So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient?
The car already has low resale value, and if they did sell it it doesn't get it off the road. I do own one, and honestly I hate driving it around now because of the stigma but its the only car I have and while yes I could sell it at a massive loss thats both a lot of work and a waste of my time, effort, and money.
It was literally the first car I ever bought and was because I liked the convenience of EV's and for the environment. Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own and always have to look over my shoulders, and I don't even like Elon in the first place and never really cared for him.
It's obviously wrong to harass innocent people. But at the same time, Tesla is so anti-consumer that switching cars might actually be beneficial. Tesla workers were caught spying on car owners through the camera, sharing in internal chat videos of people doing "really intimate things" or approaching the car "completely naked." Not only that, they were photoshopping it and memeing. It shows a culture of complete moral breakdown in the company. I definitely wouldn't want a Tesla in my home, even without the current political events.
> So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient?
Can't things be exceptional? "Inconvenient" seems to go very far in diminishing what's happening here, and I think your point would come across very differently without the understatement. Is there really no line he could cross where you would stop calling his politics an "inconvenience" and support direct actions being taken? (Not necessarily this action in particular)
I understand the stigma is painful but I would implore you to consider how that pain affects your outlook and perhaps makes you feel more sympathy for the company than you otherwise would.
And the only people who begin an argument with an ad hominem understand they have no argument at all.
I don't believe that the people who are dying in Ukraine after Starlink pulled out struggled to see reality as the bombs fell. I don't believe that all of the "parasites" as Musk calls them were terminally online before they lost their social security. I'm sure the many veterans he made jobless had a good dose of reality on the battlefield while serving the US. I don't believe that the leaders of so many countries in Europe and America are spending all of their time doomscrolling and I don't think Germany is starting investigations into electoral fraud on the basis of something they saw being terminally online.
And is this worse than what he's done? There are no calls for vandalism, it's only personal details. There was no threat implied wegen he shared the personal details of the daughter of a judge he disagreed with with millions of people right?
Tell that to the thousands who have lost their jobs in careers they no longer feel comfortable pursuing.
Claiming only those who are "terminally online" think this is more than inconvenient is an amazing display of either privilege or not giving a crap. Either way, lol calling kettle.
Seriously? Vandalizing innocent people's property is wrong, but ransacking government institutions is far worse and much more consequential. There's an order of magnitude difference in the number of victims and the ways in which they're affected, which includes death.
Death, you ask? Gutting health agencies, pollution regulators, or international efforts to prevent the spread of disease will all lead to increased numbers of death.
However, it seems that when the scale of the crime outgrows a certain threshold, the perceived severity goes down somehow. It's depressing.
The argument goes: Because 3% of the population is antisocial personality disorder in the screens on TV and the internet tell them it's okay to commit violence against you because Nazis.
> I still don't care. I may just buy another Tesla and a handgun :)
That kind of escalation is very American of you.
I'd like to remind you of the demonstration of the "bulletproof" windows of the Cybertruck and consider quite how bad things may get if Americans don't learn to live with each other without constantly laughing about "triggering" each other when the more literal trigger is on the firearms you have a constitutional right to own.
That so many are, like yourself, so blasé about the risks, was one reason I decided against migrating to the USA when I had the chance.
so you’re advocating for the “peaceful” protests to be allowed to continue? adults know this is improper behavior by the left, but we must just let it play out to avoid triggering the “protesters” who didn’t get their way in the election? why can’t they just act like adults?
> so you’re advocating for the “peaceful” protests to be allowed to continue? adults know this is improper behavior by the left, but we must just let it play out to avoid triggering the “protesters” who didn’t get their way in the election? why can’t they just act like adults?
The only change I have to do to make to your comment for it to be about the events of Jan 6 2021, is a single "left" becoming "right".
Now, as a non-American who isn't immunised and calloused to your nation's vocal rhetoric and use of literal gun sights in political campaign posters, I can't tell how close you are to a civil war.
I would rather not watch you have one, not even at this distance. So please, figure out how to not be cruel to each other.
> Two wrongs don't make a right. (Heck they're even different classifications of wrongs and not remotely comparable given that they're very different.)
Yes. Only one of "invading Capitol buildings to disrupt election confirmation while chanting 'Hang Mike Pence'" and "arson against private company and their vehicles" is actually attempting to overturn an election.
But both can be described by the comment I quoted, modulo s/left/right/
> It'd start by Europeans not egging on Americans to be complicit with or actively commit violence against other people's property.
what direct cost to individuals did Jan 6 cause? did anybody in Jan 6 loop individual citizens in and destroy their property to force alignment? no you say? this is literal terrorism because the entire point is to force an outcome using fear and violence and they should be dealt with according to US terrorism law.
> what direct cost to individuals did Jan 6 cause? did anybody in Jan 6 loop individual citizens in and destroy their property to force alignment?
Other than the funeral costs[0], the medical bills for injuries[1][2], journalists had equipment damaged[2][a] and stolen[3], various people had to increase security due to being doxxed[4], statues within the Capitol buildings were damaged[5], and the Speaker of the House had her laptop stolen[6] (more important due to her position than the device).
You may consider "$30 million"[7] to be peanuts, though that's without the cost of actually policing the event which was over 10x that[8]. The victims by and large, were not so rich as to be able to ignore such costs — even including the representatives (though most of the harm wasn't to their person, just their offices), though for this caveat about mere physical enumerable cost rather than political intimidation I am mainly talking about the journalists who had their stuff destroyed and the police who were injured.
And the FBI still doesn't know who planted the pipe bombs (plural!)[b].
> no you say?
What, exactly, do you think about 1500 people were convicted for doing? And they were convicted, even though Trump then pardoned them[9].
Why did you think Trump was impeached twice?
Why did you think Colorado, Maine, and Illinois tried to block Trump from being on the ballot?
Why, given Trump's record that included him not caring about people chanting to hang his own Vice President[10][11][12], do you think the Republican party allowed him back on their ticket if not for their members being intimidated by these riots?
> this is literal terrorism because the entire point is to force an outcome using fear and violence and they should be dealt with according to US terrorism law.
Yes, the Jan 6 attacks were in fact terrorism.
The fact you're trying to downplay that while being upset about property damage… is, unfortunately, very human.
I say "unfortunately", because that means it's hard to resolve. I can't just tell you to be reasonable, because reason is not how you got to your current state — that's very, very, dangerous, but I can't simply talk you out of this, and that means there's a huge chance you're going to escalate this and then be surprised by the response, which you don't see coming because you can't put yourself in other's shoes and see how you look from their point of view, how you're making enemies out of fellow citizens and making them fear for their lives and want to use against you the very force you say is fine when your own side does it.
Step back. Chill. Meet some people on the other side of the aisle. Share a beer and watch some sports or something. Whatever it is you Americans do for fun. Make friends, before this gets any worse.
Doing that might even prevent it getting worse.
Hopefully.
But here's a question for you: when you get to reading this paragraph, had you read any of these citations and considered them, or did you start drafting your reply performing what is called "arguments-as-soldiers" and disregarding anything that didn't fit your world view?
> But here's a question for you: when you get to reading this paragraph, had you read any of these citations and considered them, or did you start drafting your reply performing what is called "arguments-as-soldiers" and disregarding anything that didn't fit your world view?
TL;DR: 30 million dollars of enumerable damages, ~1500 convictions.
This is exactly the type of thing that makes me like America. Taking risks is an essential part of life and the more open you are to sane risks, the better. The reason I don't move there is tax laws, but boy do I, as a third worlder, want a "gold card".
Sorry, local news websites are a disaster. You can probably find the story by searching terms from the URL slug. That particular story doesn't really matter, it was just the most recent one in my area that came to mind. There is no shortage of similar stories across the US.
You may think yourself as very American, but the real Americans voted to keep you (and pretty much everybody else, don't worry) of their America. I call this cognitive dissonance (or trolling, I'm too simple to tell).
I don’t see a problem there, they take jobs from americans and the current companies abusing the H1B process are doing so not to gain rare knowledge or experience but to abuse people. So i’m totally onboard. H1B should be for people like Musk, not randos that happen to know a few things.
i have a problem with abuse of a system yes. I also have a problem with illegal immigrants. do you think trying to confuse and argue the point is going to change my or anybody’s mind?
You're the one who is confused. I know you're "america first", that was obvious.
You specifically said something which is false: "literally nobody has a problem with immigrants using legal methods".
This is false because your own statements in these very comments are continuing to demonstrate that you, personally, have a problem with immigrants using legal methods.
Abuse of the legal system? That would be a SLAPP, which is something your own example of Elon Musk has done, not "applying for and being granted a visa":
Historically the burden of proof in the legal system is on the authorities, not the accused. There's a name for countries where only people with security clearances are allowed to form opinions.
Not to dogpile too much here, but I think 1992's Unforgiven directed by and staring Clint Eastwood does the best here when it comes to my feeling about this comment:
so wonderful to share this country with folks like you! please consider shifting your scope outside yourself and your own personal protection, and consider the greater good at least occasionally, please.
> Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own
Maybe, but something like 90%+ of all Teslas sold were manufactured after Tesla the company was already on my blacklist due to the ethical issues with supporting Musk.
(There are a number of companies on my blacklist, but off the top of my head I can't recall any others that are specifically there because of the singular actions of an owner.)
If you own Apple or Nike products, you're supporting child slavery. If you own products made in China, you're supporting religious genocide. "Blacklisting" companies is just lazy slacktivism that only someone in the middle-to-upper class Twittersphere (or Blueskysphere) would ever partake in.
Murder & terrorism are morally impermissible, but at least Luigi, or the Unabomber, or the Proud Boys put their lives on the line for whatever ideas (good or bad, you decide) they had. Testicular fortitude that only extends to Hacker News is not very convincing.
What do I do to make the world a slightly better place? I volunteer at my local church and at homeless shelters, I donate, I help my neighbors, I clean up the beach, I organize community gatherings. Enough online activism with grandiose ideas, start with making a small positive change in your local community.
Tesla owner; same boat. I think Austin has voted with its doors enough for me to get the idea, at this point. I got the car in 2001, and it should be good for another 5–7 yrs as my daily commuter. I'm just resigned to my dingy fate, now.
The next car has to be a long hauler; we're looking at hybrid SUV/minivans. After that ... I hope Aptera is shipping.
I’m in Austin and have a Tesla (which I bought new) and I love it. Next car will be another new Tesla as well. Austin loves teslas, they’re everywhere. A handful of degenerate leftists isn’t scaring anyone.
True most CEOs are too cowardly to try to save us from $50 trillion in debt and financial collapse. Fighting the government jobs program of non productive people is something most don’t want to do.
Taking a position with established norms about how the job is to be done and taking direction from elected officials above you is one thing.
Interfering with elections to create a position for yourself and then using threats about further interference to bully the elected officials around you is quite another.
Interference? You mean donations to campaigns, which is entirely legal?
That's not interference. That's how the US system works. If you're upset a Musk for donating, then surely you are upset at others donating too, yes? Because all those contributions had a goal too, often policy changes.
Outside of donations, I see conspiracy theories about starlink and voting machines online, but surely you don't mean that.
What elected officials has Musk "bullied"? Was any of this supposed bulling quoted in context? Was any of this supposed bullying just impolite speech, for which Washington is famous?
This election changed perceptions. Punishing someone after perceptions have changed is morally bankrupt behaviour. This person could have bought their car pre-twitter, waay before perception change, and certainly stated a buy due to environmental concerns.
This sort of blind political hatred against innocents is literally this biggest problem with America today.
If you give somebody money, and they do harmful things with that money, then you are partially at fault. It's not political hatred, I just want people to take some responsibility for their actions.
I don't want to see anybody harmed, or have to take losses beyond the abysmal resale value of their car, but if developing an economy that is compatible with democracy means hurting some feelings along the way, well that sucks but it may be a necessary evil.
You are not even the tiniest bit at fault, if you did not know ahead of time.
You must realise that most people are busy working, trying to put food on the rable, raising a family, and helping their local community. Most don't read hours of news and social media every day, and barely hear anything from Twitter, etc.
Those same people buy thousands of products yearly, from food to cars, and have zero time to anaylise all aspects of each purchase. Expecting them to pay attention, to even know about the latest outrage is absurd.
Five years ago, Elon was still considered a shining light of environmental purity. In five years more, opinions may yet change again! Yet you seek to cause real world harm to the lives of people who bought Teslas, when doing so was considered the very best you could do environmentally?!
This is morally bankrupt. This is not acceptable.
Please, I beg you, think on this. Attitudes such as this are harming democracy, not helping.
How is it harming democracy? Do you think that we shouldn't send a message to investors that letting their money get involved in politics is a good way to to lose that money, or do you think that there's a better way to do so?
I'm aware that there wasn't a good way to predict that the power was going to go to Musk's head like it has. It was a very easy mistake to make, I almost made it as well. But if we avoid classifying it as a mistake, then we protect the value of the brand, and then we too are complicit in the harms caused by its owner--whose legitimacy (in the eyes of our myopic leadership) is derived from the value of his brands.
I'll admit that it's a bit of a hack, there are better ways to implement democracy, but can any of the them be used right now?
>Giving money to an enemy of the people should have consequences, even after the fact. That's how we prevent it from happening in the future.
I'll remember this comment when conservatives are the ones destroying something because the owner/CEO/etc. are Marxist child groomers or whatever. They'll be justified because giving money to an enemy of the people should have consequences, even after the fact. That's how we prevent it from happening in the future.
If what is being destroyed is a bunch of stock prices, and if the owner/CEO/etc. is under fire for using their wallet to disproportionally influence politics, then yeah more power to 'em. It's not about sending a message from left to right, but rather from bottom to top:
> Your contribution to politics should be 1 vote and 0 dollars, or else.
No, everybody does. And they talk to each other about it, and this affects prices and how investments are allocated, which determines whether and which people have government-influencing amounts of power.
I'm not proposing we trash his Tesla, I'm proposing that we maintain the stigma. For better or worse this is how markets work, so lets use them.
In our economy, the value of things is determined by the attitudes of everybody who interacts with those things. That's what I mean by everybody--we all get to decide whether to shame or praise each other based on the decisions we make.
Quite a lot of money has been spent ensuring that people believe--for better or worse--that the symbols that we surround ourselves with are an expression of who we are. That if we wear the right brands, or drive the right kind of car, then others will know that we're the right kind of people. Why else do people wear MAGA hats? Sentiment around symbols is the board on which on which billionaires play power games.
Are you proposing that it should only work in one direction? That it's fine to drive Apple stock up by expressing approval of somebody's MacBook, but it's forbidden to drive Tesla stock down by expressing disapproval of somebody's Tesla? Because that's absurd.
What's crazy is this was always seen as a left wing car. If you drove one of these into small blue collar towns there is a chance you would have been harassed a few short years ago.
Sounds made up. I live in a very lefty part of the Bay Area in California where Teslas abound, and there has never been any kind of campaign against them until recently, just some cynicism about Musk's grandiose claims.
My impression from reading your other comments is that you don't even live in the US. If that's wrong please correct me, but if not I think you should refrain from making counterfactual claims.
You don't need to read my comments, it's in my bio. I do work with US (Bay Area and now Texas) companies (contracting) for last 7 years. IDK why but I do get sucked into US affairs so much which I do not like.
Elon has been harassed online by woke and antifa for years now. Lately by actual people IRL too.
> So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient?
I mean, that kind of politics is kinda why the US has locally-made cars at all, rather than buying them at half the price from China (and that's not just Trump's new thing, the 100% tariff on Chinese EV's was from Biden: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/09/0130c36c7c00-us-1...)
Or why the US briefly switched from "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries".
Or, famously, that time in Boston when the North Atlantic briefly became very weak, very salty, tea.
Montgomery bus boycott, the boycotts of South African Goods in protest against apartheid. Might even be able to argue alcohol and weed being made illegal due to political pressure that converts a boycott into a legal requirement.
> Or why the US briefly switched from "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries".
That never happened, "the US" never did that. What really happened was a few people were dumb for a little while, and a couple of signs were briefly changed.
What's the embodied energy cost of making your EV and driving it for X years compared to a similar ICE vehicle?
EV tire wear (and thus, pollution) is greater due to the extra weight.
If there's an edge on environmental harm reduction, it's marginal, and mostly in terms of reducing CO2 emissions, which is important yes.
The impactful way, not just greenwashed way, to be environmentally friendly is to embrace "public luxury, private sufficiency"- support public libraries, health care, education (and not just to churn out workers...), access to local food (which, given our dependence on petroleum-derived nitrogen instead of birdshit, leading to our population boom, will be rather difficult), urban design that promotes moving around under one's own power (likewise stifling energy-sucking AI- far better to so things ourselves, as our bodies are already burning calories and want to be useful and meaningful), and more- using less than a few thousand tons of CO2/annum for example, or less than 2k Watts/day, something like this.
I hear your concerns, and it sounds like you're whining?
I don't use Amazon anymore, for years now. I'm very close to going without Google. Deleted all my connections to Microsoft, moved away from Windows a few years ago and only use Linux and BSD (quitting videogames helped here, though Valve's Proton didn't help! I appreciate what they're doing, though), unsubbed from all streaming (we just use the library and PBS now), unsubbed from Apple, and more, and while I don't have much money to "vote" with anyway, I feel much better not contributing so much to the vampires (capitalism, neoliberalism (Hayek's term, not just disparaging), surveillance capitalism, etc).
Sell or donate your Tesla and move somewhere where you can walk/bike/wheelchair/bus to work? Embrace mutual aid (Dean Spade has a concise book on this) and help build community? You have a lot of agency, and maybe you have already considered all this (I didn't dig into any of your other posts, I'm just reacting to what sounds like whining, and I'm someone who indulges in that sometimes, but who sees a way out of that pit).
Good luck!
I want to get a Tesla because their driver assist is the best in the industry, hands down. However my friends and family have made it clear that it simply is not an option. I hate Elon too, but the cars shouldn't be political. So looks like I will keep burning gas for the time being.
As a side note, I hope republicans start buying Teslas as a statement. I might actually be able to forgive Elon if he gets republicans in EVs.
The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere. There isn't even really a close second. I don't care about anything else Elon does if he successfully gets the right to care about the atmosphere (or care about owning libs via solar roofs and cyber trucks). He would go down as a martyr in my book.
The effect of the carbon can cause such a war; the impact of such a war is likely to kill fewer than the carbon.
I'm optimistic about the carbon these days. But I also think the Trump administration's position on Ukraine is going to result in a lot of countries developing their own independent nuclear capabilities, and that itself creates more risk of nuclear war.
Perhaps it will be limited to Panama and America attacking each other. The world is looking at how worthless has been the signiatures on the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and considering matters accordingly.
> The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere
Then supporting Musk makes little sense.
He's massively cutting funding for research into addressing climate change or enforcing regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
He played a major role in electing a President who says climate change is a hoax, wants to kill renewable energy, wants to greatly increase fossil fuel use, and wants to get rid of any regulations that try to at least reduce emissions from that fossil fuel.
He promotes conspiracy theories that explain away things that might have been due to or partially due to climate change, thus downplaying the need to address climate change. E.g., that the California wildfires in the Los Angeles area recently were due to a "globalist plot to wage economic warfare and deindustrialize the United States".
Even if a few on the right buy a few EVs specifically because of Musk it won't outweigh the damage the things described above are doing to the effort to fight climate change.
If, somehow, this nonsense causes Republics to think that buying eco-friendly cars is "anti-woke" and buy Tesla cars en-masse to "own the libs", this is still a win for the environment.
Regardless, thanks to how Musk is messing around with politics (domestically via DOGE and internationally via personal spats with government ministers and judges in multiple different countries), I don't see Musk's power surviving very long. How long is high-variance, but if DOGE cuts and counter-tariffs hurt too hard, then Congress could flip in 2 years and Trump may find himself impeached yet again and then Musk will have nobody with meaningful power to ask for help.
> How long is high-variance, but if DOGE cuts and counter-tariffs hurt too hard, then Congress could flip in 2 years and Trump may find himself impeached
Except that the Trump regime is dismantling enforcement of voting protections, dismantling due process, and directly using force against people expressing dissenting political views, all of which are pretty good signs that there won't be anythig approximating free and fair elections in 2026 for Republicans to lose.
These are interesting times, and between (IMO inevitable) catastrophic domestic economic impact, already ocurring international diplomatic incidents, and near universal domestic support for both the 1st and 2nd amendments, I can't predict anything about this.
Have you given SuperCruise a chance? I tried Autopilot in a 22 Model 3, Supercruise in an Equinox EV and BlueCruise in a Mach-e.
Autopilot is very good but I don't fully trust it because it feels overly confident at times which is scary. Also dont like the fac tthat you have to keep squeezing the steering wheel.
Supercruise has a camera monitoring your eyeballs and is only set to run on tested roads that have been mapped out. It just feel like GM is being a lot more honest with their system given these design decisions. Its a really smooth ride in my experience. Im trying to eye a cheap EquinoxEV with supercruise.
Bluecruise kinda drove like a super nervous first time driver. Dont really trust it but if you can get it, it does provide some benefit.
The car already has low resale value, and if they did sell it it doesn't get it off the road. I do own one, and honestly I hate driving it around now because of the stigma but its the only car I have and while yes I could sell it at a massive loss thats both a lot of work and a waste of my time, effort, and money.
It was literally the first car I ever bought and was because I liked the convenience of EV's and for the environment. Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own and always have to look over my shoulders, and I don't even like Elon in the first place and never really cared for him.