4 hours ago, martin-w said:

it does shock me how these myths propagate.

It does?  He's not an easy man to like.  I might go as far as to say he's highly unpopular.  For people like that myths and rumors propogate.

Noel

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

Not true. The family diamond mine thing was just something his father claimed.

I never said anything about a family diamond mine, just that his family was rich. And I'd say if you own 2 houses, 5 cars, an airplane and a yacht, you're doing OK.

 

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

After leaving university he was $150,000 In debt. He couldn't even afford a new computer for his first company.

[citation needed]  And yes, I know Musk said that. He also said Teslas can drive all by themselves. He said the pandemic was overblown (because he wanted to keep workers in the factory against government mandates to stay home so they wouldn't kill people). And he said kids are immune from the virus. He said he'd pay to fix contaminated water in Flint (they're still waiting). He said we'd "soon" be flying SpaceX rockets NYC to London in half an hour for the price of an economy ticket on an airliner. Been waiting for that one since 2017. He said a person he knew nothing about was a pedophile. And that's not even touching the massive spreading and even origination of election lies. He's a serial liar. We can't trust him when he tries to remake himself as the self-made rags-to-riches hero he wants us to think he is.

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

He has two bachelors degrees. One in physics, one in economics. 

And? What does that have to do with anything? If you're referring to the illegal immigrant thing, he got his bachelor's degrees from UPenn. He got an education visa to go to Stanford, which is where he didn't actually enroll in the classes he needed to not be an illegal immigrant.

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

As for Tesla, the company was nothing when he joined and devoid of funding. It was Musk that went out and got the funding. Tesla are now more valuable than all car companies combined.

Yes. Musk is a great huckster salesman. Let's remember that when he went out and got the funding, he was pimping a car that, if it got too low on charge, would brick irrecoverably. He then sued Top Gear for suggesting that when electric cars run out of power they have to be pushed. Still, I do give him credit for accelerating the rise of EVs, but that does not absolve him from responsibility for his other, reprehensible, actions.

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

You go on to say "expensive electric cars, who buys electric cars". Seems you are behind the times. The Model Y is now below the average price in the US. Or you could pick up an MG for a very reasoble price.

Considering the average car costs nearly 50 grand, even being below the average price is still expensive. Poor and even many middle class people can no longer afford new cars. Of the people who can afford new cars, those interested in electric cars tend to swing toward the left end of the political spectrum because the right side of the political spectrum has spent years angrily insisting that we have to keep using oil and coal or we will fail as a nation. Drill baby drill and all that.

71% of Republican voters say they would not buy an EV. Only 17% of Democrat voters say the same. His customer base is the group that he's busy repelling as hard as he can.

 

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

When it comes to PaPal, incompetence was claimed, whether that was true or not we dont know. Musk had grandiose plans that were regarded as too ambitious. Again, whether they were too ambitious, we don't know.

I think we can make an educated guess. How many times has he fired an entire department in a fit of pique only to rehire them a few days later because he figured out that hey, we actually needed those guys. What competent manager walks in on his first day carrying a sink as some sort of bizarre "no one is safe here" statement that is guaranteed to crash employee morale? What competent manager reacts to being out-competed (in a competition that was only in his own mind) by calling the victor a pedophile?

Dipping into the current for a moment, he's planning to cut $2T from the federal budget by firing most federal employees. Think about what that's actually going to do. Government lawyers regularly retire at the salary level of a new associate in the private sector. Federal knowledge workers are shockingly underpaid compared to their private-industry colleagues, but they put up with it because unlike the private sector, the government does not play the "the shareholders want a stock bump, let's lay off 10,000 people" game. It offers stability.

That reality is now over. Absent stability, the government will have to compete on-level with private sector jobs. In other words, if you want people to work for the federal government now, they're going to demand market rate. Suddenly that senior lawyer who manages an entire district encompassing billions of dollars worth of cases across multiple states who was making maybe $150,000 is going to demand compensation on the level of a senior equity partner at a major national law firm, which will be more like $1 million on the cheap side. And that demand isn't going to stop if we get a different administration in the future. It is now clear that federal employees are employed at the whims of whoever is in charge which means they are and always will be a maximum of four years away from career destruction through no fault of their own. Musk's cost trimming is going to cost us a literal fortune.

But yeah, I guess we just have no idea whether or not he might have been stupid at PayPal.

Quote

 And yes, I know Musk said that.

 

Do you have evidence its not true? [CITATION NEEDED] If you are going to claim a person is lying you will need to provide evidence. 

 

Quote

He also said Teslas can drive all by themselves.

 

They can and do every day. If you mean FULL delf drive then no, he said that was something they were working toward. And indeed they are working toward full self drive. So far they are doing very well with that endeavor. You'd be foolish to claim they won't achieve it. A number of autonomous vehicles are currently on the road, they aren't perfect yet, but they are on the road. Waymo, for example.

 

Quote

He said the pandemic was overblown (because he wanted to keep workers in the factory against government mandates to stay home so they wouldn't kill people). And he said kids are immune from the virus. He said he'd pay to fix contaminated water in Flint (they're still waiting).

Indeed, as I said, there much we can criticize him for. 

 

Quote

He said we'd "soon" be flying SpaceX rockets NYC to London in half an hour for the price of an economy ticket on an airliner

 

Don't recall him saying "soon" but it depends how you define soon. And of course, the technology behind Starship is perfectly capable of flying from London to New York via low Earth orbit in that time frame. Hence why the military are interested. 

Space Force eyes SpaceX’s Starship for future rocket cargo delivery missions

https://defensescoop.com/2024/11/21/spacex-starship-rocket-cargo-space-force-military/

 

Quote

And that's not even touching the massive spreading and even origination of election lies. 

 

We aren't allowed to debate politics here, but yes, like I said, there's much we can criticize him for. 

Edited December 12, 20241 yr by martin-w

 

2 hours ago, eslader said:

Considering the average car costs nearly 50 grand, even being below the average price is still expensive. Poor and even many middle class people can no longer afford new cars.

 

 

You actually said... "he's making expensive electric cars. Who buys expensive electric cars? Rich liberals."

"Expensive" is relative. 38K for a Model 3 compared with the average US price of 50K is not, relatively, defined as expensive. If you want to say ALL cars are expensive then that's a different conversation. 

As for "rich liberals buying electric cars.... Not sure about any weirdness going on in the US, but of course there's an entire world out there other than the US. And worldwide in 2023 15 million were sold, and no, it was nothing to do with their politics. 

 

2 hours ago, eslader said:

I think we can make an educated guess.

 

No we can't! If you are going to make such comments you need evidence. He had grandiose ideas at the time and there were also technological issues, and thus, the board ousted him. Anything else is speculation. 

 

2 hours ago, eslader said:

Dipping into the current for a moment, he's planning to cut $2T from the federal budget by firing most federal employees. T

 

Yes, madness, and again, we aren't supposed to debate politics here. And as I said, there's much we can criticize him for. My issue is that you seem to criticize him for everything, both factual and dubious internet gossip. 

Stick to what we know to be factually correct and less than laudable. 

 

I'm not going to comment further on the rest of your comments as they're political and will get the topic locked. Lets make the moderators job easier, not harder. 

 

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

I might go as far as to say he's highly unpopular.  For people like that myths and rumors propogate.

 

He's like Marmite Noel. You ether love it or hate it.

That's from a UK advert you wont be familiar with. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, martin-w said:

but of course there's an entire world out there other than the US. And worldwide in 2023 15 million were sold, and no, it was nothing to do with their politics. 

The rest of the world mostly has access to cheaper and better chinese EV's that have been blocked here by tariffs..... At the same time, I don't think there are very many, if any, Cybertrucks outside the US.

12 hours ago, eslader said:

Extreme concentration of wealth leads to events like the Great Depression if we're lucky.

Well, you need to stick to what *you* know, as this is incorrect.  The Great Depression was caused by a number of things, the main one being that banks were allowed to use customer deposits to invest in risky assets, and when the assets plummeted in value, the banks went under and lost everyone's savings.  This then led to a deflationary spiral, made worse by the govt's unwillingness to bail out the banks(I'm no fan of the banksters, but you can't let the banking sector fail).  The Glass-Steagall Act was later enacted which forbade the banks from doing this again, but it was stupidly repealed in the 1990s. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs didn't help either as other countries retaliated, which hurt U.S. exports and cost jobs.

Rich people are not the problem.  There have always been and will always be "filthy" rich people, and if you try to implement a system which punishes wealth you will end up with a miserable and mostly poor society like the Soviet Union.  Personally, I am disgusted at how much money some CEOs, sports figures, and actors/actresses make, but I would not punish them for their success.  I do think that the wealthy should pay more taxes, not to punish them but because they can afford it, and not more than 50% no matter how much they make, and never confiscatory wealth taxes.  The fact is that there are actually very few truly wealthy people, so you could tax them at 90% and it wouldn't bring in a whole lot more revenue.  The middle class is where the money is as there are so many of them, which is why European countries hit the middle class with very high taxation compared to the USA.

Musk and many others are exactly right that the absurd 2 trillion dollar deficit must be eliminated.  I believe it should be done gradually over a decade as the impact on thousands of govt. employees will not be pretty, but it must be done.  We cannot cut Social Security and Medicare, and we cannot allow more money printing, so cuts must be made elsewhere.  The federal govt. is far bigger than it should be.

At least Musk has done some productive and innovative things with his wealth - I admire him for that.  I don't know him personally and you don't either, so you shouldn't be so judgemental based on what you read, which is not always true.  There's a lot of propaganda out there nowadays.

Dave

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

Do you have evidence its not true? [CITATION NEEDED] If you are going to claim a person is lying you will need to provide evidence. 

I said we need evidence that happened. You're the one making the claim by way of his statement. The burden of proof lies with you.

 

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

They can and do every day. If you mean FULL delf drive then no, he said that was something they were working toward. And indeed they are working toward full self drive. So far they are doing very well with that endeavor. You'd be foolish to claim they won't achieve it. A number of autonomous vehicles are currently on the road, they aren't perfect yet, but they are on the road. Waymo, for example.

They absolutely won't achieve it with the systems they have installed on cars they sold where they said they'd achieve it, no. Waymo is irrelevant, we're talking about the Tesla "full self driving" product that Musk sold, and its systems are different from Waymo's.

 

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

Don't recall him saying "soon" but it depends how you define soon. And of course, the technology behind Starship is perfectly capable of flying from London to New York via low Earth orbit in that time frame. Hence why the military are interested. 

It is not, however, capable of doing so for $650 per passenger, which is the high-end of an economy ticket on an airplane.

 

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

We aren't allowed to debate politics here, but yes, like I said, there's much we can criticize him for. 

Fair point, mea culpa.

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

You actually said... "he's making expensive electric cars. Who buys expensive electric cars? Rich liberals."

"Expensive" is relative. 38K for a Model 3 compared with the average US price of 50K is not, relatively, defined as expensive. If you want to say ALL cars are expensive then that's a different conversation. 

 

If I had wanted to say his cars are expensive relative to something, I would have. $38,000 is expensive relative to the median income of the country the company is based in, which is less than $38,000. And btw, the Model 3 costs $44k minimum.

And that doesn't factor in added costs. I don't have to install a gas pump in my house when I buy a regular car. I do have to run a high-voltage (well, by American standards) line and install a charger, so you can add a couple-three thou on top of that price.

 

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

As for "rich liberals buying electric cars.... Not sure about any weirdness going on in the US, but of course there's an entire world out there other than the US. And worldwide in 2023 15 million were sold, and no, it was nothing to do with their politics. 

Yes, I kept it US focused because Tesla is a US-based company

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

No we can't! If you are going to make such comments you need evidence. He had grandiose ideas at the time and there were also technological issues, and thus, the board ousted him. Anything else is speculation. 

It is entirely reasonable to look at a person's performance in other places to determine what their performance is likely to be in other places. We do it all the time. Very few people get hired after someone at their old company tells someone at the new company what a terrible employee they were.

 

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Well, you need to stick to what *you* know, as this is incorrect.  The Great Depression was caused by a number of things, the main one being that banks

I'll cut out the rest of this because I agree, but who do you think owned and had significant if not controlling interests in the banks? Who do you think was spending money to make sure the banks were allowed to continue the risky behavior you outlined?

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

(I'm no fan of the banksters, but you can't let the banking sector fail).

Well, this part I don't agree with. You absolutely can let the banks fail, you just can't let them fail in a vacuum. We let banks fail today. A number of them failed in the last few years, largely for similar reasons as what caused them to fail in '29. Over-investing in risky assets because if things work out, the guys at the top get rich and if they don't work out, the guys at the top get bailed out.

The difference is that the bank failures largely didn't have much impact on most people's personal finance pictures, because we now have the FDIC. Instead of bailing out the bank, the FDIC bails out the bank's customers.

That's how all bailouts should work - the side that did the stupid thing that brought the walls crashing down shouldn't be allowed to keep operating where it will do more stupid things. The side that was an innocent victim of the stupid things that were done should be bailed out to save the economy.

 

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Rich people are not the problem.  There have always been and will always be "filthy" rich people, and if you try to implement a system which punishes wealth you will end up with a miserable and mostly poor society like the Soviet Union.

No, we don't have to go full communist.

There's a series of books you're probably familiar with, All Creatures Great and Small, which is a somewhat fictionalized autobiography of a country vet in Yorkshire. What a lot of people who read the books don't know is that James Herriot was actually Alfred Wight, and someone did a non-fictionalized biography of him. The interesting part of that biography is that after his books became best-sellers and he was raking in money from a TV show and other ventures, Wight became very wealthy, Wight spent a lot of time complaining about how much he got taxed on his book earnings.

Understand, he was very rich. The high tax rates he paid were only on income far above that which normal people ever see.

Last I checked, 1950s England was not poor, and it was nothing like the Soviet Union. It had people, rich and poor, but the tax structure was set up such that an overly large percentage of the country's money supply wouldn't end up hoarded by an ultra-elite few. (And yes, I know, what about the Royals, but no society is perfect and at least they specifically and intentionally made the monarch a figurehead)

It is possible to keep rampant wealth inequality in check without turning a society into a Soviet analog.

 

 

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

 

 The middle class is where the money is as there are so many of them, which is why European countries hit the middle class with very high taxation compared to the USA.

The middle class is where the money should be, but in the USA, that's no longer really the case. 60% of the wealth in the USA is in the hands of the top 10%.

 

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

At least Musk has done some productive and innovative things with his wealth - I admire him for that.  I don't know him personally and you don't either, so you shouldn't be so judgemental based on what you read, which is not always true.  There's a lot of propaganda out there nowadays.

Dave

Solely based on the things that he has personally said on Twitter and on camera, I have more than enough evidence to be judgmental.

(I cut out the federal stuff because I was correctly reminded above that we need to stay away from politics)

 

When I hear Musk's name mentioned, I think about another alpha dog (hint: last initial is T).

Alpha dogs by definition don't like wannabe alpha dogs. If priorities diverge, does anyone else wonder who'll prevail? Musk has age and time on his side.




 

2 hours ago, eslader said:

You absolutely can let the banks fail,

But you can't let all of the banks fail all at once.

Noel

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

But you can't let all of the banks fail all at once.

Noel

Why not?

A failed bank doesn't just close. Its management gets tossed out and some other bank acquires it or, worst-case, the government runs it until someone else acquires it. Banks which have been acting responsibly won't fail, because they're supposed to hedge against economic collapse. And before you say but they can't hedge against all economic collapse, I'll point out they expect US to hedge against it - they'll be right there to foreclose if the economy collapses, I lose my job and I can't pay my mortgage anymore. But I should have hedged my bets and had ample reserves? 1) if I'm expected to do that, then the banks which are staffed by people who actually went to school for finance should absolutely do that and 2) if you have the cash reserves to pay off the mortgage, then you should either do so or invest them in something of higher interest than the mortgage. If you've got your mortgage payoff just sitting in a savings account, you're screwing up.

If you spend a billion dollars bailing out the banks, why not spend that billion bailing out the bank customers instead?

Same argument as when the sub-prime mortgage crisis happened. We bailed out the banks by covering their losses on the bad loans. Why? Give the money to the homeowners with the requirement that it can only be used to pay off the loan. Boom, banks survive and homeowners aren't screwed. Instead, the banks survived and then foreclosed on the homeowners whose loans had just been covered by another entity. If you're keeping score, this means the banks got paid for the loan, and then stole the house and got paid again when it sold. (yes I know they didn't really steal it but only because the law does not align with basic morality)

We tend to gravitate toward bailing out banks because we're afraid everything would collapse if we don't. But in reality, every customer at that bank is covered by FDIC. If the bank collapses, we bail out the customers. This is good because it means the bank's management, which was stupid and greedy enough to get it into that mess in the first place, doesn't win and other bankers learn the lesson that if they get stupid and greedy, they'll be out of a job.

Bail the bank out and they instead float away on their golden parachutes, usually to infest another bank and do it all over again.

Edited December 13, 20241 yr by eslader

34 minutes ago, eslader said:

A failed bank doesn't just close. Its management gets tossed out and some other bank acquires it or, worst-case, the government runs it until someone else acquires it.

Yes.  When I say "bail out the banks", that's what I mean, IE cover all the lost deposits.  The govt. should then put the bank into conservatorship, fire all the guilty executives, and let someone else buy the bank.

The corrupt you-know-whos in govt. didn't hold the executives(donors) accountable like they should have back then.  They also failed to reinstate Glass-Steagall which was suggested at the time.

It is fine to let a bank or two go under as long as customer deposits are insured, which has happened a number of times recently.  The problem arises when it is a huge bank like Citibank or Bank of America - the FDIC doesn't have enough money to cover all the losses.  In that case the govt. should do whatever it can to alleviate the losses, even if it means using taxpayer money.  You can't risk a domino effect that results in a credit freeze and then takes the whole system down.

Dave

On 12/11/2024 at 3:36 AM, martin-w said:

 

Yep, exactly. But Mathew stated that cheap, simple primitive drones would make F35 obsolete. Which I disagree with.

 

Sorry I've been swamped with work this month and not much time on here, Lets just agree to disagree. I get it you like the F35 (I guess)

Break it down

1 Long Production timeline
2 Expensive
3 Massive training program with pilots and maintenance personal
4 Human Factor (G Forces)

What's going to beat it???

Search and Destroy Kamikaze Drones at a ration of 5 to 1 or more

1 Low Production timeline
2 Cheaper
3 No Training it is one time use
4 No Human Factor

With the outbreak of every conflict the weapons systems at the start become obsolete, we are already seeing this with current conflicts. The F35 is just pre-war high tech that will become obsolete very quickly with advancements in other cheap technologies, this is nothing new

Anyhow sorry if I ruffled your feathers 

14 hours ago, eslader said:

I said we need evidence that happened. You're the one making the claim by way of his statement. The burden of proof lies with you.

 

Actually, it was you that claimed Musk was wealthy. So can you demonstrate he was wealthy, and not in debt to the tune of $150K?  If neither of us can prove our claims then we, quite frankly, don't know. So perhaps neither of us should claim the $150K debt to be true or false? 

 

14 hours ago, eslader said:

They absolutely won't achieve it with the systems they have installed on cars they sold where they said they'd achieve it, 

 

 Updates to Tesla self drive are via software updates. HW3 (more powerful computer) was envisaged to be capable of full self drive. Tesla have announced that if HW3 doesn't provide full self drive then free hardware upgrades will be made available. 

 

14 hours ago, eslader said:

It is not, however, capable of doing so for $650 per passenger, which is the high-end of an economy ticket on an airplane.

 

I don't recall Musk ever saying that. In fact I don't recall he stated a price for a ticket at all. But given the rate of progress of Starship and full re-usability and the fact that we are talking about 1000 passengers, I wouldn't right it off. But as we know, Mr. Elon is prone to exaggeration and stating best case scenarios. That's nothing new. 

 

14 hours ago, eslader said:

It is entirely reasonable to look at a person's performance in other places to determine what their performance is likely to be in other places

 That depends if the board that claimed mismanagement were truthful. Neither of us know the truth. We would be arrogant to claim we do. 

 

Edited December 13, 20241 yr by martin-w

14 hours ago, eslader said:

If I had wanted to say his cars are expensive relative to something, I would have. $38,000 is expensive relative to the median income of the country the company is based in, which is less than $38,000. And btw, the Model 3 costs $44k minimum.

 

 

The term "expensive" is always relative to something. So you now say relative to median income. Nope... all cars are expensive. The way to determine how expensive a Tesla is is to compare it with other cars of equal performance. A car that is above the average car price is expensive, a car that is below the average car price, or close to it is, well... average. The comparison is car to car. The comparison is how expensive Tesla cars are compared with other cars on the road. And they are currently available at below the average car price. 

You also said... "Who would buy an electric car" so not specifically Tesla. And as you should know, BEV's are now available for as little as little as £7695 for a Citroen Ami. Dacia Spring for £14,995. Citroen eC3 for £21,990. Renault 5 for £22,995. Etc... 

 

14 hours ago, eslader said:

Yes, I kept it US focused because Tesla is a US-based company

 

Who sell cars worldwide.