Most people are just highly resistant to change, even change for the better.

SpaceX is too big to fail. It's important for national security.

I wonder if Elon wants to tangle all his businesses into SpaceX so they are all kept afloat by SpaceX's importance.

The way you've written it sounds like taxing unmonetized bullion is insane overreach, but is it? They're just treating them the same as any other commodities. I can understand if you're opposed to sales taxes generally, but the only reason to single out bullion for an exception I can see is historic norms.

They're also applying a tax to monetized bullion. That's more more like taxing currency exchanges and it's a bit weird since currency exchanges are normally taxed on appreciation.

To be honest I think the true story here is:

> the fleet has traveled approximately 500,000 miles

Let's say they average 10mph, and say they operate 10 hours a day, that's 5,000 car-days of travel, or to put it another way about 30 cars over 6 months.

That's tiny! That's a robotaxi company that is literally smaller than a lot of taxi companies.

One crash in this context is going to just completely blow out their statistics. So it's kind of dumb to even talk about the statistics today. The real take away is that the Robotaxis don't really exist, they're in an experimental phase and we're not going to get real statistics until they're doing 1,000x that mileage, and that won't happen until they've built something that actually works and that may never happen.

NIMBY for data centers is opportunity for SpaceX. When they saturate the demand for communication, data processing demand will be ramping up with no apparent ceiling. The merger between SpaceX and xAI positions them to benefit both from the AI revolution, and from the resistance to it. It's like a hypothetical 19th century textile company that managed to profit from Luddite riots by using them to help move production to Umpa Loompa.

I think you're totally wrong on this. Tesla didn't waste the first mover advantage. They benefitted from it whilst it existed, but Electric vehicles turned into a commodity, which was entirely expected and there's no moat.

You've explained yourself why it would be untenable for Musk to pursue becoming the biggest car manufacturer in the world - if he succeeded in that goal... he would have succeded in shrinking the value of the company significantly.

It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

For many people, the very term EV itself is still ubiquitous to Tesla.

And somehow Tesla is still worth more than every other non-Chinese automaker combined. $1.5T.

GM? $80B. Stellantis? $40B. Toyota? $280B. Mercedes-Benz? $60B. BMW? $55B. Volkswagen Group? Also $55B.

I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of others, but I could miss some 18 $50B automakers, and Tesla would still be worth more than all of them combined.

If Tesla was valued fairly, it would probably be at the tune of $5B. But I’ll never bet against it, because the markets can remain irrational for longer than I can remain solvent. And for some unbeknownst to me reason, the markets value Tesla as a hot tech company, not a 3rd rate automaker, which is what it actually is.

And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.