I don't disagree but it seems this time the good economy part only exists in their rhetoric.
The fact that the numbers are going up because of a bubble and a lot of questionable deals is not relevant. That's a problem for someone else to handle later.
The people who get burned there are the ones unwilling / unable to track inflation.
Uh, if it deflates, the numbers go down? Isn't that the definition? The same numerical value of currency represents more value as compared to assets etc - hence things get "cheaper", with the side effect of money getting harder to get
Is that happening though?
The future is pretty much in China now as far as green energy tech and consumption goes. Two bad elections and the US has basically lost world leader status in just over a decade.
However, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the above paragraph ascribes genius to what is more simply explained by incompetence. It's more likely Musk believed he could make Hyperloop work, but couldn't. Similarly...
- Musk thought he could buy an election and gain the inside track for his companies, but was too witless to maintain good relations with the politician he bought.
- He bought Twitter seemingly on a lark and proceeded to rapidly run it into the ground.
- He put a bunch of script-kiddies in charge of DOGE, which promptly made a mess of an entire government and created a historically massive deficit while gutting government services.
- He alienated the core customer demographics that had formerly been one of Tesla's mains sources of income. (The other being government grants and subsidies which... whoops.)
Now, Tesla's shareholders are weighing whether or not a man with Musk's recent track record is worth a trillion dollar pay package[1]. It's gobsmacking that they even need to think about this.
So, no, Musk is not some evil genius undoing green energy by deliberately creating a false solution that fails to deliver. He's just a garden variety mediocrity who has been promoted far past his capabilities or character and has been utterly undone by the resulting ego trip. He's an object lesson in just how much damage the wrong person in the right place and time can do to the world.
[1]https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/musk-could-leave...
I think you mischaracterize that deal. It's more if he can hype the stock from $1.3t to $8.5t he gets a 15% cut, in stock. It wouldn't be a bad deal for TSLA speculators.
I wouldn't drive a Tesla if it was free, I'd just sell it for whatever - that brand is torched for me.
This more-or-less summarizes American geopolitical and economic attitudes towards China from 1970 until 2016.
"Sure, they're problematic, but so are we, and their product is cheaper, so..."
All the show-stopping problems you mentioned applied to internal combustion before.
Unless electrical generation gets less efficient somehow, the economics are trending back.
That is misleading. First, China wasn't economically productive in 1970, during the Cultural Revolution. It wasn't until the 1990s that things began to subtantially improve, and then take off in the 2000s.
Also, they weren't so problematic - they were a good trading partner, and they were democratizing slowly: They had with a major setback in 1989, but were improving until Xi took over.
Under Xi, it took a few years to see what would happen, which trends were temporary and which were long-term problems; which could be reversed and which would only get worse. I think the problem calcified, in large part, because the US abandoned universal human rights in large part. If the US doesn't advocate that, who will? How can people in China say that freedom is a right and democracy superior if the US doesn't.
Tesla, in particular, boils down to how Americans respond to marketing. We love the idea of buying organic, environmentally-friendly technology that makes us part of the solution. It doesn't matter if Congolese children are dying in the cobalt mines to make EV-grade lithium ion batteries, us Americans need to virtue signal with our wallet. Buy the latest iPhone, save up for a Tesla, it's all part of the new-age jewelry we wear to make ourselves feel worth something.
It was damn good marketing.
The only realistic alternative - not "virtue signalling" and instead buying polluting ICE vehicles - is far worse. I'm ok with virtue signalling. It's not like America is going to get walkable cities and world-class public transit anytime before 2060.
I'm definitely ok with 'virtue signalling' though. It's a lot better than vice signalling.
edit the embarrassing
I assume you’re talking about Portland. Speaking as someone who lives in Portland, you’re grossly misinformed. It’s time to change your filter bubble.
i really wish /s wasn't so damn necessary
If joining Montana is "success" you've set your sights too low
/s (no offence to Montanans, it's a beautiful state. I just couldn't resist)
I'm also curious about the 'massive insurrection'. Is that like the guy in the frog costume?
That's the guy.
Both inflate the ego.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic! The inevitable swing towards authoritarianism in the US happened much sooner than I expected, which also means it'll swing back again much sooner too, likely to be way before 2060. I'll throw out a prediction and say that the soon-to-be-authoritarian state that is under construction right now might fall as soon as 2035-2040, and it'll be a wild swing the other way once it happens.
There are decades and centuries where authoritarians and dictators prevail. There is no timeline for guaranteeing democracy and human rights will prevail.
It takes action, diligence, and sacrifice to preserve those things. And even more to regain them once lost.
Of course it eventually falls down, everything does. I'm not saying it won't be difficult, nor many people will ultimately die, and the country will be very different. But it will happen, if not sooner, then later, like in every other place in the world.
By defintion, if it “never fell”, it would be one of the authoritarian states we have today, so the obvious lack of any example fulfilling that criteria doesn't demonstrate anything one way or the other.
Now, if you could say something like “point to any authoritarian regime existing after <year> that had existed for longer than <span in years>”, that might tend to support the claim that, at least after a certain point in time, authoritarian regimes tended to have a particular finite lifespan (of course, you can never prove that currently-existing regimes aren’t exceptions to that withot access to future knowledge.)
At one point I had a hypothesis based on a few notable examples that with certain definitional bounds this might work with some point in the 20th century and about 80 years (even had a bit of process explanation, though not a strong theory on why it didn't apply earlier beyond the general spread of democratic ideals) but I never rigourously checked if there might be exceptions.
(Of course, plenty of authoritarian regimes fall only to be replaced by different authoritarian regimes, too.)
Because you didn't end your sentence with "Plenty of autocracies last forever" but instead you gave them a duration. Maybe that duration sounds long, but it ends eventually, which is exactly my point.
Think more of the earlier end of medieval era, where the peasant class was mostly incapable against feudal armies, even in many cases with massive numbers on their side.
There’s an entire surveillance state, eyes everywhere, gait recognition, massive intelligence networks all at a scale unimaginable by kings and dictators of the past.
However, I won't be buying a Tesla again. I would also not buy another car if I can help it, but I need a car to see family and do relatively long distance tasks.
> us Americans need to virtue signal how much we love green energy and saving the planet.
Again, more FUD made up by the anti-EV crowd. Most people who buy EVs buy them because they are just better cars. In China, EVs are more of a national security concern: they have to import oil, which exposes them to international conflict. Importing less oil = less exposure, which is a big win for the country. The US has a lot of oil-entrenched interests.
It also goes in lots of other stuff, and is basically a byproduct of Congolese copper production.
The kids are doing artisinal mining because when capitalism doesn't need you to make money, you are pretty fucked. The big mines can make plenty of money with very few workers, leaving no need to build a decent civil society. Something to bear in mind for when our glorious AI future arrives.
Every chance that some countries become the Norway of AI and everyone is rich while others become the resource cursed Congo of AI and a tiny minority become rich and others are left to rot.
Congo is so resource rich, that the state can sustain itself easily with simple, low skilled extraction of resources, without the need to invest in its populace to increase economic output through other, more difficult means.
As for the second paragraph, I mostly agree but nothing you said obviates the virtue signalling that people endlessly associated Tesla with pre-2015. I say this not because I think EVs are bad, but because so much of America's congestive dissonance is rooted in the "Tesla good" aphorism burned into their brain for no reason besides feel-good marketing.
Pre-2015 the best selling EV in America was the Nissan Leaf. Source: https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10567
To be fair, most CEOs does that, but I think his downfall was really everything that he did besides just over-promising and under-delivering. He could have continued as-is, without all the political stunts and activities, and I'm sure Europeans would still have bought Teslas sometimes. Now the brand is poisoned pretty much world-wide, which wouldn't have happened just because of "over-promise and under-deliver", it takes a lot more for stuff like that to happen.
The equivocation here is quiet something.
For what it's worth there are battery chemistries now that don't require cobalt - LiFePO4 for example, which are already being used in vehicles. And sodium based batteries suitable for vehicles are around the corner as well, these don't even require lithium, all you need for these is table salt or desalination brine.
Anyway, the alternative to batteries is combustion, and that's just as nasty - we're paying the people that attacked the US (9/11), Israel (Oct 7th) and a sovereign European nation (Ukraine) billions upon billions of dollars each year for their oil and gas. Thanks but no thanks, we got to get rid of fossil fuels because with the exception of Norway and the US, almost all major relevant suppliers of them are religious autocracies and/or kleptocracies.
By bulk they use sodium, aluminium and iron - all of which are very abundant.
China is dominating that field as well.
What does anyone care about the people who attacked Israel? The Arab Gulf has rivers of oil required for driving human economic progress forward. they have been consistent about suppressing Islamists within their borders. The Saudi security infrastructure had voided Bin Laden's citizenship since the 1990s and notified the US & their Western partners.
Pinning Hamas on the Arab Gulf might advance your narrative, but it's provably false for anyone willing to actually probe that claim.
>we got to get rid of fossil fuels because with the exception of Norway and the US, almost all major relevant suppliers of them are religious autocracies and/or kleptocracies.
LMAO. Imagine a (likely) Western European preaching about morals after ethnically cleansing three entire continents? If morals ever mattered to anyone, we'd have known before now.
I want to see theocracies gone.
> The Arab Gulf has rivers of oil required for driving human economic progress forward.
Solar energy is cheaper and it doesn't need to be trucked around on ships, threatening insanely expensive disasters.
> they have been consistent about suppressing Islamists within their borders.
... and instead funding them in Western countries, yeah. Saudi funded madrasa schools or imams funded by oilsheik countries are a massive problem, although I admit a part of that is our fault as well for not running theology studies in our universities for Islam (unlike for Christian denominations).
> Pinning Hamas on the Arab Gulf might advance your narrative, but it's provably false for anyone willing to actually probe that claim.
Well, Hamas is strongly supported by Qatar and Iran.
> LMAO. Imagine a (likely) Western European preaching about morals after ethnically cleansing three entire continents?
Just because we did massive mistakes in the past, there's no reason we have to continue doing them now.
How they choose to organize their society is none of your business. Whenever any Arab society becomes democratic, it's almost guaranteed they'll vote in Muslim Brotherhood types that'll be joined at the hip with Islamist movements. So, you don't want rapidly liberalizing benevolent monarchies, but rather democratic Islamists? Wasn't it the Americans who nudged the Egyptian military to topple Morsi after the Arab Spring brough an Islamist to power? Democracy until whoever we dislike is elected by the people.
It was the Western powers messing around with Mossadegh's democratically-elected regime in Iran that led to its fall and later down the line, the rise of the Shia-extremist Iran.
You westerners are so full of hubris. You don't know how to leave well-enough alone.
>Solar energy is cheaper and it doesn't need to be trucked around on ships, threatening insanely expensive disasters.
That's none of your business either. No western country is accelerating the renewable transition. Stay out of the way of those doing it, and don't pontificate to those providing energy for civilization now.
>... and instead funding them in Western countries, yeah. Saudi funded madrasa schools or imams funded by oilsheik countries are a massive problem, although I admit a part of that is our fault as well for not running theology studies in our universities for Islam (unlike for Christian denominations).
That's a YOU problem! Western governments hold a monopoly of violence within their own borders. You can simply shut down Islamist mosques. If you refuse, you implicitly permit their activities. There's a reason why extreme preachers are imprisoned/executed in the Arab Gulf, but they find an audience in the West. You allowed it; it's a you problem.
>Well, Hamas is strongly supported by Qatar and Iran.
And Israel too, right? Are we going to gloss over that? That these fighters are mostly orphans, whose parents and grandparents where marched out of their homes at gunpoint and had their homes stolen?
>Well, Hamas is strongly supported by Qatar and Iran.
You're still making these mistakes now, like the ongoing genocide in Gaza. You don't get to pontificate or preach. You don't have the moral capital. No one takes the West's moral posturing serious. The only people who do are developing countries paying lip service so they can get aid handouts. No one cares. Pack it up.
Israel has a long list of their own theocratic traits, fwiw. Unless you just don’t allow religious people to vote you’re never going to get a perfect secular government anywhere.
Telsa sells a huge number of vehicles to Americans who couldn't care less about the environment but do care about buying a car that can rip through 0-60 in under 3 seconds.
ICE vehicles are simply inferior for most use cases now. They're only holding on because a huge number of people would be out of work if we abandoned obsolete transportation technology. Continuing ICE mass production is an actual socialist make-work scheme at the end of the day.
Love how you were able to take Musk's missteps, layer marketing, and blend in the emotional heart wrenching, think of the (Congolese) children!
Of course, fossil fuels are the ONLY solutions, otherwise you are a victim of marketing or a horrible person for not thinking of (Congolese) children!
If you really care about children at all or any life, first thing would be get off fossil fuels. The right metric is Deaths/TWH: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
this was never going to happen. the capitalist class are never going to be the ones to get us out of debt; they cause and benefit from it. it's his entire business model.
Not that his own debt isn't going to cause him problems when the TSLA share price stops defying gravity like Wile E. Coyote, it's just that his problems are shaped more like "being a cult leader".
But let's look at the structure for a bit...
- Citizens United has allowed unfettered amounts of dark money to flow into our elections, disproportionately benefiting the uber wealthy
- The Senate greatly favors rural states, sometimes 60 - 1 by vote weight
- The House is pretty much a race to the bottom in terms of gerrymandering, where many districts are pretty much unloseable
- Many states purge rolls and make it harder to vote by closing polling places, restricting early access, adding id requirements, and restricting mail in voting. Combined with the fact that election day is on a random Tuesday which we don't take off as a nation to go vote
- Education is... not in a great place. Many many people have _no idea_ how the system works at all, or what's happening within it day to day. But they are getting inundated with 7 second flashes of information and misinformation on infinite feeds which bubble their users, lead them to increasingly extreme content, and make it hard to distinguish between fact and fiction
So yea, he's well understood in that half the country has no idea he's all over Epstein's list and think the felonies he's been charged with are bogus while cheering on the prosecution of Letitia James for renting out an apartment that said she could rent it out in the contract she signed
And we voted for him in the sense that only 7 states seem to matter in our presidential elections, and we're constantly inundated with information about how our votes barely matter cause of all the imbalances in elections at every level
I don't know if you noticed, but the discourse in right-wing politics that's absolutely nothing to do with Chicago school anymore. They don't even bring up free markets.
It's an acknowledgment that the entire economy in the US is cartel or Monopoly
I think that's just the Trump version of the GOP, and the Dems followed along, dismissing economics - an attempt at truth - for shallow partisanship. For example, the New York Times fired their economist columnists, such as Paul Krugman.
This is also voter/public appeasement. There are many rural communities that depend on fossil fuel related jobs and will vote to protect them.
"These policies block a free market and the brilliant new businesses that can thrive and deliver solutions to everyone."
I'd be more inclined to share this view if the manufacturing were done in the US. But we can't really compete on manufacturing costs. Remove the policies and the money still goes to the rich and we lose jobs too.
It's true to an extent, but technological transitions happen regularly. Everything we have now is a product of a prior transition.
> Remove the policies and the money still goes to the rich and we lose jobs too.
Prices drop, and also the money goes to those who can innovate in the real economy. Manufacturing isn't the only sector of the economy, and we want to build the new sectors and industries, not the ones that were successful 75 years ago.
Yes, and that doesn't refute that people will vote to protect their jobs. If they were offered alternatives, then maybe it would gain more traction in those areas. Eg you can't mine coal anymore but we'll start up a solar panel plant here.
"and we want to build the new sectors and industries"
And what are those? Most of the economy is shit for job seekers right now. We continue to automate and outsource. Right now it looks like nursing and the trades are some of the few things actually growing.
The challenge of being on the leading edge economically (i.e., not being a middle-income country following the road blazed by others), is you don't always know.
Certainly IT, non-GHG energy, ...
Lets hope PG&Es price gouging kicks-off people to look for off-grid solution. EVs have humongous batteries, home batteries are getting pretty cheap. With solar + EV + home battery there is a strong economic case for a large number of people in CA to switch to off grid. Which makes PGE raise rates, driving more people to go off grid. California is a big enough market, which can create this new demand for off grid, new companies and economies of scale.
- Tax imports of panels and batteries
- Tax and oppose new installations.
- Only offer disincetive grid prices to those having panels on their houses. Low pay or negative pay to push to grid, higher cost to consume from the grid.
- Tax installed panels, even off-grid ones.
- Introduce new onerous "safety" requirements.
The treatment of fossil fuels and renewables fits: Block the obviously more economical and better long-term solution in order to shovel money toward the entrenched wealthy. That it sabotages the future due to climate change and economic inefficiency doesn't seem to be a significant factor to them.
I forgot, one of the entrenched corporate wealthy told us that climate change isn't a big deal, and we should send money to his and his friends for solutions.
I'm not anti-business; in fact, quite the opposite: These policies block a free market and the brilliant new businesses that can thrive and deliver solutions to everyone.