He works incredibly hard, long hours. He takes big risks, and shares a lot of the risk. It's not like he's on top laughing away as his underlings work for pennies - he's the one driving business.

I just find the argument annoying because there are so many other billionaire CEOs they could (correctly) critisize, why drag down the only one bringing electric vehicles, solar cities, and freakin' privatised space? This is something we should be heavily supporting and cheering on

To some extent, yes. He strongly believes that every employee under him should get some of their compensation in the company stock.

Of course, the amount of stock the typical line worker gets is not very high.

Jeff Bezos strongly believed the same thing, and gave his employees stock in lieu of higher wages... until AMZN passed $2000 a share, at which point he strongly believed in phasing out RSUs and productivity bonuses in favor of higher wages.

Then he undoes all that hard work with reckless, petty and often immature tweets.

He's targeted the automotive and fossil fuel industries. These are companies that are extremely intertwined with the government and subject to immense cronyism. We paid tens of billions of dollars to keep the entire vehicle industry in business. Ford is the only company that wasn't directly bailed out. Instead we have them a $5.9 billion loan at sub-inflation rates, which they unsurprisingly have not paid back - thanks to the ridiculous interest rate the government set, that loan becomes worth less and less the longer Ford holds out on paying it back.

And then of course he's also gone after Boeing/Lockheed which again follow the exact same pattern of deep entrenching and cronyism within the government. They, in an anticompetitive merger known as ULA, have managed to get the government to pay them $800 million a year to do literally nothing. It's called their 'launch capability contract', which is them convincing the government to pay them a billion a year just to exist.

And then most recently he's also decided to go after the media which is another extremely incestuous and entrenched industry that seems to be regularly driven by factors beyond simply going after the truth.

In a nutshell, he picks some of the most entrenched and influential people to make enemies with, and then goes full steam ahead. Probably the exact reason that he's loved and hated.

There is a very good reason their healthcare, education, banking and a whole lot more have not improved in 30+ years.

Elon is just one example of someone (or something ) that is disrupting the status quo, and many extremely powerful and rich people will fight tooth and nail to derail any such attempts.

I don't think Ford, GM, VW, etc. are barely profitable. Neither are Shell or BP or any petroleum company. Neither are ULA or Arianespace.

Keep in mind I meant the more general case to - America's healthcare system and education system are fundamentally built the way they are to make very rich people very much richer.

Ford, 36 billion, 4.3%

GM, 48 billion, 3.79%

VW, 85 billion, 3.41%

Tesla, 45 billion, -14,8%

So, Tesla, even while it is bleeding money, if you had bought in a few years ago, your return even today would easily be 10X. Those other companies stayed relatively flat.

Again, I ask you, what's the better deal if you're "rich and powerful"? What's the way to make more money? You'd be stupid to fight tooth and nail to protect those "status quo" companies. You'd make less money and lose. Why not profit both ways? If you are rich and you want to stay rich, you diversify. You don't care if Tesla wins and GM loses because of that, because you have money in either one.

You're using the cashflow accounting method, which obviously gives dramatically different results for an expanding company than an established one. If you invest a billion dollars in a battery factory, from a cashflow perspective you have a billion less dollars but that tells you nothing about the value of the new facility.

And you're not taking risk into account. Tesla is worth a lot more now than five years ago but there was no guarantee of that five years ago -- otherwise the price would have been higher five years ago.

> Again, I ask you, what's the better deal if you're "rich and powerful"? What's the way to make more money?

You're taking this from the perspective of something like a mutual fund manager. Why don't they invest in both Tesla and GM? Well, they do.

Now take it from the perspective of an oil company executive. You can produce oil at a breakeven price of $45/barrel. If oil prices are at $75/barrel, you're making a nice fat profit margin. If somebody comes along and starts mass producing solar panels and electric cars, that could reduce demand for oil and bring prices closer to your breakeven point, or even below it. You're sitting on top of a hundred+ billion dollar company that could be in big trouble if this catches on.

You can't just say they should invest in solar panels and electric cars. Most of the oil production costs are already sunk. The annual revenue difference for a $20/barrel shift in the price of oil for just one oil company is more than Tesla's entire market cap. How are they each going to make up more than $60 billion dollars every year by investing in a company worth under $50 billion dollars in total? There are seven major oil companies. Even using ridiculously optimistic numbers, Tesla isn't going to be worth trillions of dollars ten years from now. But they could cost the oil companies that much.

I'm making a statement on profit margins, Tesla's negative margins are just there for completeness.

> And you're not taking risk into account. Tesla is worth a lot more now than five years ago but there was no guarantee of that five years ago -- otherwise the price would have been higher five years ago.

There are no guarantees of anything. The potential for 10x growth was there. Those old companies weren't going to magically achieve that growth.

> You're taking this from the perspective of something like a mutual fund manager. Why don't they invest in both Tesla and GM? Well, they do.

Indeed they do. Who uses mutual funds? The "rich and powerful" do.

> Now take it from the perspective of an oil company executive. You can produce oil at a breakeven price of $45/barrel. If oil prices are at $75/barrel, you're making a nice fat profit margin. If somebody comes along and starts mass producing solar panels and electric cars...

It doesn't matter. The "rich and powerful" aren't all fully invested into oil, not even the oil execs, not even the Saudi princes. They diversify. If somebody comes and starts mass producing solar panels, they can buy that. Except of course in reality solar panels and electric cars have little impact on oil prices (rather it's the other way around), but let's say they had a significant impact, that's exactly how investors would hedge.

> How are they each going to make up more than $60 billion dollars every year by investing in a company worth under $50 billion dollars in total? There are seven major oil companies. Even using ridiculously optimistic numbers, Tesla isn't going to be worth trillions of dollars ten years from now. But they could cost the oil companies that much.

In the last decade, we had oil prices between 30$ and a 100$, while the amount of electric cars on the roads has remained irrelevant. If anything, electric cars need high oil prices to appear economical at all. But let's say electric cars would magically become highly profitable, how much money do you think would it cost those seven major companies to prevent not just Tesla but all other car makers from producing them? Everybody could go into the business of threatening to produce electric cars unless they're paid off, which is even more profitable than actually producing something! Eventually, the oil companies would have to decide it's cheaper to ignore the issue and let the market set the price.