance of a lifetime to make a cool $1mil shuffling some paper. How about it?
pro tip: they lie, thats what desperate car companies do.
Its not popular, its manufactured in small numbers (few thousand per month) and sold at huge dealer premiums.
Chevy is lying about the price same way Ford was. Nobody bought Lightning at msrp other than brand advocates and media personalities (certain youtubers magically get allocated unobtanium cars skipping queue and sticker price).
So how about those Lightnings? Maybe only 10? Ill pay $70K cash money. Mysteriously a couple car youtubers I follow were able to buy before public at sticker price. Same goes for 2023 Z06 vette.
Between small inventory and dealer premiums those halo cars are just PR stunts.
When I was in Sweden this summer, I was really surprised by the amount of EVs on the roads, and how 90% of them were not Teslas. Quite the contrast to California, or Hawaii, where it's 90% Tesla, and a small handful of others.
It's not hard to see what competition is going to do to Tesla's marketshare in the US once all those models are introduced here.
But in neighboring Norway you'd find a ton of Teslas, when before Tesla an American made car would be a very strange sight there (Ford excepted, but not the USA versions of Ford).
Yes, because Norway was way ahead of the curve on EV adoption for a bunch of reasons.
However, Tesla is down to a 10% market-share in Norway as well, so they completely squandered their first-mover advantage there as well. Apparently the "dinosaurs" managed to ramp up and pivot quite nicely despite what everyone said.
Interesting, I wasn't aware of that, thank you for the correction. Incredible in a way, to be so far ahead and with such a regulatory tailwind to be able to squander the lead.
One of the things that has been at the back of my mind is this: when the CEO of a large company is selling large volumes of stock they know more than anybody what is at stake. A CEO that has an optimistic outlook about the company they run will buy stock, not sell it. Elon has been selling across a 50% drop as though it makes no difference.
You didn't claim otherwise, but Ford does a lot of engineering and manufacturing in Europe, particularly the Cologne area. In European Ford models, the most American things are maybe the company itself and the infotainment software.
Maybe. Probably not. With a large region of the US losing power during a cold blast because TVA couldn't keep up across multiple power distribution areas, I wouldn't expect to see people jumping in on that bargain. When you need it, your electric car will be significantly less useful in a crisis. States are also beginning to raise registration fees significantly to make up for the lack of gas tax revenue.
I am in California and I know California wants to sunset gasoline cars, but when I started looking recently, I was just unable to commit to an all electric SUV and settled for hybrid (if it were available), and I think that may be a decent compromise for many. There are regular hybrids and there are plug in hybrids and between them you get a range of options that reduce the charm of going full electric.
I want to do this. But I'm not in California (or NY - i.e. CARB regulation states) and thus our local dealerships neither receive plug-in hybrids, nor can/will they service plug-in hybrids if I go to one of those states to buy one.
Teslas are still too expensive for most people and there's no sign of a cheaper model coming any time soon. The incumbent car companies are also gradually closing the gap between Tesla and their own EV offerings, there's simply no conceivable scenario where Tesla could eclipse half a dozen other companies combined.
Toyota could if it really wanted to, but there's no evidence it wants to. Toyota seems to still believe that hydrogen is going to be the next big thing Any Day Now. In the meantime, they keep making the Prius (a hybrid), but that's as electrified as they seem to want to go. It's quite sad really.
Toyota has a lot of electric cars coming out. Also I'm not sure hybrid is so far from full electric or if that's an awful distinction. Hybrid may be the better path honestly.
Tesla didn't break 1m last year btw, and IDK what their numbers will be this year - but on track to be a little higher, but not the growth they have had to date. Definitely slowing down considerably.
While Musk's antics are a convenient political point, the larger issue is that growth stocks have all been struggling this year. Ark Investments is down 70%. Tiger Global around the same. The one saving grace for Tesla earlier this year had been the war in Ukraine causing fuel prices to surge, but those have normalized and whatever boost energy cost saving had been giving to the EV market has evaporated.
A very large part of Tesla's value was never based on any kind of fundamentals, but on optimism about Musk's vision and ability to innovate into the future.
I wonder how much of the drop is based on perceived lack of "focus" from Musk (valid, but possibly temporary), and how much because of a loss of faith in the man himself.
Agreed on all counts, and I’ll throw a third factor in: how much is based on Musk’s public alignment with Trump and his Qanon-like behaviors, when Tesla’s customers skew liberal and urban?
It’s only anecdata, but I know two recent EV buyers who ruled out Tesla because of Musk’s suddenly in-your-face politics.
I'm sorry, what? This claim is laughable. Musk claims he hasn't ever voted for him, and they have publicly fueded frequently.
You can argue his politics have moved right. You can't credibly argue he's a Trump supporter.
I guess to some people these two things are equivalent, but it's simply incorrect, and reveals a certain political naivete in those making such claims.
Alignment doesn’t mean support. It means that, like Trump, he’s joined the QAnon brigade, which is unarguably true. Sure, you can say he’s only doing it for eyeballs/lulz, in which case I will refer you to Popehat’s Rule of Goats.
Ah I see. So he votes against the man, but is "aligned", because of agreement on a single issue? Even if I bought into your claim that Elon thinks favorably of "QAnon", that is in no meaningful sense Trump alignment.
Good luck making your argument to anyone who isn't a partisan hack.
Judging serial liars on their opinions seems like a waste of time to me. Looking at their actions and the results is probably safer given they both do very public things that impact large numbers of people with generally visible results.
There are only two sides in the culture war. Any free-thinking criticism of one side places you in or aligns you with the opposition.
“If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” Intelligent commentators mocked the famous George W. Bush line when he uttered it. But a decade and a half later and it’s the prevailing sentiment among many of the same people who ridiculed it.
Paul Krugman wrote recently that Elon Musk has “gone full MAGA.” The press will tell you what they can get away with. And right-thinking readers will uncritically accept it, for the most part. Trump was good for news traffic. My guess is that Musk is similarly good for business, judging on how many journalists seem to be on the Elon beat. I expect to read and hear a lot more of this for as long as that remains true.
> Intelligent commentators mocked the famous George W. Bush line when he uttered it. But a decade and a half later and it’s the prevailing sentiment among many of the same people who ridiculed it.
The degree to which this has occurred, across a wide range of issues, is still stunning to me.
Not really. The Bush administration accelerated the polarization of post-Cold War American public culture, which the Obama presidency failed to truly heal. It’s hard to be stunned when everything is progressing (or rather regressing) into tribalism and atomization as it has been for decades, just louder and more obnoxiously.
Hard to succeed at solving a problem when your actions seem almost perfectly tailored to exacerbate it.
I'm not going to relitigate the Obama era. Democrats seem incapable of understanding that the "clinging to guns, religion" comment, and the policies that follow from such a stance, were divisive.
Edit: Responding to the comment below because this account is rate limited:
Indeed, they did not. That entire "movement" is a stain on the GOP, and you are right to criticize them for it.
It's a great example of Trumpian nonsense Musk has never engaged in.
There is meaningful daylight between the views and actions of men like Trump, DeSantis, and Elon Musk. They are not "aligned" to the degree claimed throughout this thread. Though, I understand why it's politically convenient to state otherwise.
Musk, of course, is a typical Californian ideology tech libertarian industrialist who has now hitched his course to anti-woke culture war baiting and social media free speech pearl-clutching.
But there is something to be said about a Trumpian style to public behavior. Maybe it’s just social media demagoguery. Tactical trolling.
Musk, like other celebrity public figures on social media who make a lot of vapid grandiose statements and then flame out when challenged, are simply operating in the same style.
It’s funny you mentioned Bush, because growing up during his presidency, when terms like “reality-based community” and “truthiness” were coined, I never felt that Trump was a radically new phenomenon. He was Bush except louder - with less subtext.
I’d describe Trump and Musk as similarly adapted to the attention economy. But it is a similarity of style, as you said, and not necessarily politics.
While Bush II was far from the inventor of executive dissimulation, his administration did have a uniquely dysfunctional relationship with the truth. But truthiness was coined by Colbert, a brilliant critic of that administration, to describe things that aren’t true but feel true. It’s regrettable, but increasingly over the last five or six years, that term could be applied with similar frequency to claims made on either side of the aisle.
Bush comes from a dynasty of establishment bureaucrats, is a neocon, neoliberal and started a war under the false pretense of the presence of WMD in Iraq.
Trump is isolationist (but didn't push through his policies), didn't start a war and would probably have prevented the Ukraine war had he still been president. Yes, without further loss of territories!
There are no similarities at all. But no-more-mean-tweets is all that matters for the $250,000 per year SV chickenhawks. Others will go to war for them.
Trump, like Bush, made a lot of insane comments and deliberately cultivates a public persona that is designed to alternatively relate to (and be found endearing) his supporters, while simultaneously completely infuriating his detractors.
You may not have been around for his presidency, which is why you’re choosing to focus on substantiative policy choices rather than the public style I am talking about, but Bush was well criticized for appearing to be a brash and foolishly pugnacious figure. Not all that different from Trump, except Bush’s ranch owner shtick made him more rural coded- a cowboy. Both also liked to lambaste so-called experts and make use of anti-intellectual sentiment. They are more stylistically similar to each other than to say, Romney, McCain, Jeb Bush, or even Ted Cruz.
I was politically conscious for his presidency (and a few more before it), and you make a good point or two, but I’d take issue with this characterization of the Bush years. His presidency was dynastic. He was a member of the political establishment, and a governor of Texas. He campaigned as a compassionate conservative, “a uniter, not a divider”. He (clumsily) spoke Spanish. “Global sourcing” accelerated during his presidency and he was a proponent of free trade. He was “a guy you’d want to have a beer with,” but his populist appeal didn’t extend beyond a superficial level, being photographed in cowboy clothes clearing brush on his ranch. His administration was made up of radical Nixon-era neocons with a handful of moderates who lent it credibility (Rice and Powell particularly). 9/11 of course radically altered history and enabled their worst excesses. A costly illegitimate war, naked cronyism, and a massive curtailing of civil liberties that remains to this day. Without a doubt the most destructive presidency I’ve witnessed.
He was not at all pugnacious, although, like Trump, the outrage he inspired was partly due to his lack of presidential decorum and sophistication. He put his foot in his mouth. He was a national embarrassment. But his image was that of a born-again Christian, with an upright moral posture. Quite a distance from the verbal pugilist who made ridiculous threats to celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell.
The Democratic opposition saw his election as illegitimate—the Pat Buchanan vote, hanging chad Florida controversy. Worth remembering. Not the first and certainly not the last disputed election.
> He was “a guy you’d want to have a beer with,” but his populist appeal didn’t extend beyond a superficial level, being photographed in cowboy clothes clearing brush on his ranch.
I'd argue that it went further than that. Perhaps this was ginned up by his liberal critics, who loved to muckrake up shocking exposés like Jesus Camp and make clumsy analogies between Evangelicalism and the Taliban, but Bush's bluff, often stumbling, manner and tendency to engage in dismissing "those in the know" also encapsulated an anti-intellectualism that was intended to appeal to anti-elite, and thus populist, image.
Hell, his anti-intellectualism was written about in December 2000 [0], before his presidency had even begun! The fact that he was seen as somewhat of a dunderhead also fed into that. Despite being a dynastic scion and cabal of advisors, he also posed as a political outsider as well [1]. Perhaps in some ways, Bush's attempts to portray himself as diametrically opposite of what he was, thereby using the Big Lie technique, is something that he and Trump stylistically have in common, and is something that made libs mad in both eras.
> He was not at all pugnacious
While he might not have personally attacked critics as later presidents might have- calling anti-war critics treasonous in a more roundabout, conventional-politician way than directly- he was certainly seen as a bellicose warmonger to critics, especially by foreign observers. Though sure, perhaps this is a case where policy overshadowed personal style.
But no, I'm sure he was seen as a pugnacious to some degree, even if it was only in a ridiculous, chickenhawk, "lemme at him, chief" sort of way.
> to his lack of presidential decorum and sophistication.
As per above, burnished his populist image to a segment of the electorate. Certainly in contrast to Kerry.
Musk has engaged in a ton of tribal signaling recently.
Does it suck that we have such clearly delineated tribes? Yes. But Musk is also smart enough to realize that that's the case, and he's knowingly chosen to repeat and engage with the shibboleths of the extreme right.
Didn't he just throw his support behind the Republican party, the leader of which is Trump? How can you say Musk doesn't align with Trump when he is a supporter of Trump's political machine? It's not like Musk ever found the Republican party attractive before Trump turned it into what it is today. But post-insurrection, the GOP suddenly looks like a party worth supporting for Musk.
He resigned from Trump’s appointment in protest and stated many times that he’s a centrist and wants to rid Twitter of the far left and far right. Your description of the world as pro and anti trump is a massive oversimplification of reality. There are so many shades of grey between your black and white.
He said that but he also said to vote Republican in the midterms. The Republicans are the party of insurrection, not centrists. And besides, what does being a “centrist” even mean anymore when one party supports and foments a literal coup?
When Musk is tweeting “kek”, unbanning insurrectionists, banning left leaning journalists (not even far left!), then it’s clear that he’s not actually about balance. He’s signaling he is part of a particular tribe whose chief is Donald Trump, not that he’s a centrist.
His favorables gain with the MAGA is WAY lower than his drop in popularity with the libs he is working very hard to own. It's like +5% to -33%. Musk or no Musk, deep in Red country these people won't be caught dead in a Tesla.
In addition to lost of focus, and loss of respect, he also sold lots of shares after acquiring twitter (presumably to prepare for recession). That is also a contributing factor.
Most can agree Musk is right about the importance of aspirational leadership.
It's just taken a while for people to see that corporate optimism needs to be held in check and be accountable. Fake-it-to-make-it is one thing, but you can only fake robot videos, solar tiles and hyperloops for so long before you completely break it.
FSD worst of all where people have paid $10k for vaporware for years now. Some people have already traded in their first “FSD” Tesla and never actually got the feature!
I've been closely following Musk/Tesla since 2014. It is been very interesting watching "experts" write Musk off as a software guy that doesn't understand cars 2014-2019, to watching people claim that TSLA will hit "10k/share" 2020-2022, to today watching people claim that Elon is a fraud.
The reality is that he has been acting exactly the same way for the past 20 years. Nothing has changed except the observers.
No that is just when you started reading articles about how crazy he was. If you want to get up to speed start with the 2015 biography by Ashlee Vance.
For me there is a pre-cave-diver and post-cave-diver Musk, that's the time when he utterly lost it and it's been a downhill ride from there. Maybe there were earlier harbingers that were equally strong but I must have missed those.
Unfortunately the cave diver hired one of the most incompetent attorneys in America to represent him in what should have been an open-and-shut case. After blowing the Musk suit, Lin Wood went on to promote every asinine conspiracy theory during the 2020 election and was sanctioned by several different states and a Federal Judge for his conduct. I do wonder if that case had gone differently if Musk would’ve been chided a bit more.
There was a great post on Twitter from someone who said basically as long as Elon is talking about something he didn't understand deeply he sounded like a genius but when he started talking about something he did, software in this case, he sounded like an idiot.
I have always made this same comment about movies, where script writers can make something that I don't know about believable but when it came time to talk about networking or hacking or computers, it always seemed so lame. I realized that "sounding accurate" and "being accurate" were actually orthogonal characteristics of discourse.
It has always been the case where I adjust my 'believability index' by what is accomplished rather than by what is said.
I suspect there are very smart capable people at Tesla and SpaceX who are pulling off miracles but not getting credit for it. If that is true, I wish I knew who they were because I have mad respect for what they have done.
That is mostly correct. Elon operates on an optimal level of abstraction across many domains. An organization's success is determined by thousands of variables. Elon understand most of the most important of those variables at a decent level. Does that mean that PR and Panel Gaps are bad? Yes, but it also means that volumetric efficiency of factories is good. A metric that few other US auto manufacturing CEOs focus on.
> "It is therefore quite sensible to attend to [Freud] with respect in the one case and not in the other-and that is what I do. I am all the readier to do it because I have found that when he is talking off his own subject and on a subject I do know something about (namely, languages) he is very ignorant." - C.S. Lewis
When he publicly talks about things I'm knowledgeable about, he just sounds like he's communicating with the public. My previous two companies did business with SpaceX, and my coworkers who interfaced with him all said he was pretty matter-of-fact and asked good questions for being an executive.
The internet culture surrounding him is pretty detached from reality. I can't imagine not wanting to hire a former SpaceX engineer into my current company because we think Elon did everything himself.
I remember hanging out with friends who worked for ULA around the time when Falcon IX was pulling off its first landings. We were at a party drinking beer, and they were repeating their company's propaganda as if the ideas were their own. It's possible for even the best engineers to become irrationally biased if they're worried about their jobs.
The same is true for some of the more vocal accounts here on HN, as elsewhere.
I don't keep a list of usernames but a few folks talk with authority across a range of topics - both tech and adjacent interests - and when they happen to step into some niche where they obviously don't have the same depth, and yet project the same level of authority while being not entirely correct, it really does recalibrate that "believability index".
You can write the exact same comment, word-for-word in 2018 about Elon and get upvoted, but downvoted in 2022. My opinion of him hasn’t changed, he hasn’t changed, and most of the realities of Tesla haven’t changed in that time frame.
I mean, he clearly spends a lot more time airing out his own dirty laundry on social media now. Previously it might have seemed to be a clever guerrilla PR tactic, now it often just seems petty and sad.
The Twitter Files are an interesting play, to jump into culture war discourse and get political and cast himself as a free speech crusader, better than the old order.
But that’s not the dirty laundry I meant. I just mean all of the replies to the Twitter peanut gallery and reposting lame memes and looking generally boorish, rude, and unhip. He doesn’t have to do any of that, yet he chooses to.
It reads to me like he's desperately trying to prove that his acquisition of Twitter was a good thing; that the people in charge before were Bad, and he is Good.
The fact that it has turned into such an obvious nothingburger just highlights how out of touch with reality Elon has become, and how badly he needs to feel like people like him.
I have as well and agree he is still acting the same however I don't think that automatically means he is in a good position. I think we are just now watching his marketing machine collapse, and now we are seeing the markets' evaluation of his companies if he isn't seen as a genius.
It’s tough because “actual value” is roughly NPV of future profits. The magic of exponents says that a 5% market share difference 10 years from now is hundreds of billions of dollars difference in value today.
So it’s very hard to agree on actual value. It’s certainly not an objective number; it will always depend on assumptions about future profits and rates of change.
>"...and that I really try to work as much as possible, you know, to the edge of sanity, basically." -Elon Musk
>Yeah, it's only because of Elon Musk's hard work that Tesla has lost over 50% of its value this year.
>"Every high quality minute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla." -Elon Musk
>Oh, oh, it was so close. If he'd said that every minute he spends alive he causes a million dollars damage to Tesla's market cap.
>"I mean, there are many instances where a half-hour meeting -- I was able to improve the financial acumen of the company by $100 million in a half-hour meeting." -Elon Musk
>Let's see. Tesla's market cap is about $500 billion dollars. And it's lost about half of its value this year. Meaning that Tesla has lost some $500 BILLION DOLLARS in market cap this year.
>For perspective, that's about TWICE the market cap of Walmart.
>So let's see, $500 billion dollars in a years, there's roughly 10,000 hours in a year, so EVERY HOUR THIS YEAR, thanks to Musk's brilliant leadership, Teslas's lost about $50 MILLION DOLLARS of its market cap, give or take $1 MILLION DOLLARS for EVERY MINUTE Musk has been alive this year.
>"Every high quality minute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla." -Elon Musk
>You've been watching this video for about five minutes. The time it takes Elon Musk to $5 MILLION DOLLARS OF DAMAGE to Tesla stock.
>And this might give you some insight into why buying BURNING CANCER was still more valuable to Elon Musk than Tesla stock. Damn straight!
>What he can do for Tesla, he can do for Twitter.
>Now, Elizabeth Holmes this week got sentenced to ten years in jail for lying to investors, eventually resulting in a loss of about $10 billion dollars of the market cap of the company.
>Musk has been leading Tesla to lose market value at the rate of about a Thernos EVERY WEEK!
>And I should stress, one of the reasons Holmes got off so lightly -- yes, 10 years is lightly -- is she hadn't unloaded the stock when it was massively over-valued on her false promises.
>That is, she claimed that her heart is in the right place. And that she hadn't clearly pumped the stock up and then sold loads of it.
>I mean, it's not like she promised self-driving cars that would give you 100% return on investment with zero risks.
>"You say, what would be the probable gross profits from a single robo-taxi. We think probably something on the order of about $30,000 per year, and we expect to have the first operating robo-taxis next year. With no one in them. Next year." -Elon Musk, 2019
>And that they would be ready by 2020. Then after the stock explodes in value on a promise that would make most Ponzi schemes seem believable.
"ChatGPT, write a long form HN comment that explains, with links, why Musk and Tesla are bad. Use click-baity style with moderate use of capslock and exclamations."
His personal life has always been chaotic but billionaires surprisingly have great PR. He’s got like 9 children he’s abandoned already and who knows how many divorces etc
Another issue is rising competitions from "traditional" car makers. A large fraction of Tesla's valuation comes from the optimistic assumption that Tesla will ramp up super fast with flawless execution on its production, presumably from prior experiences of other "big techs". And entrench its position with asymmetric power from its software.
Those assumptions are somehow materialized and Tesla is growing very fast, but not in a perfect shape. Tesla's ramp up was slower than (admittedly unrealistic) market expectations so it gave its competitors too much time. FSD still looks 2 years ahead. And Elon now seems completely distracted by Twitter and making collateral damages to Tesla everyday. Given all the contexts, investors' concern seems legitimate IMO.
Fairly neutral on Musk (pluses & minuses) here, but the most informational thing about this story is what it says about The Guardian and their journalists (who have to survive in the new level-playing field world of Twitter blue check-marks available to anyone willing to pay the monthly fee).
>It looks like The Guardian is hoping that Elon will do for their subscriber numbers what Trump did for the New York Times's.
200 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 262 ms ] threadSince most of Musk's cash comes from selling Tesla shares, perhaps this downward trend is a good opportunity for the U.S. government to buy SpaceX from him at a discount (or for the SpaceX investors to push for an IPO).
The only real reason why they'd want to do that, is to get rid of actual innovation in space to get back to the wasteful go-nowhere days of cost-plus contracting as a jobs program.
I guess they can finance the acquisition by transferring the debt to the company itself (probably an LBO?).
The teams are great, so it would be a matter of keeping the operational teams and the board the way they are, a separate entity, etc.
I see SpaceX as a very strategic company that can benefit everyone (hence the push for public ownership).
This would render it mediocre over time, then it would slowly wilt into the apathetic evil that killed the Challenger and Columbia astronauts.
That said, no way musk gives up his desire to rule over mars or control asteroid mining industry over a few billion dollars.
Frankly, he seems trumpish by the day. I don't think he has anyone close to him who cares for him and isn't afraid of upsetting him. Surround yourself with yes men and never apologize for anything, the true way of insecure and isolated powerful men.
NASA leadership seems to think NASA’s job is primarily to set requirements and distribute funds to contractors and to avoid managing, building, or operating anything if it can possibly be avoided. They just want to pay someone to do something and slap a NASA logo on it and pat themselves on the back for their “achievement”.
I recall ULA being more diversified across states, so it'd probably make a bunch of legislators happier anyhow.
Take a look at the Space Launch System, for example. It's not the best and it sure isn't the cheapest, but reusing factories built for Space Shuttle components does get politicians re-elected!
Tesla stock is only at the lowest since the start of the pandemic when everything wildly inflated due to the massive influx of money into the system. It’s still radically up since 2017. The last two years were a severe anomaly.
The good news is that this rate of descent can't be maintained for much longer.
Perhaps that's the reason why Tesla is offering big discounts right now.
Actually, a stock can fall 11% every day for an infinite number of days (discreteness of pennies notwithstanding)!
In all seriousness, though, I would be very wary about thinking that "this rate of descent can't be maintained for much longer." Many stocks have lost half their value, only to then lose 50% more shortly thereafter, and then 50% more after that.
I can think of one option: The SEC halts trading on Tesla stock. They've done it before, there's no reason to believe they would not do it here.
Otherwise, isn't there a class of stocks called "penny stocks"?
See AMC.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
~Confucius (probably)
Seriously though, there's no natural law, perhaps other than greed, which can stop a descent. Especially for something which was (is?) irrationally overvalued.
> But I expect a floor at least somewhat above that unless even Tesla's assets end up being worth nothing.
That's the thing though, the value of stocks is only tenuously related to the value of anything Tesla (any company, really) actually does, owns, or sells. It's value is solely based on what it can be sold for. And its sale price depends solely upon what someone thinks they can sell it for at a later date.
So, aside from not going away (and buying its own stock), there's not a company can really do that can have a predictably effect on the stock price.
I've seen too many stocks move solely based on the feelings of a few stock analysts, regardless of the company's achievements, to believe otherwise.
There is an interesting rumour that Musk maybe looking to take the company private courtesy of the Saudi sovereign fund.
And that there is an effort to artificially depress the stock price to meet a purchase target.
They do own 61% of Lucid so there is precedent.
The lack of intellectual integrity in the news media in the 2020's, across the board, not just in finance, is pretty shocking.
And given they famously don't do marketing they have relied entirely on the click bait loving finance media. Can't complain now when it turns against them.
If you look back at the actual history and the actual numbers, when Tesla is punished due to macro, it's always out of proportion to what the actual business is doing. Those who have been actually following the stock know this well.
And given they famously don't do marketing they have relied entirely on the click bait loving finance media. Can't complain now when it turns against them.
Here's the thing: The finance media is generally pushing a Tesla narrative based on fear, which would be contradicted by the facts, which they never present. So there's plenty of room to complain about the accuracy and truthfulness of the media.
Tesla stock has been crazy high until recently relative to other automakers. Who is to say that this narrative is truly fear, or simply the absence of a previous hype narrative that inflated the value of the stock? Did anyone truly believe that $TSLA was worth more than the rest of the industry put together?
This is called beta [1]. Tesla’s beta is 1.9 [2]. Tesla has been falling more than 2x the market. There are obvious, firm-specific and novel risks that have emerged in the last year that are being priced in.
[1] https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/valuation/wh...
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/
This isn’t a good financial situation for the lenders.
Or something like that.
Equity in an established and profitable business like Tesla is not a bad deal in the event of default, so I do not see what incentive lenders would have to renegotiate.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4503494-tesla-stock-as-coll...
Having the manufacturer own the "gas stations" in a printer-ink business model might be worse.
Essentially they can use the patents if they accept something stronger than patents: no copying Tesla's unpatented designs or they can go back and get you for the patent violation in perpetuity (or statute of limitations).
what we got is a truck that no one knows its weights so you can't tell how much it can move in cargo, that costs two times more to operate with a very limited range unless you want to destroy your batteries really quickly but hey they did engineer the best phone charger for it....
I got that "electricity is 0.50" is a claim not backed up by reality.
I can't charge at work. I can't even plug in a block heater. I imagine most folks everywhere can't charge at work.
Plus, charging at home depends heavily on the ownership of a garage. For one, power sockets (let alone charging stations) are pretty rare at most dense housing. Secondly, charging cables contain enough copper that they are rich targets for thieves.
Currently, most apartment owners are not interested in providing charging stations, even if their tenants want them. The cost of putting them in and maintaining them is too high to justify it. Or the laziness quota, either/or.
In most states with high housing costs (such as California), landlords are required to let tenants install EV charging stations.[1] Also there are companies such as ChargePoint that go around to apartment complexes and sell them charging stations. The stations bring the apartment complex revenue and attract higher-end tenants.
I think the concerns about charging are overrated. Yes, some landlords will drag their feet, but that's true for all tech adoption. I'm sure the same thing happened with cable TV, telephone lines, and dishwashers. The fancy places adopt the new thing first, then the average places, and finally the low-end places.
1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
And charging cable theft is like bike theft. Combine exceptionally low risk with a fairly high reward, and it will happen everywhere, no matter how “low” of a crime area you’re in. A quick application of bolt cutters nets them hundreds of dollars, and may cost the owner thousands, depending on the250 per battery. Now imagine this applied to charging cables with their excess of copper and data lines and occasionally cooling jackets.
Downplay the problems as you like, but they are problems.
Stealing a charging cable is extremely high risk. A thief would be dealing with lethal currents. Also almost every EV has a phone app that notifies the owner if charging is interrupted. If you're home you'll almost certainly be able confront the thief. If it's a Tesla, sentry mode means you'll also have camera footage of the thief.
If you're worried about thieves, you should get an EV. Combustion vehicles have catalytic converters. In terms of risk-reward they are much juicier targets than charging cables. I don't know a single EV owner who has had their cable stolen. I know plenty of people who have had their catalytic converters stolen. (Yes, far fewer people have EVs, but you'd think I'd have heard of it happening at least once by now, especially in the Portland area.) EVs don't have cats, and they're basically rolling iPhones that record their surroundings, so they're less likely to be messed with.
This stuff can add up fast if you don’t already have capacity.
For fast charging on road trips, Teslas can get CCS adapters and charge at competing stations. (Although considering the current state of Electrify America, I don't know why anyone would do that.) Also Tesla is starting to open their chargers to non-Teslas. Charging is becoming a commodity. The main advantages of the Supercharger network are reliability and integration with the car's built-in trip planning. In the long term, Tesla's Superchargers will be like Apple's AirPods: compatible with pretty much everything, but nicer for those who use the company's other products.
Ford has the Mustang and the Lightning.
I’ve seen all of these on the roads recently. As many, if not more than I see Teslas. I am not in California where Tesla probably has a locational advantage due to the infrastructure being better for EVs.
Thinking Tesla is the only company investing in electric is insane. GM and Ford’s body panel alignment embarrasses these Teslas too.
Until you have to use Electrify America. Good luck with that!
pro tip: they lie, thats what desperate car companies do.
For the record, I don’t tell Fords. If you’re referring to the inability to get one… yeah, it’s extremely popular.
Chevy is lying about the price same way Ford was. Nobody bought Lightning at msrp other than brand advocates and media personalities (certain youtubers magically get allocated unobtanium cars skipping queue and sticker price).
Between small inventory and dealer premiums those halo cars are just PR stunts.
It's not hard to see what competition is going to do to Tesla's marketshare in the US once all those models are introduced here.
But in neighboring Norway you'd find a ton of Teslas, when before Tesla an American made car would be a very strange sight there (Ford excepted, but not the USA versions of Ford).
However, Tesla is down to a 10% market-share in Norway as well, so they completely squandered their first-mover advantage there as well. Apparently the "dinosaurs" managed to ramp up and pivot quite nicely despite what everyone said.
Ironic given how much they benefited from exporting pollution to the rest of the planet.
One of the things that has been at the back of my mind is this: when the CEO of a large company is selling large volumes of stock they know more than anybody what is at stake. A CEO that has an optimistic outlook about the company they run will buy stock, not sell it. Elon has been selling across a 50% drop as though it makes no difference.
recalled for burning down houses
>Ford has the Mustang and the Lightning.
truck with range going down to less than 30-40% if its slightly cold or if you tow an empty trailer
Maybe. Probably not. With a large region of the US losing power during a cold blast because TVA couldn't keep up across multiple power distribution areas, I wouldn't expect to see people jumping in on that bargain. When you need it, your electric car will be significantly less useful in a crisis. States are also beginning to raise registration fees significantly to make up for the lack of gas tax revenue.
It's really frustrating.
I think hybrid will be in peak demand in 10 years. Electric doesn’t work well for anyone that doesn’t have a house/residential charging.
Tesla didn't break 1m last year btw, and IDK what their numbers will be this year - but on track to be a little higher, but not the growth they have had to date. Definitely slowing down considerably.
I wonder how much of the drop is based on perceived lack of "focus" from Musk (valid, but possibly temporary), and how much because of a loss of faith in the man himself.
He has unarguably lost a ton of respect.
It’s only anecdata, but I know two recent EV buyers who ruled out Tesla because of Musk’s suddenly in-your-face politics.
I'm sorry, what? This claim is laughable. Musk claims he hasn't ever voted for him, and they have publicly fueded frequently.
You can argue his politics have moved right. You can't credibly argue he's a Trump supporter.
I guess to some people these two things are equivalent, but it's simply incorrect, and reveals a certain political naivete in those making such claims.
Good luck making your argument to anyone who isn't a partisan hack.
“If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” Intelligent commentators mocked the famous George W. Bush line when he uttered it. But a decade and a half later and it’s the prevailing sentiment among many of the same people who ridiculed it.
Paul Krugman wrote recently that Elon Musk has “gone full MAGA.” The press will tell you what they can get away with. And right-thinking readers will uncritically accept it, for the most part. Trump was good for news traffic. My guess is that Musk is similarly good for business, judging on how many journalists seem to be on the Elon beat. I expect to read and hear a lot more of this for as long as that remains true.
The degree to which this has occurred, across a wide range of issues, is still stunning to me.
Hard to succeed at solving a problem when your actions seem almost perfectly tailored to exacerbate it.
I'm not going to relitigate the Obama era. Democrats seem incapable of understanding that the "clinging to guns, religion" comment, and the policies that follow from such a stance, were divisive.
Edit: Responding to the comment below because this account is rate limited:
Indeed, they did not. That entire "movement" is a stain on the GOP, and you are right to criticize them for it.
It's a great example of Trumpian nonsense Musk has never engaged in.
There is meaningful daylight between the views and actions of men like Trump, DeSantis, and Elon Musk. They are not "aligned" to the degree claimed throughout this thread. Though, I understand why it's politically convenient to state otherwise.
But there is something to be said about a Trumpian style to public behavior. Maybe it’s just social media demagoguery. Tactical trolling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkvvAQxxo_0
Musk, like other celebrity public figures on social media who make a lot of vapid grandiose statements and then flame out when challenged, are simply operating in the same style.
It’s funny you mentioned Bush, because growing up during his presidency, when terms like “reality-based community” and “truthiness” were coined, I never felt that Trump was a radically new phenomenon. He was Bush except louder - with less subtext.
While Bush II was far from the inventor of executive dissimulation, his administration did have a uniquely dysfunctional relationship with the truth. But truthiness was coined by Colbert, a brilliant critic of that administration, to describe things that aren’t true but feel true. It’s regrettable, but increasingly over the last five or six years, that term could be applied with similar frequency to claims made on either side of the aisle.
Trump is isolationist (but didn't push through his policies), didn't start a war and would probably have prevented the Ukraine war had he still been president. Yes, without further loss of territories!
There are no similarities at all. But no-more-mean-tweets is all that matters for the $250,000 per year SV chickenhawks. Others will go to war for them.
You may not have been around for his presidency, which is why you’re choosing to focus on substantiative policy choices rather than the public style I am talking about, but Bush was well criticized for appearing to be a brash and foolishly pugnacious figure. Not all that different from Trump, except Bush’s ranch owner shtick made him more rural coded- a cowboy. Both also liked to lambaste so-called experts and make use of anti-intellectual sentiment. They are more stylistically similar to each other than to say, Romney, McCain, Jeb Bush, or even Ted Cruz.
He was not at all pugnacious, although, like Trump, the outrage he inspired was partly due to his lack of presidential decorum and sophistication. He put his foot in his mouth. He was a national embarrassment. But his image was that of a born-again Christian, with an upright moral posture. Quite a distance from the verbal pugilist who made ridiculous threats to celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell.
The Democratic opposition saw his election as illegitimate—the Pat Buchanan vote, hanging chad Florida controversy. Worth remembering. Not the first and certainly not the last disputed election.
I'd argue that it went further than that. Perhaps this was ginned up by his liberal critics, who loved to muckrake up shocking exposés like Jesus Camp and make clumsy analogies between Evangelicalism and the Taliban, but Bush's bluff, often stumbling, manner and tendency to engage in dismissing "those in the know" also encapsulated an anti-intellectualism that was intended to appeal to anti-elite, and thus populist, image.
Hell, his anti-intellectualism was written about in December 2000 [0], before his presidency had even begun! The fact that he was seen as somewhat of a dunderhead also fed into that. Despite being a dynastic scion and cabal of advisors, he also posed as a political outsider as well [1]. Perhaps in some ways, Bush's attempts to portray himself as diametrically opposite of what he was, thereby using the Big Lie technique, is something that he and Trump stylistically have in common, and is something that made libs mad in both eras.
> He was not at all pugnacious
While he might not have personally attacked critics as later presidents might have- calling anti-war critics treasonous in a more roundabout, conventional-politician way than directly- he was certainly seen as a bellicose warmonger to critics, especially by foreign observers. Though sure, perhaps this is a case where policy overshadowed personal style.
But no, I'm sure he was seen as a pugnacious to some degree, even if it was only in a ridiculous, chickenhawk, "lemme at him, chief" sort of way.
> to his lack of presidential decorum and sophistication.
As per above, burnished his populist image to a segment of the electorate. Certainly in contrast to Kerry.
[0] https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-renaissance-of-anti-in...
[1]https://www.quora.com/Why-was-George-W-Bush-seen-as-an-outsi...
Does it suck that we have such clearly delineated tribes? Yes. But Musk is also smart enough to realize that that's the case, and he's knowingly chosen to repeat and engage with the shibboleths of the extreme right.
When Musk is tweeting “kek”, unbanning insurrectionists, banning left leaning journalists (not even far left!), then it’s clear that he’s not actually about balance. He’s signaling he is part of a particular tribe whose chief is Donald Trump, not that he’s a centrist.
He has already sold to the non Trump crowd. Maybe he can sell a whole lot more if the other team believes he is one of their own :)
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA:NASDAQ?comparison=...
It's just taken a while for people to see that corporate optimism needs to be held in check and be accountable. Fake-it-to-make-it is one thing, but you can only fake robot videos, solar tiles and hyperloops for so long before you completely break it.
The reality is that he has been acting exactly the same way for the past 20 years. Nothing has changed except the observers.
His clear shift towards messiness was at least four years ago, with his unnecessary statements and actions during the Thai soccer team cave crisis.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/761595.Ashlee_Vance
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Lin_Wood
I have always made this same comment about movies, where script writers can make something that I don't know about believable but when it came time to talk about networking or hacking or computers, it always seemed so lame. I realized that "sounding accurate" and "being accurate" were actually orthogonal characteristics of discourse.
It has always been the case where I adjust my 'believability index' by what is accomplished rather than by what is said.
I suspect there are very smart capable people at Tesla and SpaceX who are pulling off miracles but not getting credit for it. If that is true, I wish I knew who they were because I have mad respect for what they have done.
I have been in the game long enough to understand the use but eventually you have to make good.
It is stunning that there haven’t been lawsuits about ‘Full Self Driving’ and that it has taken the Feds this long to raise eyebrows about it
The internet culture surrounding him is pretty detached from reality. I can't imagine not wanting to hire a former SpaceX engineer into my current company because we think Elon did everything himself.
I remember hanging out with friends who worked for ULA around the time when Falcon IX was pulling off its first landings. We were at a party drinking beer, and they were repeating their company's propaganda as if the ideas were their own. It's possible for even the best engineers to become irrationally biased if they're worried about their jobs.
I don't keep a list of usernames but a few folks talk with authority across a range of topics - both tech and adjacent interests - and when they happen to step into some niche where they obviously don't have the same depth, and yet project the same level of authority while being not entirely correct, it really does recalibrate that "believability index".
If it makes the situation more risky for Twitter and more likely to be sued.
If Twitter did something wrong or illegal in the past, couldn't it be held accountable today and have to pay a fine or compensation?
Sounds like stepping on your own foot.
But that’s not the dirty laundry I meant. I just mean all of the replies to the Twitter peanut gallery and reposting lame memes and looking generally boorish, rude, and unhip. He doesn’t have to do any of that, yet he chooses to.
The fact that it has turned into such an obvious nothingburger just highlights how out of touch with reality Elon has become, and how badly he needs to feel like people like him.
So it’s very hard to agree on actual value. It’s certainly not an objective number; it will always depend on assumptions about future profits and rates of change.
Why you should NEVER believe Elon Musk! (Part 33 ⅓):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrwkNp_AOjQ&t=2m58s
[...]
>But Musk is adamant that his amazing decision making is what drives what happens at Tesla.
>It is Tesla that has lost HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS, five hundred BILLION dollars off its market cap this year.
>But Elon Musk was so proud about the money he could save Tesla in a half hour meeting.
>"Every good hour or even minute of thinking about Tesla and SpaceX has such a big effect no the company..." -Elon Musk
https://sadtrombone.com/
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/tsla/historica...
>"...and that I really try to work as much as possible, you know, to the edge of sanity, basically." -Elon Musk
>Yeah, it's only because of Elon Musk's hard work that Tesla has lost over 50% of its value this year.
>"Every high quality minute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla." -Elon Musk
>Oh, oh, it was so close. If he'd said that every minute he spends alive he causes a million dollars damage to Tesla's market cap.
>"I mean, there are many instances where a half-hour meeting -- I was able to improve the financial acumen of the company by $100 million in a half-hour meeting." -Elon Musk
>Let's see. Tesla's market cap is about $500 billion dollars. And it's lost about half of its value this year. Meaning that Tesla has lost some $500 BILLION DOLLARS in market cap this year.
>For perspective, that's about TWICE the market cap of Walmart.
>So let's see, $500 billion dollars in a years, there's roughly 10,000 hours in a year, so EVERY HOUR THIS YEAR, thanks to Musk's brilliant leadership, Teslas's lost about $50 MILLION DOLLARS of its market cap, give or take $1 MILLION DOLLARS for EVERY MINUTE Musk has been alive this year.
>"Every high quality minute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla." -Elon Musk
>You've been watching this video for about five minutes. The time it takes Elon Musk to $5 MILLION DOLLARS OF DAMAGE to Tesla stock.
>And this might give you some insight into why buying BURNING CANCER was still more valuable to Elon Musk than Tesla stock. Damn straight!
>What he can do for Tesla, he can do for Twitter.
>Now, Elizabeth Holmes this week got sentenced to ten years in jail for lying to investors, eventually resulting in a loss of about $10 billion dollars of the market cap of the company.
>Musk has been leading Tesla to lose market value at the rate of about a Thernos EVERY WEEK!
>And I should stress, one of the reasons Holmes got off so lightly -- yes, 10 years is lightly -- is she hadn't unloaded the stock when it was massively over-valued on her false promises.
>That is, she claimed that her heart is in the right place. And that she hadn't clearly pumped the stock up and then sold loads of it.
>I mean, it's not like she promised self-driving cars that would give you 100% return on investment with zero risks.
>"You say, what would be the probable gross profits from a single robo-taxi. We think probably something on the order of about $30,000 per year, and we expect to have the first operating robo-taxis next year. With no one in them. Next year." -Elon Musk, 2019
>And that they would be ready by 2020. Then after the stock explodes in value on a promise that would make most Ponzi schemes seem believable.
>Selling some $30 BILLION DOLLARS worth of stock.
>I mean, I'm not really a stock mark...
Those assumptions are somehow materialized and Tesla is growing very fast, but not in a perfect shape. Tesla's ramp up was slower than (admittedly unrealistic) market expectations so it gave its competitors too much time. FSD still looks 2 years ahead. And Elon now seems completely distracted by Twitter and making collateral damages to Tesla everyday. Given all the contexts, investors' concern seems legitimate IMO.
>It looks like The Guardian is hoping that Elon will do for their subscriber numbers what Trump did for the New York Times's.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1587079038463606787
pg's Twitter from the end of October 31, that is before he got temporarily deactivated for tweeting on December 19
>This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604557444247539712