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Comment by joering2 | Hacker News Reader

>Trevor Milton lied to Nikola’s investors — over and over and over again. That’s fraud, plain and simple,

>He faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted on all four counts.

If he would have taken large subsidies, like Musk did, it would've been much harder to jail him. Then he could let his imagination go - promise investors that they will make 100% return on investment per year ("buy Tesla for $30,000 and you make that or more per year renting it as a robotaxi"), promise superfast underground tunnels and deliver insecure tunnel with no ventilation/safety exists, with cars moving at 40 mpg, promise solar roofs, and many other things with absolutely no liability at all.

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> Hindenburg said the truck was “towed to the top of a hill on a remote stretch of road and simply filmed it rolling down the hill.” It was then used in a video, which Nikola said was created by a third party, in which the truck appeared to be driving on its own propulsion on flat roads.

It's all relative. How much is hype or marketing, and how much is just dishonesty? I think it depends on the field. I mean even the term "AI" is fraudulent whenever it's used, really. But investors who actually do the most basic diligence in their research know the shot. Filming a truck rolling down a hill is pretty dishonest though. I mean trucks aren't a 'concept' they're a real thing already.

I don't find it dishonest, rather brilliant he found a hill the truck rolled down from. The whole ordeal was the weakest chain of the whole lawsuit - most of the time the tech showed is not 100% working. The truck showed would not be on sale anyways, but obviously whatever would leave a factory. Musk showed houses that did not even have real solar panels even thought he told people in their faces these are solar panels. Seriously, the only reason Musk is not facing 25 years prison is because he is too rich to jail. With enough runaway, this could have been Milton or Holmes.

I mean it can be brilliant and dishonest. But it's not that brilliant. I don't know if that's what he was accused of fraud for.

What is "brilliant" about faking a car moving with the intent of misleading your investors, who are redirecting to you vast amounts of wealth from more deserving companies that would make society a better place?

You're stealing from companies that create economic acceleration to create economic friction.

If we keep rewarding scammers with this notion that they're doing anything remotely of value, we end up with a society of Roger Stone and Trump types who are really good at seeking out and winning negative sum games.

> You're stealing from companies that create economic acceleration to create economic friction.

At the margins, there's going to be some truth to this, but the kind of financier who is wowed by this kind of demo isn't skilled at telling what innovations are deserving.

> If we keep rewarding scammers with this notion that they're doing anything remotely of value, we end up with a society of Roger Stone and Trump types who are really good at seeking out and winning negative sum games.

I'd really drain a lot of money from the class of financiers as a whole and move it to households and non-financial industry. If we'd responded to 2008 with widespread haircuts on bad lenders and nationalisation of failing banks, instead of bailouts for banks and inflating the financial system via QE, we would have moved int this direction.

Musk is not a good example of the entrepreneur, but he's not in the same class as Stone, who kind of mobilised the Oath Keepers as his private heavies, or Trump, who depends on intimidation and personal dominance to run his business affairs.

It was a prototype! Musk sold his cybertruck on unbreakable windows and that turned out to be deception too. How about $30,000 investment in robo taxi and ROI of 100% per year (even Madoff wasn't giving that good returns). I mean most stuff Musk every push is or was scam. Milton never had a chance to finish his project (hello Feds) but the company is doing fine and they will eventually release their truck.

Again -- matter of how much runaway you had and how fast you become too rich to jail. I'm sure his father wealth (owning multiple emerald mines) helped too.

The solar panels on those roofs at that Elon event where fake. [1]

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/e6476876-1afb-3d50-9aa7-3d40d27aa...

He had used NASA's money to buy his solar company's bonds with his space company. He had to bail them out with the separate car company or who would pay back NASA?

When did Musk take subsidies (other than those any other competitors received to)?

Isn’t that how subsidies work? They go to the massively wealthy and powerful too much? Which is the problem?

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