Tesla is doing wild things which are causing crazy growth, but also crazy panic.

But the critics of Musk's behavior would respond, I think correctly, that there is a categorical difference between "wild things which cause crazy panic because they are high risk with high upside potential ('crazy growth')" and "wild things which cause crazy panic because they are high risk with little to no upside potential." And while perhaps sometimes it's difficult to tell whether a certain Crazy Elon Thing falls into Category A or Category B, things like "let's accuse someone who criticized me of being a pedophile, that'll teach him" or "hey, we have nothing signed and this blatantly violates SEC rules, but screw it, it'd be funny if I said we were going private at $420 a share, because 420"? Those are very clearly things that are in the "little to no upside potential" category.

But (a) laws don't work like that (b) selectively enforcing rules (especially those designed to prevent fraud and deception) isn't justice or ethics, and (c) he genuinely did something wrong-- multiple things wrong. He deserves to face adverse consequences for those choices.

People are perhaps sympathetic to Elon because he shows more potential than other CEOs, no? Did the judge in the case above show leniency because 'he liked her'?

For b) rather than selectively enforcing rules, this would be an example of discretionary punishment, which is absolutely a part of justice and ethics, as in the case above. Some could interpret your argument to support mandatory minimum sentencing, which many don't believe works.

You have to weigh the good and the bad, and thus far I'd say it's no contest. Elon has contributed far more upside.

I can also want that same person not to make unfounded, potentially illegal, and highly monitored claims regarding the company's trading status that could land them in court.

And not insult rescuers as pedophiles, etc.

Basically, what chipotle_coyote said.

Not commenting on the specifics of this case, but some economists argue that insider trading should be legalized:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_...

> Yet, many couch investors would prefer to have a CEO who is stable, boring and predictable. People want to put their money in for steady long-term returns, and not worry

A much simpler explanation, lacking the conflict, would be that early, start-up hungry investors prefer the rockstar CEO, and long-term investors would prefer a business-seasoned CEO.

To which I would say: Tesla has been around for 15 years (longer than Facebook!), and as the fans frequently profess, its market capitalization has (in the recent past) already surpassed that of other established car manufacturers. Perhaps it's time to leave the startup image behind.

Elon brings incredible value to his companies. He also brings incredible risk. The error his fans make is in assuming the two are inseparable--that you can't have the space visionary without the libel, or the automotive and energy revolutionary without the fraud.

I think this is a mistake. You could solve most of Elon's problems by giving someone the ability to preview his tweets before he sends them. I can't see how putting a broadcast delay on his twitter feed would stop him from building cars and rockets.

He denied, for many years, that he was a father of his daughter and, while a millionaire, didn't support his daughter or her mother financially.

He was investigated by SEC for, wait for it, securities fraud (stock options backdating including his 7.5 million stock options). He wasn't charged. His CFO and General Counsel weren't so lucky. https://www.cnet.com/news/how-jobs-dodged-the-stock-option-b...

He certainly was an actual frequent drug user, not a one time marijuana puffer.

And many more https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10#ever...

This is not to say that one jerk justifies another but to point the power of narrative.

Musk has already achieved more than Jobs (I put creating 5 companies and dominating fricking space industry, from nothing, in less than 2 decades a bit higher than overseeing development of iPod and iPhone).

But make a few mis-steps on twitter, report it nationally by click hungry press and suddenly he's irresponsible, reckless, drug addicted man child who has to be reigned in by adults.

Zip2, x.com, SpaceX, Boring Company. Elon didn't create Solar City or Tesla. What am I missing?

Also, Jobs did far more than iPod/iPhone. Both in Apple and in his other companies.

Invest in Musk if you believe the future won't happen fast enough if you don't. A corporate board making all the decisions would have been long ago crushed by big oil or bigger manufacturers, or their patents bought and buried to continue the status-quo.

"simply swaps small details" is undercutting the improvements made to the cars, especially with fit and finish, something tesla is rather poor at in my opinion.

my statement is accurate and didn't imply that they redesign the car every year. everyone knows that isn't how it works.

I agree with other comments that things like his fight with the diver was unhelpful. I don't know what was really behind the threat to take things private. Hopefully he learned something and will focus again on what he does best.

Sometimes, established industry needs someone from outside to threaten do do something even if it isn't the most profitable thing to do. I remember when iphones were charging for ringtones and wallpaper. Google's decision to make an open source OS, and threat to build a phone for it if no one else would, changed the whole game.

I'd rather invest time or money in Musk, despite the risk, just because he built the car, landed the rocket, and I want him to be able to do it again. I can respect an investor who just wants a safe return, but they should invest elsewhere and good riddance. He doesn't need that kind of investor always threatening to pull their money if he doesn't play it safer. Maybe instead of going public, he should start the world's largest Kickstarter.

Many of the major ("old, boring") car manufacturers are growing on the EV segment and will overtake Tesla soon if not already there. For example, BMW i3 has sold around 100k units now, about a third of Teslas. Overall the market is dominated by the Chinese manufacturers.

Tesla got where they are because of the media skills and connections of Mr. Musk and the media amplification that follows. With Mr. Musk gone I see rather dire times for Tesla as a company, regardless of whether the company is sold to someone or not.

Full disclosure: have never driven a Tesla but have seen it zoom to a tiny dot in the horizon in a really short time when the traffic lights turned green.

Reminds me of the "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." wrap-up the Slashdot editors gave[1] to iPod upon release.[2]

Any Tesla model is an exciting car, due to performance and handling, the sheen of EV greenness, and the otherness of experience[3], while still being a no-compromise daily driver. Even the range anxiety on longer trips is a strong emotion, count it as a long-term advantage, and yet another spark for endless discussions mentioning the brand. Contrast that with the i3 being mid-to-lower-end model among BMW offerings, and excites close to nobody.

There's no trick in bringing a boring, incremental car to the market; any large company can do it. Nor is it a springboard from rags to riches; it can only work in a slow-moving, low-innovation market, which new car market used to be for decades, but apparently got hot again.

The trick is to bring something that has appearance of new&fresh, that will set an industry-wide trend, will appear to push the envelope, and will make customers into excited fanboys queueing up for the goods, or preordering a year in advance. This is much harder for an established player, due to Innovator's Dilemma, and the inertia of any large organization.

BMW i3 is "yeah, I save a bunch of $$$ on gas, and I can usually fit the groceries in the trunk"; Tesla is, "I GOT 10k LIKES ON MY LUDICROUS MODE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE AND MY SIGNIFICANT OTHER WAS SCREAMING ALL THE WAY ALSO SUNROOF <3 AND I CAN LET GO OF THE WHEEL". Emotions.

Tesla is like the (early) fast and exciting X.com/PayPal among boring old banks with their wire transfers, rather than like umpteenth "also-ran" online payment processor we get every few months.

> Many of the major car manufacturers (...) will overtake Tesla soon if not already there

The IBM overtook Apple for several decades, in no small part thanks to the duopoly with Microsoft and their EEE tactics. And yet here we are, Apple > IBM. However IBM PC was effectively an open platform, while the modern passenger car is at best half-way such. In this race of Tesla against the proverbial Detroit, I bet on Tesla; and I put Elon's antics in the assets column rather than liabilities, with a "any PR is good PR" note.

[1] https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

[2] and then there's the response Dropbox got early on on HN

[3] granted it's not for everybody. Just like Mercedes and BMW fans deride each others' ergonomic&stylistic choices.

Trying to achieve higher rewards generally necessitates risk taking. Desire for the first leads to the second.

High entropy events, by themselves, do not necessitate greater possibilities of higher rewards. There is no great benefit to sticking your face in a fan, as high entropy as that might be.

So the question comes, has Elon lately been doing things high entropy because he's chasing higher rewards by doing them, or are they just high entropy because they're high entropy.

At least for a couple of recent "Elon specials" (paedophile smears, SEC, dope smoking), it looks to me like you would be very hard pressed in arguing that this individual isn't one just partaking in "face in the fan" type entropy...

Please let me know if you can find any perfectly behaved geniuses with a track record of pioneering multiple world-changing companies/technologies.

We live in a post-IRA revelation world.