If you haven't read Fortune magazine's latest explainer on why Tesla is still a bubble waiting to pop then you might want to check it out before it's too late. They do a good job at taking a rational look at a very irrational valuation. 

The Trillion Dollar Tesla Gamble

Consumer Reports came out with their latest quality rankings last week, and yes, Tesla is still at the bottom. What is surprising is how bad Tesla ranked considering that Tesla fans have been known to to try and hide Tesla quality problems from the press. Tesla owners who complain about quality problems are promptly chastised not to do so by their fellow owners and to keep it between them and Tesla "for the good of the cause". If that doesn't sound like cult brainwashing I don't know what does. 

Automotive journalist Tim Stevens has written glowing reviews of Tesla's cars in the past. So the angry Tesla fans can't say that this was a hit piece from a hater. In fact, this guy didn't want to report the truth. But Tesla's self-driving software is so bad, that he felt he had no choice. He was faced with the choice of either reporting the truth about Tesla's terrible software quality or flush his journalistic reputation down the toilet. 

Here’s a reminder by CNN Money that Musk isn’t like the other self-made tech billionaires. He is in a class by himself. The welfare class. Both Tesla and SpaceX have been saved by the government on multiple occasions. The state of California has bent over backwards to help Tesla when they were down and Musk repaid them by moving the company out. The state of New York gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Tesla to help create hundreds of jobs at the Buffalo Gigafactory only to be let down. 

Here’s how Elon Musk’s Wealth Has Benefitted From Taxpayer Help

Here’s a company that churns out glitchy rattle traps that look like they were made in a Cold War soviet factory and yet Musk thinks that he built something great. What he’s built is the poster child of the bubble economy. 

Tesla and Musk are takers, not builders. They don’t really add any value to our economy unlike companies like Apple or Amazon. Tesla’s stock price is built on fantasy storylines written by their pumpers. And it is siphoning investment money from other companies that actually do add value to the economy. 

One concept that I’ve always found interesting is that if you took all the money away from the wealthy entrepreneur class and gave it away to the poor, within 10 years the money would’ve found its way back to the wealthy. Because they possess the skills and know how to rebuild what was taken. This story applies to Musk.

The new version of this axiom, is that if you took all the money away from successful entrepreneurs and give it to grifters with big twitter followings that eventually, they’ll lose it all. Musk doesn’t really know how to run a business and within ten years all the wealth he has accumulated via his PT Barnum ways will find its way to others who know how to add value to the economy. 

The problem with ignoring history is that you won’t recognize disturbing patterns when they emerge. Case in point, domestic manufacturers spent a lot of the 1990’s trying to wean themselves off of fleet sales. Fleet sales are like cocaine, they give you a momentary high, but the hangover is brutal. ​

If you don’t believe that Tesla isn’t a two year stock bubble which is eventually going to burst then you need to catch the latest episode of the Quoth the Raven podcast. He discusses something which a lot of people have been whispering about recently. Was the sudden meteoric rise in Tesla’s stock price all artificially manipulated? ​

If you haven’t seen the TV sitcom parody of Silicon Valley titled Silicon Valley, you’re missing out. It’s a hilarious Revenge of the Nerds type show where the hero is a mild-mannered programming genius who decides to start his own company vs selling out to a tech behemoth. But the antagonist is a dead ringer for Elon Musk. Meaning he’s a petty, vindictive, man-child who keeps making a fool of himself to those in the know. While the rest of the journalistic world heaps praise upon him. ​

Check out this report by a Tesla owner on Reddit whose car crashed into the same boulder as 5 other Teslas. What’s worse, is this guy wants to keep the story quiet so that Tesla doesn’t get bad press. It’s like Tesla is one giant fraud and even the customers are in on the scam. ​

Here’s an interesting take by Greg Barker on why the U.S. Government seems keen on letting Elon Musk get away with breaking the law on multiple fronts. It’s a cynical view that Musk is a distraction for the impoverished masses. ​