5 ms·

Given Elon Musk's track record of spelling out exactly what he wants to do, receiving a bunch of naysaying, and then doing exactly what he said, I think betting

Given Elon Musk's track record of spelling out exactly what he wants to do, receiving a bunch of naysaying, and then doing exactly what he said, I think betting against him is a bad bet.

bjelkeman-again 10y ago
The shorters, and there is a lot of them, don't think so, but I agree with you. We need a sustainable future and this is a really good effort to get parts of our society there. Waiting for the auto companies to get their act together, then we'll burn.
- webXL 10y ago
  I'm a Musk fan, but not a fan of his desire to accelerate sustainability on the backs of the taxpayer. Malthus also predicted doom and gloom and we saw plenty of market forces handle that. Government regulation has increased tremendously, so perhaps the days of leaving it up to the market are over, but from a public policy standpoint, it's incredibly risky leaving a "sustainable future" up to one company.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - schiffern 10y ago
    > Malthus also predicted doom and gloom and we saw plenty of market forces handle that. So far all I've seen is market forces switching from renewable food production (soil and in-situ biological generated fertility) to nonrenewable (fossil fertilizers trucked in from "somewhere else"), rampant soil loss, unsustainable acquifer pumping and salination, water eutrophication, wealth consolidation in food production, and soil erosion on a scale never seen before. Ironic that you should bring up subsidies, because globally industrial agriculture is almost entirely a subsidized (yet economically futile) endeavor. I know it's heresy to question Borlag et. al and the "green" revolution, but far from "handling i," market forces have merely enlarged and externalized the scale of the destruction.
    - webXL 10y ago
      Most of those problems stem from the lack of property rights. If a company cannot sustain its business with what it owns, then it should go out of business. However, non-market forces prop up these unsustainable businesses or turn a blind eye to the destruction of the commons. They "steal" from the rest of us via subsidies or abuse of public resources. Those are not market failures, contrary to popular opinion.
      - schiffern 10y ago
        Things like the atmosphere, food web, water cycle etc. are fundamentally different than ownership of physical objects or even land. They are not confined to a particular place, and being fundamentally diffuse transactions and interactions with them are not obviously subject to singular control. Even if you break them down into components the bookkeeping and transaction cost is far too high. Saying that they're not market failures says more about the narrow definition of "market" than about the workings and evolution of capitalist systems (including both visible systems like farms and factories and invisible systems like laws and power structures).
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  > We need a sustainable future and this is a really good effort to get parts of our society there. Even if we accept this as truth (I'm not saying it is or isn't), the fact remains that Tesla is very overvalued compared to any other carmaker, especially when we know they are losing money on each car and will keep doing so for at least three more years. Tesla has almost as high market cap as Ford, despite selling less than 1℅ as many cars per year. Tesla had a P/E of -60 last year, projected to have -100 this year. The financial fundamentals compared to current valuation doesn't look good. Will Tesla go up or down? There is more potential downside than upside, that's for sure. Also, it's not like none of the other car companies have EVs coming out. In fact, most of them do.
  - vibrato 10y ago
    "There is more potential downside than upside, that's for sure." This may be true over very short time horizons. But if Tesla survives 50-100 years, is it not realistic to think it could be valued at 5x - 10x current? That would be a 400% upside, versus 100% downside. I say this as a habitual short seller.(haven't traded TSLA)
    - guelo 10y ago
      If 400% over 50 years = 8%/year is the most optimistic scenario then it's not very exciting.
      - ksherlock 10y ago
        and with compounding interest, it's only 5%/year.
    - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      Tesla is currently valued higher than Subaru, Fiat Chrysler and Mazda; all successful car companies selling much more cars. With the exception of Volvo and Toyota, whose value includes much more than just the car companies (like heavy industry manufacturing, commercial vehicles, Toyote even owns 0.27% of Tesla), only a ~2x increase in valuation is realistic. If they become one of the biggest car companies in the world.
drcross 10y ago
With the amount of momentum behind him it would take a lot of upsets to derail the company. There's always going to be some wealthy philanthropist willing to bail them out so they can be included in the Musk biographies of the future.

Given Elon Musk's track record of spelling out exactly what he wants to do, receiving a bunch of naysaying, and then doing exactly what he said, I think betting against him is a bad bet.

bjelkeman-again 10y ago

The shorters, and there is a lot of them, don't think so, but I agree with you. We need a sustainable future and this is a really good effort to get parts of our society there. Waiting for the auto companies to get their act together, then we'll burn.

webXL 10y ago
I'm a Musk fan, but not a fan of his desire to accelerate sustainability on the backs of the taxpayer. Malthus also predicted doom and gloom and we saw plenty of market forces handle that. Government regulation has increased tremendously, so perhaps the days of leaving it up to the market are over, but from a public policy standpoint, it's incredibly risky leaving a "sustainable future" up to one company.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- schiffern 10y ago
  > Malthus also predicted doom and gloom and we saw plenty of market forces handle that. So far all I've seen is market forces switching from renewable food production (soil and in-situ biological generated fertility) to nonrenewable (fossil fertilizers trucked in from "somewhere else"), rampant soil loss, unsustainable acquifer pumping and salination, water eutrophication, wealth consolidation in food production, and soil erosion on a scale never seen before. Ironic that you should bring up subsidies, because globally industrial agriculture is almost entirely a subsidized (yet economically futile) endeavor. I know it's heresy to question Borlag et. al and the "green" revolution, but far from "handling i," market forces have merely enlarged and externalized the scale of the destruction.
  - webXL 10y ago
    Most of those problems stem from the lack of property rights. If a company cannot sustain its business with what it owns, then it should go out of business. However, non-market forces prop up these unsustainable businesses or turn a blind eye to the destruction of the commons. They "steal" from the rest of us via subsidies or abuse of public resources. Those are not market failures, contrary to popular opinion.
    - schiffern 10y ago
      Things like the atmosphere, food web, water cycle etc. are fundamentally different than ownership of physical objects or even land. They are not confined to a particular place, and being fundamentally diffuse transactions and interactions with them are not obviously subject to singular control. Even if you break them down into components the bookkeeping and transaction cost is far too high. Saying that they're not market failures says more about the narrow definition of "market" than about the workings and evolution of capitalist systems (including both visible systems like farms and factories and invisible systems like laws and power structures).
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
> We need a sustainable future and this is a really good effort to get parts of our society there. Even if we accept this as truth (I'm not saying it is or isn't), the fact remains that Tesla is very overvalued compared to any other carmaker, especially when we know they are losing money on each car and will keep doing so for at least three more years. Tesla has almost as high market cap as Ford, despite selling less than 1℅ as many cars per year. Tesla had a P/E of -60 last year, projected to have -100 this year. The financial fundamentals compared to current valuation doesn't look good. Will Tesla go up or down? There is more potential downside than upside, that's for sure. Also, it's not like none of the other car companies have EVs coming out. In fact, most of them do.
- vibrato 10y ago
  "There is more potential downside than upside, that's for sure." This may be true over very short time horizons. But if Tesla survives 50-100 years, is it not realistic to think it could be valued at 5x - 10x current? That would be a 400% upside, versus 100% downside. I say this as a habitual short seller.(haven't traded TSLA)
  - guelo 10y ago
    If 400% over 50 years = 8%/year is the most optimistic scenario then it's not very exciting.
    - ksherlock 10y ago
      and with compounding interest, it's only 5%/year.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    Tesla is currently valued higher than Subaru, Fiat Chrysler and Mazda; all successful car companies selling much more cars. With the exception of Volvo and Toyota, whose value includes much more than just the car companies (like heavy industry manufacturing, commercial vehicles, Toyote even owns 0.27% of Tesla), only a ~2x increase in valuation is realistic. If they become one of the biggest car companies in the world.

drcross 10y ago

With the amount of momentum behind him it would take a lot of upsets to derail the company. There's always going to be some wealthy philanthropist willing to bail them out so they can be included in the Musk biographies of the future.