I'm still convinced that it being called "full self driving" is misleading marketing and really needs to stop, since it isn't according to Tesla
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The much more likely hypothesis in my view is that he was helping Trump because of personal conviction (only in small parts motivated by naked self-interest).
You should expect rational billionaires to tend politically right out of pure self-interest and distorted perspective alone; because the universal thing that such parties reliably do when in power is cutting tax burden on the top end.
The problem is not that the republican party used to be a conservative right party.
What I’m saying is this is not a sports competition where Musk is automatically an opponent of the Democratic party because he supported Trump. He supported Trump in order to improve his chances with the legal system because he knew Trump would be willing to be so corrupt.
Another world might be imagined in which the Democratic party was taken over in 2016 but that is not the world we live in.
Sending a bunch of scriptkiddies around and having them cut government funding and gut agencies is not really how you make evidence "vanish", how would that even work?
And, lastly, jumping in front of an audience at every opportunity and running your mouth is the absolute last thing anyone would ever do if the goal was to avoid prosection. But it is perfectly in line with a person that has a very big ego and wants to achieve political goals.
> U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom, who presided over the case, said in an order that she did not find “sufficient evidence” that Tesla’s failure to initially produce the data was intentional.
What is your actual point? What would he stand in front of a judge for, right now, if Harris had won?
This is how conservatives keep people going 'both sides!' even though they manufacture whatever is required to be that way.
He used to be quite charismatic, I believed him up until about 2017 or so. Then I figured he was just a bit greedy and maybe money got to his head but still a respectable innovator. However during 2020 or 2021 (I don’t exactly remember) he started to get quite unpleasant and making obviously short-term decisions, such as relying only on cameras for self driving because of chip shortages but dressing it up as an engineering decision.
I scrutinise beliefs and assumptions even if they are convenient, and you should, too.
I don't believe that Musks main motivation to participate in the 2024 election was to avoid prosecution, because his actions are not really compatible with this, and there is a much more plausible alternative hypothesis that he preferred (possibly no longer) the republican platform for non-prosecution reasons/personal conviction instead, which his actions are very compatible with.
> Labor violations, taxes, National Highway traffic safety administration investigation Tesla
Let me say it like this: Billionaires generally don't have to care about minor infractions like this at all. The whole system is set up to shield them from liability, and wealth is an excellent buffer against effective prosection regardless of who is president. There have been a plethora of infinitely more serious infractions with zero real consequences for the CEOs involved, and this is not because they participated in past presidential election campaigns. See: the VW diesel emission fraud or much worse, leaded gas in the last century (and what associated industry did to keep that going).
Musk’s assistant peeked back the muttered and said he had another meeting. “Do you have any final thoughts?” she asked.
“Yes, I want to say one thing.” the data scientist said. He took a deep breath and turned to Musk.
“I’m resigning today. I was feeling excited about the takeover, but I was really disappointed by your Paul Pelosi tweet. It’s really such obvious partisan misinformation and it makes me worry about you and what kind of friends you’re getting information from. It’s only really like the tenth percentile of the adult population who’d be gullible enough to fall for this.”
The color drained from Musk’s already pale face. He leaned forward in his chair. No one spoke to him like this. And no one, least of all someone who worked for him, would dare to question his intellect or his tweets. His darting eyes focused for a second directly on the data scientist.
“Fuck you!” Musk growled.
You will basically never hear another CEO of another publicly traded company say this. I just don't believe that the same person who cares so little about his stock price that he sends a tweet like that (and the stock dropped 10% on it) also is making fraudulent statements to inflate the price. A better explanation is that he just says what he thinks without regard for the stock price, which is also something you won't see any other CEO of a publicly traded company do.
But it took him four months deeply embedded with the Republican party to come to this conclusion?
It's been blindingly obvious to anyone remotely paying attention to US politics for the last decade (or two, or more, but blindingly so, more recently).
There is a pretty recent precendent on the other side of the political spectrum: Hillary Clinton. Republicans went on and on for how she belonged in prison. Anyone with half a brain was able to tell that this was not gonna happen, because there simply was no case. Republicans got basically absolute power since, and --surprise-- Hillary did not go to prison.
What makes you so confident that you are right about Elon, while the people back then were obviously wrong with Hillary (even without hindisght!).
It's always difficult to get a true read on what people believe, and that goes double for very powerful or wealthy people, who have professionals devoted to their image management.
Which, not coincidentally, is also where the idea of Musk as an "amazing, brilliantly intelligent man" comes from. After all, he doesn't have any sort of history of published work or intellectual breakthroughs to support that.
He seems to be good at investment, and at a certain kind of hype-based marketing, including of himself (up to a point.)
Look at the things he’s already been in court for: labor and environmental violations, safety problems. A really big one for him is the exposure to suits over his statements as the CEO of a public company: anyone who’s bought TSLA in the the last decade or so could, for example, claim that he was knowingly misleading investors about FSD’s readiness or safety record.
Each of those are areas where he absolutely does not want someone with government investigatory powers talking to his employees, demanding internal documents, etc. and in several of them he could have business activities blocked if, for example, they linked approvals to more comprehensive evidence (imagine if they couldn’t sell FSD for use on public roads until it was safer and had to compensate past buyers).
But that doesn't mean that there is no case against Elon. I'm not sure why you would draw an equals between the two. The SEC really does put people in jail, the stuff with Vlad is bordering on treason.
I think you may have forgotten that we actually used to have a government and there was rule of law.
You can’t seriously think it’s just politics. Elon’s _entire_ fortune is built on these misrepresentations. A competent government that forces them to stop selling self driving, after a series of high profile lawsuits, is something Elon would pay very close attention to, probably even more than the day to day operations of the (mediocre electric car) company that he runs.
Elon is about the stock, the stock price, and the yarn he spins to keep it up. There is nothing else for him.