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[Naturegirl1999]

And how would it benefit him? Who will buy from his company if everyone else is dead?

[MrRoboto75]

And how would it benefit him? Who will buy from his company if everyone else is dead?

That's a "later" problem.  If it doesn't affect this financial quarter or the next one, then it isn't a problem.

[Naturegirl1999]

Pretty sure killing buyers would affect financial quarters

[MrRoboto75]

Pretty sure killing buyers would affect financial quarters

but that happens later, right now tesla stock is up!

[Starver]

Robot traders...

 

[Rolan7]

People with a lot of stock and influence over that stock's price can make a lot of money by buying and selling at advantageous times.  (This is technically highly regulated, but there are ways and means)

Some companies are built on faulty premises yet are valued extremely highly based on investor confidence.  They're bound to fail, but people involved can avoid most of the crash by getting out at the right time.

Corporations in general *can* be a bit more forward-thinking than people.  In fact if the commodity and stock markets worked optimally, then they'd be an ideal way to secure funding for long-term projects like nuclear power!  People can invest in a project that won't turn a profit in their lifetime, yet make money as the project nears completion, due to its value increasing.

But in practice companies are much more obsessed with hitting quarterly targets.

[JoshuaFH]

-

[Rolan7]

(As a followup)
I say companies are obsessed, but that's just the behavior of their boards (or other people in charge).  It's sad, because I see the forward-planning as the one possible redeeming virtue of capitalism.  In an ideal market system with perfect information: a long-term project would immediately have significant investment value, and would grow in value as it neared fruition - over years, decades or centuries.  Under that model, one should be able to trade in and profit in the growth of, say, a project to keep Earth habitable.

Liberals (In the American Democrat sense, not leftists) often believe in that.  Sadly markets are, for lack of a better term, corrupt.  Instead of being controlled by market forces they are controlled by a wealthy class who can profit (in the short term, like their lifetime) by controlling said corporations.  Regulation only goes so far.

That's why corporations chase quarterly profit.  I used to think of corporations as wetware AIs, callously pursuing profit at any cost.  Gestalt minds working against the interests of the humans making their decisions.

But it's not as "cool" as that, at least not for the biggest companies.  Maybe a company like Pepsi-co is merely ruthlessly efficient, but Tesla and Amazon are driven primarily by individual humans.  Humans who benefit from the self-destructive and extraordinarily shortsighted directions they "guide" their companies in.

Tesla doesn't have a future, it has whatever Musk tweets next month which boosts his portfolio.

[Frumple]

Pretty sure killing buyers would affect financial quarters

I mean, you'd think that, but plenty of joints have strong financials even as their horseshit is getting people killed by the plague, nevermind all the other sorts of less immediately rememberable examples of murderous corporate malfeasance getting financially rewarded.

The unfortunate reality is that that just isn't necessarily true

[Random_Dragon]

Companies seem to gravitate towards a strange sense of planning: The long game only tends to be thought through properly if taking the most reflexive short-term game would be good for consumers. A form of Corporate Murphy's Law, if you will.

This video led me to have that thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE

In his example, following the "short term profits now, to hell with how it might screw us over later" approach to its logical conclusion would make it more attractive to NOT commit to planned obsolescence, given the competitive advantage longer-lasting products offer, and extreme enough examples of durability would give you more freedom to charge a premium for the product.

Given the self-destructive polices increasingly evident today, it leads one to suspect that companies have a talent for choosing  short-term profits or long-term sustainability based on which outcome would be most detrimental to consumers (with the impact on employees being a nice side bonus).

[Starver]

It was a phrase I was going to use to describe someone else in another context, after some added pithiness, but it applies here if you don't mind its raw form...

A guy who tells his myriad followers "buy gold, folks, like I just did", then later "sell gold, folks, like I just did" is probably doing it at least partly without altruism in mind.

(s/gold/bitcoin/ and that probably matches Elon's game, even if only accidentally at first. And I'm reminded of the shenanigens (that aren't described that well at all in the official summary) in this comedy) that very occasionally gets repeated but not any time recently/soon, it looks like.)

[Rolan7]

Companies seem to gravitate towards a strange sense of planning: The long game only tends to be thought through properly if taking the most reflexive short-term game would be good for consumers. A form of Corporate Murphy's Law, if you will.

Many companies seem quite able to play the long game.  We don't hear about them so much, because they're quietly making profits.

This video led me to have that thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE

In his example, following the "short term profits now, to hell with how it might screw us over later" approach to its logical conclusion would make it more attractive to NOT commit to planned obsolescence, given the competitive advantage longer-lasting products offer, and extreme enough examples of durability would give you more freedom to charge a premium for the product.

Given the self-destructive polices increasingly evident today, it leads one to suspect that companies have a talent for choosing  short-term profits or long-term sustainability based on which outcome would be most detrimental to consumers (with the impact on employees being a nice side bonus).

These self-destructive polices are what I'm trying to highlight, yeah!  The corporation isn't having a collective brain fart.  It's individuals who are trying to leverage their companies as much as possible, making money whenever it goes up - or down!  If they (or technically their friends and family) can profit from the results of their actions, they win even more.

This is one of the reasons why corporations nosedive regardless of merit.

Tesla is a meritless company though.

Edit: Also, Elon Musk has no right to speak Tesla's name. Tesla was a savant and a chaste ladykiller and I stan-

[MorleyDev]

Explosion at Kabul airport.

It seems ISK are the ones intelligence point to as behind it, who are a group that regard the Taliban as apostates, and it seems US Forces, Taliban forces and Civilians have all been injured and/or killed.

[martinuzz]

US government now confirms that US soldiers were killed and wounded in the attacks.

[Starver]

It was inevitable (and the warnings had been seen, already). The crowding was too tempting for any so-minded belligerant (in this case, possibly, ISKP - who have grudges with the Taliban as well as the West and anybody 'Westernised' enough to be wanting to fly out) and I expect everyone knew this would happen if ever there was a mass civilian exodus[1]. I certainly was awaiting something.


Also, back in America (♪♪...Okay by me in America, Everything free in America, For a small fee in America!♪♪) along with having to pay costs, a group of lawyers who perpetuated voter-fraud lawsuits that even Trump (eventually) dissowned have been ordered by a judge to be refered to the respective legal bars' oversight groups and been told to undergo additional compulsary legal training, in Michigan.


[1] Which would have happened if support workers/etc had been given an out before the troops upped sticks, also. Maybe not as mass-panicked, but still massed, and even if it hadn't been IS-affiliates it would have been still-underground Talibani-affiliates, or AQ remnants, or whoever.