I’ve been planning to get a Tesla, but I can’t buy one anymore. Between this and all the crazy, and sometimes illegal, shit Elon says, I just cant do it.
Not only that, but these types of "normal people vs the evil government" statements only add fuel to the trumpian narrative that corruption and misinformation are everywhere; and all of our institutions are worthless. This is such a consequential position to take and yet he seems to do it without even thinking about the repercussions of his words. Shame on him!
Of course, he's still a acting ignorant / stupid, but I'd guess that a certain lack of social skills - empathy in particular - is quite common among startup founders.
Just think about his public tweet ejaculations which frequently decimate his investor's 401k portfolios. Part of his appeal is how he's so forthcoming about his thoughts; but this is proving to be a double edged sword. As days continue to pass his words feel more and more like an instance of Hanlon's razor, he's not actually trying to project a world view that makes sense; it simply doesn't matter to him. And these externalities which are laying in his wake also don't matter. You will be hard pressed to find a billionaire that's that careless.
With Texas reopening the race is on to control the national narrative of COVID. If Texas successfully reopens without being forced to retreat later, it will only strengthen the WH narrative that much of the economic damage has been self-inflicted by blue states, and that further aid would be unfair to red states.
Sweden's has basically said the costs of shutting down until a vaccine is found (or until the numbers are low enough you can test-and-track and impose quaruntine or testing on all visitors to the country) are worse than just letting it run its course.
Bare in mind that all government decisions are heavily biased by the optics of that decision, as seen by the average voter when passed through a media filter. If it genuinely cost more QALYs to implement shutdown+exit strategy than just "attempt mitigation with focus on elderly and delay things until you've got enough equipment", it would still be very hard to argue that viewpoint in front of the media.
Arguing "The economy is more important than grandma!" is very difficult, requiring a dive into life expectancy, quality of life metrics, isolation side effects, economic depression side effects, QALYs and what exactly an "economy" even is (and, importantly, what it isn't, like all the non-captured-by-gdp utility gained by just hanging out with friends in the park). Can you imagine a politician trying to argue that grandma is a necessary sacrifice in front of the cameras?
Admittedly, making such an argument isn't impossible: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8281007/amp/Forme...
Stamping out COVID19 worldwide simply isn't practical, so isn't the omly option to just live with it? We manage to live with far worse things, like ageing.
And I believe that a vaccine can succeed where natural immunity doesn't. For example, there are viruses where you only gain partial immunity from contacting the disease, but can end up with a worse form of the disease if exposed again, like with chicken pox (varicella) leaving the door open to shingles (zoster).
As for corruption and misinformation being everywhere - the truth of that is evident. This doesn't make our institutions worthless, but it doesn't make skepticism prudent.
He's not very brilliant though. He may be good at his niche (although I'm not sure what that is judging by the quality of Tesla vehicles), but if you are a subject matter expert in a field that he pretends to know, it becomes very obvious that his knowledge is extremely surface-level and the equivalent of "I read Wikipedia on the plane".
Actually I think his brilliance is in convincing the eager Silicon Valley masses that he's brilliant and that they should invest in his companies - regardless of how poorly they continue to do.
Best build quality or after-sales service? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The quality of Tesla's cars are fine, much better than before. Unless what you are talking about is from 3-2 years ago? If so, you're out of date.
Actually I think his brilliance is in convincing the eager Silicon Valley masses that he's brilliant and that they should invest in his companies - regardless of how poorly they continue to do.
Poorly continue to do by what metric? As far as I know as an interested follower, Tesla and SpaceX are doing fine.
Then the media quietly drops it because people just don't care about workers or the pile of corpses under Elon's "I'm saving the planet and taking us to Mars" narrative. Elon unleashes his troll army and they hammer the journalist or anyone who is even mildly curious about the work conditions at Tesla.
Tesla cars are the blood diamonds of EVs.
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[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/03/01/tesla-sa...
It beats doing nothing at all, and using some of the things you cite (oil, made in China) is close to impossible to avoid (for now at least), but that doesn’t preclude anyone from saying they disapprove of Tesla and won’t buy one of their car because of what they think of the ceo. Especially when the ceo is the brand.
Global warming is orders of magnitude more important than COVID19.
So me buying a non-Tesla electric car will have much the same effect as buying a Tesla with regard to the future of personal transportation? Regardless of how many cars the other manufacturer is currently producing?
I wonder what signal I’m sending by not owning a car…
I honestly don't know either way
Not so feasible in a car-centric country, but that's a other problem that needs to be solved.
Maybe Tesla is no worse or better than the other companies. That’s one issue for me, but there is another. He doesn’t appear to be in control of himself. It leaves me with very little confidence in a company that I would be spending ~70k on their product with the expectation of high quality, and good support for 5-10 years.