More Musk Math

If Musk's Tesla stock was evenly divided between every Tesla employee, each one would get over $4 million worth of stock. And a lot of of them are making less than $40k/year.

It would be beautiful to see Musk forced out of Tesla, the way he forced out the founders. I realize that it wouldn't result in every poor schmuck Tesla employee getting $4 million, but I think that the boost to the company might just be huge. The boost in wages and other benefits, the boost in working conditions, the boost in the company's public image -- all of those things could be huge.

 

I know I'm dreaming. But I also know something else that not everybody knows: EVERYbody who tries to predict the future more than a week ahead is dreaming. We just don't know how things will work out. With Tesla or with anything else. There are simply too many factors. In this case: will the general public begin to see Musk as a bad man, bad for Tesla, bad for the environment, bad for himself, bad for just about everything except his net worth? I see him that way. A growing number of people see him that way. 

A number big enough to matter? Not yet. And if and when the number is big enough than Musk could be forced out of Tesla, out of the EV industry, so that all of those high ideals he claims to represent, but doesn't, could in fact be represented by millions of ex-Musk fans, spearheaded by a Tesla which actually did operate in a green and humanistic way -- if and when that will happen, is unknowable. There are too many factors. 

Such as the success or failure of other makers of EV's, and the quality of those companies. Such as how many people will no longer drive at all, such as public transportation and bicycles and plain old walking. 

Is Rivian a better company than Tesla? Is it run by people who are not monsters, who actually care about things other than their own net worths? I have no idea. They've made almost 700 RT1's. Still not very many at all, but they're much faster now than they were in September. 

Do Rivian's low production numbers mean they won't exist as a company a year from now? Or do they mean that Rivian wants to be known as the all-EV company which DOESN'T have panel gaps and other quality-control issues for the first 10 years?  

Things few people know yet. Things nobody knows.

Why do People Dislike Elon Musk?

Many people have commented about how Elon Musk denounced requirements for businesses to shut down because of the coronavirus, and how he blatantly violated those requirements, keeping his Tesla plant in Fremont, California open and churning out cars. Disappointingly few people have been pointing out why Musk did this: his pay from Tesla, Inc comes in the form of bonuses which are tied to several factors, and one of those factors is the number of vehicles Tesla makes. Once again this year, Musk will get a bonus worth several billion dollars, and one reason is because Tesla kept churning out those cars.

Did the Tesla employees on the assembly lines also get bonuses for hitting production goals? No. But I gather that they do get attaboy emails from Musk, telling them what a good job they're doing, and how they're saving the world.

What do they get when they talk about improving safety conditions, or about unions? They get fired.

Now, when people like me complain about how Musk mistreats his employees, or when we repeats those awfully persistent rumours that the Tesla assembly lines don't look nearly as shiny as clean as in the photos which Tesla allows to go public,

or how Musk milks the company for money, or lies to the public about how much his cars cost or about the terms he offered to other companies to join in with Tesla's Supercharger network, or discourages people from fixing their own Teslas although Tesla service is notoriously slow and expensive, or about how Musk has nothing but verbal abuse and downright slander for any company which hints that it might begin to compete with Tesla for a share of the EV market, or about how he won a lawsuit to allow him to call himself a founder of Tesla even though he's not, or about how he calls someone who rescued a group of boys from dying in a cave a pedophile, or about how the real Nikola Tesla was a brilliant man who was shabbily treated by the billionaire businessman Thomas Edison, who constantly took credit for his employees' ideas and hard work while ruthlessly eliminating competing corporations, or other complaints about how Musk is a thieving, fraudulent, cruel monster ripping off those who adore him, or what have you, we often hear the response that Tesla is revolutionizing the auto industry, and that it wouldn't be a success without Musk. But are either of those answers true?

We hear from Musk's ardent disciples -- this is a cult we're talking about -- that Tesla wouldn't exist today if Musk hadn't rescued it with money from his own pocket. They seem to believe that Musk quite selflessly offered all of the money he had in order to keep Tesla going.

No. Musk invested $30 million dollars in Tesla in 2004. This was not all of the money Musk had at the time: he had recently sold his share in PayPal for over a billion dollars.

That's right: although Musk didn't found Tesla, he did co-found PayPal. Have you heard lots of comments about how PayPal is a wonderful company which is making the world a better, safer, fairer, cleaner, more righteous place? Yeah, neither have I. In fact I've never heard a single comment remotely like that. But the next company Musk is involved with, suddenly, boom, you hear all of that all of the time, and you hear that it's all because of Musk.

So, Musk invested $30 million in Tesla in 2004, and now he's being paid several billion dollars every year. That's a pretty good return on investment -- it's pretty good for Musk, I mean. I'm not sure it's good for anyone else.

Would Tesla have gone under if not for that $30 million from Musk? It's hard for me to imagine that they would have. They raised hundreds of millions of dollars from other sources around the time they Musk put in his $30 million.

And now Tesla is making cars in China, home of those sweatshops which manufacture iPhones and Nikes and other products from companies which claim to be progressive. What's progressive about sweatshops? Why aren't more people asking what working conditions are like for Tesla employees in China?

What you hear more often than any other answer, when people like me disrespect Elon Musk, is that we're all jealous cause he's so cool and so successful and so brilliant.

Yeah. That must be it.

Elon Musk and Publicity and Money

Recently, Elon Musk donated $1 million dollars to a charity which plants trees, and claims that 1 tree will be planted for every dollar people donate. So, that's good. That's a million trees, assuming that the charity's claims are correct, and I haven't seen any claims to the contrary. The donation has gotten a lot of publicity, and hopefully will lead to many other similar donations, large and small.

Musk probably made the donation because he needed some good publicity, badly -- but still, those million plantings are a very good thing. The example, and the challenge to others to follow the example, are good. Afforestation and reforestation are important parts of repairing Earth's climate and saving our own lives.

And it's especially remarkable that Musk would donate $1 million, given that he is earning no money whatsoever.

No, I didn't really mean that last part. Me saying that Musk is earning no money, that's sarcasm. It's also the claim which Musk is making in his defense in the lawsuit being brought against him by the guy who rescued a youth soccer team from an underwater cave in 2018, and Musk was rushing to the scene to be a part of the rescue with a submarine he'd built, and the young soccer players were rescued before Musk's submarine got there, and Musk reacted to that by calling the rescuer a pedophile.

Musk really needs good publicity from things like the $1 million for trees, because of the bad publicity from things like the whole rescue incident, which make it look like appearing to be a hero is more important to Musk than being one, and that it is extremely difficult for him to share credit with others.

It also seems perfectly obvious to me that it is extremely hard for Musk to share money with others. How can I say that about someone who just gave $1 million to a good cause? I can say it because it seems to me that Musk was just buying goodwill with that $1 million, and buying it pretty cheaply. For a guy who receives $2 billion a year, $1 million is 1/40 of a week's pay. For a new employee at Tesla, who receives $16 an hour, 1/40 of one week's pay would be $16. Which would be a nice contribution to a good cause, but not really astonishingly generous.

Musk was given Tesla stock options worth over $2 billion dollars in 2018. That's what Tesla's own SEC proxy statement says. That statement also says that the $2 billion worth of options are part of Musk's compensation for 2018. I have to admit, I got very tired before I found out what other parts there were, but if anyone wants to look: it's called a proxy statement, filed by Tesla with the SEC.

So, it's good that Musk gave $1 million to that charity. It's also good that Telsa makes EV's, and has sold so many of them.

But the very widespread opinion that the emerging success of the EV industry is due above all to Musk, I think that opinion is mistaken. I disagree. I think we don't know, can't know, what Tesla would have done by now if Musk hadn't taken the company over from its original founders, forced them out, and then won a lawsuit giving him the legal right to refer to himself as the founder of the company. I don't think we know, I don't think we can know, how well other EV manufacturers, and other EV models made by traditional automakers, would have been doing by now, if Musk had never gotten into the automotive industry.

I don't think we can know how well Tesla would be doing if those billions of dollars per year which have been going into Musk's compensation, had instead been going into higher wages for Tesla employees, and lower prices for Tesla automobiles, power-storage systems, solar panels and solar roof tiles and other Tesla products, and so forth.

I certainly don't think that we can know how different the world would be today, it the CEO of the world's largest manufacturer of EV's were actually a nice guy, instead of a ruthless narcissist multi-billionaire who has hit on pretending to be a nice guy as a successful business model.

I don't think anyone can know for sure how much of the technical excellence of Tesla's car is directly attributable to Musk. I'm completely certain that he gets way too much credit for it. (Quick, name 5 other people who've been involved in designing Teslas! Name them right now! No googling allowed!)

Now, being a fan of electric vehicles, and being concerned about the Earth's climate, doesn't necessarily mean that you're blind. There are many intelligent EV enthusiasts who are familiar with his methods of finance and self-promotion. Still, they maintain they the EV "community" owes Musk a lot. I don't think anybody owes this guy, who already has over $20 billion, anything. I don't see exactly how life has been unfair to him. I think that Tesla, and the EV industry in general, would be much better off if it and Musk went their separate ways. Even if that meant a multi-billion-dollar golden parachute for Musk. Sometimes I wonder whether I'm literally the only member of the EV "community" who feels this way. I'm certainly not the only person on Earth who does.