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Comment by Eddy_Viscosity2 | Hacker News Reader

Who was going to stop them from lying?

SEC and FTC would be obvious candidates who historically would do this. States also have the ability to prosecute this via UDAP (unfair and deceptive practices) laws.

Probably Tesla being the only major domestic EV manufacturer + historically Musk not wading into politics + Musk/Tesla being widely popular for a time is probably why no one has gone after him. Not sure how this changes going forward with Musk being a very polarizing figure now.

>SEC and FTC would be obvious candidates who historically would do this.

Yeah, historically, as in: before many people here were born. It's been so long since SEC and FTC did such things.

FTC, sure, yeah, mostly, kinda neutered these days. SEC, despite Trump’s efforts to neuter it, is still fairly scary tho.

Maybe that’s what happens in late stage capitalism. The billionaires get so powerful that they become untouchable. He’s already shown that he uses his fortune to steer political outcomes.

The previous two administrations (Trump I and Biden) being somewhat anti-Tesla or anti-Musk was some part of what prompted Musk to get into politics in the first place. Given the Biden admin's hostility, I would have expected the SEC and FTC to have been directed to do all they could against him within bounds, and so my first guess would be that they did, in fact, do everything justifiable.

> anti-Tesla

I'm curious why you think this. I would be pretty shocked if, despite Musk's disgusting personality, they weren't also bought in.

From 2022, a contemporaneous account of the Biden antipathy: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2022/02/03/...

While I didn't look long for a more neutral source, Teslarati has a good list of the prompts of the shift from Musk being anti-Trump and pro-Biden, to giving up on Biden, to supporting Trump: https://www.teslarati.com/former-tesla-exec-confirms-wsj-rep...

There were apparently also other considerations not associated with Tesla for his turn (transgender child, etc), but my read on all this is that Musk saw staying out of politics didn't mean politics would stay away from him. Given that Trump II is also now somewhat anti-Musk, it's not clear to me that he succeeded in avoiding a longer-term axe for Tesla (Neuralink/Solarcity/SpaceX/Boring...) from politicians. We'll see.

Not to mention there's got to have been insane pressure from the hill not to kill the golden goose.