Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 225 posts

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#161

Post by tachyonbeam »

lisper wrote: post #78
travisoneill1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. This is what I used to think, but every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound. I never even hear about the other EV's by themselves, only as the competition to Tesla. Anybody who watches the news would have known that the Model 3 was a colossal fa…

> every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound That's true, but I think it's because of bad marketing rather than bad technology. The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3, but it is being positioned as a low-end car, a competitor to the Honda Civic rather than the Model 3. Power seats, for example, are not even offered as an option. That is not a car a rich person is going to buy to impress thei…

AFAIK, GM is selling the Bolt at a loss. They don't have the ability to source batteries in quantities or at a cost low enough to compete with Tesla. This is also a problem for much of the EV competition. Tesla made the right bet by vertically integrating battery production and aiming for economies of scale. This is a huge competitive advantage that many people fail to understand. Batteries are most of the cost of an EV, and you need a lot of them. It's the reason why you don't see "Tesla killers" overtaking the market.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#162

Post by api »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #71
api wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would also explain his energy level. Manics can sometimes "use" their episodes to achieve hyperfocus, but as with synthetically induced mania (amphetamine) there are side effects.

A old DJ/Raver friend mentioned a friend of his went through episode where he moved to Detroit (or some such) put together a Rap Band as their manager and got it signed to a well known label. He knew absolutely no one in Detroit, nothing about rap music, and had no contacts with anyone at a label. He did that in three months.

LOL. I was huge raver from ~18-22 and saw lots of that type of stuff from both natural and un-natural mania.

I had a friend once who had a (natural) manic episode and wanted to get rid of a non-running car in his garage. He cut the car into small chunks with a large Dremel-type tool and threw it away in the dumpster. I mean the entire car. This took about 48 hours. The dumpster was so heavy they had to bring a special truck, and someone had to ask who threw away a car. I think the apartment complex forwarded him a bill for special industrial trash removal.

HN-worthy nerd tangent:

Remember all the discussion a while back about the threat posed to humanity by runaway self-improving AI super-intelligences?

I've always thought that you don't need a super-intelligence in the IQ sense. You just need something with the intelligence of a moderately smart human with super-focus and super-motivation. Imagine something that ran by default in the state you describe above but with no cognitive impairment side effects. That would be super-human. A "race" of these would find conquering humanity trivial even if their IQ-type intelligence were merely comparable to ours.

Most humans exist in a state of low-grade depression most of the time. I have for years thought that the dopamine pathway is the rate limiter for human achievement, not IQ or memory or anything else. It's one of the many reasons I'm a moderate IQ skeptic. Our reward/motivation system is calibrated for a very slow hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The problem is that we have not found a good way to artificially boost this without side effects that impair cognition in ways that result in things like dumb comments on Twitter that get you in trouble with the SEC.

Amphetamine|coke|mania is a helluvadrug.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#163

Post by DennisP »

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #121
DennisP wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be daunting even if he weren't simultaneously running a space launch company and personally leading the rocket engine design team: https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560?s=21 Though if it's all too much and he'd rather focus on rockets, I don't see why he wouldn't just step down as Tesla CEO. If things go south he could just blame the new CEO.

Musk is basing his entire funding plans for Mars colonisation in Tesla succeeding. Read his new CEO contract, it's another moon shot. He doesn't intend to step down any time soon. Apparently a new wave of shorts FUD has started to spread now which probably means Tesla has something new to unveil and people are preparing for the next round of hate. Let's see how the semi and the Y turn out.

The funding plan for Mars is based on the SpaceX satellite internet business. The only way Tesla can contribute is if Musk donates his personal shares or compensation, unless somehow he can make a Mars trip profitable for the other Tesla shareholders.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#164

Post by gamblor956 »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #159
lisper wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound That's true, but I think it's because of bad marketing rather than bad technology. The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3, but it is being positioned as a low-end car, a competitor to the Honda Civic rather than the Model 3. Power seats, for example, are not even offered as an option. That is not a car a rich person is going to buy to impress thei…

Yes I think you're right, but that may be an even harder gap to close than tech. Good Marketing: Crazy genius CEO who is always in the news, builds rockets in his spare time, launches his car into space, smokes weed with Joe Rogan, and constantly thumbs his nose at the authorities. Customers like this company so much that the CEO can ask for volunteers and actually get a response. $0 advertising budget. All marketing…

According to their SEC filings, Tesla spends between $60 and $100 million annually on marketing, and they've definitely placed billboards in major cities since I have seen several of them in the LA area.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#165

Post by gamblor956 »

mandeepj wrote: post #119
travisoneill1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. This is what I used to think, but every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound. I never even hear about the other EV's by themselves, only as the competition to Tesla. Anybody who watches the news would have known that the Model 3 was a colossal fa…

Musk has already promised a $25k Model 3 in 3 years. https://electrek.co/2018/08/17/tesla-cheaper-25000-electric-...

Musk also promised to have all of his tweets reviewed prior to posting, and we all know how well he kept that promise...

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#166

Post by sangnoir »

kamaal wrote: post #144
elliekelly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no such thing as “FU money” with the SEC though. They can bar him from serving in any fiduciary capacity on behalf of any company under their jurisdiction. For life. Musk is playing with fire.

>>They can bar him from serving in any fiduciary capacity on behalf of any company under their jurisdiction. Seems like a nice idea to encourage him to start a car company some where in Germany. Also the fact that over zealous prosecutors go after industrialists won't exactly motivate(more like scare away) people wanting to start companies. Sometimes you must opt not to fight a few contests. The fact that you can win…

> Also the fact that over zealous prosecutors go after industrialists won't exactly motivate(more like scare away) people wanting to start companies.

Strange how the invisible hand of the market gets paralyzed when it comes to "job creators". If every industrialist relocates to the Bahamas or Panama but the opportunity for new companies is still there - new people you've never heard of will crop up to start them!

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#167

Post by sangnoir »

solarkraft wrote: post #138
serf wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that 'fraud' and 'exposed' are complete hyperbolic falsities , but what industries did Musk start, exactly? The closest I can think of is his early e-banking-ish stuff.

- Internet banking (has wasn't the only one, but successful in it [he participated in what is now called PayPal]) - Commercial space launches (admittedly there's competition, but with different goals/ none have come this far) with LANDING ROCKETS - Consumer electric vehicles (How would you disagree with this? There was nothing serious before Tesla. ) He hasn't invented much technology. But often enough he saw that we…

> How would you disagree with this? There was nothing serious before Tesla.

I would disagree with this by saying he wasn't with Tesla at the start. He saw the potential of the industry early - but he didn't start it.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#168

Post by sangnoir »

smallgovt wrote: post #79

I don't see how he can reasonably defend himself in this situation. His tweet was both material and inaccurate. Tweeting material information without clearance is obviously against his settlement. What confuses me is that TSLA's price hasn't suffered. I have a hunch this isn't as serious of a matter as is being reported, but I'm not sure why.

> What confuses me is that TSLA's price hasn't suffered.

If I'm to speculate, it's because last time Tesla tangoed with the SEC, it got a slap on the wrist. Perhaps the market is expecting more of the same.

Tangentally - I don't know how common this belief is, but Matt Levine in his newsletter argued that the best way the SEC could protect Tesla's shareholders is to not get rid of Elon Musk regardless of his behaviour. I'm not saying that is Levine's belief - it might have been a thought experiment - and I disagree wholeheartedly with it because it doesn't consider 2nd order effects on CEO behaviour against a powerless SEC and how this would impact other non-Tesla shareholders.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#169

Post by elliekelly »

ceejayoz wrote: post #153
kamaal wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>They can bar him from serving in any fiduciary capacity on behalf of any company under their jurisdiction. Seems like a nice idea to encourage him to start a car company some where in Germany. Also the fact that over zealous prosecutors go after industrialists won't exactly motivate(more like scare away) people wanting to start companies. Sometimes you must opt not to fight a few contests. The fact that you can win…

Is there any reason to believe Germany's version of the SEC wouldn't have similar issues with this sort of behavior?

Not at all. In my experience European financial regulators are significantly less likely to tolerate companies trying to argue technicalities as Musk's team has done in response to the SEC's show cause order. European regulators expect compliance with the spirit of the law while U.S. regulators tend to expect compliance with the black letter law. Certainly pros & cons to both approaches but Musk's behavior certainly wouldn't fly under either regime.
Post reply on HN