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Comment by sz4kerto | Hacker News Reader

What are you going to get instead? I think that Chinese EVs are flooding the market but it's absolutely not better to support China than supporting Tesla. Hyundai/Kia - maybe an option, primarily because people don't know that much about South Korea :)

I find it very sad that purchasing a car from a publicly traded company with tens of thousands of employees is somehow interpreted as supporting the politics of the CEO of said company. Life shouldn't be politicised that much

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> it's absolutely not better to support China than supporting Tesla

I disagree. Right now, I wouldn't criticise anyone who buys a Chinese EV. But I would put stickers of Musk doing his nazi salute on Teslas I find in the streets.

> Life shouldn't be politicised that much

That's what one says about political topics that don't impact them. Go tell Ukrainians that they should buy Russian products because "life shouldn't be politicised that much".

> But I would put stickers of Musk doing his nazi salute on Teslas I find in the streets.

I know people who were so upset about the other side (in that case, Republican voters) that they said that they (the other side) should be deported from the US. I think this level of mania is too much and it is the real life manifestation of what people do on the Internet. I recommend that you put a sticker on the car when the owner is there, and look them in the eye.

> Go tell Ukrainians that they should buy Russian products because "life shouldn't be politicised that much".

I am likely much-much closer to this problem than you think (personally and physically), and I absolutely think that what's happening in Ukraine and what is happening in the US right now is incomparable.

You know, Ukrainians and Russians still live and work closely in many parts of the world because they can differentiate between Putin and the person who's in front of them. You're not beating Elon with your stickers, just screwing up a day of a random human person who has bought a car they liked.

I don't live in a place where people buy a Tesla because they need it. Only wealthy people buy Teslas, and they buy it like one would buy a Rolex.

Where I live, if someone buys a Tesla now, they deserve a sticker. I said a sticker, not to be beaten in the street.

Yes it is sad, but the stakes are too high to ignore. I don't know where you live but in Europe most people are very disappointed in recent actions by the US. Any decision, from small to large, now should factor in if it benefits Europe or the US. It is a matter of being reciprocal.

Well the US stopped being allies of Europe/Canada, now they are merely partners. And pretty unstable ones. So it seems fair to take it into account.

Ioniq is so fucking amazing. It's also always the top EV seller ex. Tesla.

It's the best parts of Tesla mixed with the best qualities of Korean manufacturing.

Volkswagen's ID5s are also very good since last year. Many of the software woes seems to be fixed.

Drove an ID5 on a trip in France last year, really good car.

> Life shouldn't be politicised that much

Musk is the one politicizing it that much, we're just responding to it. If he shut up and stopped his nonsense, it would quiet back down.

I almost never judge a work by it's creator, but sometimes the creator really goes out of their way to make me ignore that principle. Musk, Kanye, and a handful of others.

> I find it very sad that purchasing a car from a publicly traded company with tens of thousands of employees is somehow interpreted as supporting the politics of the CEO of said company.

I'm sure there were also good people in IG Farben who just wanted to get through their day during WW2, right?

Nobody would bat an eye if some random shmuck on the Tesla manufacturing floor held some silly ideas, but arguing that the extremely public facing CEO of a company gets a pass because he's just one of many at a large firm is a wrong take, I'm sorry.

The CEO is the company. If the janitor posts a silly youtube video doing a sieg heil, the janitor is in trouble. If the CEO of the company does a nazi salute, the company is in trouble.

At this point I'm wondering what China is doing that is so bad that they're not the vastly better superpower compared to the US.

The ethnic cleansing Uyghur concentration camps are probably the biggest one. Also threatening Taiwan, which is a lovely country I would hate to see destroyed. Besides that the social control the government exerts is pretty frightening to me (I've lived in China).

All that said I still see China as less of a direct threat right now.

Some good points, I was aware of them, but comparing to the current US it doesn't seem as bad.

I just don't know how bad the Uyghur was/is considering the propaganda that both sides would push, with China not letting independant investigators or reporters do anything in and the whole US manufacturing consent media and US government propaganda. Then them calling it a genocide while Palestine is not.

You do realize that most of this is US propaganda, right? Xinjiang is like a fully developed economy and Uyghurs are doing well. I visited Beijing last summer and asked some Uyghur workers who discussed their conditions openly.

The re-education camps were for a small part of the Uyghur populace that were involved in terrorism against other Uyghurs and Chinese.

Wild to post that second part underneath "don't support China".

>I find it very sad that purchasing a car from a publicly traded company with tens of thousands of employees is somehow interpreted as supporting the politics of the CEO of said company.

But this is the reality, parts of your money go to the CEO salary, and if the sales are good the CEO will get a giant bonus that he can use to buy a president/dictator and convince them to do super insane shit.

There was a news yesterday where twitter AI system prompt had a filter for Trump and Elon, they were caught and they reversed it, IMO that topic should have been a bigger thread here

https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/23/grok-3-appears-to-have-bri...

your money supports this hypocrite that is a free speech absolutists and then silences critics.

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