Permanently Deleted

  • OptimusPrimeRib [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I have seen a tesla three times in my life. How are they bigger than established auto companies? Is this a meme?

    • AliceBToklas [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      this is the Market Capitalization and it's basically a measure of stock price times how much of that stock there is.

      basically, Tesla has issued a shitload of stock and people for whatever reason think it's worth something despite this showing that it's obviously wildly inflated.

    • vsaush [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      This is the reasoning you'll hear from capitalists and Tesla apologists: different industries have different ratios of their assets to market capitalization, its above 100% because in a healthy business you get more profit and money from them working then you do liquidating their assets.

      Manufacturers might have a ratio like 3x their assets. Tech companies are usually valued higher. Tesla is viewed, by capitalist Tech evangelists mind, as a tech company. So therefore its market capitalization ratio to its assets should be much higher. They'll give a bunch of reasons: Tesla focuses on its self driving and software, Tesla isn't an auto manufacturer it's an industrial-scaled 3d printing assembly line, etc.

      From a Marxist perspective, tech and finance are "fictitious capital" and tech is getting blown up by irrational actors trying to counter the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. We have been in an extraordinarily low profit rate regime since the 90s (since the neoliberal turn from the 80s to late 90s, previously profit was slumping since the 50s and we've never recovered to those profit rates), and capitalism has become nearly globalized - there are few options for new frontiers to open to imperialism, all that's left is China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, so capital has turned to these fictitious sources for profitability.

      Capital props up companies like Tesla not because it's in any way rational or sane, but because its searching for profitability.

    • Gaysexdotcom [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      It's a pyramid scheme at this point, paying out investors by issuing more stock thats bought by people who 'support tesla' or think somehow they're gonna take over the entire market in our lifetime

    • Poop [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Hype, points for the "future," points for their CEO, etc. AKA made up

    • glk [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I actually see a lot.

      Liquidating the vestiges of European social democracy to the benefit of American speculative finance.

    • CatherineTheSoSo [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The closest thing to rational explanation of the cost is that they are the closest to figuring the self-driving thing and once they do they're going to rake in profits.

      • anthm17 [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        They aren't close to self driving, no one is actually close to self driving.

        Uber just dumped all of theirs. Regulators are getting more and more pissed off that Musk won't back off on the self driving rhetoric.