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Comment by wnorris | Hacker News Reader

There appears to be an active group working to create these stories in order to create a 'whistleblower hell'.

Elon occasionally does not help this, but authorities should look into the allegations that a group is actively manipulating Tesla employees for these types of stories.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/21/were-cnbc-sources-tesla...

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Elon gets a lot of hate unfortunately due to his position in the industry, and also I guess the age we're in.

See this tweet from Paul Graham for example https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1122987659079618563

People notice the hate, and although there most probably are issues in the factories, then the reporting of them is way bent to the negative.

Elon gets himself into it. He wants to be the center of attention (Thailand, pedo, 420). Creating a profitable business comes second to his need to be seen as a tech luminary.

I seriously doubt this. Writing a tweet doesn't take much time, and it is probably fun to him to irritate the opposing forces.

For profits, I think it's pretty obvious that both Tesla and SpaceX will start making a profit quite soon, and will probably make a lot of it in the long term. (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...)

> (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...)

SpaceX is private, so its books are closed and there is no publicly reviewable valuation.

Tesla is public and has had < 5 profitable quarters in its existence. None of Elon's existing companies have been able to turn a profit. Paypal does not count as "his" since he joined there on an acquisition and he was only CEO there for a few months before getting the boot.

You can't be serious? It's not like Tesla is a bakery where on the 6th month the bread sales pay off the one-time asset purchases (e.g oven and other equipment) and then it's all profit down the line. It takes time, especially on the scale Elon appears to be doing it.

It doesn’t take time to get profitable, all it would take is to stop putting billions of dollars into building new factories. The problem is that stopping growth would never bring humanity closer to sustainable transport (nor would it make sensible investors happy)

> It doesn’t take time to get profitable, all it would take is to stop putting billions of dollars into building new factories.

Are you serious? I can throw a rock at any newly minted tech IPO in the last year and almost guarantee that it's not even remotely close to being in the black without even hearing the name.

Tesla isn't a newly minted tech IPO. They're just riding the wave of an economy with good lending rates.

Yeah.. My argument perhaps wasn't put in the best way, and yes, Tesla is growth-heavy, and probably could have been profitable already if they would have wanted to.

With what I said was more aimed at the argument that building electric vehicles isn't a straightforward business where there is nothing to innovate and the purpose is just to get profitable as quickly as possible. But yes, as you say, they invest it all back.

I wonder if the negative side in the whole argument would just like the profits and stock go up as fast as possible, and that is the reason for unhappynes?

Reinvestment of profits into PP&E doesn't affect the bottom line on the net income statement. That's not what Tesla is doing. They're printing losses (aside from one-off "miracle quarters" where they skim high margin backlogs) and then filling the gaps with newly raised capital.

I'm serious. Before Elon took over, they were profitable selling high performance vehicles [1],

They didn't need to become huge right away, that was his gamble, and it remains to be seen if that will pay off.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/TxDbHX7.jpg

Actually the criticism that Musk gets is a result of things like:

- Calling someone's boss and threatening a lawsuit to make him take down critical writings on Twitter and Seeking Alpha (https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/07/27/1532692760000/Je-suis...)

- Threatening to "nuke" a departing employee who had returned to Tesla HQ to collect some personal belongings (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-05/tesla-boa...)

- Trumpian attacks on the press, including by riling up his fans on Twitter (https://twitter.com/lopezlinette/status/1014983757252780033)

- Lying with statistics, e.g. "traffic incidents are xx% less likely with Autopilot engaged" or "Tesla cars are xx% safer than the overall U.S. fleet" without mentioning the huge selection bias at play

- Running factories with tons of environmental, health, labor, and QA-related problems, then attempting to just gaslight his way through the criticism (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/15/tesla-workers-in-ga4-tent-de...)

- Brazenly lying about his company on Twitter in an attempt to manipulate the stock price (https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-2...)

This is all true. But how does it compare to companies building machines that are emitting toxic gas to billions of people and destroying the Earth’s climate?

There’s a good reason why mainstream media doesn’t talk about it as seriously as it should be doing.

There's also that story about oil companies sitting on the secret of perpetual motion...

Also, those companies happen to build products that are needed and can actually be afforded by people who need them to, you know, make a living, unlike Elon's shiny toys.

This conspiratorial mindset on part of Tesla's fans is far more detrimental than any mythical shorts' conspiracy or anything.

> But how does it compare to

Wattaboutism does not address the man's problems, including all the problems he brings onto himself, the company he runs, and its investors.

Other than the last one you've linked it doesn't appear that any of these are actually true or were proven. It seems more evident as time goes on that these sensational troll stories come out yet there's no recourse against Tesla. It's hard to tell but I would guess one of two things are happening: 1) Tesla is paying these people to go away 2) these allegations are targeting Tesla either for financial gain (shorters) or competitive (dealers/manufacturers).

While I've yet to actually see the latter I'm not so sure what to think, quite honestly. However it seems odd of the timing of this - right before earnings. I'll be curious to see how CNBC drums this up today.

Did Paul Graham write an algorithm which crawls twitter and counts all this robo haters?

The bigger reason is that Tesla really put themselves out there and now negative stories getting a lot of views.

I don't know what you're talking about, Elon Musk gets flack for being a jerk, and all the questionable stuff he's done. This narrative that big business is out to get him (eg. that tweet) needs to die.

I'm not speciffically referring to the "industry out to get him" narrative. Perhaps there is a reason for the industry not to like him since he's competition, but I dont believe there is any organized campaign. What I was referring to was that he has made a name in the general public and is not politically correct nor "tamed". Obviously he's going to get plenty of negative attention.

He's also a prick. The whole I'm not tame or PC, is a lame and tired excuse.

FWIW The linked tweet did make that claim, so hopefully I made that clear.

The way you argument doesn't really honor you.

I don't agree. I think you're making terrible excuses for bad behavior, that shouldn't be accepted under any circumstances.

Ironically, you resort to personal attacks instead of making an argument based on merits. It's perfectly fair to point out that the "I'm not PC or tame" line is frequently used by people that are just jerks to justify jerk behavior. I don't think calling him a prick is unwarrented given the behavior.

I think in your head you are arguing with somebody else. E.g what excuses have I made? I personally don't even know which parts of his behavior you are referring to. It's you here saying "jerk" and "prick" - behavior I think shouldn't be ignored.

Although I don't have the full list of what Elon has done wrong then I'm pretty sure that there is plenty of way more ugly stuff going on which we don't even know about, but by people who don't bring any value to the world. And you are just randomly angry because the current guy at hand is public with his mistakes, you can see them, and then you go and argue about it on the internet.

> I think in your head you are arguing with somebody else. E.g what excuses have I made?

> he has made a name in the general public and is not politically correct nor "tamed". Obviously he's going to get plenty of negative attention.

This is a classic excuse used by pricks/jerks. I don't have a full list either, but I've literally never called someone a pedo for criticizing me, I've never seen it happen. It's a jerk first; truly exceptional. "I'm not politically correct" is a classic, tired, and lame excuse.

WTF are you talking about people that don't bring value to the world? Everyone does, and I'm not impressed by Musk.

> And you are just randomly angry because the current guy at hand is public with his mistakes, you can see them, and then you go and argue about it on the internet.

I'm not angry, and this is an internet discussion board, so I don't know what your point is.

> Perhaps there is a reason for the industry not to like him since he's competition

You're commenting on a man who accused a cave rescuer of being a pedophile after he criticised mr Musk's brain-dead proposal to rescue the stranded kids.

The problem does not lie on strawmen such as this silly idea tha the industry does not like him.

That is the tweet of a man who slept through 2014.

That's not an objective source.

Clean Technica is to Elon Musk as Fox News is to Donald Trump

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