Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”Me: “Yup.”Student: “How did he get that much money?”Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash.
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@huntingdon @nswigger as I've gotten older and been exposed to more of the world, it's become impossible to see economists as anything more than bootlickers for whichever powerful status quo needs a pseudoscientific veneer of validation this decade (the concept of "revealed preferences" is about as damning for their field as "oppositional defiant disorder" is for psychiatry).
Unfortunately, you can't really say that kind of thing at an average cocktail party without sounding like one of those people who drinks their own urine and thinks 5G puts a chip in your head. But we're slowly getting to a place of deserved skepticism for fields that have long played fast and loose with academic rigor.
Anyways, the Economist is a hilarious example of exactly the material you'd expect, from people who would name themselves "the Economist" without a hint of self-awareness or irony.
@MaddieM4 @huntingdon @nswigger You are even kinder than I would be at that cocktail party, because I would be mentioning that reading tea leaves has more science than some economic theories
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@TheTenuousOrder @nswigger Elder GenXer, ackchewally.
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Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
@nswigger IMHO all profits and assets that one can get a loan against or use as collateral should be taxed like wagework income, if not higher!
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Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
Maybe the student can understand why I call it the "greater fool market" instead of the "stock market".
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@lauerhahn @huntingdon @nswigger Exactly. Spherical cows are totally fine for physics, most of the time, but dangerously misleading if you try to model like that for biology or veterinary science. The more I've learned about Econ, the more it's felt like the latter.
@MaddieM4 @lauerhahn @huntingdon @nswigger
We need to stop basing economic measures on the statement of income and expenses and base them on the balance sheet instead.
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Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
@nswigger Tesla made $2.8 billion in 2025.
Star Link made about $8 billion.
Spacex is the only loser, even with the $8 billion star link made it lost $5 billion, mostly because their AI division apparently is a bottomless hole.
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Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
@nswigger
By the way, Gen X does so, too. We are just used to getting fucked over by... like everyone. -
Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
@nswigger I'm "Cash burn rate" KPI of year 2000 old
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Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
@nswigger Not to let facts get in the way of your lols but in 6/2020 Tesla became profitable after four consecutive quarters in the black.
Yes, Elon is an asshole and a huge disappointment but there would be no US EV industry without the pressure #tesla put on legacy manufacturers
I know I know buses and bicycles, I use them frequently but the majority of Americans never will but are more likely to drive an #ev
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Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
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Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
@nswigger *does* gen z hate capitalism? they're big stock buyers.
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@huntingdon @nswigger as I've gotten older and been exposed to more of the world, it's become impossible to see economists as anything more than bootlickers for whichever powerful status quo needs a pseudoscientific veneer of validation this decade (the concept of "revealed preferences" is about as damning for their field as "oppositional defiant disorder" is for psychiatry).
Unfortunately, you can't really say that kind of thing at an average cocktail party without sounding like one of those people who drinks their own urine and thinks 5G puts a chip in your head. But we're slowly getting to a place of deserved skepticism for fields that have long played fast and loose with academic rigor.
Anyways, the Economist is a hilarious example of exactly the material you'd expect, from people who would name themselves "the Economist" without a hint of self-awareness or irony.
@MaddieM4
What make oppositional defiant damning? I'm only shallowly aware of it, and I've not heard criticism of it. -
@MaddieM4
What make oppositional defiant damning? I'm only shallowly aware of it, and I've not heard criticism of it.@dpflug It's not well known. I could maybe talk about it with more nuance under better conditions, but I happened to just wake up in the middle a medical incident *and* ODD doesn't deserve nuance, so I think flippant should be fine.
Imagine there was a diagnosis in the DSM5 that pathologized not accepting authority, especially the authority of psychiatrists. If you refuse any part of the treatment regimen they demand, it's further proof that you're sick and need intervention. Imagine further that black people were diagnosed at a much higher rate than white people. Okay stop imagining, that's ODD.
I have no personal skin in this specific game. I've never been diagnosed with something like that, and with my complexion, it's unlikely. But as long as it's on the books, it can be selectively enforced, and if that sounds like a tiny part of a big picture that psychiatry is an arm of the carceral state and we're just used to downplaying the cop-adjacency of the industry, you're on the money.
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It doesn't make sense to compare the share prices for different companies. Any company can have whatever share price it wants by issuing or buying back shares, by having stock splits or (whatever the opposite is called, I've forgotten). You need to compare the market capitalisation (share price multiplied by the number of shares). And that makes it look even more ludicrous.
Tesla's market cap is $1.506 T.
BMW's is €43 B (around $50 B).
Tesla's market valuation is around 30x that of BMW (not the 5x that the stock prices alone would imply).
A market valuation for a company is typically a combination of how well it's doing at the moment (profit) and how much people expect it to grow. BMW is probably a relatively stable company, but the price for Tesla is assuming that it will grow by a factor of about 300. Tesla sold a bit under 2M cars last year (including some slightly dodgy accounting with Musk's companies selling to each other). That's close to 2% of total car sales. So a factor of 50x growth would mean that they have 100% of the total addressable market. More than that requires the market expanding significantly or them moving into completely new markets.
This is why Tesla is referred to as a 'meme stock': the valuation has absolutely nothing to do with how much money the company is expected to be and 100% to do with the supply of greater fools.
@david_chisnall @ananas @zeenix @nswigger To be precise, only the circulating or outstanding shares should be considered. When companies do stock buybacks (instead of paying taxable dividends), they're effectively reducing the outstanding shares to increase the stock price. In sum, the market value should remain the same though.
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@nswigger *does* gen z hate capitalism? they're big stock buyers.
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@pixelschubsi @nswigger careful. you might see the good in it after all.
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@pixelschubsi @nswigger careful. you might see the good in it after all.
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@pixelschubsi @nswigger empathy is no warden against insight
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Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “How did he get that much money?”
Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.”
Student: “So those companies make huge profits?”
Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
@nswigger well, they're not exactly going to run with "Capitalism: how we help run the biggest scam in the world" are they?
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@nswigger gen y doesn't particularly like it either. Would I be Gen Y? I was created in 1990...
@dodecahedron @nswigger that's a millennial.
You destroyed capitalism by eating avocados and not having pensions.
I'm GenX. We destroyed capitalism by genuinely not giving a shit and doing way too many drugs.
