Elon Musk

[jabloomf1230]

All these blockade protests do is annoy Joe Public. It doesn't matter whether it's environmentalists blocking logging roads, farmers on tractors or truckers in big rigs. These protests cause temporary havoc and then disappear with no long term effect.

 

[israndy]

What would you suggest? We certainly cannot count on our leaders to come to smart decisions with all the money flooding politics. If you are annoyed by people who have had enough perhaps you should pay attention to what they are upset about. Sure, some crowds are protesting the first black president in a country based on slavery, so not everything has the same merit, but just suggesting no one should be allowed to protest, seems crazy to me.

 

[Daniel in SD]

What would you suggest? We certainly cannot count on our leaders to come to smart decisions with all the money flooding politics. If you are annoyed by people who have had enough perhaps you should pay attention to what they are upset about. Sure, some crowds are protesting the first black president in a country based on slavery, so not everything has the same merit, but just suggesting no one should be allowed to protest, seems crazy to me.

They could protest by not getting vaccinated.
I still don't understand how it will change anything if Canada doesn't require vaccination to cross the border? The US will still require it and protesting the US government as a Canadian citizen sounds futile to me.

 

[israndy]

Oh, my

 

[FlatSix911]

Go Elon!

'Treating the American Public Like Fools': Elon Musk Sounds Off After Biden's Comment About Electric Vehicles

townhall.com

“He also responded to another user who noted: “Honestly how does he say this with a straight face. Shame on you President Biden for trying to was cancel a great American Drop it and rewrite EV history. No one is buying this. What an embarrassment for the United States. @elonmusk #Tesla.”

““Biden is treating the American public like fools,” Musk replied.”

“You know, Biden held this EV summit — didn’t invite Tesla. Invited GM, Ford, Chrysler and [United Auto Workers]. An EV summit on the White House. Didn’t mention Tesla once, and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution," Musk said. "Does this sound maybe a little biased or something? And you know, just — it’s not the friendliest administration. Seems to be controlled by unions, as far as I can tell.”

 

[Daniel in SD]

unions

He's figured it out!
I do wish Biden would just say "I'm not going to do any public events with non-union automakers" instead of this silly drama.

 

[Crutonius]

Interesting:

View attachment 761007

Background: Freedom Convoy plans to gridlock Ottawa until all vaccine mandates repealed

Personally I sort of agree. I think mandates should more targeted to where they're more necessary. I don't see how mandating truckers getting vaccinated is necessary. But jesus, does Elon musk ever miss an opportunity to make me feel embarrassed to drive a tesla?

 

[Cosmacelf]

Personally I sort of agree. I think mandates should more targeted to where they're more necessary. I don't see how mandating truckers getting vaccinated is necessary. But jesus, does Elon musk ever miss an opportunity to make me feel embarrassed to drive a tesla?

If you look at his subsequent tweets about this, he comes at it from a freedom angle, which is consistent with his past remarks. You need to remember that he was 18 when he left South Africa in no small part because he would have been forced to join the military as part of apartheid.

So he has a thing against government mandated compulsions, and I don’t disagree with him. If the government didn’t have mandates and instead was always honest and instead took a pursuation approach rather than a compulsion approach, i think the “anti Covid vax” movement would have been much smaller.

Look at Vietnam draft dodgers for example. We now no longer have a mandatory draft, yet we manage our voluntary recruiting just fine. And as a result, anti war protests are much smaller.

 

[terranx]

The antivax sentiment against the COVID vaccine was there long before there was anything resembling a government mandate. There were plenty of employer mandates - especially hospitals. Other vaccines have been required for years. If not taking the vaccine only impacted the individuals who choose not to take it, no one would care. But that's simply not the case. Their selfish actions have prolonged the pandemic, allowed new variants to develop, and take limited hospital resources from everyone else. How I wish it were legal to refuse admission to people who deliberately chose not to vaccinate.

Let's be real, Elon has been a COVID denialist since the beginning. He doesn't care about people getting sick or dying as long as he makes money.

 

[Dave EV]

Let's be real, Elon has been a COVID denialist since the beginning. He doesn't care about people getting sick or dying as long as he makes money.

While he has consistently downplayed and underestimated the risks of COVID, much to my chagrin, he takes a libertarian view towards in terms of how we should deal with it, which I disagree with.

It's pretty clear that you can't count on all individuals to make decisions that protect others - you can't even count on everyone to put their trash in the proper receptacle.

I don't think it's fair to claim that "he doesn't care about people getting sick or dying as long as he makes money", I recall very early on that he said that people were free to work (or not) should they think the risk of COVID was too high to go into the factory. Question is, how much paid time off did Tesla give those people and did Tesla provide enough PPE to minimize the risk of catching COVID?

 

[Cosmacelf]

I see you guys have completely ignored my points and are just pushing yours about why Elon is pro freedom on this issue. I’ll just emphasize one point in a forlorn attempt at education. The fact that the government repeatedly lied about the origins of the virus, vaccine effectiveness, vaccine side effects, changed their minds on masking, downplayed or was outright hostile to vaccine alternatives like various therapies (and now have outlawed monoclonal antibodies, for Pete’s sake), ignored the negative health consequences of lockdowns and other (usually illegal, I might add) measures, suppressed vaccine clinical trial data for 75 years, all make people very suspicious.

If the government and media played this straight, recognizing that there no absolutes when it comes to science and medicine, anti Covid vaxxers would be a much smaller minority.

I might add that “anti-vaxxer” is a deliberately derogative term that lumps people who were anti-measles vaccine along with people who are anti Covid vax. There are tons of people are aren’t anti vax in general who are suspicious of the Covid vax (which was rushed to the general population before proper clinical trials were performed). And others (like me) who have taken the jab who are still pro freedom and agree with Elon‘s sentiments. I guess I should call you guys anti-freedom?

 

[israndy]

Yikes!

 

[wooter]

It's not a vaccine mandate. Both Canada and the US are requiring mandatory quarantine for entering their country, and have made exceptions on this quarantine on vaccination status. Your freedom goes up to your country's border, and then other freedoms apply. People who received the AstraZeneca vaccin, for instance, could not enter the US last year.

Requirements for truckers entering Canada in effect as of January 15, 2022 - Canada.ca

On November 19, 2021, we announced that as of January 15, 2022, certain categories of travellers who are currently exempt from entry requirements, will only be allowed to enter the country if they are fully vaccinated with one of the vaccines approved for entry into Canada.

www.canada.ca

Also, Elon's spiel is bad form here. For one, the convoy is quite limited

https://twitter.com/x/status/1487074460062699521

and is carrying a bunch of loons you don't want to be associated with.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1487838826915860481

But I'm not really surprised. Elon's hanging out with some conservative bro culture guys like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, and listening to Lex Fridman's podcast a few weeks ago I felt that also Lex, once a nerd, now was yapping about food supplements and what not. It's the male equivalent of essential oils and other snake oil.

I'm actually kind of surprised Elon is not getting more blowback from this.

 

[Cosmacelf]

“Bro culture”?? The horror

And the smears against the protest are just that, smears. The Terry Fox status was not defaced, they put signs around it, which were quickly removed. They didn’t take food from a homeless shelter, some protesters asked for food, and then the shelter shut down because they didn’t want to support the protest. Same thing with the downtown mall … protesters went inside (remember it was -25 C outside), so they shutdown the entire mall. By the way, govt closed two bridges to stop protesters coming in from the east. ”Standing on the tomb of the unknown soldier”, really, standing? The nazi flags were obviously not part of the protest, they were probably either feds or kooks. All large scale protests attract kooks … pointing out the one nazi flag while ignoring 1,000 Canadian flags is pretty disingenuous and frankly, fraudulent.

Finally, that convoy count was one place, far from Ottawa, at one point in time. Means nothing. Protest supporters were lining the route across Canada. But the only way you’d know that would be to seek out media that was objective rather than watching hostile media. You can make any protest look bad if you cherry pick.

The protest achieved its purpose which was to show people, who cared to look, that there was a lot of Canadians fed up with all Covid mandates (not just trucking mandates).

 

[wooter]

Funny you ignore my point about the mandate not being a mandate, and freedom that stops at someone else's borders .

And Kingston is along the 401 between Toronto and Montreal, on the way to Ottawa. If you don't want a ruckus you don't start putting antivax BS around monuments, don't wave around confederate and nazi flags and don't ask for food at homeless shelters.

You feel nazi and confederate flags are from kooks, but pretty much everyone else feels these antivax protesters are kooks. It's hard to understand the difference then.

It also doesn't help that most of these protests, at least the ones I know of in Europe, are organised by right wing anti science racist kooks.

But yeah, I'm disappointed but not surprised by Elon 'corona will be gone by April 2020' Musk.

 

[Cosmacelf]

The protests were about all lockdowns and mandates, like masking, stay at home orders, must show proof of vax to go into grocery stores (I’m not exaggerating there, various Canadian provinces have really strict orders), school shutdowns, etc. But believe what you want to believe and shut your ears.

Check out Rebel News if you want a different spin.

 

[wooter]

Yeah I'm good, I have family in Canada. It started out as a protest against a vaccine mandate for truckers, and I understand it got to be more, but the US has just the same requirement to enter the US for Canadians, so the protest is kinda moot. Also, Canada is considerably less impacted by corona in the number of patients and deaths because of stricter measures than the US, so yeah, that freedom eh.

I can understand that you want the freedom to do what you want, but please also understand that this freedom ends at your country's borders.

Don't fool yourself in thinking that this protest represents a large majority. There is however a large silent majority very happy they aren't the US.

 

[wdolson]

The antivax sentiment against the COVID vaccine was there long before there was anything resembling a government mandate. There were plenty of employer mandates - especially hospitals. Other vaccines have been required for years. If not taking the vaccine only impacted the individuals who choose not to take it, no one would care. But that's simply not the case. Their selfish actions have prolonged the pandemic, allowed new variants to develop, and take limited hospital resources from everyone else. How I wish it were legal to refuse admission to people who deliberately chose not to vaccinate.

Let's be real, Elon has been a COVID denialist since the beginning. He doesn't care about people getting sick or dying as long as he makes money.

Elon has played down the risks from the beginning of the pandemic, but it isn't about money with him. Many entrepreneurs who make it big are not really all that impressed by their wealth. They did what they did to bring something new to the world, the fact that they got rich is fine with them, but they are more focused on the work.

Elon is one of the richest billionaires in the world not because he ran up Tesla stock, but because investors bought it like tulip bulbs in the 1630s Netherlands. By law he has to do things to keep the stock price up, but he's also made it clear he'd rather Tesla was a private company so he didn't have to do the constant dog and pony shows.

The guy sold all his houses so he can live in a glorified storage container. Nobody impressed with their own wealth would do that. Imagine some of the higher profile wealthy people like the people who are frequently on the cover of gossip magazines deciding to sell everything they own and moving into a tiny house without bragging to the world how pious they have become (usually because of some supposed spiritual awakening involving lots of talk on social media about their "cleanses" and other things their doing).

 

[Crutonius]

If you look at his subsequent tweets about this, he comes at it from a freedom angle, which is consistent with his past remarks. You need to remember that he was 18 when he left South Africa in no small part because he would have been forced to join the military as part of apartheid.

So he has a thing against government mandated compulsions, and I don’t disagree with him. If the government didn’t have mandates and instead was always honest and instead took a pursuation approach rather than a compulsion approach, i think the “anti Covid vax” movement would have been much smaller.

Look at Vietnam draft dodgers for example. We now no longer have a mandatory draft, yet we manage our voluntary recruiting just fine. And as a result, anti war protests are much smaller.

There's an alternate reality where the discussion of the vaccine is separate from the discussion of the policies regarding the vaccine. But that is not this world. There's no way anyone protesting is vaccinated but doing it out of principle. There's no way they're not all screaming "Let's go Brandon" in unison while they do this.

What you say about Elon's motivations may be true but this nuance is lost in twitter. He has to realize how this makes him look. People will just think "oh gee, the richest man on the planet doesn't like taxes or regulations. What a shock."

I'm pretty sure the vaccine push started with persuasion, incentives even. They've made it part of their political and religious identity and thereby logic proof. I don't think anything would have affected the size of the antivax movement. Actually I take that last part back. The antivax movement is shrinking by about 2500 people per day roughly.

FWIW I'm of the opinion that mandates like these should be as narrow as possible. If I could only pick 10 professions to mandate a vaccine for then truckers wouldn't be one of them.

 

[Dave EV]

The fact that the government repeatedly lied about the origins of the virus, vaccine effectiveness, vaccine side effects, changed their minds on masking, downplayed or was outright hostile to vaccine alternatives like various therapies (and now have outlawed monoclonal antibodies, for Pete’s sake), ignored the negative health consequences of lockdowns and other (usually illegal, I might add) measures, suppressed vaccine clinical trial data for 75 years,

You're going to have to present some references for these claims, because as far as I can tell, none of these are backed up by facts at all. And hey - instead of a Gish gallop - why not try sticking to a single claim to start - how about the first one?

The nazi flags were obviously not part of the protest, they were probably either feds or kooks. All large scale protests attract kooks … pointing out the one nazi flag while ignoring 1,000 Canadian flags is pretty disingenuous and frankly, fraudulent.

You're clearly not a minority or someone who's family were actively persecuted by the people those flags and groups represented. Those flags instill fear among those directly affected and the fact that they were allowed to fly freely. Silence among supporters of these protests only encourages the extremists, while terrorizing the rest.

Check out Rebel News if you want a different spin.

Hahahah, no thanks. Rebel News - Wikipedia

Rebel News (also known as The Rebel Media and The Rebel) is a Canadian far-right[8] political and social commentary media website operated by Rebel News Network, Ltd. It has been described as a "global platform" for the anti-Muslim ideology known as counter-jihad.[9][10] It was founded in February 2015 by former Sun News Network personalities Ezra Levant and Brian Lilley.

Rebel News broadcasts its content only on the internet and is sometimes cast as Canada's version of Breitbart News.[11][12][13] Rebel News has been described as being part of the alt-right movement.[14]

But I'm not really surprised. Elon's hanging out with some conservative bro culture guys like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, and listening to Lex Fridman's podcast a few weeks ago I felt that also Lex, once a nerd, now was yapping about food supplements and what not. It's the male equivalent of essential oils and other snake oil.

Yep - Lex has tilted pretty far to the right with his views recently - used to follow him, but stopped. BTW - essential oils are not limited to women, I know men who swear by them. Elon seems to be headed in that direction as well.

It's a shame that Elon isn't more in tune to how out of touch he comes across and how little he seems to care that he does. Billionaires pleading for "freedom" rings hollow - the wealthy can do basically anything they want with little to no repercussion.

Like it or not, he's the's head and face of two hugely important companies (Tesla & SpaceX) who are genuinely changing the world. But all these distractions and noise that's generated because of it only hurts those causes. There are many people who simply refuse to buy Tesla products because of Elon and while it may not matter now while demand out-strips supply, eventually it will make a difference.