Most MY and M3 owners I have talked to rave about their cars and have very high customer loyalty.

After 2016, however, they seemed to adopt a firm anti-MAGA stance which I found to be biased and off-putting. Their highly critical stance against Israel after the Hamas attacks of October 2023 was the last straw.

Then, they withdrew from the X platform and now they might as well not exist, as far as I'm concerned. I think that was a mistake, given their significant following on X, but I guess they felt they don't need it.

Or do you imagine that these agencies are completely perfect and free of corruption?

It’s like saying that if Musk unleashes a billion Optimus robots to take control of the world, people will be mad and stop buying Teslas.

We as a society have a consensus that we need such agencies to manage the hugely complex country that we have become, but that doesn’t necessarily mean these bureaucratic organizations are themselves properly managed.

Years ago, I read about a man who the IRS was trying to levy extensive fines on. After five years of court battles, he committed suicide.

Perhaps this was an extreme case, but there is nonetheless an important question that arises out of this tragedy: does the government exist to serve the people, or do the people exist to serve the government?

I believe our colonial era checks and balances no longer protect us from a bureaucracy that is automatically funded by the Treasury, that the President has limited control over, and that only an act of Congress can change.

In an era when no one political party has enough control to enact legislation (i.e. a filibuster proof majority), the bureaucracy is effectively out of control and the only real way it can be reformed is by uncovering waste and corruption.

Perhaps their stock was overpriced, perhaps not. Long term, there’s tremendous upside and right now it’s arguably a buying opportunity. Musk’s involvement with DoGE will end in a matter of months or maybe a year, and the people keying cars and engaging in political theatrics outside Tesla dealerships will soon move on to the next cause.

I’m surprised there isn’t more interest in this topic. Is there another hn thread that is more active? I wonder if people have become jaded by the seemingly routine business of space travel. Yet, it remains a very difficult and dangerous endeavor.

As for Tesla’s recent hiccup, they have a strong product portfolio and are likely to recover before long. It’s happened before.

Read Milton Friedman, not anti-Trump hit pieces that predict disaster.

It's recently been revealed that not only does the FAA require a "biography" of its ATC applicants, but have even been coaching black candidates how to use the keywords that will allow their applications to float to the top.

If the agency and the politicians overseeing it cared about safety, shouldn't they try to hire the best and the brightest, not the under-represented minorities that they have been struggling to hire in recent years? Meanwhile, White applicants who were fully qualified have been bypassed.

I personally don't care, and I suspect most thinking people don't care, what the ethnicity or gender are of the people in the towers. But we all care very deeply that they should be the very best of the best.