As the center of the U.S. freezes this weekend, Elon Musk is
trying to figure out how to save Tesla from going the way of Enron.
Religions die hard. It takes an orgy of evidence to change a
person’s mind on a subject that is integral to their moral and ethical
structure.
In the case of Tesla, the mania surrounding it over the past
decade has been inextricably bound up with the hysteria of global warming.
For years investors ignored the obvious warning signs that Tesla
would never be able to graduate from a boutique, hand-built car manufacturer
and technology skunk works to a mass producer.
I’ve
been very hard on Musk in the past,
with good reason. But, as a guy with vision I applaud him getting Tesla off the
ground and legitimizing the idea of the upscale electric car.
But it was never going to work as a mass production scheme
because Musk isn’t that guy. He’s a dreamer and a schemer, not a builder. And,
as I’ve said multiple times, he should have stepped down as CEO of Tesla ages
ago.
A man has got to know his limitations as The Man once said.
Musk doesn’t.
People
Need Religion
And this goes for the Global Warming crowd as well. Their’s is a
religion based around basic human hubris — that we are far more impactful on
the world than we actually are and our activities need to be reined in.
This comes from worshiping the environment as a substitute for
traditional religions. Marx preached organized religion is the ‘opiate of the
masses’ but people need religion of some form or another to bring meaning to
their lives and guide their behavior.
So if they reject Christianity, for example, they will seek out
a new thing to elevate and substitute for it. I would argue that Star Wars
provided that for me as a teenager and later Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle.
We all need a religion.
The environment is definitely one of these substitute religions.
In fact, modern environmentalism has all the trappings of a classic human
religion.
We have our Satan, consumerism. It is the bastard child of
capitalism since this version of environment-worship is rooted in Marxism.
We have the apocalypse story, Global Warming. We will literally
destroy all life on the planet turning it into Venus. It’s the rapture for Gaia
worshipers.
And we have the High Priest of Technocracy who will save us from
ourselves, Elon Musk. He will put a solar panel on every roof, take us to Mars
while we drive around, guilt-free in our luxury Teslas.
The
problem with all of it, of course, is that it was all bought with debt and
government largesse, itself a consumerist fantasy created out of the opulence that
capitalism provided.
And while there are plenty of reasons why electric cars can
make sense, less carbon dioxide isn’t one of them. But, that’s where the
billions in grants and Wall Street funny money came from.
Tesla is witches’ brew consisting of equal parts the Fed’s insane zero-bound interest rates, the elevation of global warming to religious significance by the left and cynical Wall Street profiteering.
The Fed provided the money, the government gave out the subsidies to entice the Wall Streeters and global warming provided the upscaling demand as Generation Prius gave way to the siren’s call of Musk’s consumerism.
Tesla is witches’ brew consisting of equal parts the Fed’s insane zero-bound interest rates, the elevation of global warming to religious significance by the left and cynical Wall Street profiteering.
The Fed provided the money, the government gave out the subsidies to entice the Wall Streeters and global warming provided the upscaling demand as Generation Prius gave way to the siren’s call of Musk’s consumerism.
In essence, we live in a period of history so wealthy relative
to our basic survival needs we can indulge the ravings of mad Marxists at
levels of taxation and wealth redistribution which are far greater than any
previous economic cycle.
Why this occurred, in my view, is confluence of three things:
1. Rising sun
output lowering the cost of food production.
2. Enshrining
private property rights and the subservience of government to the people in law
in some places, like the U.S.
3. Accessing
the deep, high-density energy reserves of the planet (Oil).
Those three thing created real wealth for humanity at a rate
easily double previous periods of recorded history.
There’s no doubt that this period has been messy and our
institutions and cultural identities are having a hard time adjusting.
The environmentalists certainly have a point about pollution and
consumerism.
But only up to a point.
And if
they would confine their activities to getting polluters to pay their ‘externalities,’ limiting governments’ protection of
them and educating people about being less wasteful then I would have zero
problems with them.
In fact, I applaud their efforts. What they fail to understand,
willfully I believe, is that the efficiency enforced by the laws of economics
on producers drives waste and pollution down over time.
But their religious fervor cannot allow them to see that and
allow nature, as it were, to take its course. And there’s is a religion based
on the unquenchable envy of Marxism.
My substitute religion however, doesn’t tell me to expropriate
10% of world GDP to ensure I get another Star Wars movie to add to my gospel
either.
But you do see that from the Global Warming extremists. And the
sad part is that the same Wall St. profiteers who sold them Tesla are also
selling them carbon credits, solar panels and electric luxury cars.
The very people who they rail against, Wall St. are the ones
handing them the money to indulge their power fantasies about saving the world.
You can have your environmentalist cake and eat it too,
Greenies.
And it would all be great if it weren’t all a complete lie.
Global warming is a bubble bursting just like Tesla is because both are stories
built on a foundation of debt and consumption, not privation and thrift.
Like capitalism is.
The climate cycle is changing in front of our eyes. The sun is
shutting down and will likely remain so for at lest another ten years, possibly
far longer.
The climate is only just now catching up to this fact. And we
are woefully unprepared for this fact as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes full
Marxist retard touting a Green New Deal.
We are
in a transition state from warming to cooling. Weather is getting violent. The
upper atmosphere is cooling off so quickly even the religious nuts at NASA have had to admit it
publicly.
And yet, people cling to their religions because they have to.
Just like they cling to Marxism that forms its foundations despite its truly
horrific record of human abuse.
As Musk and Tesla fall from grace we’ll see the scales lift from
many true believers’ eyes. Because nothing wakes people up faster than seeing
their future gutted as their brokerage account plunges towards zero.
At that point even this cycle will turn. Expectations will be
tempered and people will finally become open to truly sustainable solutions we
all actually want.