8 ms·
So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient? The car already has low resale valu
by Jcampuzano2 2y ago
So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient?
The car already has low resale value, and if they did sell it it doesn't get it off the road. I do own one, and honestly I hate driving it around now because of the stigma but its the only car I have and while yes I could sell it at a massive loss thats both a lot of work and a waste of my time, effort, and money.
It was literally the first car I ever bought and was because I liked the convenience of EV's and for the environment. Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own and always have to look over my shoulders, and I don't even like Elon in the first place and never really cared for him.
- kshmir 2y agoI just love the Tesla, why would I care about what other people say? It works better everyday.
- base698 2y agoThe argument goes: Because 3% of the population is antisocial personality disorder in the screens on TV and the internet tell them it's okay to commit violence against you because Nazis. You may not care but the crazy people care a lot.
- kshmir 2y agoI still don't care. I may just buy another Tesla and a handgun :)
- margalabargala 2y agoMurdering vandals is still murder. You will be locked in a small box and deserve it.
- kshmir 2y agoIt's never about shooting.
- Zigurd 2y agoNot quite never, but statistically it would end up being you or some member of your household, by accident or intentional self harm.
- mlindner 2y agoSelf defense is not murder. Definitionally. That depends on the state however. It can be murder, so take care.
- margalabargala 2y agoSure. People driving Teslas haven't been getting physically assaulted, so self defense isn't what we're talking about here.
- ben_w 2y ago> I still don't care. I may just buy another Tesla and a handgun :) That kind of escalation is very American of you. I'd like to remind you of the demonstration of the "bulletproof" windows of the Cybertruck and consider quite how bad things may get if Americans don't learn to live with each other without constantly laughing about "triggering" each other when the more literal trigger is on the firearms you have a constitutional right to own. That so many are, like yourself, so blasé about the risks, was one reason I decided against migrating to the USA when I had the chance.
- lvass 2y agoThis is exactly the type of thing that makes me like America. Taking risks is an essential part of life and the more open you are to sane risks, the better. The reason I don't move there is tax laws, but boy do I, as a third worlder, want a "gold card".
- coldpie 2y agoIt's a lot less fun than it sounds. https://www.kare11.com/article/news/crime/woman-shot-by-stray-bullet-in-minneapolis-oliver-avenue-north-gunfire-from-alley/89-310142fb-f61d-49e9-9577-0e541162d7a4 https://www.kare11.com/article/news/crime/woman-shot-by-stra...
- ben_w 2y agoThat link redirects to their YouTube channel home page.
- coldpie 2y agoSorry, local news websites are a disaster. You can probably find the story by searching terms from the URL slug. That particular story doesn't really matter, it was just the most recent one in my area that came to mind. There is no shortage of similar stories across the US.
- ben_w 2y ago
- jackstraw14 2y agoso wonderful to share this country with folks like you! please consider shifting your scope outside yourself and your own personal protection, and consider the greater good at least occasionally, please.
- Balgair 2y agoNot to dogpile too much here, but I think 1992's Unforgiven directed by and staring Clint Eastwood does the best here when it comes to my feeling about this comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTjBR0jicAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTjBR0jicAo Bill Munny: It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have. Schofield Kid: Yeah. Well I guess they had it coming. Bill Munny: We all have it coming, kid. The acting here is much better than these simple lines as well as the lead up to them. Suffice to say, talking about dealing death over property online is a lot easier than living with it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- adamdonahue 2y agoThis.
- sMarsIntruder 2y agoThat’s what real freedom it really is. Finally I start reading some sanity over here.
- Workaccount2 2y agoI want to get a Tesla because their driver assist is the best in the industry, hands down. However my friends and family have made it clear that it simply is not an option. I hate Elon too, but the cars shouldn't be political. So looks like I will keep burning gas for the time being. As a side note, I hope republicans start buying Teslas as a statement. I might actually be able to forgive Elon if he gets republicans in EVs.
- Zigurd 2y ago"I hate Elon too, but" ... "I hope republicans start buying Teslas as a statement." This is the new "I'm not racist. I just don't see color."
- ben_w 2y agoIf, somehow, this nonsense causes Republics to think that buying eco-friendly cars is "anti-woke" and buy Tesla cars en-masse to "own the libs", this is still a win for the environment. Regardless, thanks to how Musk is messing around with politics (domestically via DOGE and internationally via personal spats with government ministers and judges in multiple different countries), I don't see Musk's power surviving very long. How long is high-variance, but if DOGE cuts and counter-tariffs hurt too hard, then Congress could flip in 2 years and Trump may find himself impeached yet again and then Musk will have nobody with meaningful power to ask for help.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> How long is high-variance, but if DOGE cuts and counter-tariffs hurt too hard, then Congress could flip in 2 years and Trump may find himself impeached Except that the Trump regime is dismantling enforcement of voting protections, dismantling due process, and directly using force against people expressing dissenting political views, all of which are pretty good signs that there won't be anythig approximating free and fair elections in 2026 for Republicans to lose.
- ben_w 2y ago
- ben_w 2y ago> So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient? I mean, that kind of politics is kinda why the US has locally-made cars at all, rather than buying them at half the price from China (and that's not just Trump's new thing, the 100% tariff on Chinese EV's was from Biden: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/09/0130c36c7c00-us-100-duty-on-chinese-evs-comes-into-effect.html https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/09/0130c36c7c00-us-1...) Or why the US briefly switched from "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries". Or, famously, that time in Boston when the North Atlantic briefly became very weak, very salty, tea. Montgomery bus boycott, the boycotts of South African Goods in protest against apartheid. Might even be able to argue alcohol and weed being made illegal due to political pressure that converts a boycott into a legal requirement.
- palmotea 2y ago> Or why the US briefly switched from "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries". That never happened, "the US" never did that. What really happened was a few people were dumb for a little while, and a couple of signs were briefly changed.
- thechao 2y agoTesla owner; same boat. I think Austin has voted with its doors enough for me to get the idea, at this point. I got the car in 2001, and it should be good for another 5–7 yrs as my daily commuter. I'm just resigned to my dingy fate, now. The next car has to be a long hauler; we're looking at hybrid SUV/minivans. After that ... I hope Aptera is shipping.
- soraminazuki 2y agoIt's obviously wrong to harass innocent people. But at the same time, Tesla is so anti-consumer that switching cars might actually be beneficial. Tesla workers were caught spying on car owners through the camera, sharing in internal chat videos of people doing "really intimate things" or approaching the car "completely naked." Not only that, they were photoshopping it and memeing. It shows a culture of complete moral breakdown in the company. I definitely wouldn't want a Tesla in my home, even without the current political events. https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
- meristohm 2y agoWhat's the embodied energy cost of making your EV and driving it for X years compared to a similar ICE vehicle? EV tire wear (and thus, pollution) is greater due to the extra weight. If there's an edge on environmental harm reduction, it's marginal, and mostly in terms of reducing CO2 emissions, which is important yes. The impactful way, not just greenwashed way, to be environmentally friendly is to embrace "public luxury, private sufficiency"- support public libraries, health care, education (and not just to churn out workers...), access to local food (which, given our dependence on petroleum-derived nitrogen instead of birdshit, leading to our population boom, will be rather difficult), urban design that promotes moving around under one's own power (likewise stifling energy-sucking AI- far better to so things ourselves, as our bodies are already burning calories and want to be useful and meaningful), and more- using less than a few thousand tons of CO2/annum for example, or less than 2k Watts/day, something like this. I hear your concerns, and it sounds like you're whining? I don't use Amazon anymore, for years now. I'm very close to going without Google. Deleted all my connections to Microsoft, moved away from Windows a few years ago and only use Linux and BSD (quitting videogames helped here, though Valve's Proton didn't help! I appreciate what they're doing, though), unsubbed from all streaming (we just use the library and PBS now), unsubbed from Apple, and more, and while I don't have much money to "vote" with anyway, I feel much better not contributing so much to the vampires (capitalism, neoliberalism (Hayek's term, not just disparaging), surveillance capitalism, etc). Sell or donate your Tesla and move somewhere where you can walk/bike/wheelchair/bus to work? Embrace mutual aid (Dean Spade has a concise book on this) and help build community? You have a lot of agency, and maybe you have already considered all this (I didn't dig into any of your other posts, I'm just reacting to what sounds like whining, and I'm someone who indulges in that sometimes, but who sees a way out of that pit). Good luck!
- Marsymars 2y ago> Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own Maybe, but something like 90%+ of all Teslas sold were manufactured after Tesla the company was already on my blacklist due to the ethical issues with supporting Musk. (There are a number of companies on my blacklist, but off the top of my head I can't recall any others that are specifically there because of the singular actions of an owner.)
- tekknik 2y agowhy is your blacklist important? also isn’t it supposed to be called something other than “blacklist” now?
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoRight, I think the new term is hitlist.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoFound typical Jalopnik reader
- dvt 2y agoIf you own Apple or Nike products, you're supporting child slavery. If you own products made in China, you're supporting religious genocide. "Blacklisting" companies is just lazy slacktivism that only someone in the middle-to-upper class Twittersphere (or Blueskysphere) would ever partake in. Murder & terrorism are morally impermissible, but at least Luigi, or the Unabomber, or the Proud Boys put their lives on the line for whatever ideas (good or bad, you decide) they had. Testicular fortitude that only extends to Hacker News is not very convincing. What do I do to make the world a slightly better place? I volunteer at my local church and at homeless shelters, I donate, I help my neighbors, I clean up the beach, I organize community gatherings. Enough online activism with grandiose ideas, start with making a small positive change in your local community.
- maximinus_thrax 2y ago
- jarsin 2y agoWhat's crazy is this was always seen as a left wing car. If you drove one of these into small blue collar towns there is a chance you would have been harassed a few short years ago.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoFar left and antifa always hated Tesla tho. But I also suspect antifa is just Russian trolls financed by oil money.
- jarsin 2y agoI put Antifa into a whole other category called, Terrorist.
- anigbrowl 2y agoSounds made up. I live in a very lefty part of the Bay Area in California where Teslas abound, and there has never been any kind of campaign against them until recently, just some cynicism about Musk's grandiose claims. My impression from reading your other comments is that you don't even live in the US. If that's wrong please correct me, but if not I think you should refrain from making counterfactual claims.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoYou don't need to read my comments, it's in my bio. I do work with US (Bay Area and now Texas) companies (contracting) for last 7 years. IDK why but I do get sucked into US affairs so much which I do not like. Elon has been harassed online by woke and antifa for years now. Lately by actual people IRL too.
- anigbrowl 2y agoSorry, I didn't realize you were on first name terms with him.
- AlecSchueler 2y ago> So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient? Can't things be exceptional? "Inconvenient" seems to go very far in diminishing what's happening here, and I think your point would come across very differently without the understatement. Is there really no line he could cross where you would stop calling his politics an "inconvenience" and support direct actions being taken? (Not necessarily this action in particular) I understand the stigma is painful but I would implore you to consider how that pain affects your outlook and perhaps makes you feel more sympathy for the company than you otherwise would.
- mlindner 2y agoThe only people who think this is more than "politically inconvenient" are terminally online and aren't really seeing reality for what it is. The people pushing for vandalism of these vehicles are way worse than Elon has ever been.
- soraminazuki 2y ago> way worse than Elon has ever been Seriously? Vandalizing innocent people's property is wrong, but ransacking government institutions is far worse and much more consequential. There's an order of magnitude difference in the number of victims and the ways in which they're affected, which includes death. Death, you ask? Gutting health agencies, pollution regulators, or international efforts to prevent the spread of disease will all lead to increased numbers of death. However, it seems that when the scale of the crime outgrows a certain threshold, the perceived severity goes down somehow. It's depressing.
- chneu 2y agoTell that to the thousands who have lost their jobs in careers they no longer feel comfortable pursuing. Claiming only those who are "terminally online" think this is more than inconvenient is an amazing display of either privilege or not giving a crap. Either way, lol calling kettle.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tzs 2y ago> So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient? I suspect this will be a one time thing because I don't think any other carmaker CEO will do the kind of things Musk is doing.
- poeao 2y agoTrue most CEOs are too cowardly to try to save us from $50 trillion in debt and financial collapse. Fighting the government jobs program of non productive people is something most don’t want to do.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoIf he wanted to do those things with the consent of the people, he could have run for public office. Buying his way in changes things significantly.
- b112 2y ago99.99% of government work is done by non-elected officials. Did you vote for the head of the FBI? The FTC? I don't get this argument.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoTaking a position with established norms about how the job is to be done and taking direction from elected officials above you is one thing. Interfering with elections to create a position for yourself and then using threats about further interference to bully the elected officials around you is quite another.
- b112 2y agoInterference? You mean donations to campaigns, which is entirely legal? That's not interference. That's how the US system works. If you're upset a Musk for donating, then surely you are upset at others donating too, yes? Because all those contributions had a goal too, often policy changes. Outside of donations, I see conspiracy theories about starlink and voting machines online, but surely you don't mean that. What elected officials has Musk "bullied"? Was any of this supposed bulling quoted in context? Was any of this supposed bullying just impolite speech, for which Washington is famous?
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI hope people aren't being excessively cruel, but... > through no fault of my own Giving money to an enemy of the people should have consequences, even after the fact. That's how we prevent it from happening in the future.
- anonfordays 2y ago>Giving money to an enemy of the people should have consequences, even after the fact. That's how we prevent it from happening in the future. I'll remember this comment when conservatives are the ones destroying something because the owner/CEO/etc. are Marxist child groomers or whatever. They'll be justified because giving money to an enemy of the people should have consequences, even after the fact. That's how we prevent it from happening in the future.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoIf what is being destroyed is a bunch of stock prices, and if the owner/CEO/etc. is under fire for using their wallet to disproportionally influence politics, then yeah more power to 'em. It's not about sending a message from left to right, but rather from bottom to top: > Your contribution to politics should be 1 vote and 0 dollars, or else.
- sMarsIntruder 2y agoThis is complete madness. So, you define who is an “enemy of the people”? You’re more dangerous than the “problem” itself.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoNo, everybody does. And they talk to each other about it, and this affects prices and how investments are allocated, which determines whether and which people have government-influencing amounts of power. I'm not proposing we trash his Tesla, I'm proposing that we maintain the stigma. For better or worse this is how markets work, so lets use them.