Fuck them. Starting a private company and then selling it to some tool doesn’t make these guys great people. They exploited their employees and sold the company to some guy to exploit some more. I’m not sympathizing with capitalists because of other capitalists.
yeah fair enough. that still implies that there’s something great about founding Tesla. Which could be great, if the founders had sold the company to its employees and made it a co-op!
No government can exist without surpluses generated by the population. There have never been surpluses, except maybe in a few golden areas of abundant rain, without some form of trade and profit i.e. capitalism
Yeah people like to save money and that’s what banks invest and offer interest on. They then hand out loans with higher interest than they pay to savers. I’m pretty sure that’s already how banks work.
yeah turns out I was misinformed. my bad. But point still stands, they made a private company designed to exploit workers, and some asshole took it over.
Starting a private company and then selling it to some tool doesn’t make these guys great people.
Engineering a practical prototype for an electric sports car in the year 2003 makes you pretty cool, if nothing else.
Lacking the easy access to low-interest credit and being hedged out of the SUV-heavy American car market doesn’t make them bad people.
They exploited their employees and sold the company to some guy to exploit some more
The company had exactly three people in it when Elon Musk arrived with $6.5M in Series A investment cash. They were both forced out of the company in 2008, as the Series B funding was exhausted and Elon was leveraging his fundraising clout to monopolize control of the board. This was long before the Gigafactory and the big labor abuses we’re familiar with today.
I wouldn’t call them geniuses or pretend they were irreplaceable. These were a couple of car hobbyists who stumbled into a cut-throat industry and got their work snatched out from under them.
But then I wouldn’t call the Tesla a particularly amazing piece of technology. Just something a couple of car hobbyists realized was possible with existing technology and made a (small) fortune scaling up.
The real genius in the end was scamming the Department of Energy out of billions of dollars and helping gas guzzlers fake their EV quota.
Starting a private company and then selling it to some tool doesn’t make these guys great people.
Where are you coming up with your narrative about him selling?
“The Tesla cofounder lost his role as CEO of Tesla about three years after Elon Musk began investing in the electric-car maker. Eberhard previously told Insider that Musk and Tesla’s board had met behind his back and voted to replace him as CEO.”
For what it’s worth, it’s been suggested that Musk’s takeover of Tesla was opportunistic, and against the desire of Tarpenning and Eberhard.
From my research, Tarpenning was pressured into quitting, and Eberhard was fired by the board of directors for lying to the board. Since Elon was chairman of the board at the time, it’s plausible (and even hinted at) that Elon played dirty to push through this firing.
I cannot say for sure if they would have handled the company more ethically then Musk, but I am personally uncomfortable hanging them out to dry simply on what could have been.
That said, I agree that employee co-ops are a top tier business organization structure.
Elon is a jackass who runs over all normal senses of decency while repeatedly getting away with it. And he will continue to do so as long as his legion of asshole internet followers continue to worship him on a wide scale, giving him large benefits in our cultural zeitgeist.
I am happy that people are finally understanding how much of an asshole Elon is today. But he’s been pulling this shit since the dawn of Tesla, as the Tesla takeover court cases proved in the 00s.
Elon threw money at the problem and it worked, as it so often does. Conversely, the tactic failed in the Twitter scenario. That’s his entire game plan for everything, a trait he shares with nearly every other person born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Fuck them. Starting a private company and then selling it to some tool doesn’t make these guys great people. They exploited their employees and sold the company to some guy to exploit some more. I’m not sympathizing with capitalists because of other capitalists.
I think this post is more about denigrating Elon than celebrating these two.
yeah fair enough. that still implies that there’s something great about founding Tesla. Which could be great, if the founders had sold the company to its employees and made it a co-op!
Ok. Show me how we collectively invest in R&D without IP and build a car company without profits.
Aaaaannnnd go!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nuclear_power
Oh look! Government investment!
No government can exist without surpluses generated by the population. There have never been surpluses, except maybe in a few golden areas of abundant rain, without some form of trade and profit i.e. capitalism
investment into worker owned companies is possible. Buying stocks is not the only way to invest and make profit.
If nobody has profits, what is there to invest?
You can make contracts that guarantee a certain percentage of revenue for a certain number if years, or you know, just loans with interest.
Loan what? Banks can only work if someone has already made a profit that they can invest.
Yeah people like to save money and that’s what banks invest and offer interest on. They then hand out loans with higher interest than they pay to savers. I’m pretty sure that’s already how banks work.
So perform magic? Do you know how the company transferred ownership?
yeah turns out I was misinformed. my bad. But point still stands, they made a private company designed to exploit workers, and some asshole took it over.
Engineering a practical prototype for an electric sports car in the year 2003 makes you pretty cool, if nothing else.
Lacking the easy access to low-interest credit and being hedged out of the SUV-heavy American car market doesn’t make them bad people.
The company had exactly three people in it when Elon Musk arrived with $6.5M in Series A investment cash. They were both forced out of the company in 2008, as the Series B funding was exhausted and Elon was leveraging his fundraising clout to monopolize control of the board. This was long before the Gigafactory and the big labor abuses we’re familiar with today.
I wouldn’t call them geniuses or pretend they were irreplaceable. These were a couple of car hobbyists who stumbled into a cut-throat industry and got their work snatched out from under them.
But then I wouldn’t call the Tesla a particularly amazing piece of technology. Just something a couple of car hobbyists realized was possible with existing technology and made a (small) fortune scaling up.
The real genius in the end was scamming the Department of Energy out of billions of dollars and helping gas guzzlers fake their EV quota.
Yeah that was AC Propulsion though, and in 1996, and a completely different group of people.
The Tesla guys had the idea of shoving it into a Lotus Elise and marketing it as a tech company.
Could you explain this more?
Where are you coming up with your narrative about him selling?
“The Tesla cofounder lost his role as CEO of Tesla about three years after Elon Musk began investing in the electric-car maker. Eberhard previously told Insider that Musk and Tesla’s board had met behind his back and voted to replace him as CEO.”
source
Ohhh, back-stabbing bitches. *grabs popcorn*
For what it’s worth, it’s been suggested that Musk’s takeover of Tesla was opportunistic, and against the desire of Tarpenning and Eberhard.
From my research, Tarpenning was pressured into quitting, and Eberhard was fired by the board of directors for lying to the board. Since Elon was chairman of the board at the time, it’s plausible (and even hinted at) that Elon played dirty to push through this firing.
I cannot say for sure if they would have handled the company more ethically then Musk, but I am personally uncomfortable hanging them out to dry simply on what could have been.
That said, I agree that employee co-ops are a top tier business organization structure.
Vapid contrarian moral posturing with claims of Marxist purity? Surely, you jest!
I feel like I’ve read this before as a strategy in a COINTELPRO document
Moral posturing is a an agent provocateur’s strategy? Can you link the document?
Not only do you sound angry and full of an agenda, you are also wrong about your facts. Are you paid by Elon?
That’s not what really happened though. They needed an investor to get the company off the ground. Musk came in and screwed them out of the company
They didn’t sell it to Elon.
Elon sued them and took Tesla over in court. https://www.theverge.com/23815634/tesla-elon-musk-origin-founder-twitter-land-of-the-giants.
Elon beat them in the court of law, business tactics, and expertly took over the company. What, you think Elon paid for this? He’s smarter than that.
I mean he paid for Twitter and… well…
Yeah, I was gonna say, playing dirty is one thing. Making great business decisions without stepping on people for profit is another thing entirely.
Only after the Delaware court forced him to.
Elon is a jackass who runs over all normal senses of decency while repeatedly getting away with it. And he will continue to do so as long as his legion of asshole internet followers continue to worship him on a wide scale, giving him large benefits in our cultural zeitgeist.
I am happy that people are finally understanding how much of an asshole Elon is today. But he’s been pulling this shit since the dawn of Tesla, as the Tesla takeover court cases proved in the 00s.
Elon threw money at the problem and it worked, as it so often does. Conversely, the tactic failed in the Twitter scenario. That’s his entire game plan for everything, a trait he shares with nearly every other person born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
He bought founder title.