this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2021
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Late Stage Capitalism

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 years ago (2 children)

If criticisms of capitalism want to be taken seriously, they need to expand beyond Tesla and Amazon.

Chevron, Exxon, and Blackwater love that you focus all your ire on an...electric car company.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 years ago

How exactly will focusing on those companies instead ensure that criticisms of capitalism are taken seriously?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

People ALSO focus on those. Even arch-neolib BIDEN calling out Exxon, however disingenuous that might be in his case.

Demanding that all of them are mentioned in every post or some sort of deranged forced parity of criticism on a post rightly criticizing one of them is worse than worthless. It's a harmful distraction and a whataboutism.

.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This article is over 2.5 years old and (I think) no longer relevant...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

It was posted 2 years ago. Idk why it's showing up in the feed

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Bro, what? Let's say you're a baker with a storefront where you sell baked goods, and in the back, you make your products. However, if you look at your books, you realize that you're actually making money not from the bread you make and sell, but from selling something entirely different. Now, what happens if this thing that you're selling to make money becomes unavailable, and other bakers who are actually making money from their products outperform you over time? Yeah, Tesla is screwed. They no longer make the best bread, and their main source of income is gone once regulations change. Other bakeries will surpass them with time. Tesla is an interesting concept, but it's not just a car manufacturing company; it's a tech company that is lagging behind in innovation and has run out of profitable ideas to sell. Tesla stock is traded as a tech company that is supposed to have groundbreaking technology that makes them more valuable than other car manufacturers. The problem is they don't possess such technology, so it's a massively overvalued car company. My prediction is that within five years, other car manufacturers will completely surpass Tesla, and within another five years, Tesla will become mostly irrelevant. This is assuming nothing changes, as they have nothing in their pipeline that gives me confidence they can turn this situation around. Elon Musk is great at selling "fake" visions that, when scrutinized, do not hold up.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes and no: super old article, but afaik selling green credits is still their main source of income and the only thing keeping them in the black.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I actually really don't like tesla as a company or elon as a ceo or person, but I'm pretty sure that's not true.

Edit: https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22594778/tesla-q2-2021-earnings-revenue-profit-credits-emissions-bitcoin

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It is. Here's an article about their Q1 2023 revenue showing the same thing.

Edit: so they had one report of car sales AND energy projects outpacing the lowest amount of carbon credit income I've seen them get? Not really convincing me there..

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. So the carbon credit business is growing and/or the car business is shrinking to the point that without the credits they aren't profitable again.

Tesla would be in the red were it not for carbon credits – something that hasn’t happened in the last two years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, so I misread that as being in the red hadn't happened for them in two years. Either way, they're a carbon credit and battery company that sometimes make shoddily built cars, not the other way around.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No disagreement there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

ThNk you for using the archive link!!!

I hate running into paywall crap

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Puts on the author.

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