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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   24622 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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The bull case is explicitly that Musk will pivot to a business that doesn't exist yet and make the pivot work because he's Musk.

Implicit in my comment about him not being a wizard and having a poasting addiction is that I think this case is still dubious. Contra his haters, Musk seems to have (maybe had) a genuine talent for manufacturing startups, but TBC is vaporware, Twitter is still a money pit, and Neuralink doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

  • A pivot to batteries or robotics may be a genuinely viable long-term plan, but I find it very hard to believe they're going to wind up in a market-dominant position that allows them to maintain high margins versus becoming Just Another Manufacturing Company. It seems more likely to me that Chinese firms will eat their lunch and Tesla will have to join the US legacy automakers club in begging USG for handouts and protection.
  • As above, selling compute for AI may be a viable plan to make money, but absent some improbable recover, xAI is already an also-ran in AI race.
  • Musk has already lost the robotaxi race as well. Tesla may achieve their own true self-driving car, but they're just going to be one competitor among many.
  • Space data centers are sci-fi bullshit for the foreseeable future.

Like, from what I can tell, Musk should be an ordinary Extremely Rich Guy, not the Richest Man Ever.

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