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> Guy is 50, has been doing this for 30 years and I never used a product or a service of a company he was at the helm of, and I am not exactly a subsaharan farm

> Guy is 50, has been doing this for 30 years and I never used a product or a service of a company he was at the helm of, and I am not exactly a subsaharan farmer. At least 47% (3.6 billion people) don't use Internet [5]. Half the population on earth have never heard of Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc. I personally don't buy anything from Microsoft (they make keyboards?), NVidia, Berkshire Hathaway, TSMC. Never bought CISCO switches or Oracle databases. Never went to Disney, don't drink Coke or Pepsi, never bought anything from Toyota. Don't use FB. Looking at the 50 largest companies[0], at least half of those are companies that I've never had any kind of interaction with. Are all these companies MLMs/scams? > It's all about promises, hype and financial engineering to pump the stock so that he can take loans to finance his lifestyle. Guy mostly works all the time (80+ hours), lives in a 50K prefab house (doesn't own a home, very few possessions) [1 - 3]. Why so much resentment against a guy who has broken the oil industry's stranglehold on electric cars? [4] Should he emulate the frugal lifestyle of CEOs who aren't hated as much? Perhaps like Larry Ellison? >20 years from now a whole bunch of people will look so stupid for believing this guy, it's like one of those MLM scams on a global basis. Yep! Tesla is not a real product. SpaceX rockets are a fiction. Starlink doesn't exist. All these just materialized from thin air. [5] https://stlpartners.com/research/understanding-why-half-the-people-in-the-world-dont-have-access-to-the-internet/ https://stlpartners.com/research/understanding-why-half-the-... [0] https://www.dogsofthedow.com/largest-companies-by-market-cap.htm https://www.dogsofthedow.com/largest-companies-by-market-cap... [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1256239554148724737 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1256239554148724737 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1050811017221963776 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1050811017221963776 [3] https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/elon-musk-lives-prefab-tiny-house-texas https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/elon-musk-lives-pr... [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/08/11/how-did-tesla-win-against-the-oil-lobby/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/08/11/how-did-tesla-... From vaporizing gas to replacing it with batteries, the Achilles heel of the Oil industry has always been a drop in demand. That is why, for decades, it encouraged big 5 Lt, V8 engines that practically spew wasted gasoline from the exhaust. And that is why Big Oil kept buying out any advancement fiercely - especially in the area of batteries. They bought patents and companies left and right. Bought and controlled. Bought and buried. As a result, electric cars in 2004 had the same range as electric cars did in… the 1890’s. (edit:formatting)

belval 5y ago
Saying Musk is a fraud is very much "trendy" these days, but I feel like it ties in a much wider social transformation where for some reason we can't separate the artist from the art. Reading his biography he does come off as an asshole, people can dislike him all they want (and we probably shouldn't idealize billionaires), but for some reason that's not enough anymore, he has to be stripped of all his accomplishment, "he's not a real Tesla founder", "he stole the SpaceX idea from someone else", "his father had an emerald mine", "he had a negative impact on PayPal", etc... It seems like some saw too many Hollywood movies where the good is virtuous and morally perfect, and the bad can only advance forward through deceit and unfair advantages. These stories are entertaining, but ultimately they fail to do justice to people that are as layered and complex as we all are.
- GDC7 5y ago
  > Saying Musk is a fraud is very much "trendy" these days, but I feel like it ties in a much wider social transformation where for some reason we can't separate the artist from the art. There is a huge discrepancy between the financial value of Tesla and the presence of Tesla products in the market. The other FAAMGs you cannot turn your head without seeing one of their logo (both in your house and when walking down the street). Where can you see Tesla logo? On twitter and the financial headlines. People are not stupid, especially here...we all know what Musk is trying to do which is basically the same he has always done. Trying to divorce his net worth from the concrete and practical impact that his company is having on the world. He does so with promises of technoutopian dreams. This stuff might fool the general population, but don't work in here. As the saying goes "it takes one to see one"
  - belval 5y ago
    I feel like you are answering a point that I was not making, Tesla is overvalued in my opinion too. > People are not stupid, especially here...we all know what Musk is trying to do which is basically the same he has always done. Trying to divorce his net worth from the concrete and practical impact that his company is having on the world. Tesla does ship cars, you not seeing them in the street is more telling of where you live than anything else. I see several every day because three of my neighbours have one. Anecdotes are worthless in these discussions. You not seeing Tesla also doesn't change the fact that SpaceX is putting satellites in orbit and landing the booster afterwards. It has no impact on the current starlink customers getting Internet access in remote areas where they could only get 1Mbps before. It does not change the fact that PayPal is worth $240B today. In a way you prove exactly the point I am making, you call Tesla a scam because "He does so with promises of technoutopian dreams". Tesla isn't a scam, you can drive the car without owning their stock, the model 3 is even affordable. You dislike Musk and that's fine, but your overly cynical take is not enlightened.

belval 5y ago

Saying Musk is a fraud is very much "trendy" these days, but I feel like it ties in a much wider social transformation where for some reason we can't separate the artist from the art. Reading his biography he does come off as an asshole, people can dislike him all they want (and we probably shouldn't idealize billionaires), but for some reason that's not enough anymore, he has to be stripped of all his accomplishment, "he's not a real Tesla founder", "he stole the SpaceX idea from someone else", "his father had an emerald mine", "he had a negative impact on PayPal", etc... It seems like some saw too many Hollywood movies where the good is virtuous and morally perfect, and the bad can only advance forward through deceit and unfair advantages. These stories are entertaining, but ultimately they fail to do justice to people that are as layered and complex as we all are.

GDC7 5y ago
> Saying Musk is a fraud is very much "trendy" these days, but I feel like it ties in a much wider social transformation where for some reason we can't separate the artist from the art. There is a huge discrepancy between the financial value of Tesla and the presence of Tesla products in the market. The other FAAMGs you cannot turn your head without seeing one of their logo (both in your house and when walking down the street). Where can you see Tesla logo? On twitter and the financial headlines. People are not stupid, especially here...we all know what Musk is trying to do which is basically the same he has always done. Trying to divorce his net worth from the concrete and practical impact that his company is having on the world. He does so with promises of technoutopian dreams. This stuff might fool the general population, but don't work in here. As the saying goes "it takes one to see one"
- belval 5y ago
  I feel like you are answering a point that I was not making, Tesla is overvalued in my opinion too. > People are not stupid, especially here...we all know what Musk is trying to do which is basically the same he has always done. Trying to divorce his net worth from the concrete and practical impact that his company is having on the world. Tesla does ship cars, you not seeing them in the street is more telling of where you live than anything else. I see several every day because three of my neighbours have one. Anecdotes are worthless in these discussions. You not seeing Tesla also doesn't change the fact that SpaceX is putting satellites in orbit and landing the booster afterwards. It has no impact on the current starlink customers getting Internet access in remote areas where they could only get 1Mbps before. It does not change the fact that PayPal is worth $240B today. In a way you prove exactly the point I am making, you call Tesla a scam because "He does so with promises of technoutopian dreams". Tesla isn't a scam, you can drive the car without owning their stock, the model 3 is even affordable. You dislike Musk and that's fine, but your overly cynical take is not enlightened.