The Strawman is your whole post. You are not replying to anyone, you are replying to the image of someone you have in your had, and are then pwning that image.
But that image does not actually correspond to a real person.
If you want my take on why my perception of musk changed (so you can talk to an actual real person instead of a strawman), here it is.
I like electric vehicles and i like space stuff. Thus, without any additional information, i generally liked the core idea of tesla and spaceX, and i didn't really dig into the details because i wasn't that interested. This made me even disregard my equally low-level basic dislike for billionaires. I don't care about Twitter, so whether Musk bought Twitter or not is also irrelevant.
However, at some point roughly 2021, Musk started talking a lot (/posting stuff on social media). And i noticed that the more he talks, the more i dislike him as a person, and his political stances on pretty much any topic.
I still don't comment on his business stuff, because i am not deeply informed about the details of that. For that same reason, i don't invest in it, because it smells as if it too much discussion about Musks businesses is very hype- and personality-driven. As can be seen by the fact that we are often simply referencing them as "Musks businesses" and not as the fundamentally completely different companies they should be. And too much hype feels risky to me.
And where in 2020 i might have taken something he said on basically any topic as generally valuable, simply because i only had limited, but positive, context, in 2022 i mostly disregard it, because i have more context (he opened his mouth a lot in the meantime, and i disagreed with almost all of it), and almost all of it is negative.
The perception of Musk is changing for the same reason as why the perception of Trump is changing... more people are catching up to what other people knew all along (or at least, much earlier on).
On December 02 2022 22:13 Slaughter wrote: I saw some concerns about those new Semi's being a fair bit worse on the roads because they are heavier but that they should perform well for shorter routes.
I think the bigger concerns now are in different aspects. Elon promised a $0.07 on electricity and it's at $0.50, making recharging semis over twice as expensive as diesel fuel for trucks. And the megachargers that could top them up quickly are nowhere in sight. Some companies that received semis say that Tesla provides engineering support and specs to build your own megachargers, but that's a sizeable investment (half a million dollars in solar panels alone if you want to go this route, not even counting how much land you'd need for that).
Toyota Supra Mk4 gained +250% value in the last 5 years alone in Germany (+300% over the past 3 years in the UK).
The cars that have loans on them are depreciating assets 99.99% of the time.
You picked a low volume collectors car. Those do increase in value sometimes but are in no way representative of auto loans as a whole.
Any autoloan bubble is nothing like the housing bubble as homes typically go up in value while cars do not. Other than niche ultra low volume vehicles, nobody is buying a car and hoping to flip it for more money in 3 or 5 years. They arent investment opportunities unless the car is rare and sits in a garage somewhere not to be driven.
On December 20 2022 00:25 JimmiC wrote: Yeah daily drivers are brutal because the asset is depreciating because of time and use. Then you have gas, maintence and repairs. With a loan and interest payments there are not a lot of worse things for your money. That being said in north america most cities and towns sre not well set up for other forms of transport (public, bikes, so on), so you are kind of stuck with paying for cars(mostly trucks/suvs around here) or spending a crazy amount of time waiting for busses and then walking pretty far. In a place where I live it would be imppossible. You could bike down a highway in the shoulder, but that would suck especially when its snow and ice. They have been talking about a bike path but its been 2 decades even though someone donated the money. Parking lots though, those go up all the time no problem.
It's funny how Europe and USA take completely different approaches to this. In Amsterdam for example they are removing 10k parking spaces
On December 19 2022 17:20 Taelshin wrote: @kwark If I responded to one of you or anyone else's posts like this I'd be suspended in a hot minute. You can do better.
Show me the strawman and Ill bring you the flamethrower(yikes its built by musk)
You imagined a person, imagined some words in their mouth, then criticized the words you put there. That’s literally a straw man.
The interesting thing about Musk is that for the people that think his businesses have no real substance and he just cons people by hyping them up, it just doesn’t mesh with the fact that he has gone out of his way to be the “fuck woke culture” alt-right troll that he has become. It’s really not “good for business” to do what he is doing. How many CEOs have come out saying we need Trump back on Twitter? Probably just him and the MyPillow guy. He has invited hella scrutiny for himself and his companies as well as activists actively campaigning against him. It’s not exactly an optimal strategy if you believe his businesses rely entirely on image and hype.
You're right that it doesn't seem to be a good strategy but I don't see anything pointing toward it not being that. Tesla spends almost nothing on PR, it's all based around Musk's public persona. And the more he is showing of himself the worse this strategy becomes. Brands need to be seen positively by as many people as possible (in their target group) and choosing sides politically, trolling and making jokes about resigning as the CEO of the company you just bought is just not a good choice here. Also, Tesla needs good connections to politicians as the EV and self-driving space will be regulated more and more. Pissing off one side is not a good choice here.
"it seems to be stupid but he does it anyways, so what are we missing?" - my answer is that we're not missing anything.
On December 20 2022 23:15 schaf wrote: You're right that it doesn't seem to be a good strategy but I don't see anything pointing toward it not being that. Tesla spends almost nothing on PR, it's all based around Musk's public persona. And the more he is showing of himself the worse this strategy becomes. Brands need to be seen positively by as many people as possible (in their target group) and choosing sides politically, trolling and making jokes about resigning as the CEO of the company you just bought is just not a good choice here. Also, Tesla needs good connections to politicians as the EV and self-driving space will be regulated more and more. Pissing off one side is not a good choice here.
"it seems to be stupid but he does it anyways, so what are we missing?" - my answer is that we're not missing anything.
It’s more a question for the people that believe that Musks only talent is extracting value from a persona that he has built up when recent history tells us that he’s really not that good at keeping his persona valuable. He’s all talk but his talking is bad for business? Seems somewhat contradictory.
People can fuck up good stuff they got going. Hubris and arrogance are some of the core forces leading to that, and there is little that leads to more hubris and arrogance than being a billionaire. Another current example of a powerful man fucking up a good (for them) thing is Putins invasion of Ukraine.
After you build yourself an echo chamber, and once you believe yourself to be beyond reproach, and that everything you touch necessarily turns to gold because you are a genius, you make stupid decisions and stupid mistakes, and your surroundings will reinforce those because you purged those who disagree with you ages ago.
On December 21 2022 00:31 JimmiC wrote: It would not be the first time someone built up value in a persona and then blew that all away with one or many acts. These things are dynamic not static. Musk has changed his message pretty dramaticlly in the last few years, and there is WAY more Musk. It would actually be surprising if people did not have a different opinion of him then they did a few years ago.
The part I find strange is all the southern baptists that now love Musk. His lifestyle does not remotely match with their "values", but we live in strange times.
He lives a rather humble live i read the other day. No mega mansions and mega yaghts, And no doubt he works very hard and puts in lots of hours. The twitter antics i think they forgive him. Its seen as an act to achieve what is neccesary. In a similar way Trump was accepted. As a means to an end.
Tsla keeps dropping i wonder where the bottom is. Would not be surprised to see it well below 100 somewhere in 2023. Musk cleared his bonus and got his shares. I dont know what price he got them for , the 2 recent splits make the situation a bit unclear. He could buy them for ~70 but that was before the 5/1 and 3/1 split i think (not 100% sure on this). Which would mean he got his shares for around 5$ each. (if someone has more accurate info on this i would like to see it).
Making massive amounts of money from China is nearing its end i think. Not only for Tsla but also for many other tech stocks that depend to a more or lesser extend on production and sales in China. Tech will probably remain under pressure in 2023 and i dont think 2023 will be any better then 2022 in general. There is to many major problems still in the pipeline.
On December 21 2022 00:31 JimmiC wrote: It would not be the first time someone built up value in a persona and then blew that all away with one or many acts. These things are dynamic not static. Musk has changed his message pretty dramaticlly in the last few years, and there is WAY more Musk. It would actually be surprising if people did not have a different opinion of him then they did a few years ago.
The part I find strange is all the southern baptists that now love Musk. His lifestyle does not remotely match with their "values", but we live in strange times.
He lives a rather humble live i read the other day. No mega mansions and mega yaghts, And no doubt he works very hard and puts in lots of hours. The twitter antics i think they forgive him. Its seen as an act to achieve what is neccesary. In a similar way Trump was accepted. As a means to an end.
Tsla keeps dropping i wonder where the bottom is. Would not be surprised to see it well below 100 somewhere in 2023. Musk cleared his bonus and got his shares. I dont know what price he got them for , the 2 recent splits make the situation a bit unclear. He could buy them for ~70 but that was before the 5/1 and 3/1 split i think (not 100% sure on this). Which would mean he got his shares for around 5$ each. (if someone has more accurate info on this i would like to see it).
Making massive amounts of money from China is nearing its end i think. Not only for Tsla but also for many other tech stocks that depend to a more or lesser extend on production and sales in China. Tech will probably remain under pressure in 2023 and i dont think 2023 will be any better then 2022 in general. There is to many major problems still in the pipeline.
A stock split splits the exercise price on options. So an option to buy one share at $100 would, after a 5 for 1 split, be an option to buy 5 shares at $100 (so 5 options at $20).
On December 20 2022 23:15 schaf wrote: You're right that it doesn't seem to be a good strategy but I don't see anything pointing toward it not being that. Tesla spends almost nothing on PR, it's all based around Musk's public persona. And the more he is showing of himself the worse this strategy becomes. Brands need to be seen positively by as many people as possible (in their target group) and choosing sides politically, trolling and making jokes about resigning as the CEO of the company you just bought is just not a good choice here. Also, Tesla needs good connections to politicians as the EV and self-driving space will be regulated more and more. Pissing off one side is not a good choice here.
"it seems to be stupid but he does it anyways, so what are we missing?" - my answer is that we're not missing anything.
It’s more a question for the people that believe that Musks only talent is extracting value from a persona that he has built up when recent history tells us that he’s really not that good at keeping his persona valuable. He’s all talk but his talking is bad for business? Seems somewhat contradictory.
It’s contradictory only if you assume that he’s perfect. A perfect public hype man would be unlikely to tank the price of the company he hyped by publicly acting like an idiot. That leaves us with two possible explanations. 1 (yours). Musk cannot simply be a perfect hype man because no perfect hype man would engage in anti-hype. 2. Musk is a hype man, but isn’t perfect and sometimes does stupid things.
By grandfathering in the assumption that Musk is perfect you have attempted to prove 1. What’s weird is that you thought this would work when the people you are attempting to prove this to strongly disagree with the assertion that Musk is perfect.
Overall I rate your argument ???? out of 10. It was based on grandfathering in logical assumptions that you must have known your intended audience would not accept. It’s materially no different to “if Jesus wasn’t the son of god then explain the resurrection”.
Incidentally 2 is the basis for a lot of the TSLA shareholder complaints about Musk. His antics have made them very rich over the last few years due to the meme stock status of TSLA that has propelled it into unheard of PE multiples. Recently his antics have had the opposite effect and are costing them money. His main job at TSLA is making shareholders money (and therefore lowering TSLA’s cost of capital allowing them to open mega factories funded by index investors) and he hasn’t been doing that.
On December 20 2022 23:15 schaf wrote: You're right that it doesn't seem to be a good strategy but I don't see anything pointing toward it not being that. Tesla spends almost nothing on PR, it's all based around Musk's public persona. And the more he is showing of himself the worse this strategy becomes. Brands need to be seen positively by as many people as possible (in their target group) and choosing sides politically, trolling and making jokes about resigning as the CEO of the company you just bought is just not a good choice here. Also, Tesla needs good connections to politicians as the EV and self-driving space will be regulated more and more. Pissing off one side is not a good choice here.
"it seems to be stupid but he does it anyways, so what are we missing?" - my answer is that we're not missing anything.
It’s more a question for the people that believe that Musks only talent is extracting value from a persona that he has built up when recent history tells us that he’s really not that good at keeping his persona valuable. He’s all talk but his talking is bad for business? Seems somewhat contradictory.
It’s contradictory only if you assume that he’s perfect. A perfect public hype man would be unlikely to tank the price of the company he hyped by publicly acting like an idiot. That leaves us with two possible explanations. 1 (yours). Musk cannot simply be a perfect hype man because no perfect hype man would engage in anti-hype. 2. Musk is a hype man, but isn’t perfect and sometimes does stupid things.
By grandfathering in the assumption that Musk is perfect you have attempted to prove 1. What’s weird is that you thought this would work when the people you are attempting to prove this to strongly disagree with the assertion that Musk is perfect.
Overall I rate your argument ???? out of 10. It was based on grandfathering in logical assumptions that you must have known your intended audience would not accept. It’s materially no different to “if Jesus wasn’t the son of god then explain the resurrection”.
Incidentally 2 is the basis for a lot of the TSLA shareholder complaints about Musk. His antics have made them very rich over the last few years due to the meme stock status of TSLA that has propelled it into unheard of PE multiples. Recently his antics have had the opposite effect and are costing them money. His main job at TSLA is making shareholders money (and therefore lowering TSLA’s cost of capital allowing them to open mega factories funded by index investors) and he hasn’t been doing that.
There’s oceans of water between being imperfect and what Musk has done. It’s something a 10 year old would know is dumb. If someone was purported to be a math genius but didn’t know 2+2=4 it would also seem somewhat contradictory. But on the whole, you’re right. “Nobody’s perfect” does offer an explanation that is not contradictory.
Musk i dont know to well,i never saw him as a potential saviour of the world and i am kinda indifferent towards him. I do admire him as an entrepeneur , though i dont think he is the greatest entrepeneur of our time. About his antics on twitter i dont really have an opinion,its part of our time (unfortunately) and he is playing his part. Tsla is about much more then Musks antics scaring investors though,its a minor thing compared to other things.
When it comes to Musk,i think both the left and the right dont really know what to do with him. The right doesnt fully embrace him either and he doesnt have the apeal to a certain demograpghic that Trump had. Its very difficult to judge where he truly stands,much of what he says and does i think is also a means to an end. And not neccessarily because he believes in it.
On December 20 2022 00:25 JimmiC wrote: Yeah daily drivers are brutal because the asset is depreciating because of time and use. Then you have gas, maintence and repairs. With a loan and interest payments there are not a lot of worse things for your money. That being said in north america most cities and towns sre not well set up for other forms of transport (public, bikes, so on), so you are kind of stuck with paying for cars(mostly trucks/suvs around here) or spending a crazy amount of time waiting for busses and then walking pretty far. In a place where I live it would be imppossible. You could bike down a highway in the shoulder, but that would suck especially when its snow and ice. They have been talking about a bike path but its been 2 decades even though someone donated the money. Parking lots though, those go up all the time no problem.
It's funny how Europe and USA take completely different approaches to this. In Amsterdam for example they are removing 10k parking spaces
The Dutch government is also seizing and closing 3000 farms when food inflation is well over 10%, so I wouldn't be holding them up as an example of sanity.
EPT
