[The_Real_Stack]

I like Elon’s antics. I don’t agree with everything he says or does but I like that he isn’t unscripted and he isn’t afraid to speak his mind. If I had his money I’d do the same thing. “What’s the point of having F you money if you never say F You?” -Bobby Axlerod

 

[The_Real_Stack]

So is this akin to "Shut up and dribble?"

Humans are going to human. People can have a different viewpoint from me, I don't care. I can still be agreeable with you. My father-in-law is staunchly anti-gay marriage, and is opposite of me on many hot-button issues (you can probably guess the other big one). But we still get along -- not because I have to because he's my FIL -- but because I genuinely love the guy and his views don't define our relationship.

It’s because you are a mentally healthy individual who can abide by people who sometimes think differently from yourself.

The internet has taught me that is much less common than I previously thought.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

Billionaires shouldn't exist.

So what’s the mechanism from removing their wealth? The big few millionaires (Musk, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Buffet, etc) all got their start founding* companies that became very influential and lucrative, and most of their wealth is just their shares of ownership of those companies. If they don’t deserve to own these companies, who do you give it to when you take it away from them?


*for some of them “founding” isn’t quite literal, but all took the companies and built them into what it is today, let’s skip the

 

[The_Real_Stack]

The problem isn’t that they’re billionaires, the problem is that these people and their companies weld so much influence that it can be detrimental to balance . Do you really want one company or person controlling what you see on the Internet, news and TV for example ?

That’s a different question than “billionaires shouldn’t exist.” I absolutely agree that individuals shouldn’t have the kind of control that they do, especially Zuck. But that wasn’t the discussion.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

I think if we went back to enforcing antitrust laws and breaking up companies that grow too large, then billionaires wouldn't be able to so easily exist. Sure, there would be a few here and there, but not people with eight and nine digit net worths, and certainly not hundreds of billionaires.

The problem is how you break up global companies with the kind of reach of some of them.

Tesla is really only large in market cap; in size and sales they certainly aren’t bigger then Ford or GM or Toyota or VW.

FB, yeah, strip them of Insta and WhatsApp, I’m cool with that, but beyond that?

Amazon? I dunno. How do you downsize that?

MS, there was some targeted anti-trust stuff there already, someone smarter than me can opine on more

Berskshire, what do you do? Bar him from investing more?

 

[The_Real_Stack]

Tax them. You don't become a billionaire by working hard. You become one by acquiring shares and avoiding taxes.

To be clear, I'm not talking about burning everything to the ground. It's more just the absolute insane duality that's happening everywhere. We got dudes measuring cockrockets trying to get to Mars while this planet is burning and nearly every major U.S. city has a Hooverville somewhere.

You can’t, under current US law, tax something that hasn’t been realized. Say Musk when he owned his McLaren F1. He paid, in round numbers, $1M for it. Well now they trade at around $20M. We don’t say “you only paid sales tax on a $1M car, now it’s worth $20M you owe us more taxes.” When he sells it (he already sold it but bear with me), we can hit him with capital gains tax, but until it’s sold, it doesn’t matter, he hasn’t realized that wealth.

It’s the same way I can avoid taxes by dumping $18k or $19k or whatever it is per year into a 401k. I’ll get taxed on that money when I realize it (dump it into my bank account). Until then I don’t have access to it, so I don’t get taxed on it.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

What's wrong with the 4xe?

It’s not a Golf R, CTR, or Corolla GR, so if he wants that I can see why a 4xe isn’t satisfying.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

Probably the biggest thing you could do is make wealth use it or lose it. No passing down generational wealth anymore. Tax estates at 100%. A reasonable exclusion for "regular people" but no cut outs for spoilt kids and grandkids and their pets. No hiding in trusts. It gets one inheritance of a single family home to a single dependent or spouse and the entireity is auctioned off and sold. No palacial estates or farking castles with 37 car garages and a theme park,a single high median income single family home.

Spend it before you die or the public gets all of it. If they don't have a qualifying home, they will be provided enough funds from the sale to acquire them one.

There are a bunch of issues with this idea.

Number one, from a libertarian perspective I simply don’t believe “the public” (the government) deserves it.

Number two, in the case of something like Tesla, the government will almost certainly destroy it. They can’t run it. It will be worthless in a few years and they will have destroyed hundreds of billions of dollars of value and wealth.

Number three, as an employee of a private, single-man-owned company with 20,000+ workers and does about $7-8B of revenue a year in a critical industry…what happens to us? Just shut it down? Government runs it into oblivion? 20,000+ of us lose our jobs because a dude died?

People like to rail against the Paris Hiltons of the world and get all indignant that she’s a member of the lucky sperm club and they are not, but as a practical matter stewardship of companies has to be done in an orderly way as directed by the owners, or it’s all going to be destroyed and a bunch of angry stakeholders will be angrily looking at the nameless faceless bureaucrats who f’d the whole thing up for everyone.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

No issues with the 4xe. The issues are on me for being oblivious to the obvious, and positive equity on a lease did me in.

• 70 MPH + not enjoyable
  • Too loud w/ the one touch soft-top
  • Gas mileage
• Ride quality
• Battery lasted 22 hours

Driving slow with the top and windows down is fun for a few. My preference is canyons over fire trails.

​

Two days a week I commute 35 miles each way in the 4xe (usually) on the highway, and hate the Jeep. The other 5 days a week I cruise around town in it (usually top and doors off) and love it again.

That I have the S in the garage for sports car driving salves the wound as well.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

I'm not too familiar with Elon Musk's antics, but I saw this cheesy ad for a solar company featuring a Tesla powerwall on Facebook recently and realized how jarring it is to see a Tesla product in a traditional advertisement. I don't think I've ever seen a Tesla product actually advertised before. They managed to launch and promote a new worldwide car company via that one guy, which is pretty impressive. Of course the downside to any larger personality is that for everyone who loves it, there are people who equally hate it. It does seem to be working so far though.

Part of the reason the media hates Tesla is because he doesn’t play their games. Tesla doesn’t pay for advertising, doesn’t give press loaners, and relies mostly on their CEO shooting his mouth off on Twitter for press releases/PR. Oh and Musk is newly anti-woke? It drives media people crazy, so they dig and dig and dig for as much dirt on him that they can blast him with. And Musk is a popular/well known figure so controversy around him generates lots of clicks.

None of that means Musk is a perfect person and doesn’t have any dirt to report, obviously he does, but the media has lots of extra incentive to find and sensationalize it versus a regular relatively unknown CEO who caters to them and plays their games. “Akio Toyoda releases statement” isn’t going to generate a tenth the clicks that “See Musk’s latest controversial tweet!” does.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

^^what he said.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

I'm quite sure this advertisement is as much as a meme as it is a way to generate more sales. If the guy was wearing NB's I'd be 100% its just an expensive joke tbh. But it's these kind of funny little things that make Tesla stand out in my book, using a traditional way of advertising ironically.

I’m guessing it’s not a Tesla ad. I see a lot of solar company ads on Insta that use Tesla power walls. Kinda like the cheesy ads for your local Ford or Chevy dealer that shows Fords and Chevies isn’t a Ford or Chevy ad.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

Given that all those Republicans voted against Veterans Bill only to take a "win" away from the Democrats, and almost all of those Republicans had previously supported the Bill, I can see why Jon Stewart was so pissed off. Especially of Ted Cruz who was caught fist bumping a fellow Republican when they voted down the Bill. Playing politics with the health and lives of vets is outright shameful.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1553037966057955328

What was the justification for voting against the bill? There had to be some sort of rider in there that if passed it would give Nancy Pelosi an extra 100 gallons of ice cream a year or something, right? If it’s purely party politics that’s complete BS, but there’s almost always something else in these bills that you’re not supposed to notice under the shiny happy friendly headlines, right?

 

[The_Real_Stack]

I'm sorry, I don't care who you are... that s**t is funny

Musk’s sense of humor is similar to mine. We both just say sh*t that’s funny to us. Some of it lands, some of it doesn’t. And people who take themselves way too seriously/are humorless shrews get all bent out of shape about it.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

And none of the sense was made.

Sure it does. Some people when they hear a joke that doesn’t land they just roll their eyes and move on. My wife does this to me all the time.

Some people have to have a temper tantrum. The second group hates Musk.

 

[The_Real_Stack]

It doesn't though. That's not how comedy works. You can't claim people who don't think your jokes are funny are humorless, if right before that you claim that some of it lands and some of it doesn't and the jokes are 'for you.'

I'm not trying to attack you or goad you into some war here, Chris. I'm just trying to land on a shared reality where we can all accept that people disagreeing with us doesn't immediately qualify them as emotionally unstable lunatics with no humor. And I know that you think it's 'just words on a forum' but you've been on it for years and what we write is most of how we know each other.



I'd like you to rest easy knowing that in my history of disliking you on this forum, you have never once caused me a tantrum. Not even right now. Promise. Not even Elon Musk has caused me one either.

There’s a difference between “you’re a dork, that wasn’t funny” and the complete Twitter outrage/meltdown at Musk at everything he does. I don’t mind being told I’m not funny.