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Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

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Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#111

Post by dominotw »

tsomctl wrote: post #64
dominotw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For comparison, pretty much every other major auto maker will sell you a book telling you how to fix anything on your vehicle Wow I didn't know this. I have hard time believing this. Where can I find this for my subaru 2019.

Really, modern vehicles require a subscription to a website. Hypothetically, you could pay for the 2 day access and scrape the site for your vehicle. For older vehicles, you can normally find the fsm/workshop manual with some creative googling.

ok found it. https://techinfo.subaru.com

I had no idea this existed. thanks.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#112

Post by dpkonofa »

sokoloff wrote: post #90
geofft wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then it is not a morally defensible system, unless you believe the accumulation of wealth is inherently moral? It seems surprising that capitalism is so easy to argue against on moral grounds. Surely it has some benefit for the society that lives under it?

> Surely it has some benefit for the society that lives under it? It does seem that societies with generally capitalist systems flourish to a much greater degree than societies that are organized under any other dominant economic system.

That really depends on what your definition of "flourish" is. The United States is really the only country that has "flourished" under a capitalist system and that's only if you define that through the definition of capitalism which is to say that there is more capital in the US than in other nations. Attributing that to capitalism, though, and not to years and years of industrial progress, human slavery, and, arguably, immoral behavior is somewhat naive, in my opinion.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#113

Post by [deleted] »

nerddoctor wrote: post #75
Avshalom wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully about $30-50 per share in "market confidence" in the midst of a bear market. Otherwise Tesla probably goes bankrupt in March.

Why would an increase in stock value stop a company from going bankrupt?

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#114

Post by tw04 »

u320 wrote: post #105
tw04 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would label it as extremely bad. You're talking about a guy who has no shame in using a publicly traded company (Oracle) to bail himself out of personal investments gone wrong (See Pillar Data). He's literally everything that is wrong with capitalism embodied. He's made a living off holding customers hostage and milking them for every last penny. Tesla has made a living off customer service.

> You're talking about a guy who has no shame in using a publicly traded company (Oracle) to bail himself out of personal investments gone wrong (See Pillar Data). Kind of like using SpaceX to fund SolarCity and then using Tesla to bail out SolarCity so that SpaceX bond holdings doesn't go bust?

>Tesla to bail out SolarCity so that SpaceX bond holdings doesn't go bust?

Right... so SpaceX doesn't go bust. Not "so he can personally enrich himself". Nothing I've seen thus far from Elon indicates to me that his decision making is based entirely on his personal net-worth. In fact most of his moves show the exact OPPOSITE - that he doesn't care at all about his personal wealth and he cares about changing the world/completing his vision.

I have absolutely no issues with him using one company to prop up another because he needs both to reach his end-goal. If he was using one company to bail-out a failed investment so his bank account looks a little better I've got a LOT of problems with it.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#115

Post by daveFNbuck »

geofft wrote: post #9
tsomctl wrote: post #5

"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's ve…

Isn't the whole premise of capitalism that people motivated by money will build useful things for the world? How did Ellison conclude that shipping mediocrity is more profitable than shipping excellence?

Mediocre things are useful. They can be much cheaper when you don't require excellence. The part of that quote that's more an indictment of capitalism is that they're inflicting misery and screwing their customers. That's what's not supposed to be profitable.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#116

Post by jen20 »

midnitewarrior wrote: post #38
tsomctl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that this doesn't bode well for Tesla. My biggest complaint with Tesla is that they don't provide service manuals or have an open parts department for their vehicles. For comparison, pretty much every other major auto maker will sell you a book telling you how to fix anything on your vehicle, and will sell you the parts and special tools to do so. Not Tesla, and given what we know about Ellison, I very mu…

Apple started the path to normalizing this, and I believe it's core to being responsible for the entire user experience. Personally, I'm not a fan of this, but I understand the motives aside from profit. If a Tesla gets poor maintenance by an unskilled shop, when the vehicle crashes and kills the driver, Tesla gets the black eye and has to defend itself in the media and in front of the NHTSA. Tesla's stock takes the…

> Apple started the path to normalizing this

[citation needed].

As a consumer, I wasn't able to buy detailed service manuals for cars or TVs for long before I couldn't get one from Apple.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#117

Post by burtonator »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #8

The same guy who encouraged Elizabeth Holmes to ignore her engineers in favor of over the top promotion. Also a board member who failed (or chose not) to detect the underlying fraud... Every time I consider closing out my Tesla short position something like this happens and I get more confident that something is awry.

This was my thinking... Ellison spend the early part of Oracle's career overselling, then locking people into a product which they were now stuck with using. It also had the double impact of pricing out honest competitors.

One of the BIGGEST things we need to do is STOP punishing honest companies and politicians.

In the 2008 financial crisis we BAILED OUT banks who basically gambled.

Banks who were honest didn't benefit by being honest. They should have been able to buy up the entire industry at a penny.

The political system has the same issue now. Trump lies and the GOP continues to support him. Honest politicians lose because people want to be told what they already "know" not hard truths.

Their position on coal is a good example.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#118

Post by jen20 »

throwaway765456 wrote: post #72
tsomctl wrote: post #5

"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's ve…

I've always wondered how Mr. Cantrill felt when in 2015, after years of hearing his vitriol about Oracle, more than a few of his Joyent team left him to follow Mark Cavage to Oracle including Node.js frontman TJ. This would have been a substantial hit to the tight US development team. Has Mr. Cantrill spoken on how he processed that?

Probably best not to feed the obvious trolls, but I'd imagine somewhat vindicated when the self-same mistakes made by Cavage that took a long time to correct in Triton appeared in Oracle's cloud APIs a few years later.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#119

Post by Agathos »

azhenley wrote: post #16

A lot of people seem negative about this. Can someone explain why? Are there any implications I should expect (as a Tesla owner and stockholder)?

Seems like more of the same. He'll be a hands-off board member. The board will continue letting Elon do whatever he wants, including the occasional Twitter meltdown.
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