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This reminds me of Musk's recent comments about "political attacks against him in the coming days". It has since been learned that he had been reached by Busin

This reminds me of Musk's recent comments about "political attacks against him in the coming days". It has since been learned that he had been reached by Business Insider to comment about the sexual abuse case beforehand. He already knew that an article against him was coming so he framed the narrative before it even reached the public. I would not be surprised this was the same here. Tell everyone "Leave if you don't like it or we will fire you" when you very well know that 10% of the workforce will need to be dismissed. This is pure speculations but would not be surprising at all. I cannot imagine that the company's management is unable to do the math on number of employees vs. number of workstations.

ethanbond 4y ago
Yeah, since the BI story – and in particular his attempt to frontrun it and turn his personal legal troubles into a culture war battleground – I think we can assume pretty slimy tactics from Musk.
- belter 4y ago
  Slimy tactics? From the person that said one of his companies can fix Spinal and Brain injuries?: https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1312 https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1312 Surely...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dharmaturtle 4y ago
    Meh. The youtuber criticizes Musk's statement "This is something we could fix" by saying "He does not say 'This is something we _might_ be able to fix.'" Seconds later, the youtuber goes on to criticize Musk's disclaimer of "I'm not saying this is going to solve everything... it's something that _might_ be helpful." You just can't win with these "skeptics".
    - haspok 4y ago
      Another golden Musk gem: "I am very confident that...". The guy doesn't say anything, yet he makes everyone believe he did. Genius. The best salesperson in the world for sure.
    - belter 4y ago
      You missed the part where Elon Musk says it will take a few years before then can do a "brain memory upload". So they will be content of spending the first decade "just" fixing spine and brain injuries: https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1116 https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1116 Then Elon Musk says he will solve Schizophrenia, Depression and Morbid Obesity: https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1137 https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1137 Yes,...really what is with the skeptics? Can't the recognize a genius when they see one?
      - dharmaturtle 4y ago
        Oh god I demonstrate how the timestamped quote is incorrect and now I've attracted the attention of the Musk anti-fans. Let me be clear: Musk is human. He has positive and negative qualities. His Thailand pedo comments were, to put it bluntly, fucking retarded. His autopilot timeline was wildly optimistic. His behavior on Twitter is infantile. And yet this is not carte blanche to twist his words into something unrecognizable. You can't just criticize someone for not being nuanced, then criticize their disclaimer that happens seconds later. That's intellectually dishonest. At that point I stopped listening because it is clear (to me) that the youtuber has an agenda to push. As to your comments, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Is it incorrect to believe that brain implants may lead to solutions to these problems?
        belter 4y ago
        Guy says he will provide a brain implant to upload human memories to a computer and says he CAN fix a whole range of brain and spine damage, plus diseases that are not even caused by brain injury, and you focus on the disclaimer that will not be "right away"?
- deelowe 4y ago
  I started assuming this after Musk called that cave exploration expert in Thailand a pedophile.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    Hey after all that activity on Twitter you gotta give him leeway at some point, just like a cop who's been in a thousand conflicts gets a pass when things go wrong, there has to be a margin of error.
    - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
      I'm hoping this was sarcasm.
      - daniel-cussen 4y ago
        Like you're in any position to chide me? It's a common South African insult, in fact I've heard classmates say it to one another in early high school for dating girls in late middle school. It's a word, people sometimes say it. There's a context. It wasn't a formal accusation. One in thousands of comments, you actually expect perfection from Musk and police? Let me tell you as someone who has pulled off exactly that in 28 conflicts, as if they were 28 chess matches, I haven't fucked up this whole time. It's fucking impossible in the long term. Narrowest odds imaginable. That's not fucking up at all, much harder than merely winning 28 times in a row, which is already staggering. You have to let us fuck up sometimes, let it go. Someday I'll fuck up. Especially due to manipulation eg a racketeer as a last resort, when arrest was imminent, angled his back to get injured by police, in order to get a lighter sentence by countering the guilt of crime with an accusation of police brutality (SFPD police didn't fall for it, not even close). The bad guys want us to fuck up, it's not easy to foil them every single time. Saying this is possible implies strict inferiority on the part of the bad guys. And if you expect perfection from the police, you ought to tell them that next time you call them to come vindicate you. So they know you might yourself accuse them of brutalizing your victimizer.
        4y ago
- flutas 4y ago
  > I think we can assume pretty slimy tactics from Musk. I personally think we can assume slimy tactics from everyone involved. Did Musk do what he was accused of? Knowing his attitude most likely. Did someone also have very large shorts opened on Tesla right before the story dropped, to expire a day later? Yep. https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1527439455350468609 https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/152743945535046860...
  - throwawaybobby 4y ago
    That someone could be him, since he knew the story was going to break and tank the stock.
    - lupire 4y ago
      This has happened at least twice, and the first time didn't involve Elon/Tesla, but did also involve Business Insider.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Not everyone, but yes a convicted securities fraudster (Henry Blodget) runs a news site that has now published two sexual harassment stories about two different companies, on two different dates (respectively), that both had unusually large shorts expiring.
    - numair 4y ago
      The Elon / TSLA fanboys need to update their conspiracy theory. Blodget doesn’t even own BI, which everyone knows. I think Elon himself helped to spread this conspiracy, when he would be fully aware it’s complete BS. This demonstrates to me that he is willing to engage in the dangerous game of pushing fake news on his blind followers to get them to go after his enemies, even if it makes no sense. These are the exact sort of people who should not have any power, because they’ll happily abuse it to cause societal harm. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/29/axel-springer-buys-business-insider-henry-blodget https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/29/axel-springer-...
- daenz 4y ago
  The BI story thing is only a slimy tactic if you assume the sexual assault accusation to be true. If Elon knows its false and a tactic to paint him in a specific light, how could he be blamed for getting out in front of the narrative? Should he just let people say reputationally-damaging things about him, without intervening in any way? I think we've seen recently with the Amber Heard case that it's better to let these things shake out in court first.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Strongly disagree. I'm completely ambivalent as to whether the accusation is true or not – I have literally no idea and probably never will. Elon didn't come out and say, "hey there are accusations coming about an issue that was settled long ago outside of court, I maintain position X." He said, "I am switching to the Republican party, expect political hit pieces." He has turned his legal issue into a Republican vs Democrat issue. That's slimy regardless of the veracity of the allegations.
    - daenz 4y ago
      Again, in order to think it's slimy, you have to make assumptions about what is true. In the instance you just described, you still have to assume that the "hit piece" isn't because he was starting to lean more Republican. I don't think we know why the accusation re-surfaced, do we?
      - WoahNoun 4y ago
        Most people don't change their political ideology based on sexual assault accusations. Even if they were false, why would that cause someone to join a party with a radically different view of society than their previous party?
        daenz 4y ago
        >Most people don't change their political ideology based on sexual assault accusations That's not the ordering of events I'm suggesting. People have commented over time how Elon has been "moving right" for some time now. I'm suggesting it's possible that the accusation re-surfaced in response to how his political alignment shifting overall. Him saying he's "switching parties" is a soundbite for the last 5 years of his politics.
- res0nat0r 4y ago
  Also the 20% drop of $TSLA since he announced his idiotic bid for Twitter and the potential fallout from that I'm sure is related.
Tehchops 4y ago
Despite the zealous beliefs of the visionary, thought-leader techbro space that Musk's every move was to drive civilization forward in some kind of libertarian, technocrat utopia, it seems very clear at this point every one of these moves was absolutely a self-serving narrative shield around incredibly typical corporate/rich-person bad behavior. Oh but who could have seen this coming except oh wait everyone. The schadenfreude has been hilarious. Twitter has been blessedly devoid of the kind of chest-thumping he typically elicits and it has been glorious.
- UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
  This is of course, correct, but it is something not exclusive to Elon Musk, you just have to read the stream of accolades some of the darlings of this site receive here when they are just your run of the mill capitalists with all the usual interests and biases.
  - ditonal 4y ago
    Yep. You’d think Patrick Collison of Stripe invented the internet based on the praise he receives here rather than the reality that he made a PayPal clone with some custom branding options. Brian Chesky directly ripped off a popular free product called CouchSurfing then said “ok same thing but I get to be a billionaire, local housing markets lose long term rentals in exchange for teenage keg parties, and I get to buy virtue signaling billboards all over SF cause I get to be rich AND morally superior.” Then after we lionize those guys we can make fun of the Musk fan club.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  The divide here about Elon is much deeper than I anticipated. It’s crazy how one sided HN is. Seems entirely subjective and political. If one were to read the comments here, the only conclusion would be that Elon is the force of evil and a reincarnation of satan.
  - 1270018080 4y ago
    Is there a grand conspiracy plotting against him to discredit him? Or are his own actions doing the damage?
huijzer 4y ago
I'm starting to wonder more and more whether Musk has forgotten to think about the individuals negatively affected by his actions. I wouldn't be surprised if he really cares about humanity and wants to save the world by going to Mars, but I'm not so sure though whether the end justifies the means.
- FiberBundle 4y ago
  I don't think he displays any altruistic behaviour if you observe any of his actions.
  - 1270018080 4y ago
    I don't think it's possible to be altruistic and be a billionaire. That part of your brain has to be dysfunctional in order to amass infinite money while exploiting everyone around you.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      People voluntarily bought the Tesla cars, shareholders voluntarily bought the shares. That's Elon's wealth. He didn't steal it from anyone else.
      - 1270018080 4y ago
        He didn't steal, he exploited. Think about how 1 person at a company can be worth $100+ billion, and the other 100k employees are worth less than that combined. Can you imagine that there systemic exploitation there? Every day he lives and consciously decides to hoard that wealth. Just because it happened legally doesn't mean it's not evil/exploitation.
        systemvoltage 4y ago
        He made many millionaires at Tesla. This is absolutely abhorrent mischaracterization of any billionaire, let alone Elon Musk. Wealth is not stolen from anyone, it is created from providing value to millions of people. No one is exploiting anyone. It is at-will employment. Provides a living wage to thousands of employees to raise their families. If wealth was stolen, then we'd not have any growth in GDP. 90% people lived in poverty in the 19th century. Capitalism improved lives of millions of people. Every single person is better off today than in 18th century. You simply cannot become a billionaire without providing value to millions. Exceptions are inheritance and crony capitalists (often in bed with Gov). Sergey Brin is rightfully a billionaire. He made the world better and so did pretty much any billionaire. I feel like media has been feeding people "Billionaire bad, socialism good" and people have stopped thinking for themselves.
systemvoltage 4y ago
I feel like you could have said a lot of this with less words. But, exposing Elon seems to be the focus of your comment. Non-sequitur after non-sequitur.
- Karawebnetwork 4y ago
  Please rewrite my comment in your own words without losing any information. English is my second language and I am curious on how you would achieve this. From my point of view it is as barebone as it can be with 125 words, 7 sentences and 4 paragraphs.

ethanbond 4y ago

Yeah, since the BI story – and in particular his attempt to frontrun it and turn his personal legal troubles into a culture war battleground – I think we can assume pretty slimy tactics from Musk.

belter 4y ago
Slimy tactics? From the person that said one of his companies can fix Spinal and Brain injuries?: https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1312 https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1312 Surely...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dharmaturtle 4y ago
  Meh. The youtuber criticizes Musk's statement "This is something we could fix" by saying "He does not say 'This is something we _might_ be able to fix.'" Seconds later, the youtuber goes on to criticize Musk's disclaimer of "I'm not saying this is going to solve everything... it's something that _might_ be helpful." You just can't win with these "skeptics".
  - haspok 4y ago
    Another golden Musk gem: "I am very confident that...". The guy doesn't say anything, yet he makes everyone believe he did. Genius. The best salesperson in the world for sure.
  - belter 4y ago
    You missed the part where Elon Musk says it will take a few years before then can do a "brain memory upload". So they will be content of spending the first decade "just" fixing spine and brain injuries: https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1116 https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1116 Then Elon Musk says he will solve Schizophrenia, Depression and Morbid Obesity: https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1137 https://youtu.be/cgyFL5Hzy-s?t=1137 Yes,...really what is with the skeptics? Can't the recognize a genius when they see one?
    - dharmaturtle 4y ago
      Oh god I demonstrate how the timestamped quote is incorrect and now I've attracted the attention of the Musk anti-fans. Let me be clear: Musk is human. He has positive and negative qualities. His Thailand pedo comments were, to put it bluntly, fucking retarded. His autopilot timeline was wildly optimistic. His behavior on Twitter is infantile. And yet this is not carte blanche to twist his words into something unrecognizable. You can't just criticize someone for not being nuanced, then criticize their disclaimer that happens seconds later. That's intellectually dishonest. At that point I stopped listening because it is clear (to me) that the youtuber has an agenda to push. As to your comments, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Is it incorrect to believe that brain implants may lead to solutions to these problems?
      - belter 4y ago
        Guy says he will provide a brain implant to upload human memories to a computer and says he CAN fix a whole range of brain and spine damage, plus diseases that are not even caused by brain injury, and you focus on the disclaimer that will not be "right away"?
deelowe 4y ago
I started assuming this after Musk called that cave exploration expert in Thailand a pedophile.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Hey after all that activity on Twitter you gotta give him leeway at some point, just like a cop who's been in a thousand conflicts gets a pass when things go wrong, there has to be a margin of error.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    I'm hoping this was sarcasm.
    - daniel-cussen 4y ago
      Like you're in any position to chide me? It's a common South African insult, in fact I've heard classmates say it to one another in early high school for dating girls in late middle school. It's a word, people sometimes say it. There's a context. It wasn't a formal accusation. One in thousands of comments, you actually expect perfection from Musk and police? Let me tell you as someone who has pulled off exactly that in 28 conflicts, as if they were 28 chess matches, I haven't fucked up this whole time. It's fucking impossible in the long term. Narrowest odds imaginable. That's not fucking up at all, much harder than merely winning 28 times in a row, which is already staggering. You have to let us fuck up sometimes, let it go. Someday I'll fuck up. Especially due to manipulation eg a racketeer as a last resort, when arrest was imminent, angled his back to get injured by police, in order to get a lighter sentence by countering the guilt of crime with an accusation of police brutality (SFPD police didn't fall for it, not even close). The bad guys want us to fuck up, it's not easy to foil them every single time. Saying this is possible implies strict inferiority on the part of the bad guys. And if you expect perfection from the police, you ought to tell them that next time you call them to come vindicate you. So they know you might yourself accuse them of brutalizing your victimizer.
      - 4y ago
flutas 4y ago
> I think we can assume pretty slimy tactics from Musk. I personally think we can assume slimy tactics from everyone involved. Did Musk do what he was accused of? Knowing his attitude most likely. Did someone also have very large shorts opened on Tesla right before the story dropped, to expire a day later? Yep. https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1527439455350468609 https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/152743945535046860...
- throwawaybobby 4y ago
  That someone could be him, since he knew the story was going to break and tank the stock.
  - lupire 4y ago
    This has happened at least twice, and the first time didn't involve Elon/Tesla, but did also involve Business Insider.
- lupire 4y ago
  Not everyone, but yes a convicted securities fraudster (Henry Blodget) runs a news site that has now published two sexual harassment stories about two different companies, on two different dates (respectively), that both had unusually large shorts expiring.
  - numair 4y ago
    The Elon / TSLA fanboys need to update their conspiracy theory. Blodget doesn’t even own BI, which everyone knows. I think Elon himself helped to spread this conspiracy, when he would be fully aware it’s complete BS. This demonstrates to me that he is willing to engage in the dangerous game of pushing fake news on his blind followers to get them to go after his enemies, even if it makes no sense. These are the exact sort of people who should not have any power, because they’ll happily abuse it to cause societal harm. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/29/axel-springer-buys-business-insider-henry-blodget https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/29/axel-springer-...
daenz 4y ago
The BI story thing is only a slimy tactic if you assume the sexual assault accusation to be true. If Elon knows its false and a tactic to paint him in a specific light, how could he be blamed for getting out in front of the narrative? Should he just let people say reputationally-damaging things about him, without intervening in any way? I think we've seen recently with the Amber Heard case that it's better to let these things shake out in court first.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Strongly disagree. I'm completely ambivalent as to whether the accusation is true or not – I have literally no idea and probably never will. Elon didn't come out and say, "hey there are accusations coming about an issue that was settled long ago outside of court, I maintain position X." He said, "I am switching to the Republican party, expect political hit pieces." He has turned his legal issue into a Republican vs Democrat issue. That's slimy regardless of the veracity of the allegations.
  - daenz 4y ago
    Again, in order to think it's slimy, you have to make assumptions about what is true. In the instance you just described, you still have to assume that the "hit piece" isn't because he was starting to lean more Republican. I don't think we know why the accusation re-surfaced, do we?
    - WoahNoun 4y ago
      Most people don't change their political ideology based on sexual assault accusations. Even if they were false, why would that cause someone to join a party with a radically different view of society than their previous party?
      - daenz 4y ago
        >Most people don't change their political ideology based on sexual assault accusations That's not the ordering of events I'm suggesting. People have commented over time how Elon has been "moving right" for some time now. I'm suggesting it's possible that the accusation re-surfaced in response to how his political alignment shifting overall. Him saying he's "switching parties" is a soundbite for the last 5 years of his politics.
res0nat0r 4y ago
Also the 20% drop of $TSLA since he announced his idiotic bid for Twitter and the potential fallout from that I'm sure is related.

Tehchops 4y ago

Despite the zealous beliefs of the visionary, thought-leader techbro space that Musk's every move was to drive civilization forward in some kind of libertarian, technocrat utopia, it seems very clear at this point every one of these moves was absolutely a self-serving narrative shield around incredibly typical corporate/rich-person bad behavior. Oh but who could have seen this coming except oh wait everyone. The schadenfreude has been hilarious. Twitter has been blessedly devoid of the kind of chest-thumping he typically elicits and it has been glorious.

UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
This is of course, correct, but it is something not exclusive to Elon Musk, you just have to read the stream of accolades some of the darlings of this site receive here when they are just your run of the mill capitalists with all the usual interests and biases.
- ditonal 4y ago
  Yep. You’d think Patrick Collison of Stripe invented the internet based on the praise he receives here rather than the reality that he made a PayPal clone with some custom branding options. Brian Chesky directly ripped off a popular free product called CouchSurfing then said “ok same thing but I get to be a billionaire, local housing markets lose long term rentals in exchange for teenage keg parties, and I get to buy virtue signaling billboards all over SF cause I get to be rich AND morally superior.” Then after we lionize those guys we can make fun of the Musk fan club.
systemvoltage 4y ago
The divide here about Elon is much deeper than I anticipated. It’s crazy how one sided HN is. Seems entirely subjective and political. If one were to read the comments here, the only conclusion would be that Elon is the force of evil and a reincarnation of satan.
- 1270018080 4y ago
  Is there a grand conspiracy plotting against him to discredit him? Or are his own actions doing the damage?

huijzer 4y ago

I'm starting to wonder more and more whether Musk has forgotten to think about the individuals negatively affected by his actions. I wouldn't be surprised if he really cares about humanity and wants to save the world by going to Mars, but I'm not so sure though whether the end justifies the means.

FiberBundle 4y ago
I don't think he displays any altruistic behaviour if you observe any of his actions.
- 1270018080 4y ago
  I don't think it's possible to be altruistic and be a billionaire. That part of your brain has to be dysfunctional in order to amass infinite money while exploiting everyone around you.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    People voluntarily bought the Tesla cars, shareholders voluntarily bought the shares. That's Elon's wealth. He didn't steal it from anyone else.
    - 1270018080 4y ago
      He didn't steal, he exploited. Think about how 1 person at a company can be worth $100+ billion, and the other 100k employees are worth less than that combined. Can you imagine that there systemic exploitation there? Every day he lives and consciously decides to hoard that wealth. Just because it happened legally doesn't mean it's not evil/exploitation.
      - systemvoltage 4y ago
        He made many millionaires at Tesla. This is absolutely abhorrent mischaracterization of any billionaire, let alone Elon Musk. Wealth is not stolen from anyone, it is created from providing value to millions of people. No one is exploiting anyone. It is at-will employment. Provides a living wage to thousands of employees to raise their families. If wealth was stolen, then we'd not have any growth in GDP. 90% people lived in poverty in the 19th century. Capitalism improved lives of millions of people. Every single person is better off today than in 18th century. You simply cannot become a billionaire without providing value to millions. Exceptions are inheritance and crony capitalists (often in bed with Gov). Sergey Brin is rightfully a billionaire. He made the world better and so did pretty much any billionaire. I feel like media has been feeding people "Billionaire bad, socialism good" and people have stopped thinking for themselves.

systemvoltage 4y ago

I feel like you could have said a lot of this with less words. But, exposing Elon seems to be the focus of your comment. Non-sequitur after non-sequitur.

Karawebnetwork 4y ago
Please rewrite my comment in your own words without losing any information. English is my second language and I am curious on how you would achieve this. From my point of view it is as barebone as it can be with 125 words, 7 sentences and 4 paragraphs.