Repeating this again: Tesla would be more successful without Elon Musk … leading any longer.

Perhaps now with all his controversies…but Tesla would not be the company it is today without him. Musk may not be a genius engineer and is a shit human, but what he is—wealthy and willing to make risky bleeding edge tech investments with extremely long ROIs and have the patience to wait them out is what makes Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink names we all know.

It is that sense of undisciplined risk taking that I am referring to. Model Y was supposed to be a money maker. Instead he let the better part get to him and added so many bells and whistles that it delayed it and was not even cheap.

Tesla production had so many problems before. Lots of jobs were lost because of this. Guess who remembers those job cuts? Me. Part of me believes anyone with slightly more discipline could have done a better job.

With any other investor those production issues would never had existed because the production lines themselves would have never existed. Most normal capital providers would have not allowed or taken such a bold risk. So is it sad that jobs were lost? Sure. But they existed at one point when otherwise wouldn’t have with the standard more risk averse investor looking for a more immediate ROI.

His lack of discipline and departure from conventional wisdom is the reason Tesla, SpaceX exist today. Without his patience and capital they would all be footnotes of failed companies in their respective industries.

I think you could probably make the argument that those industries might not even be serious if Musk’s risks and patience didn’t demonstrate their viability.

I count 14 (maybe 15?) people in that first protest photo.

Yeah, but that is where it starts. It’s like people who comment vs just reading/sharing the same opinion. Only a tiny fraction speak out. There are lots more who share the same opinion but just haven’t/don’t voice it.

Additionally there are those who attended the other rallies yesterday not at the dealerships but at other locations holding signs declaring their opinion towards Musk.

Hell, I just paid off my Tesla and I’m thinking of dumping it because I don’t want to be seen as someone who supports him.

The brand is 100% tarnished.

Only when sales/stock price take a long sustained hit will there be anything done.

They only care about their money.

There's a reason most CEOs and billionaires try to stay out of the spotlight and try to influence things behind the scenes instead.

We'll see how things turn out for Musk in a few years.

At least Starlink, and hence Spacex, won't be affected too much, the service is too valuable for the US military, various industries (aviation, maritime) and also private customers as long as no credible alternative is in sight.

I think for Elon, he has long figured out the same thing Donald Trump figured out that the way to success is by saying brash things that you are always in the spotlight and therefore always known.

Tesla and other stocks are not valuated based on the economics. They are meme stocks. Inflated because of gen y/z bros. Uber was the same way a few years ago when Travis was there. For as long as they are doing something "cool" like Tesla Robots, the stock will get attention, nvm that the robots were fake.

Without Elon, Starlink would get a more microscopic examination and it would likely not have investors' drive that a stalwart would bring.

The stock price is fucked if Musk leaves. The car business might survive, though.

I have no faith they can deliver on FSD/optimus/AI/cheap model. But with SEC kneecapped, I think the next rabbit out of Elon’s hat will be spectacular.

The OG Moist von Lipwig

Like 2 years ago I wrote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34158126

Many people don't like what the owners of Chick-fil-A are up to but apparently they do really good chicken at fair price so people keep buying it anyway. I would guess that Tesla is losing the premium they can put to their prices and that is pushing Tesla value to a transactional value. No more apologists for the build quality or features that are pay now get it next year(every year, next year), if Tesla makes good cars and sell them at good price people will buy and if they don't people won't

I still think its true, if Tesla makes good cars they will sell at fair value(no more premium to save the planet). In Turkey for example, no one is protesting Tesla even though there were huge protests in support of Palestine. Musk is literally in the US government, literally was the biggest supporter of Trump who announced ethnic cleansing intentions and no one in Turkey associate the brand with this stuff. For some reason they associate Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald's, Burger King etc but never Tesla. Influencers close to the organizations doing the protests even work with Tesla on promotional content. I tried mentioning this to see what they think in automotive forums, it gained no traction. Tesla's are good value in Turkey thanks to the tax breaks on electric cars, no one wants to hear the political aspects.

There's a huge difference between spending $10 at Chick-fil-A and spending $50K on a Tesla. Automobiles are the second most expensive item people purchase. They think a little more about that purchase than they do a chicken sandwich.

I don't know specifically what's going on in Turkey, but I have seen that January sales in Europe had dropped an average of 50%. That kind of sales decline should make anyone sit up and take notice.

senior managers said that they believe “the company would be better off if Musk resigned.”

Would that even help at this point? The association between musk and tesla would still remain - e.g. musk’s ownership of tesla shares is a pop culture topic at this point.

Interesting, this post was removed (shadow delisted). I don't see it on the in the first 3 pages anymore after it was at number 11 just a few minutes ago.

Man, for a place that supposedly considers itself a bastion of free thinkers, we sure do spend a lot of time quarreling about self-censorship.

I use https://hckrnews.com/ (alternate interface) to avoid this issue.

Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case it's not hard to guess: there have been countless stories like this and people are (rightly) tired of the repetition.

Edit: If you (or anyone) want further explanation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43093299 and the links there. If, after that, you have a question that I haven't already answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

People voted for radical change yet want to absolve themselves of the inevitable friction.

Though in the case of Musk he still might have had similar turmoil given the valuation of TSLA dwindling in 2024 and his antics on X. I don't know if a campaign against a tech person in the news should be suppressed just because people are "tired" of seeing it (meanwhile, AI posted a dozen times per day).

Is it too late to build in a simple regex filter for accounts?

I don't think HN users wanting to preserve HN for its intended purpose of intellectual curiosity has much to do with "absolving themselves". It's simply a question of having a forum with that purpose rather than another.

"man is not a rational animal: he is a rationizing animal" -Robert A. Heinlein

We have varying phases of new hyped tech get many low quality articles that don't inspire curiosity but nonetheless satisfy some people's need to circle around the same talking points. I just find it unfortunate that the moment any overhyped tech is linked to "the real world" that we start to dismiss it.

I suppose the answer isn't surprising given the population's disposition of acting like computer scientists and not software engineers, but is techs effect on actual people not intellectually curious? Are we fine just tinkering with ideas and throwing pandora's box out for the rest of the world to handle?

s simply a question of having a forum with that purpose rather than another.

Well I don't have any data, but at this point I don't think this is happening organically. That's my main concern. It's no coincidence this only seems to happen with negative press for a certain person, when months ago pretty much all news on this subject would not be flagged (hence the first part of my comment).

You do have the data, but if your data says otherwise, there's not much I can do. I'll just keep doing what I'm already doing and try to fight the suppression.

I don't think what you're seeing is suppression—it's just the preference of the bulk of the community. That's frustrating when you feel strongly that it should be otherwise (for good reason), but there isn't some extraneous nefarious force at work here; it's just that most HN users don't want the site to turn into a battlefield.

HN users wanting to preserve HN for its intended purpose of intellectual curiosity

Curiosity is sustained and long term. Curiosity is being willing to understand things completely.

What you're arguing for is novelty and distraction. That is shallow thinking, not curious thinking.

A month ago after Musk's fascist salutes you said, "This sort of flare-up always feels absolutely critical in the moment—how can one possibly justify not dropping everything to orbit around it?—and then vanishes. Their half life is so brief that I'm surprised people don't notice how ephemeral they are. They come in an endless sequence, and they aren't what HN is supposed to be for. They're also not that hard to resist; it's not as if this is a borderline call."

You were clearly wrong. It hasn't vanished. You should be curious about that.

In four months Y Combinator will hold an AI Startup School event with speakers including Musk: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus

Bias is a real problem in AI systems. Will you be at the event? What questions will you put to Musk about his biases and how they will be reflected in Grok?

Be curious. Ask those questions.

I appreciate your thoughts on curiosity, but I don't think that argument addresses the situation as it is. The alternative here is not deeper curiosity—it's screaming matches and outright war.

Commenters who want to fight about these topics are not operating in curiosity mode, seeking to learn from each other. They're operating in battle mode, seeking to destroy each other, vent rage, and deploy verbal weapons such as snark, name-calling, and talking points at the enemy. None of that is what HN is for, as should be obvious to anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html or spent much time here.

You were clearly wrong. It hasn't vanished

HN has been around for 15+ years. A month isn't long at all. My expectation is still that this will subside, and when it does, it will sink into a swamp of amnesia, the same as has happened in the past.

No one forgets Zuckerberg thinks Facebook users are dumb fucks: https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-im...

They won't forget Musk's fascist salutes either. If anything, Musk's salutes have been more public, have done more brand damage, and have revealed worse character.

Musk and Zuckerberg are showing you who and what they are.

Pay attention.

You may be right that people will remember that, and yes that's an interesting data point to compare it with.

I was talking about something else though. My claim is that the HN baseline will return to the status quo ante, just as it has after past political tsunamis, and that when it does, the current fever for every political story to be on the frontpage will fade into oblivion. I may be wrong about that, but we will have to wait to find out.

showing you who and what they are. Pay attention.

That's a trope, indeed already a cliché, of internet political arguments. It would be in your interest to avoid those because although on a surface level they intensify a comment, at a deeper level they make it less persuasive (to the persuadable reader). I know you didn't ask for commenting advice and normally I wouldn't go there, but HN's guidelines specifically ask commenters to omit internet tropes: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I'd bet there is a concerted effort to quickly flag negative posts about Tesla / Musk, since it always happens very quickly on these stories.

Meh for every 1 person who cares, 10 people don't. Plus the media loves a fall from grace story.

I think they'll be fine once the new model is out.

What's your evidence for that ratio?

I can't wait to buy the new Model Y. Fantastic car. If I were to choose products based on the CEO's behavior outside the company (vs their behavior running the company), I'd have no time left to live, and I wouldn't be buying anything from communist and other authoritarian countries.

Is Korea and Japan communist, authoritarian companies? My impression is that Hyundai and Kia has more than caught up on Evs now. Japan isnt that far back either.

You can't buy a Chinese car even if you wanted to because we have like 200% tarriffs on them. Great response to competition, America.

To clarify, I make decisions based on how good the product is, not who the CEO is, nor what country it is coming from. I think it is hypocritical of people to reject Teslas because of Musk's opinions or civic contributions.

Incredible how everything about Musk is been censored and people don't care.

“ When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”

Jonathan Swift

And when all the dunces celebrate someone, what does that mean?