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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I think it'd be a huge win for short term Tesla investors and Tesla, but not long term investors. Tesla's financials should be pushed as hard as possible to enable scaling rapidly (every dollar not needed in opex should be going to capex or r&d).

Independent directors (in my opinion) would prioritize saving Tesla as an ongoing concern, even if it meant they remained a small boutique manufacturer (vs growing into an energy storage powerhouse).

TL;DR I want Captain Ahab at the helm, chasing his White Whale, swinging for the fences. I don't want Bob Lutz or Lee Iacocca.

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>I think it'd be a huge win for short term Tesla investors and Tesla, but not long term investors.

I'd say the opposite. Kicking out Musk will kill the stock price as the cult members sell, but in the long run Tesla might be better off being run by someone boring, as opposed to an unstable CEO who divides his attention a million ways and seems hell-bent on self-destructing via twitter. Over 40 executives have left this year and the latest CFO quit after a month on the job. For Tesla to become a solid company, that has to stop.

The optimal case would be Musk gets some sleep, talks to a therapist, and takes his ego down a notch. Then he could go back to spreading a vision instead of trying to harm people with flagrant lies. Unfortunately, the window of opportunity for this may have already closed.

By long term do you mean less than two years? He could have come back after two years of boring leadership.

Tesla's board has 9 directors. Barring Musk from the chairmanship doesn't preclude putting a loyalist in to replace him. I don't see how 2/9 non-chairman directors being independent creates a drastic about-face in company policy.

>TL;DR I want Captain Ahab at the helm, chasing his White Whale, swinging for the fences.

I want people with the integrity not to commit securities fraud.

Morality is shades of gray. Nobody died, and I have yet to see the damages done by his statements quantified. You and I want different values in leaders, and that's okay.

"nobody died" is the standard now?

No, but "I was high and tweeted some nonsense" shouldn't be a standard either.

I'm not saying Musk should get off scot-free, but it'll be sad to see Tesla suffer, when companies like e.g. Uber or Equifax, for which dishonesty and negligence is standard operating practice, continue to function with no consequences. But then, I guess the universe isn't fair.

It is the necessary standard when you're playing with other people's money.

They're playing with their own money. Noone is forced to invest (or short).

What about the people that would benefit from Tesla's stocks dropping and did a big media push to highlight Tesla cars' shortcomings? It's not normal for a car accident to be in the media for weeks afterwards.

Why do you think there is some grand conspiracy? Media attention works both ways. TSLA/Musk forced themselves into popular culture and they have benefitted greatly (a completely disconnected from reality stock price that has allowed them to raise an enormous amount of debt) from that free media attention. But, it also means increased scrutiny. It is a similar situation with Apple and iPhones. If the Pixel has some bug, you might see a blip on an Android fan site. If the iPhone has a bug it makes headlines for days.

You mean the series of accidents caused by failures of the revolutionary new technology that is going to change every aspect of civilization?

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