A list of short reactions that I desperately feel the need to get off my chest:
I mean… Sure, whatever. Matt Levine had a good take on this yesterday, before the vote. If you are still at Tesla investor in November 2025, then you are pretty much by definition an Elon stan. Tesla is a meme stock with a price/earnings ratio hovering close to 300. The new payment plan only kicks in if Elon transforms Tesla into a $8.5 trillion company. That’s going to be hard to do, on paper, with declining car sales and an utterly pretend product line of personalized Optimus robots.
People on Bluesky were saying last night that he’ll never reach the pay package because it is a failing, flailing company. And I would like to agree with them, but I worry that these folks are underestimating the degree to which money — particularly stock market money — is all fake now.
I think it’s entirely possible that, over the next 5 years, Tesla sales will continue to decline, and the Optimus robots will be a Cybertruck-scale nonstarter, while, simultaneously, the company becomes a world-leading innovator in shady market manipulation and semi-fraudulent accounting techniques.
By November 2030, Tesla might just be fifteen circular funding deals in a trenchcoat — cash-poor and on the verge of insolvency, but also nominally valued at $8.5 trillion, granting Elon his performance bonuses.
Bookmark this for the next three years at least: it’s only accounting fraud if we have a functional administrative state and courts willing to enforce the law.
Money is fake. Sam wants the government to guarantee that, if investors ever notice that his company is on the hook for $1.4 trillion in spending, with (maybe) $20 billion in revenues (WHERE’S THE OTHER $1.38 TRILLION SUPPOSED TO COME FROM, SAM???), then it will be someone else’s problem.
And the thing is, with David Sacks as the crypto and AI czar, Altman will probably get it. They’ll probably make Sam give the Trump family a stake in OpenAI or something, but then it’ll be bailout city. All these guys believe in free markets and libertarianism until the check comes due.
The morning after Trump won the election last year, I wrote a list of predictions for what was coming. I just reread them and ohgodohgodohgod how has the past year been even darker than expected?!?
Here are the predictions. The only one that broke in our favor is that the anti-Trump resistance movement took awhile to get going, but is now bigger than ever.
A few reading recommendations:
I’ve been reading Hillary Allen’s ebook, Fintech Dystopia: A Summer Beach Read about Silicon Valley Ruining Things. Folks, this book is so goddamn fun to read. It belongs on the shelf right next to Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up.
Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification is an excellent read. I have a draft post in the works, riffing on some extended themes that it left me thinking about.
Damon Beres wrote an absolute barnburner in The Atlantic this week, “The Age of Anti-Social Media is Here.” It’s about what the chatbot industry is doing to the internet, and to us all, because we haven’t created the types of regulatory friction necessary to stop them. And check out Max Read’s piece from last week, “Platform Temperance,” as well. The two pieces really speak to each other.
And finally, a music recommendation:
The new Mountain Goats album is out today! All hail Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan!
That’s all from me. Have a good weekend,
-Dave