Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
A wonderful observation.
Has someone made a stab at describing these new paradigms of advertising and value? I don't think I've seen exactly this stated or named, but there's a lot of writing and thinking out there. If it strikes anyone reading this, links welcome.
Specifically, it seems like advertising may have gone from "the quality of the product doesn't matter", to "the product existing doesn't matter". Quite a big leap.
Meme stocks have a way of defying normal economic gravity and irritating traditional investors up until they don't, and when that happens their demise is usually rapid and complete.
That’s a dangerous game to play. What’s the opposite of a falling knife?
Optimus with the full-self-catering package to slice and dice any flesh it finds in what it thinks is the kitchen.
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2024/02/the-...
This gist of it is that central banks tried to stimulate investment in the economy by purchasing bonds, which lowered their yields and made them unattractive to institutional investors. As a result, institutional investors had no choice but to use the QE printed money to invest in stocks instead. This greatly repressed the risk in the stock market, while decoupling it from profits, because for a long time “numbers would only go up”.
Separately, the repressed borrowing costs (another intended effect of QE) enabled big tech to consolidate their monopolies, creating the attention harvesting platforms of today. Alongside inequality also being amplified by QE, those platforms started to favour rage baiting.
The combination of high risk appetite + algorithmic promotion of outrage enabled a kind of business model which is based on nothing except ridiculous dreams. Elon and his Tesla are therefore the quintessential creatures of the era.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/05/17/tesla-...
How many billionaires are willing to bet their life on a cell tower connection? How many people would be bold enough to ask them to?
Makes you want to ask, "say, Elon, how's that full-self-driving going?"
Last year, roughly 90 million new light vehicles were sold worldwide. 1.8 million of these were Tesla --- about 2% of the total.
Earlier this year, Tesla's market capitalization was $1.5 TRILLION --- more than virtually all the major auto manufacturers in the world COMBINED.
Can you say, "Ridiculously over priced"?
How can a company's valuation have seemingly no tie at all to how they're doing as a company? Just on the surface that seems absurd. But that's not even my concern - my concern is that this happens and nobody seems to care. As if there's very real exploits in our financial markets and nobody seems to bat an eye.
Just the fact Tesla has somehow managed to do this should be making us uneasy! But then again, I don't understand the stock market, and nobody understands the economy, so I guess it's fine.
The model 3 didn't come out until 2017. Before that, Tesla only made niche Model X/S cars. That was a huge run up in just 8 years, who knows if that would have kept going if Musk didn't make the mistake of binding himself to Trump.
Wait until those investors find out what China is investing in and actually succeeding in with automation, personal robots, and making self driving cars with affordable LIDAR (negating Tesla's camera bet).
This seems to be how Silicon Valley works. (Also Redmond.)
A captive audience, e.g., manipulated through intermediaries like Twitter, etc., that is prohibited from considering past or present failures and forced to remain fixated on a future that Silicon Valley assures can be predicted, but only by Silicon Vallley and its devotees.
Can Silicon Valley be "disrupted".