Elon Musk: Not MY Hero

Let's start with those patents which Tesla allegedly "released" in 2014, in order, supposedly, to stimulate others to build electric vehicles. For the good of the whole planet, dontcha know.

But if you read the fine print, the release of the patents is stipulated to be for the use of companies who are "not competing" with Tesla. How exactly are you supposed to build electric vehicles at all and not compete with Tesla? The release also stipulates that other companies who use Tesla's patents must be "operating in good faith." What "operating in good faith" is, is not more precisely defined.

But perhaps the biggest whopper in the patent release is that any company which uses a Tesla patent must agree not to sue Tesla -- not just in matters related to these patents, but not to sue them at all, over anything.

This is truly diabolical: if you use any of Tesla's patents, Tesla can sue you if they deem you to be competing with them -- and just let me know if you know how it's possible to build an electric vehicle and not compete with Tesla -- or operating in bad faith, and you can't sue them for anything at all. Not even a counter-suit in response to a frivolous lawsuit. To me, the conventional arrangement where you just pay the patent owner an agreed-upon price to use their patent, and then just move on from there with no further restrictions, looks a lot more attractive. I don't see how this so-called "release" of patents does anything but restrict and discourage the making of electric vehicles by other companies.

And, to make the diabolical nature of it all quite complete, Musk was able to sell this "release" of patents to his adoring fans and customers, and for the most part to the general public as well, as an act of phenomenal generosity, as just one more example of how he is better than other CEO's. Morally better.

In reality, the "release" of the patents is one more example of how Musk is worse than other CEO's. It's one more piece of evidence of his extreme tendency toward control.

Teslas are good cars, but Tesla owners have to wait extremely long times to get the cars repaired, because authorized Tesla repair centers are few and far between. Tesla doesn't want to sell parts to do-it-yourselfers who work on the cars themselves -- the way all other car manufacturers have done for a century and a third now -- because they make less money that way. They want your money when you buy a Tesla, and more of your money every time you have it repaired -- and even more of your money every time you charge up at one of those Teslas Superchargers where only Teslas can charge up, and Teslas can't use other superchargers without an adapter. Does having an entire network of charging stations which only Teslas can use encourage the growth of the entire electric-vehicle sector? Of course not, it does exactly the opposite. And to top that off and make it perfectly diabolical, they've somehow managed to convince the Tesla fans that the non-compatibility in charging stations is 100% the fault of other electric vehicle manufacturers. Tesla TRIED to work with the other companies on the charging stations, the fans insist, and the other companies all refused.

Did you notice how all of the other companies had no difficulty making chargers that were compatible with everybody except Tesla? And did you notice how none of the other companies had patented charging technology which other companies were free to use, but only if they agreed that the company with the charging technology could sue them for anything, and they couldn't sue that company for anything?

Back in the early 80's, when it was Beta vs VHS, did Sony keep making Betas and get its customers to blame all the other video-cassette manufacturers for the fact that there were two incompatible formats? No, Sony started making VHS cassettes and didn't complain. Why? Because Sony isn't as evil as Tesla.

It's the lying that's evil: the narrative which Tesla sells (just like the narrative which Apple sells), which says that this company is morally superior to all of the others, when in fact their management is a bit sleazier.

Successfully selling the lies means that the company's fans will constantly make excuses for the company.

And this brings us to the lie that Elon Musk IS Tesla, that The Man and The Company are one and the same. Well, Tesla fans may say: Elon founded the company. No, as a matter of fact he didn't. He joined the company after Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded it, then won a lawsuit giving him the legal right to call himself a founder -- the legal right to lie. This guy's good. Good at being evil -- and then forced out the actual founders.

The fans will say, but Musk made the company what it is. If by "what it is" you mean "a company which drives other electric vehicles builders out of business and then blames others for there being so few other electric vehicles," then I would tend to agree. But that's not what the fans mean. They mean that Tesla automobiles are so good because Musk designed them. Did he? Or is he really good at taking the credit for the work of other people, thousands of other people who've worked long hours for low pay and done brilliant work at Tesla and then let Musk convince them that he'd done it, not them? I don't know for sure, but I find the story where Musk takes the credit much more believable than the one where Musk actually makes the brilliant cars.

Which brings us to the money. Tesla stockholders haven't gotten any dividends yet, while Musk has been paid billions by the company. If I were a Tesla stockholder, I'd be pretty steamed about that, and calling for Musk to be dumped and replaced with a CEO who could be bought for a measly $30 million a year or so. But I can't even penetrate the denial of these fans and stockholders, who insist that Musk makes $150,000 a year or less. They focus on Musk's salary and somehow manage to ignore his bonuses. Sometimes, if the bonuses are brought up, they point out that Musk invested tens of millions of dollars in Tesla and saved the company. They're engaging in the logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc: the company has survived after Musk joined it, and the fans say that the company has survived because Musk joined it. Except that they're usually also in denial about the fact that he joined the company, as opposed to founding it. Not to mention being in denial about how investing tens of millions of dollars once, and then getting billions of dollars of return per year on that investment is pretty sharp even by the sleazy standards of billionaires.

And finally, as many of you no doubt have already noticed, I refuse to call him Elon. To me, he's Musk. Calling him Elon would imply that I regarded him as my friend, my buddy, and, as you may have noticed, I don't. I don't think he's my friend, and I don't think he's yours either. I think he's pretending to care about the environment in order to prop up a lie about him being a hero and a wonderful human being.

Welcome to Tesla Service Hell

Another great video from the YouTube channel Rich Rebuilds. Here Rich vents some frustration at Tesla because Tesla won't help a non-authorized repairman, such as himself, to make repairs, the way every other car company does.




In this video, Rich says (I'm paraphrasing), if you treat your customers the way Tesla treats theirs, they're going to buy another brand.

That would be true if people were rational, but we aren't rational. Not completely. And most people, not even mostly. If people were rational, Apple wouldn't have sold hundreds of millions of computers -- or is it billions by now? -- for twice as much money as PC's that go twice as fast. Tesla buyers and Apple buyers put up with all sorts of crap from their cult leaders that they would never tolerate from any other companies. I hope that changes someday, but I don't see any sign of it changing soon. Apple's been selling overpriced crap for 40 years, but they're not about to go out of business. McDonald's is still going strong, speaking of popular overpriced crap sold by a long-term successful company. And aside from all of the service BS, Tesla's products are actually extremely good, so already they've got a big leg up on business titans like Apple and McDonald's.

I shouted at the screen at one point in this video, when Rich was talking about how it's ecologically sound for him and other repair people to fix up damaged Tesla's, and asks rhetorically, isn't being ecologically sound what Tesla is all about? I shouted at the screen: "No, it's not! It's all about making a billionaire much, much more rich!"

Tesla presents itself as being all about ecological soundness and saving the Earth. That's part of the reason they have such a blindly devoted following.

The thing is, though: you don't have to treat your customers like crap in order to be ecologically sound. In fact, that part of Tesla's way of doing things, when you add it all up, may not be very green.

More Tesla Math

Maybe you've already heard about Tesla's Superchargers, their amazing network of thousands, I said thousands of places worldwide, a rapidly-growing network of stations where you can stop and recharge your electric vehicle extra-quickly. The quick charging is the "super" part.

I've even written a post on this blog about them. They used to be free, but they're not free anymore except for a small number of early Model S and X owners, but that's not the math I referred to in the title of this post.

The math I referred to in the title of this post, I just learned today. It's the number of non-Tesla electric vehicles which can recharge at Tesla Superchargers: 0. Number of Tesla vehicles which can re-charge at non-Tesla stations without something called a J-1772 adapter: also 0. Price of a J-1772 adapter: not well-publicized, so I'm assuming it's high. Number of adapters which let non-Tesla vehicles charge at Tesla Superchargers? 0. Number of non-Tesla electric vehicles which can't charge at non-Tesla charging stations? As far as I can tell: 0, because: number of carmakers who decided not to used charging units which are compatible with every non-Tesla supercharger in the world is: 1. Tesla.

Chance that Tesla could've unintentionally made their superchargers incompatible with everybody's else cars and the cars incompatible with everybody else's superchargers? Zero. Part of me prepared to believe the Tesla party line that hostility to them from other companies is 100% attributable to evil oil-company greed? Plummeting fast.

Remind you of Apple? Yeah, me too! And not just the billionaire owner and the creepy cult-like devotion of the fans to him, finding that he can do no wrong, only genius-type things, but also: the equipment that doesn't work with the rest of the equipment on the planet, only with the equipment made by the genius cult company. Tesla Supercharger = Apple Store: a place for white people with more money than brains to feel superior to the rest of the planet -- for a substantial fee. (Non-whites are of course welcome either place, but they gotta pay as much as everybody else.)

"Now You Know" -- Cult Members, or Just Really Enthusiastic Tesla Fans?

Tesla doesn't advertise -- you know how I know that? I heard it on the YouTube channel "Now You Know," which is mainly about Tesla. With You Tube channels like "Now You Know," Tesla doesn't have to advertise. Zac and Jesse, the channel's hosts (sorry, I haven't been able to find their last names. Perhaps they actually don't have last names), present an extremely positive view of Tesla which only occasionally loses controls and looks like an out-and-out obvious cult. I don't think Elon Musk pays these guys, but he really should.

Then again, if Elon Musk has ever heard of Zac and Jesse, maybe it creeps him out a little that they always refer to him as "Elon," like it does me.

Then again, maybe Musk insists that all of his employees call him Elon, and Zac and Jesse are going for Employeee of the Month every day, although, as I say, they don't actually get paid by Tesla (I'm almost 100% sure).

Speaking of pay: recently, on several of their videos, responding to criticism of Tesla and Musk, which they refer to as FUD, the spreading of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, Zac and Jesse have mentioned that Musk's salary is $0 per year.

I researched the subject of Musk's financial compensation from Tesla, and the subject is a little controversial: some say he has no salary, some say his salary is minimum wage, some say it's a high as $53,000 a year. Some say he never cashes his salary checks, some say he donates his entire salary to charity... But I don't care about Musk's salary nearly as much as the fact that he gets billions of dollars per year from Tesla in bonuses. The same that I don't care whether Zac and Jesse's figure of $0 is exactly accurate or off by several dozen thousand dollars a year, nearly as much as I care about the fact that they don't mention the the 10-figure annual bonuses at all.

Another thing which strikes me as cultlike and disturbing: in this video from 2017, Zac and Jesse describe Tesla's efforts to set up a new electrical grid in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.



It doesn't bother me that Tesla's sending batteries to Puerto Rico and doing other helpful things there. What bothers me is this: Zac and Jesse don't refer to the situation in Puerto Rico as a humanitarian disaster. They also don't accuse the Trump administration of being responsible, by neglect, for the deaths of many Puerto Ricans. They should have mentioned both of those things, but they didn't. But they did mention that the whole Puerto Rican episode could be great, business-wise and public-relations-wise, for Tesla and Musk.

Zac and Jesse say many things with which I wholeheartedly agree. I agree with their negative take on conventional automakers and the petrochemical industry and climate-change deniers. I agree with them that it's extremely important and urgent that we stop using fossil fuels, completely and very soon.

I'm just not sure that Elon Musk is the Messiah.

Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Elon Musk is single-handedly saving the human race. Zac and Jesse have recently compared Musk to Steve Jobs, which set off alarm bells in my head, because I've always thought of Jobs as the most successful cult leader of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a purveyor of overpriced IT hardware which is incompatible with the rest of the IT in the world, making his cult members wholly dependent on his overpriced parts and service.

And what's the biggest complaint about Tesla, by far? Parts and service. Elon doesn't want you to get your Tesla repaired by anyone else. He wants you to wait 2 months to replace that lug nut which you can't get from anyone except Tesla. And if you're Zac or Jesse, you probably will wait, and pass the time by angrily denouncing everyone who thinks you're a chump, calling them all dishonest, corrupt dinosaurs.

Maybe I'm wrong about Steve Jobs, and maybe Musk also isn't all bad. Maybe they're only partly assholes, and partly very good. Maybe I've been all wrong all along about the quality of Apple products, which I admit I have used very rarely. I'm trying to keep an open mind about everything. One thing seems very clear: almost everyone who's ever driven a Tesla agrees that they are very good cars.

They're kinda pricy, though, too. The way that Apple products are pricy. And Starbucks coffee. And Nike shoes, and some other products as well which are purveyed by billionaires who supposedly have good hearts. I'm really trying to keep an open mind, and stay well-informed.

Apple, Ireland, Taxes And The Continued Life Of The Myth Of Steve Jobs

Apple is outraged that some people in Ireland (and some lawmakers in the European Union) think that Apple should pay taxes in Ireland. (Why, the nerve of those peasants!)

The headline of a story about Aplle's Irish tax situation in the Guardian says

Apple should pay its EU tax bill and start focusing on innovation rather than balance sheets --

Well, alright for the Guardian! Wait, there's more writing in the headline...

-- as the company did in the Steve Jobs era.

D'oh!

Okay. So the Guardian can see that Apple is an obscenely huge money-taking operation posing as a computer maker now, but not that it was the same sort of thing in the Jobs era. More than 30 years ago Apple went from the Wozniak-Jobs era to the Jobs era largely because Wozniak felt that Apple was too much about marketing and not enough about innovation and having actual good stuff to market. Not that Wozniak felt strongly enough about that to keep him from becoming a billionaire, or that there was ever a time when Apple was either technologically superior or a better deal than its competition. They've been selling hot air the whole time, including the 14 Jobs-Wozniak years. Apple wasn't good with Woz, it just got more shamelessly evil and rapacious without him.

Apple didn't get worse technologically or more egregiously-overpriced without Jobs because that wasn't possible. If the Guardian headline is any indication, then maybe, without Jobs, Apple is losing its ability to sell nonsense. Which would be good. But if the myth of Jobs, Technological Genius And Friend To Humanity, doesn't crumble along with that ability, then it's only part-good.

I'm Not Planning To Watch The Steve Jobs Movie Really Soon

I won't go out of my way to avoid it. If someone wants to drag me to it I'll go willingly. I'm a big fan of Michael Fassbinder and Kate Winslet and Seth Rogan and Michael Stuhlbarg, and a small-to-medium-sized fan of Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin.

But that's not why I'm writing to you right now. I'm writing because I've seen a lot of interviews with Danny Boyle, the director of this grand epic, and Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter, and with some of the above-named cast members and so forth, and further discussions of the movie by members of the press who've gotten preview screenings, and not just the tools who work on shows like "Entertainment Tonight," but also people whom I would characterize as fairly serious journalists, like, for example, Chris Hayes and Chris Matthews, people whom I would generally trust to be sincere and forthcoming if they happened not to agree with some current bout of hero-worship, and so far I haven't noticed that either an interviewer nor an interviewee has referred to Apple products in less than ecstatic tones. Or disputed the characterization of Jobs as a genius. Or piped up to opine that his genius lay far more in marketing than in IT.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I think Apple sucks. I realize that some Apple devotees won't believe that. They will think that I'm just jealous because I can't afford all of the latest Apple stuff. And I probably wouldn't be able to convince them otherwise if I tried, which I won't. But I'm far from the only non-fan of Apple. There are so many of us that it surprises me that that I haven't heard a single person yet say, while discussing this new movie about Steve Jobs, that they don't use Apple products. Let alone: that they don't use Apple products and don't plan to and here's why. Or: that Apple products are overpriced and perform poorly and are marketed with astonishing success to rubes. Or: "No, it doesn't surprise me that the Steve Jobs portrayed in the movie has some very unpleasant sides. Not in the least."

I could probably find such a reaction to the movie if I went looking for it. Just a moment. ** googling **

No. I couldn't, not within a few minutes. Hmm.

Creepy. Reminds me of the outbreaks of vaccinate-able diseases among the children of Hollywood.

It Could Be Worse: I Could Be Using Apple

Apple has released a new, inexpensive version of the iPhone and they can't sell it because it won't make anyone envious.

I can honestly say that I have never envied anyone for having purchased an Apple product. Now of course, a lot of you Apple people will read that and think either that I have no idea what I'm missing, or that I'm lying, that I really am envious. And that doesn't bother me either. And a lot of you will read that and think I'm lying, or that I just don't understand.

I was walking around in NYC in 1996 with my brother and I saw what looked to me at first to be a line of homeless people waiting outside of a soup kitchen for some grub. But it was a strange-looking group of homeless people, different from most homeless: just as dirty and scruffy and haphazardly-dressed, but almost all of this group were white and overweight. Then I realized that they weren't homeless people waiting for food, they were idiots waiting in line for $10 tickets for that evening's performance of Rent. (Tickets for Broadways shows were normally $50 or so and up at the time, and popular shows were sold out way in advance, but because Rent was so "hip," they always held a certain number of tickets for each show, to be given to whomever had gotten in line for them early enough and paid $10. Which meant that every day people were camping out in line in front of the theatre overnight. How "bohemian," eh? I don't know if or how scalping of those $10 tickets was prevented, and you know what? Don't care about that either.) I'm certain, I don't have any actual stats but I mean I just know, that many of those douchebags in line for the $10 Rent tickets have been networking since then as mid-level execs at Starbuck's or Trader Joe's and now stand in line at the Apple Stores and have iPhones. And will never believe that someone like me feels sorry for them or understand why I would, because they're idiots and there's a whole lot of things they will never understand. Like how Steve Jobs understood how many people are idiots and still have massive amounts of disposable income, and understood how to organize them into massive lemming-like herds consumed with desire to buy anything he dangled in front of them.

As long as it was unreasonably expensive.