12 ms·

I browse through a lot of niche investing social media groups. One of the more liked posts on a Nikola investment group was, "If "they" cared about the future,

I browse through a lot of niche investing social media groups. One of the more liked posts on a Nikola investment group was, "If "they" cared about the future, the earth and the renewable energy issue, they would let whatever Trevor did slide." Surprisingly, I saw similar posts about Musk on the Thailand rescuer tweet and the price too high tweet. You are not betting against the fundamentals or the realities of the stock, you are betting against these people.

fossuser 5y ago
Something can be true in one case and not true in another. Nikola looked like fraud from the start (no Silicon Valley funds invested iirc - money came from Detroit). Elon Musk is obviously different.
- zeusk 5y ago
  Silicon Valley is choke full of fraud and absurd valuations.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    When you look at the actual fraud (like Theranos) silicon valley funds are nowhere near it. The people that get duped are usually outsiders that are more easily manipulated. It can be hard to tell the difference between big ideas and bullshit, they can often sound similar. Con-artists will mimic the people that actually know their shit. In order to tell the difference you need to actually look at the underlying tech for yourself.
    - rvz 5y ago
      > Con-artists will mimic the people that actually know their shit. Ah yes. A certain billionaire promises robo-taxis and full Level 5 autonomy by 2020, and then in 2021, admits self-driving is hard as FSD is still Level 2, after duping their own customers on buying ahead of their 'promises'. This billionaire in 2019, surely knew what he was talking about. /s > In order to tell the difference you need to actually look at the underlying tech for yourself. Like the deceptive advertisement of FSD (Full Self Driving) auto-pilot software in Tesla cars that has tricked many Tesla drivers into paying for a product that not only doesn't work as advertised, but puts the safety of drivers and others at risk. The worst part is that they continue to market it regardless of the missed deadlines, the safety risks and the fact that the software is still 'safe' for usage, which that is complete bullshit. The FSD feature in Tesla cars (along side the robotaxis) was deceptively advertised as 'safe' and promised as 'Level 5' with lots of customers buying into it; and some have lost their lives over the software getting confused. If FSD is not regarded as 'actual fraud' or 'deceptively advertised', then I don't know what is.
      - fossuser 5y ago
        FSD was advertised as paying for something that would come in the future - I bought it under that assumption (and so did everyone I know that has it). That was and remains true. They've continued to make progress towards it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6bOwQdCJrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6bOwQdCJrc Autopilot is different and isn't advertised as level 5 - 'autopilot' implies fancy lane keeping not turn by turn point to point autonomy. Elon's FSD timelines were wrong - that isn't fraud. People say everything he's trying to do won't work constantly, just because they're occasionally right doesn't validate all of the times they're wrong (e.g. Model 3 is vaporware will never ship, the company is bankrupt and will close in two weeks, the Model S will never ship, gigafactory is a mistake, roadster means Musk only cares about EVs for the rich etc. etc.) If you can't tell the difference between Elon Musk and the success of Tesla and SpaceX or think it's equivalent to something like Theranos or Nikola I'm not sure what to say about that, there's just not much point in further discussion. Your pejorative use of billionaire also suggests some political element.
        Robotbeat 5y ago
        I think Trevor was counting on people not being able to tell the difference. They named their Tesla-competing company “Nikola,” which is a bit astounding when you think of it.
        fossuser 5y ago
        And Elizabeth Holmes wore black turtle necks - subtlety is not what they’re usually going for. Trevor does have some 30+ million dollar ranch in Utah though so I guess he did a better job of it. In Holmes case I genuinely think it didn't start as a fraud, but became one when they started lying. Not sure about Nikola.
        cat199 5y ago
        > In Holmes case I genuinely think it didn't start as a fraud Anyone thinking you can do statistically accurate blood testing from one drop of dirty fingertip capillary blood without having already made a major scientific breakthrough is certainly not thinking straight, if not outright being fraudulent
    - cat199 5y ago
      > When you look at the actual fraud (like Theranos) silicon valley funds are nowhere near it. The people that get duped are usually outsiders that are more easily manipulated. might not have been valley insiders, but if you look at theranos bizarre board selection, they were certainly not just random joes and certainly had the wherewithal to know they needed do proper due diligence before attaching themselves to the fraud, unless of course they were also party to it...
- xkjkls 5y ago
  Why do you think Elon Musk is obviously different? He's definitely had many events where he has lied about aspects of his business. You could argue that it doesn't matter now that he has built something real, but that's down to a lot of luck, not ethical backbone.
  - electriclove 5y ago
    Musk has built many things over the past Many years. Though he may talk about even more, bringing EVs to the masses and creating reusable rockets is something he deserves full credit for. It has nothing to do with ethics. A rational person would not equate Musk with Milton.
    - xkjkls 5y ago
      Not equate, realize that they are both part of a pattern. We also should not let Elon Musk's actions only be evaluated in their totality. We can argue about the net sum of his contributions, but it should be fundamentally irrelevant to evaluating any individual one. He shouldn't lie or allow fraud. His actions with the Solar Roof launch, Boring Company, Self Driving, and funding tweets all cross ethical lines that we as a country need to make clear are not what we want from our business leaders.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      The fact that Tesla is not entirely vapourware doesn't mean that Musk hasn't lied or even committed fraud to get here. Lying to investors to fund a billion dollar company that is actually worth a few hundred million is not that different from funding one that is worth 0 dollars.
aiisjustanif 5y ago
You are still betting against the product those people are building. Their sentiment doesn’t matter much when the product weak and company is committing fraud for personal gain or to bolster the promises of the product, like Thernos, most (not all of the time, by any means) of the time history has dealt with this.
- celticninja 5y ago
  I think the poster meant the irrational investors, as opposed to the CEO/owner, when they used "they".
  - kikokikokiko 5y ago
    This is why this idiotic trend towards gender neutral pronouns is so... idiotic. 90% of the time when it's used, it's confusing and makes the information you're trying to convey harder to get. In this case the op wasn't even using gender neutral shenaningans, but since it's 2021 and it's becoming relatively ubiquitous, we get this kind of confusion.
    - drdeca 5y ago
      But if the two people have the same gender, why would using gendered pronouns make it less confusing? Sure, I guess it is less ambiguous on average.. Hm.
    - lovemenot 5y ago
      It'll get easier the longer it persists. Just be patient. Heck, Japanese very rarely need a pronoun at all, yet they can somehow infer meaning just fine.
      - kikokikokiko 5y ago
        No, it won't get any easier. When you use "they", you are in fact losing information. If I say "he" or "she", the amount of information I'm portraying is, and always will be, greater than a "neutral" pronoun can convey.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I’ve learned to cast a more cynical eye towards companies claiming to be accomplishing grand, ethical aims. Sometimes they’re right, of course, but it’s also a phenomenal way to sweep abuse and fraud under a rug.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > I’ve learned to cast a more cynical eye towards companies claiming to be accomplishing grand, ethical aims. People have stopped talking about Google's famed "Don't be Evil" thing.. But hey, it served a purpose for Google when it mattered.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    It is really depressing that honor and integrity means nothing. Do whatever you want and while claiming the opposite. If it blows up, hire a specialized PR company and pretend nothing happened.
  - sellyme 5y ago
    It also helped that Google, by-and-large, were doing extremely good things. For all the complaints about the (very real) problems the internet has today, I think people have lost sight of how much the internet sucked in 1997. There's a website you loved, but you forgot the URL? Good luck ever finding that again. Want to watch a video? Hope you've got an updated QuickTime plug-in and a lot of time to wait for the shitty webhost to serve a 240p video at 80B/s. Your daughter just emailed you a few photos of your grandchildren? Better delete the last 5 years of your conversation history to make space for it - Hotmail and Yahoo! only offered 10MB of storage before Gmail launched with 100x that. Want to monetise your blog? Hope you're happy with your readers getting malware, because every ad service out there is insanely shady.
- cmiller1 5y ago
  "...villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged." -- Captain Jean-Luc Picard
- xkjkls 5y ago
jdminhbg 5y ago
I'm not sure creating a multibillion dollar vaporware fraud shell company and being a dick on Twitter are comparable sins.
- MrPatan 5y ago
  The sin is the same: Being successful when I'm not. Off with their heads!
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    You know the thread your posting this in is about one of them being indicted for fraud, right?
- xkjkls 5y ago
  I'm not sure you are following the Elon-Solar City case if you think Elon's only sin is being a dick on Twitter. Or the original $420 funding a share saga. Elon Musk's repeated fake-it-till-you-make-it behavior and the unwillingness of regulators to crack down on it spawns Trevor Miltons.
  - djmips 5y ago
    This has been going on since time immemorial. A part of me thinks it's a necessary evil in a world where people won't fund revolutionary ideas. However, that also means Milton and Holmes etc.
    - xkjkls 5y ago
      I would agree that fraud is always going to happen; how much though is up for debate, and I would tend to argue that more fraud makes the world worse at funding revolutionary ideas. More revolutionary ideas happen and get funded in the US, which while I believe has become rife with fraud over the past decade, is no where near the scale the number of frauds in China or Africa or less well monitored markets. Trust is fundamental part of markets and is basically its own interest rate. The more people can trust one another, the riskier investments people are willing to partake in.

fossuser 5y ago

Something can be true in one case and not true in another. Nikola looked like fraud from the start (no Silicon Valley funds invested iirc - money came from Detroit). Elon Musk is obviously different.

zeusk 5y ago
Silicon Valley is choke full of fraud and absurd valuations.
- fossuser 5y ago
  When you look at the actual fraud (like Theranos) silicon valley funds are nowhere near it. The people that get duped are usually outsiders that are more easily manipulated. It can be hard to tell the difference between big ideas and bullshit, they can often sound similar. Con-artists will mimic the people that actually know their shit. In order to tell the difference you need to actually look at the underlying tech for yourself.
  - rvz 5y ago
    > Con-artists will mimic the people that actually know their shit. Ah yes. A certain billionaire promises robo-taxis and full Level 5 autonomy by 2020, and then in 2021, admits self-driving is hard as FSD is still Level 2, after duping their own customers on buying ahead of their 'promises'. This billionaire in 2019, surely knew what he was talking about. /s > In order to tell the difference you need to actually look at the underlying tech for yourself. Like the deceptive advertisement of FSD (Full Self Driving) auto-pilot software in Tesla cars that has tricked many Tesla drivers into paying for a product that not only doesn't work as advertised, but puts the safety of drivers and others at risk. The worst part is that they continue to market it regardless of the missed deadlines, the safety risks and the fact that the software is still 'safe' for usage, which that is complete bullshit. The FSD feature in Tesla cars (along side the robotaxis) was deceptively advertised as 'safe' and promised as 'Level 5' with lots of customers buying into it; and some have lost their lives over the software getting confused. If FSD is not regarded as 'actual fraud' or 'deceptively advertised', then I don't know what is.
    - fossuser 5y ago
      FSD was advertised as paying for something that would come in the future - I bought it under that assumption (and so did everyone I know that has it). That was and remains true. They've continued to make progress towards it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6bOwQdCJrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6bOwQdCJrc Autopilot is different and isn't advertised as level 5 - 'autopilot' implies fancy lane keeping not turn by turn point to point autonomy. Elon's FSD timelines were wrong - that isn't fraud. People say everything he's trying to do won't work constantly, just because they're occasionally right doesn't validate all of the times they're wrong (e.g. Model 3 is vaporware will never ship, the company is bankrupt and will close in two weeks, the Model S will never ship, gigafactory is a mistake, roadster means Musk only cares about EVs for the rich etc. etc.) If you can't tell the difference between Elon Musk and the success of Tesla and SpaceX or think it's equivalent to something like Theranos or Nikola I'm not sure what to say about that, there's just not much point in further discussion. Your pejorative use of billionaire also suggests some political element.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        I think Trevor was counting on people not being able to tell the difference. They named their Tesla-competing company “Nikola,” which is a bit astounding when you think of it.
        fossuser 5y ago
        And Elizabeth Holmes wore black turtle necks - subtlety is not what they’re usually going for. Trevor does have some 30+ million dollar ranch in Utah though so I guess he did a better job of it. In Holmes case I genuinely think it didn't start as a fraud, but became one when they started lying. Not sure about Nikola.
        cat199 5y ago
        > In Holmes case I genuinely think it didn't start as a fraud Anyone thinking you can do statistically accurate blood testing from one drop of dirty fingertip capillary blood without having already made a major scientific breakthrough is certainly not thinking straight, if not outright being fraudulent
  - cat199 5y ago
    > When you look at the actual fraud (like Theranos) silicon valley funds are nowhere near it. The people that get duped are usually outsiders that are more easily manipulated. might not have been valley insiders, but if you look at theranos bizarre board selection, they were certainly not just random joes and certainly had the wherewithal to know they needed do proper due diligence before attaching themselves to the fraud, unless of course they were also party to it...
xkjkls 5y ago
Why do you think Elon Musk is obviously different? He's definitely had many events where he has lied about aspects of his business. You could argue that it doesn't matter now that he has built something real, but that's down to a lot of luck, not ethical backbone.
- electriclove 5y ago
  Musk has built many things over the past Many years. Though he may talk about even more, bringing EVs to the masses and creating reusable rockets is something he deserves full credit for. It has nothing to do with ethics. A rational person would not equate Musk with Milton.
  - xkjkls 5y ago
    Not equate, realize that they are both part of a pattern. We also should not let Elon Musk's actions only be evaluated in their totality. We can argue about the net sum of his contributions, but it should be fundamentally irrelevant to evaluating any individual one. He shouldn't lie or allow fraud. His actions with the Solar Roof launch, Boring Company, Self Driving, and funding tweets all cross ethical lines that we as a country need to make clear are not what we want from our business leaders.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    The fact that Tesla is not entirely vapourware doesn't mean that Musk hasn't lied or even committed fraud to get here. Lying to investors to fund a billion dollar company that is actually worth a few hundred million is not that different from funding one that is worth 0 dollars.

aiisjustanif 5y ago

You are still betting against the product those people are building. Their sentiment doesn’t matter much when the product weak and company is committing fraud for personal gain or to bolster the promises of the product, like Thernos, most (not all of the time, by any means) of the time history has dealt with this.

celticninja 5y ago
I think the poster meant the irrational investors, as opposed to the CEO/owner, when they used "they".
- kikokikokiko 5y ago
  This is why this idiotic trend towards gender neutral pronouns is so... idiotic. 90% of the time when it's used, it's confusing and makes the information you're trying to convey harder to get. In this case the op wasn't even using gender neutral shenaningans, but since it's 2021 and it's becoming relatively ubiquitous, we get this kind of confusion.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    But if the two people have the same gender, why would using gendered pronouns make it less confusing? Sure, I guess it is less ambiguous on average.. Hm.
  - lovemenot 5y ago
    It'll get easier the longer it persists. Just be patient. Heck, Japanese very rarely need a pronoun at all, yet they can somehow infer meaning just fine.
    - kikokikokiko 5y ago
      No, it won't get any easier. When you use "they", you are in fact losing information. If I say "he" or "she", the amount of information I'm portraying is, and always will be, greater than a "neutral" pronoun can convey.

ashtonkem 5y ago

I’ve learned to cast a more cynical eye towards companies claiming to be accomplishing grand, ethical aims. Sometimes they’re right, of course, but it’s also a phenomenal way to sweep abuse and fraud under a rug.

yumraj 5y ago
> I’ve learned to cast a more cynical eye towards companies claiming to be accomplishing grand, ethical aims. People have stopped talking about Google's famed "Don't be Evil" thing.. But hey, it served a purpose for Google when it mattered.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  It is really depressing that honor and integrity means nothing. Do whatever you want and while claiming the opposite. If it blows up, hire a specialized PR company and pretend nothing happened.
- sellyme 5y ago
  It also helped that Google, by-and-large, were doing extremely good things. For all the complaints about the (very real) problems the internet has today, I think people have lost sight of how much the internet sucked in 1997. There's a website you loved, but you forgot the URL? Good luck ever finding that again. Want to watch a video? Hope you've got an updated QuickTime plug-in and a lot of time to wait for the shitty webhost to serve a 240p video at 80B/s. Your daughter just emailed you a few photos of your grandchildren? Better delete the last 5 years of your conversation history to make space for it - Hotmail and Yahoo! only offered 10MB of storage before Gmail launched with 100x that. Want to monetise your blog? Hope you're happy with your readers getting malware, because every ad service out there is insanely shady.
cmiller1 5y ago
"...villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged." -- Captain Jean-Luc Picard
xkjkls 5y ago

jdminhbg 5y ago

I'm not sure creating a multibillion dollar vaporware fraud shell company and being a dick on Twitter are comparable sins.

MrPatan 5y ago
The sin is the same: Being successful when I'm not. Off with their heads!
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  You know the thread your posting this in is about one of them being indicted for fraud, right?
xkjkls 5y ago
I'm not sure you are following the Elon-Solar City case if you think Elon's only sin is being a dick on Twitter. Or the original $420 funding a share saga. Elon Musk's repeated fake-it-till-you-make-it behavior and the unwillingness of regulators to crack down on it spawns Trevor Miltons.
- djmips 5y ago
  This has been going on since time immemorial. A part of me thinks it's a necessary evil in a world where people won't fund revolutionary ideas. However, that also means Milton and Holmes etc.
  - xkjkls 5y ago
    I would agree that fraud is always going to happen; how much though is up for debate, and I would tend to argue that more fraud makes the world worse at funding revolutionary ideas. More revolutionary ideas happen and get funded in the US, which while I believe has become rife with fraud over the past decade, is no where near the scale the number of frauds in China or Africa or less well monitored markets. Trust is fundamental part of markets and is basically its own interest rate. The more people can trust one another, the riskier investments people are willing to partake in.