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The Tesla, last I read about and test drove one, is a great car. Why tear at a company that makes a great car over anyone's political preferences? The phrase "s

• jryan49 2y ago
  It's at the bottom of all reliability lists so I'd argue it's not a "great car"
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• lovich 2y ago
  >Why tear at a company that makes a great car over anyone's political preferences? With how our society is set up, you are suggesting not holding any political viewpoints or preferences. I had a whole diatribe typed up that I deleted because I realized I cannot actually empathize or have a theory of mind for how you could think this was an acceptable way to live life. Do you silo every interaction you have with everyone else?
  • milesrout 2y ago
    He is suggesting the opposite. Attacking every company run by someone you disagree with politically is a recipe for not being able to participate in society in any meaningful way. Musk's views are quite normal and are shared by people involved in every company and institution out there. Are you going to boycott them all? These boycotts only work as isolated, selective outrage. It is the same with countries. If you wanted to be consistent, you'd have to boycott every country in the world. They all do some bad things.
    • supportengineer 2y ago
      >> Musk's views are quite normal Citation please
      • _bin_ 2y ago
        a majority of the American people voted for the guy who explicitly and repeatedly campaigned with him. that's a pretty solid citation.
        • gainda 2y ago
          I wouldn't be so quick to say a 'majority of the American people.' The 'majority' that voted for him is only about 31% of the voting-eligible population.
          • _bin_ 2y ago
            right. with the availability of early voting, that implies that most of that 69% didn't care enough either way. it was a pretty close election, probably with a slight edge going in for Harris, so that would tend to cause more would-be Trump voters to stay home. in other words, there are plenty of valid complaints, but "abnormal" or denying a clear democratic mandate aren't any of them.
    • EnergyAmy 2y ago
      Throwing around Nazi salutes is normal? Are you writing this from an evil mirror universe?
      • assimpleaspossi 2y ago
        You, and most who believe that, are ignoring the part where he said something like, "My heart goes out to you!" as he threw his hand from his heart out to the people in the crowd.
        • llm_nerd 2y ago
          No one is ignoring that, and it's bizarre seeing people defend Musk in such a ridiculous fashion. The plausible deniability angle would hit a little better if Musk hadn't also been endorsing a number of Nazi-adjacent parties and views, pushed literal white nationalist views repeatedly (which he has been doing for years -- he isn't concerned about birth rates, he is literally only worried about white birth rates while he runs his creepy birthing farm down in Texas, and that's aside from his endless "empathy is our weakness" attacks on migrants), and most recently literally excused Hitler on the basis that really it's the public servants who are to blame. It's quite incredible really. If the guy wasn't already absolutely soaked with extremely far right rhetoric and beliefs -- save the absurd "oh he's a centrist" nonsense that zero people believe if they have any functioning grey matter at all -- it might have been excusable as something that just looked concerning.
        • gainda 2y ago
          You're already misremembering what actually happened - that he says that after two vigorous salutes.
          • assimpleaspossi 2y ago
            And how does that change anything?
            • gainda 2y ago
    • outer_web 2y ago
      Absolutely, it is impossible to draw a line based on, say how evil the person is or how much they are trying to spread the evil. Because anyone can be evil, we simply cannot take action against anyone!
  • qwerpy 2y ago
    Having political viewpoints is fine. Protesting at their showrooms is fine. Making purchasing decisions for yourself based on your political viewpoints, also fine. Punishing people (vandalism, scrawling Nazi symbols, hostile/threatening interactions on the road) for owning a brand of car and not sharing your viewpoints is not fine.
    • EnergyAmy 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • mrangle 2y ago
        Because it's terrorism.
        • Analemma_ 2y ago
          I remember when tech people were deeply suspicious of expanding the definition of "terrorism" to encompass protest and dissent. Now apparently it's awesome and based if Glorious Leader does it.
        • sshine 2y ago
          Only if there’s people inside. Otherwise it’s vandalism.
          • mrangle 2y ago
            That's wrong.
            • sshine 2y ago
              Boeing flies into building. Missile hits hospital. Captured dam floods city. Drone explodes civilian’s head. Upset leftist scratches swastika on car. I see the similarities.
      • sshine 2y ago
  • Analemma_ 2y ago
    If it makes you feel better, the person you're replying to isn't siloing. These people set up a wonderful Catch-22: "we don't need laws or regulations: consumer choice and people voting with their wallets is enough to ensure good behavior. If people really care, they will stop buying it" (people exercise consumer choice and vote with their wallets) "Hey, whoa, not like that! Let's not bring politics into this!" What the OP and others like them actually want is a total lack of accountability for bad actors, and they will pick whatever argument is convenient in that moment regardless of consistency.
    • oenton 2y ago
      > What the OP and others like them actually want is a total lack of accountability for bad actors, and they will pick whatever argument is convenient in that moment regardless of consistency. Thank you for eloquently putting this into words.
  • Ferret7446 2y ago
    This used to be normal. I guess the new normal (building your identity around politics) is either the cause of or correlated with the general rise in mental illness in our modern society. Yes, not talking or caring about politics within various social silos is (used to be) normal.
• gainda 2y ago
  > over anyone's political preferences I think this phrasing mellows the reality that he has, regardless of intent, displayed Nazi-like behavior. Why not tear at a company whose absentee CEO acts this way? Tesla is not the only great car or the only great car company. Let it thrive or die based on myriad factors, including leadership optics.
• kerkeslager 2y ago
  Because some of us don't want our money to go to Nazism. That's not crazy, it's basic ethical behavior.
  • milesrout 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • randerson 2y ago
      Last I checked Henry Ford was still dead and the current owners of Ford are not known to be Nazis. Just in the last week Musk reposted "Stalin, Hitler and Mao didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did." I would rather not be getting a car in return for a sizeable donation to someone who is spreading that kind of rhetoric.
      • cityofdelusion 2y ago
        Just thinking and putting some thoughts out. I guess the question is when does accountability stop? If a company and its descendant employees and products are built on an evil foundation and benefit from it, how do we rectify as a society? Ford is hardly alone here, many German, Japanese, and American companies were built on wartime atrocities and exist today from that previous goodwill. If the malignant founder is dead, is then the rest of the machine exempt from responsibility? I personally think the only way to be truly principled is to boycott basically everything. I imagine the vast majority of people reading this right now are wearing clothes produced by child slavery or eating imported products that clear cut rainforest and villages or whatnot. Society for better or worse has to carry some amount of baggage to just subsist without emotional stress.
        • randerson 2y ago
          I agree, and I've long thought that there is no such thing as a clean dollar. I could donate $100 to an animal shelter, and some % of that will eventually make its way into evil hands. But I'd make that trade-off because the money is being used more for good than bad, and the bad part is largely out of my control. Musk's wealth is however causing very direct and obvious harm to causes I care about, and he uses his platform of 100M+ followers to spread hateful views which now permeate every conversation. I am tired of him being relevant. There are many alternatives to Tesla so it is easy enough to not give him money. I also take a forward-facing view. I can't change what people's past dollars were spent on. Instead I care about what my dollars be spent on after I give them to a company. I buy Porsche cars today even though their founder was a Nazi and the company is still majority-owned by the Porsche family. But their founder is dead, and today's Porsche has strongly disavowed Nazi views. Seems my money mostly goes toward developing cool cars while the owners stay out of politics.
• rco8786 2y ago
  > The phrase "shooting oneself in the foot" comes to mind. It should come to mind for elon, not car buyers. He built a car company based on environmentalism that naturally appealed to people with environmental concerns and then pivoted to publicly insulting and denigrating those exact people. It's not even really political. Elon isn't the first CEO to hold political values that differ from a majority of the company's customers. It's the fact that he goes out of his way to call his most likely customers retards.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• maximilianburke 2y ago
  Because the better Tesla does the more financial leverage that Elon Musk, a terrible person who is causing a great deal of harm, has.
• supportengineer 2y ago
  Because buying the car essentially gives money to Adolf Hitler. Do you not see that?
• yks 2y ago
  It's just a car bro. No one is "shooting oneself in the foot" by not owning Tesla of all things.
  • assimpleaspossi 2y ago
    That's also my point. No one gains anything by not owning one, either. If one does like and want the car, they only hurt themselves by not buying one. If Tesla went out of business and one couldn't buy a car they wanted, they hurt themselves. I buy things that make me happy or give me an advantage of some sort. I wouldn't want to lose that. Someone else's politics or personal life don't matter to me.
    • yks 2y ago
      This "hurting themselves" you're talking about is as hurtful as buying hot chocolate instead of coffee.
• Symbiote 2y ago
  Making a sacrifice, whether great or small, is a very common ethical behaviour. I refuse to make purchases on Amazon. Sometimes that's a minor inconvenience: perhaps the alternative has slower delivery. Sometimes purchasing elsewhere probably costs me more than it would on Amazon. My purchase value is low considering the whole world, but it's not zero. I can also influence my employer's decisions, which are larger — and we use Azure rather than AWS.
• pornel 2y ago
  The car isn't the problem, but it's tied to an incredibly overvalued stock, which in turn made it possible for Musk to buy massive influence and political power, and wield it irresponsible self-serving ways.