this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
832 points (99.3% liked)

Technology

79576 readers
4257 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Poor Lonnie. May he cry himself to sleep on his MyPillow tonight.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 58 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

I honestly don't know how Musks companies work.

Tesla makes cars. Cars don't sell, so profit drops. Musk uses SpaceX to buy Teslas. Tesla's profit declines, Musk says it's an AI company, then buys AI from his other AI company, which he funded from Tesla stock. Musk buys Twitter, twitter goes down in value. Musk buys Twitter from himself using xAI, for higher than its market value, then boasts stock gains?

So now Tesla is going to buy AI from himself, and build robots that were just pantomimed guys in suits... and somehow... profit???

I don't know what the fuck is going on in this world. But I would absolutely love to see Tesla's stock drop and all of this made up debt-financing fall apart like the house of cards it is. However, Musk saying "we're making robots now" seems to have nicely papered over what should be a massive stock decline. After his last one "Tesla isn't a car company, it's an AI company" now it's "Tesla isn't an AI company, it's a factory company".

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's simple in its principal, really..

  • you have multiple companies
  • one company (A) have some supply for some product
  • on the other company (B), you create demand for that product (i.e. for its operation)
  • thus, under your control, you make company A and B enter a trade agreement
  • as someone who brokered that deal, you get rewarded (e.g. from brokerage fee, or commision)
  • sometimes, by having a massive increase in sales, the stock for company A would increase, thus you can sell a little bit of it, which you can later buy back after the stock price goes back down
  • profit

Some facts:

  • even though they're your companies, you are a separate entity from them, and they are each its own entity
  • the money comes from the investors as well as profit, remember that they are separate
  • no, you cannot just take all the companies' money, since even though they're yours, there are corporate structures and other people at stake preventing that

So you basically come up with some excuse for moving stuff around, then you come up with some excuse to siphon off some of that good stuff.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Fuck that shit. Companies being their own legal entity was a mistake.

[–] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The reason why that was done was largely to keep debtors and investors from ripping apart a company and then transferring the debt to the ones running it. This would've been back when most large companies were trade companies wherein it made a lot of sense, since if the ship goes down you're fucked regardless time to liquidate the company and payback who you can.

The actual problem is the stock market since it creates fairy tale bullshit that allows Tesla to exist. Remove the stock market and the individual investments become a lot more risky and make bullshit stocks less likely to exist since all stock would be privately traded and their worth based off of company payout.

[–] PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

keep debtors and investors from ripping apart a company and then transferring the debt to the ones running it

So instead we get "vulture capitalism" as an entire ecosystem of companies, doing this but with more diffuse consequences, by spreading out the bag holders far and wide (but always among the powerless). Fits like a glove with the general "privatize profits, socialize losses" strategy of wealth extraction we like so much.

Corporate person-hood is a stain on humanity and the world. We should never have shifted culpability and direct experience of negative consequences away from human beings, ever.

[–] notastatist@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

If a real person would be held resonsible... Not even in finance but in breaking the law stuff. Companies only ever get a fine.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

He’s Elizabeth Holmes on a global scale. He grifts money from the governments

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] matlag@sh.itjust.works 2 points 22 hours ago

As much as I despise her (as much as the rest of that tech-bros lot), I still suspect she's only seen jail because she was a young woman.

[–] midas22@lemmy.wtf 1 points 22 hours ago

The Tesla stock is the biggest bubble we have ever seen. Short it on the market with the right timing and you will become filthy rich. It will crash, there's no way they can deliver to this valuation ever... the only question is exactly when. It's difficult to predict since it doesn't follow any logical rules in the short term.