But there’s also an incentive towards exuberant narratives and over-confidence deeply embedded in the business model of Silicon Valley. In many ways, Silicon Valley looks less like capitalism and more like a nonprofit. The way you get rich isn’t to sell products to consumers, because you’re likely giving away your product for free, and your customers wouldn’t pay for it if you tried to charge them. If you’re a startup, and not FAANG, the way you pay your bills is to convince someone who’s already rich to give you money. Maybe that’s a venture capital investment, but if you want to get really rich yourself, it’s selling your business to one of the big guys.
You’re not selling a product to a consumer, but selling a story to someone who believes in it, and values it enough to put money towards it. That story of how you can change the world could be true, of course. Plenty of nonprofits have a real and worthwhile impact. But it’s not the same as getting a customer to buy a product at retail. Instead, you’re selling a vision and then a story of how you’ll achieve it. This is the case if you go to a VC, it’s the case if you get a larger firm to buy you, and it’s the case if you’re talking ordinary investors into buying your stock. (Tesla’s stock price is plummeting because Musk’s brand has made Tesla’s brand toxic. But Tesla’s corporate board can’t get rid of him, because investors bought Tesla’s stock—and pumped it to clearly overvalued levels—precisely because they believe in the myth of Musk as a world-historical innovator who will, any day now, unleash the innovations that’ll bring unlimited profits.) (Silicon Valley has, however, given us seemingly unlimited prophets.)
It’s fair to say that Tesla isn’t doing so well. Thanks to an ageing lineup and a ket-fuelled, government-destroying, Nazi-saluting CEO, Tesla sales are plummeting across the entire globe. Their revolutionary 4680 battery has failed to materialise and is now obsolete. Their Cybertruck is such a sales flop that they are already pulling its manufacturing capacity. Thanks to Musk’s dogmatic “vision only” approach to self-driving, Tesla FSD is far from being an industry leader and miles away from being functionally safe. As a result, Tesla’s Cybercab and self-driving revolution is now all but confirmed as vapourware. Everything that once made Tesla one of the highest-valued companies is falling apart. It looks like Tesla is spiralling towards death. But can such a giant really die? Oh yes, and this is how.
Let’s start with the reality of Tesla.
In 2024, Tesla’s annual net income was only $12.6 billion (though some sources put it as low as $7 billion). The vast majority of this was from their car sales. However, as of the time of writing, Tesla is valued at $852.43 billion! That means its P/E ratio (a ratio of company value to its net income, used to determine if the company is over or undervalued) is a staggering 67.65!
Let’s compare that to Toyota. They are far larger than Tesla and have far more impactful upcoming EV and self-driving technology than Tesla. Last financial year, their net income was a massive $29 billion! However, they have a much more realistic value of $243.56 billion, giving them a P/E ratio of 8.40, which is close to the average for the automotive world.
By comparison, Tesla’s value makes no sense. It offers nothing that Toyota doesn’t also offer. The only reason Tesla is so stupidly valuable is because it is treated as a speculative meme stock.
Did I mention yesterday I was abusing caffeine popping pills, lapping up coffee at home then more at work, though I quit drinking fairly early in favor of water by mid-day in the office.
Strangely I think I slept pretty well once I finally got to bed at 10 PM last night after the Guilderland Town Board Meeting , frying up saved portion of mom’s lasagna and then working on that essay about affordable small-single family homes that so many of the towns people wanted but don’t exist except in the minds of people remembering yesteryear. That song Georgie Girl is fun, and today is the last day of winter. A fun song from a different era, but one you can secretly sing along like a girly man jacked up beyond belief.
That said, this morning I’m a bit of a wreck. I will ride in this morning, well caffeinated maybe even follow a traffic law or two. At least I haven’t gotten a citation yet for running past that stopped school bus the other day on my mountain bike. And how many red lights I’ve run over the years riding to work. I guess most of them are for the motorists, and that one light I often run, really doesn’t apply to bicyclists. I will see how things work out with the new chain on the ride to wok today.
I probably should put the old chain back on and order a new cassette along with a chain-stretch monitoring tool, and just keep regularly replacing chains. I just hate throwing away so much crap, especially metal that doesn’t burn. I guess I could toss it in my pile of metal that some point I’ll take to a scrap yard as mixed scrap. I priced out chains, and they are about $10 while you can get new cassettes for about $13 if you go for knock off brands. Will the hold up as well as the the official Shemano cassettes? Hard to say. I put so many miles on my mountain bike. Maybe a road bike would better for commuting, but like with my big jacked up truck, I sometimes like to get off the established trail.
It didn’t help that when I briefly awoke this morning, turned on my phone and first article to open up was one about recycling in the Adirondacks. It actually was more hopeful then most. And then I kept dwelling over the night, passing that sign on the Westmere Fire Station saying No Open Burning through May 15th, though that applies only to bonfires and brush burning and not campfires. Still you get reading about all these brush fires out west, including the burning of the big time hunter Keith Warren’s house and then stories about people who have lost their uninsured cabins in wildfires that they put their lifetimes into building. Ultimately though I think land is far more important then building, I hate how so much of a housing market is about the house rather then land. I get it, most people don’t farm on their land. They just need a place with a roof to work in city. Like my dumpy apartment.
, frying up saved portion of mom’s lasagna and then working on that essay about affordable small-single family homes 
that so many of the towns people wanted but don’t exist except in the minds of people remembering yesteryear. That song Georgie Girl is fun, and today is the last day of winter. 
A fun song from a different era, but one you can secretly sing along like a girly man jacked up beyond belief.
I will ride in this morning, 
well caffeinated 
maybe even follow a traffic law or two. At least I haven’t gotten a citation yet for running past that stopped school 
bus the other day on my mountain bike. And how many red lights I’ve run over the years riding to work. I guess most of them are for the motorists, and that one light I often run, really doesn’t apply to bicyclists. 
I will see how things work out with the new chain on the ride to wok today.
I just hate throwing away so much crap, especially metal that doesn’t burn. I guess I could toss it in my pile of metal that some point I’ll take to a scrap yard as mixed scrap. I priced out chains, and they are about $10 while you can get new cassettes for about $13 if you go for knock off brands. Will the hold up as well as the the official Shemano cassettes? Hard to say. I put so many miles on my mountain bike. Maybe a road bike would better for commuting, but like with my big jacked up truck, I sometimes like to get off the established trail.
turned on my phone and first article to open up was one about recycling 
in the Adirondacks. It actually was more hopeful then most. And then I kept dwelling over the night, passing that sign on the Westmere Fire Station 
saying No Open Burning through May 15th, though that applies only to bonfires and brush burning and not campfires. 
Still you get reading about all these brush fires out west, including the burning of the big time hunter Keith Warren’s house and then stories about people who have lost their uninsured cabins in wildfires that they put their lifetimes into building. Ultimately though I think land is far more important then building, I hate how so much of a housing market 
is about the house rather then land. I get it, most people don’t farm on their land. 
They just need a place with a roof to work in city. Like my dumpy apartment.