>>Your views on Musk changed precisely when everyone else's did
NO they did not. If I was like you, I'd over-generalize and say that "you are just like every other right-wing nutter who only believes a limited view of the world and must slam any other view, regardless of how disconneced from the facts..."
But I won't. I'll explain that my view changed when Musk went from delivering as much or more than he claimed, as was the case with early SpaceX and Tesla. to massively over-promising and under-delivering, e.g., now nearly a decade late on his FSD, so late on Starship that his first cricumlunar customer already bailed, making inflated promises about AI, lying about OpenAI, delivering Cybertruck a half-decade late and with crappy quality, etc., etc., etc. One particular turning point was when he argued about software engineering in public with one of Twitter's lead engineers, and it was obvious to me (with some background in commercial software) that Musk was nothing but bluster and bullshit; it became clear he is not a master engineer, he's a master manipulator. I have far less respect for the latter.
As you can see, it has absolutely zero to do with whatever 'anti-establishment' carp you are ranting on about. But you seem to enjoy your fact-free life more, so carry on.
Musk has always over-promised. The entirely left-wing establishment news media turned on him when he started criticizing the sacred cows of and growing support for censorship by the political left, which mainstream journalists, unionized as they all are, try to show solidarity with.
All his faults came into laser focus, and a disproportionate share of coverage became negative in its slant.
Nothing in his entrepreneurial strategy changed since 2018. Ordinary people just don't appreciate how ideologically biased mainstream news media is, so are taken in by the change in how they choose to portray him.
Arguing that your 'champion' has ALWAYS been a liar — that argument does not mean what you think it means
>>don't appreciate how ideologically biased mainstream news media is,
"The liberal media" is the biggest lie ever. It may once have been the case, and while some still wear liberal clothes, 90% of the news media, including 'local' media, is owned and run by only SIX corporations. While some operations have unions, they are virtually powerless to even slow down massive newsroom layoffs, and the corporations that aren't flat-out right-wing yellow sheets (e.g., Fox, [0]), are nevertheless all-in on pro-'conservative' politics as both the corporations and their owners & leaders dislike being taxed at higher rates.
>> so are taken in by the change in how they choose to portray him.
Right, so all people are mere sheep being "taken in" by the evil news media, except for you... As you rant on in every more circular ways, that becomes less and less convincing, and in fact look far more like you are the one taken in by RW populist rags who flood the zone with lies and opinion designed to flatter your biases.
The fact is that your hero, who we agree always lied, initially delivered some really great advances, and initially had the reputation of an engineering wizard, has in more recent years failed to deliver on decades-old 'promises', and has shown himself publicly to be less of a master engineer and more of a master manipulator. His focus has obviously changed from engineering to social media nonsense.
I can see that from his own writings. I did not need any news media whatsoever to observe this. Many other people also can view this. Except for you.
Consider taking your own advice, stop reading the media, and start going to the actual source data.
And yes, providing many arguments that saying two opposite and mutually contradictory things in marketing vs actual operations is somehow OK, actually convinces us that no, it is systematic lying and definitely not OK. The marketing is fraudulent and the operations are proof of that.
[0] Fox, which settled for $787 million for repeatedly lying about elections, and literally argues in court that no reasonable person would believe their announcers)
>>Arguing that your 'champion' has ALWAYS been a liar — that argument does not mean what you think it means
He's not my champion. I generally like him, but disagree with him on some issues. I defend anyone against clearly agenda-driven attacks, whether I support them or not.
>>90% of the news media, including 'local' media, is owned and run by only SIX corporations.
Is that why the media conspired to hide the Hunter Biden laptop story during the elections?
The corporations cannot override their unionized employees, because of labor laws and collective bargaining agreements.
And the corporations themselves are often dependent on the labyrinth of regulatory restrictions inhibiting competition, and government contracts, for their bottom line, so are by no means biased toward political parties that defend free market principles.
>>Right, so all people are mere sheep being "taken in" by the evil news media, except for you...
I think the people who have turned on Musk have been taken in, and I haven't. Naturally I think I'm right. Now what I think doesn't matter. What does is the evidence I provide, like the coincidence of public opinion and news media coverage turning against Musk precisely when he began vocally criticizing positions espoused by the political left, like advocating censorship of views critical of tbe Democratic party, and minority viewpoints on COVID and gender pronoun use, on the largest social media sites.
>>The fact is that your hero, who we agree always lied, initially delivered some really great advances, and initially had the reputation of an engineering wizard, has in more recent years failed to deliver on decades-old 'promises',
Tesla hit sales records precisely before and during the period when the mainstream/establishment turned on him. Tesla became the most successful US automaker in a generation, and for a time, was the most valuable automaker in the world. And all while building only fully electric vehicles.
SpaceX made enormous strides in reusable rockets, with record numbers of launches of Falcon 9, and significant advances on its fully reusable Starship space vehicle, in exactly the same period when you are claiming he was falling short.
Look at this graph of number of space launches per year:
The massive increase in US launches was solely due to SpaceX. To put it another way: the US restoring its leadership in the pivotally important space industry was entirely due to Musk's company.
Sp no, your arguments don't stand to reason. His behavior and performance would not explain a significant portion of the population turning against him.
The establishment, which includes all the left wing news guilds which dominate news media, turning against him for his anti-establishment comments, would.
>>I defend anyone against clearly agenda-driven attacks
Well, you have clearly massively misidentified my comment, from the start to the last comment.
I have no conspiracy theory or agenda. I simply observed, over time, from Musk's and Tesla's OWN STATEMENTS that he and Tesla insist that "Full Self Driving" is a legitimate claim (despite failing to prove it in court and settling to avoid a verdict) and that this is in contrast to the requirement that the driver be '100% in control at all times'.
One of those is a plain language lie. It does not require a conspiracy theory or agenda to point this out.
Yet you are more clearly pursuing your own agenda and conspiracy theories.
I've many times defended Musk on here, but no longer do as I have more information.
In contrast, you just posted this conspiracy theory:
>>like the coincidence of public opinion ... Tesla hit sales records precisely before and during the period when the mainstream/establishment turned on him.
This is not evidence, it is a theory that there is a conspiracy against Musk. Your claim is that it is not real people, but some cabal of unionized journalists (btw, only about 17% of journalists are unionized) that conspired to print lies to turn people against Musk.
You overlook entirely the most likely explanation, which is that Musk's own statements, often designed to be outrageous, speak for themselves.
Musk obviously chose his side and insists on being extremely blatant about it. I've never seen a CEO tell everyone to "Go fuck yourselves" on a public stage, or most of the other blatantly attention-seeking comments Musk has made.
The fact is that Tesla's primary customers are environmentally-conscious, which goes with more left-leaning politics, yet Muck choose the right-wing side, who typically deny climate change issues and hate electric cars.
He can have his opinions, but as he's not a politician, it was an extremely stupid business move to broadcast them so strongly. Or, maybe it's brilliant and he'll sell more Cybertrucks the more truck-driving RW customers than he'd ever sell Model-Xs to LW customers. But it does not look like it's working out that way.
But zero of this requires a conspiracy of the 1/6 of journalists who are unionized.
And it's laughable to accuse me of being media-agenda driven when I haven't lived in a household with a cable subscription for 2+ decades, and I treat all news media with great suspicion and work hard to find more accurate sources. While I've defended Musk on HN for his innovations at SpaceX, I also noticed that his executives have said that they have a team dedicated to handling Musk, creating a bubble around him to insulate the organization from his toxicly disruptive influence. There are thousands of other examples.
As the famous quote goes: "When the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do?"
>I have no conspiracy theory or agenda. I simply observed, over time, from Musk's and Tesla's OWN STATEMENTS that he and Tesla insist that "Full Self Driving" is a legitimate claim (despite failing to prove it in court and settling to avoid a verdict) and that this is in contrast to the requirement that the driver be '100% in control at all times'.
If the misimpression created by the marketing term is corrected by the explicit and repeated warnings and instructions given to Tesla drivers, then the marketing term cannot be blamed for inattentive driving.
>This is not evidence, it is a theory that there is a conspiracy against Musk.
The coincidence is the evidence here.
>The fact is that Tesla's primary customers are environmentally-conscious, which goes with more left-leaning politics, yet Muck choose the right-wing side, who typically deny climate change issues and hate electric cars.
So you are, in fact, supporting my point, which is that the attacks on him intensified due to the political views he expressed.
Like I said:
"Both Musk and Tesla are far from perfect, but the lengths that people go to to attack them is obviously agenda-driven and a result of emotions"
Trying to blame Autopilot accidents on Tesla instead of inattentive drivers is example of that.
>btw, only about 17% of journalists are unionized
Which major newspapers and TV networks in the US are not unionized?
>He can have his opinions, but as he's not a politician
In a democracy, everyone is supposed to express their political opinions.
You opened your mind too far here and your brain may have fallen out.
Have you heard of Fox News and the Murdoch empire? Could you explain how either Murdoch isn't part of the US establishment news media or how it is that he's "left-wing" ?
News Corp and its subsidiaries own well under 10% of newspapers and TV networks in the US, and being outliers as they are, they are incessantly attacked.
Where do you think the media and political power concentrates in the US? The Republican party or the Democratic Party?
89% of cities with a population > 100,000 in the US have a Democrat mayor. All of the public sector unions support the Democrats. All of the news guilds, and most of their members, support the Democrats.
Almost all of academia supports the Democrats. Law firms donate five times more to the Democrats than to Republicans. The political class is intimately linked to the legal profession.
Judge Kathaleen McCormick, who rescinded Elon Musk's $55 billion Tesla compensation package, against the will of the company's board and 80% of its shareholders, worked at Young Conaway before her Delaware Chancery Court Judge appointment.
In 2016, Hunter Biden organized a gubernatorial campaign event for Congressman John Carney, featuring then-Vice President Joe Biden as the guest speaker. The event was held at the Law Offices of Young Conaway in Wilmington, Delaware.
The lawyers who won the lawsuit against Musk thanks to McCormick's ruling are now asking for $5.5 billion in Tesla stock, for their legal fees. Giving to Democrat-allied lawyers and taking from technologists.
>Yes he has, we're in agreement.
I'm not surprised you agree with me on the one negative thing I've said about him. Entirely predictable.
NO they did not. If I was like you, I'd over-generalize and say that "you are just like every other right-wing nutter who only believes a limited view of the world and must slam any other view, regardless of how disconneced from the facts..."
But I won't. I'll explain that my view changed when Musk went from delivering as much or more than he claimed, as was the case with early SpaceX and Tesla. to massively over-promising and under-delivering, e.g., now nearly a decade late on his FSD, so late on Starship that his first cricumlunar customer already bailed, making inflated promises about AI, lying about OpenAI, delivering Cybertruck a half-decade late and with crappy quality, etc., etc., etc. One particular turning point was when he argued about software engineering in public with one of Twitter's lead engineers, and it was obvious to me (with some background in commercial software) that Musk was nothing but bluster and bullshit; it became clear he is not a master engineer, he's a master manipulator. I have far less respect for the latter.
As you can see, it has absolutely zero to do with whatever 'anti-establishment' carp you are ranting on about. But you seem to enjoy your fact-free life more, so carry on.