It's worse, IMO. At least electric car subsidies are open to other companies.

It's not just the US government subsidising his product. There is a big world outside the US, you know. In fact, >96% of the world's population doesn't live there.

That's a huge market to have handed to you by governments everywhere. Yes, these things are open to other companies too, but it doesn't take any naus to grow a business in those circumstances.

How did this thread get on to the merits (or lack thereof) of electric transport. Last time everyone was slagging off Musk. Let's face it, he boughttwitter for $$44 billion, it's worth about a third of that now. Of that loans have to be given back in full, regardless of the drop in value. If he suckered some folks into buying shares, they've lost big time.

It's not.

It is about the ease with which one can grow a business when you're selling products which are incentivised by governments the world over.

But some here fantasise that Mr. Musk is somehow a prodigy to be worshipped.

Musk has skill in getting money behind him, vision & imagination. And he can sell. SpaceX is arguably the best space effort in the world. Tesla is one of the world's great electric car ranges. He traded for many years at a loss, and still money kept flowing in. Not many have those personal qualities.

It's only when Musk gets on twitter, and much worse, after he bought it, that you can see through him. He's a prejudiced 'a**hole' as I believe the American expression is. We have a saying here about the lift (elevator) not going to the top story when we imply a mental deficiency. Musk seems to have the opposite problem. The lift doesn't go to the ground floor, where twitter tests him. But it goes way beyond the top story. That irritates folks who want to get out there.

Is this the look of a successful business?

https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/14/tw...r-unpaid-rent/

You don't have to be responsible to be succesful anymore, see: hollywood, music labels, etc.

Musk may relocate. He has a nice place in Dublin, Holland, England, etc. In fact if he's that hard up, he may even de-locate, and dispense with offices altogether. He is unpredictable. I won't say he's mad, but if he somehow ended up in a psych ward, would you let him out?

Crazy like a fox.
"Apple TV
@AppleTV
3 days until the #Silo finale.

Here’s the entire first episode."
https://twitter.com/AppleTV/status/1673730750095712256

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
"Improved longform posts"
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674226170488057856

Twitter Write
@TwitterWrite
"Two new features for writers: you can now post up to 25,000 characters and add up to 4 inline images. Subscribe to access these new features: ..."
https://twitter.com/TwitterWrite/sta...21120495685635

I'm not in twitter at all. I can't raise those posts you're linking. I get some privacy error. Should I be using a 'don't care' browser?

You've already read the posts - it's the text quoted on the lines above the links.

However, if one wanted to view replies/media/etc, Nitter can be used - simply change twitter.com to nitter.net, e.g:

"https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674226170488057856" -> "https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1674226170488057856"

(That's just an example, not a recommendation to read the link, which contains nothing worth reading.)

Opinions are like ...well, you know, everyone has one. I happen to disagree but to each his own.

Thanks. I tried the nitter.net link on Chromium-ungoogled. It returned "Tweet not found." I'll try that when others are less thorough.

Odd; works here. Occasionally rate limiting kicks in, but IIRC that gives a different message. (Also, there are other Nitter instances which can be used when that happens.)