ObserverNeutral's comments

> and are not attempts at stock price manipulation or some kind of investor scam

Why isn't he working on stuff in a full open source manner like Linus of Linux did back in the day?

Also , let's assume you are in it to solve the problem and believe that the for-profit model is the better than opensource ...then why not live modestly like Warren Buffett?

Guy knows what he's doing. He wants to be famous and rich and surronded by yes-men and yes-girls.

> Yet, this fake it til you make model has enabled reflexivity in the growth and stock price allowing Tesla and other Musk ventures to grow and accomplish a lot with amazing speed.

But once you are a company that size the goal is to grow and accomplish amazing stuff but with great margins.

Tesla has essentially arrived at destination with regards to MarketCap, it won't become a 5 trillion dollar company. Nobody will. There is such a thing as the Sherman Act and Antitrust.

Tesla still lags behind in every other metric (especially margins) compared to similar companies of that size.

Seems to me Musk will have to work a whole lot just deliver and thus mantain the current valuation and his level of net worth right now.

Alternatively he could get to 5 trillions by promising new products at an increasingly higher rate and thus avoiding the antitrust laws. Those laws were written for a company which actually has a market dominance, not a company which has a stock market dominance based on the promises of the CEO and people believing in it and buying the stock.

I think from what we've seen, he's going in this direction exactly, he'll keep inflating the bubble that's for sure. He only has one gear

It's not surprising actually.

People are looking for something to believe in, which will make them feel like the future will be brighter.

Musk has this ability . Unless he goes crazy and becomes overleveraged with debt he'll be fine.

He'll constantly move the goalposts and keep giving people hope, if Autopilot is proven not feasible, he'll just move onto the next big thing which will fill people with enthusiasm .

He's essentially a politician, a techno-utopian cult leader who is also a CEO and major owner of the stock.

His best intuition was understanding that telling people that the future will be brighter is itself a product which people are willing to buy. Much like people pay for insurance to have peace of mind, people gladly pay to be reassured that the world will be better.

His second best intuition is to never bankrupt the company trying to deliver, just move the goalposts. As long as you don't bankrupt the company you can always move the goalposts

You should also try Virtual Skipper 5

Virtual Skipper 5 is better

It's not about your own wealth, it's about the size of the company you are at the helm of.

People understand the diminishing returns of wealth, they'd rather be at the helm of a Fortune 100 company and have a net wealth of 100m vs. being a billionaire who made his billion buying and selling real estate in Sweden.

Sweden billionaires are all small potatos guys, they are way inferior to Trump if we are talking about turnover of the companies they own.

The US has the real guys, people like Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Koch etc.

> properly prioritizing one's life based one's own sense of what's meaningful.

The biggest meaning is derived by elevating oneself socially. It's the reason why people move to cities. Cities are essentially the arenas where the competition happens.

You can say whatever you want , but more and more people are moving to the arenas, and to the extent they stop moving there or an outflow begins...that's because we now have the Internet which is essentially a MegaCity. A huge metropolis , the biggest arena we ever built

If you stop competing then all you are left with is contemplating your own insignificance and death.

Competition keeps us busy, if we are busy competing , then we can't think.

The moment society collectively stops to think and do introspection, it would be the end of the human race, we'd all fall in a deep depression and off ourselves.

This matches my experience.

If I were to use a word to define the nordic countries I'd use : Flatline

An other which comes to mind is : Stasis

Those places are depressing, people don't have the hatred and the competitive killer instinct which can be seen in big US metropolis and London

These companies quite literally saved the world as we know it.

If I was the CEO or the President of those companies I'd close shop and go start a cryptocurrency instead

You are sending the message that if the problem is too important, then you should not work on it because as soon as you find a solution you'd be held at gunpoint to make it availible for free.

There will be a huge slowdown in Selfdriving cars tech as well. If Waymo or Amazon come up with the tech , then you'd see people screaming :

"40,000 deaths per year! Young children, pregnant mothers!!! Release the IP, now!!"

And of course government would follow the mob and force them to do so.

Again, off they go to start a cryptocurrency or in the internet advertising business.

Sergey and Larry aren't techbros.

You can see it even today. People who know who they are...are in the thousands whereas people like Bezos and Musk seek to be known by the whole world.

If we know something about the promotional industry is that you only become famous if you want to.

Bill Gates is undefeated when the DOJ isn't summoned up.

Except for Google.

Public affairs are separated from business. This was about whatever money had to be spent on X and were directed to Y via corruption

Nice to see economists were already thriving back then

> Is that really the world you want to live in?

It's the other way around, Doge being worth more than Ford and Twitter is just the billionth datapoint which tells you this is the world we live in.

If you somehow managed to miss all the others, this one is your opportunity to surrender to this fact. You got to take your opinion, blindfold it, load it in a truck and put a couple of bullets in the back of its head.

Accept that your opinion is worth nothing it and start betting on people's opinions.

That's how you make money

I guess you are saying to yourself "I am worthless" every time you put a condom on... :|

That's true, but , hear me out...the fact that there are people who are sufficiently equipped to realize this scenario...might compel them to spend their BTC before the BTC induced economic collapse.

That would cause the aforementioned economic collapse not to happen at all...

In such scenario the smart person is not the one who postpones gratification by storing the marshmallow, but the one who eats it now because there is no future

It's really interesting, BTC moves the analysis from balance sheets to people's psyche.

> far surpass the most optimistic expectations.

Both companies are leechers for government money, that's all they do.

The best product from Tesla is the hype they sell to public officials to take government money and the hype they sell to retail investors to take their money to pump the stock.

People compare it to Amazon, they are not even in the same league, not the same ballpark

How so? You are telling people what they want to hear, you make them relaxed and chill.

Not really. I mean those who bet on proper lines and on financial markets that Republicans will win after 8 years of Democrats and vice versa

Also those who automatically assume the political leaning of the person they are interacting with.

If I am with a hot college girl who is a Bernie supporter, you bet I'd be strongly and passionately arguing for the redistribution of wealth and a 95% income tax because that creates empathy and increases my chances.

If I am pitching to a VC in Texas, you bet I'll be strongly pro-Trump and pro 2nd amendment, because it creates empathy and increases my chances.

Politics is a tool to improve your quality of life, and I mean by acquiring friends and allies while talking about it, the trick is to not have a political opinion and polish your acting skills and suddenly the sky is the limit