It's better to think of tesla as an MIC company than a typical auto manufacturer (indeed the auto industry has always held a tight, symbiotic, and often mandatory link with the military).
Tesla's domestic EV manufacturing, Starlink's satellite network, and ofc SpaceX are all critical pieces of American foreign policy. It should be obvious why Tesla is one of the most heavily subsidized companies of all time[0]
I don't really understand why Tesla is part of the MIC. They don't do anything for the military and has no strategic value. In terms of foreign policy, considering the US has soft-power due to Tesla, the company continues to under perform year-by-year while European and Chinese companies are gaining market share.
I am not a fan of Elon Musk, I've been skeptical of his accomplishments way before his involvement in politics so I may be a little biased. But it seems to me that Tesla is a failure. The last new model launched was a flop and a subject of general ridicule, they've stopped innovating, the existing models are last in reliability scores and no promises were kept wrt to self-driving, robotaxis, hyperloop or whatever other sci-fi scam was talked about at every shareholder meeting.
I really don't understand how in other areas (such as Enterprise AI or cloud computing in the past) investors want to see actual growth and huge returns and they threaten to pull their money constantly. But when it comes to Tesla in particular, the company keeps getting years and years of leeway while it's failing and failing.
Perhaps the hope is that it will get nationalized or be in some sort of public-private partnership that would ensure perpetual bailouts and it's just a way of sucking off money from the taxpayer?
Humans are the same emotional, irrational apes as we were 100,000 years ago, and the most emotional and irrational thing any of us do, bar none, is delude ourselves by pretending that we aren't.
I'd argue we're too rational and not irrational enough. If we were sufficiently irrational, the first time Musk-rat lied, everyone woulda bailed. It takes a thoroughly motivated rationality to cling to the hopes of promises that won't ever be kept.
> The top people are all who kissed each others ass and looked out only for their cohort (e.g. people who were in same positions as them in early 2013). So teach your kids to kiss ass and play poltiics.
After more than 20 years in big tech, I agree, this is basically it. Your work can only get you so far. If it makes you feel any better, you can reframe politics as 'people systems' and work on optimizing the relationships in the system. Or whatever. But the gist of it is to find a powerful group and try to become a member of that group.
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