[imgabe]

Yes. If you determine a Tesla is the best car to fit your needs, there are far better ways to influence Elon's actions than depriving yourself of the best car for you. You could write your Senator / Congressperson to support laws that would curtail Elon's actions. You could speak publicly and propose better things than what Elon is doing or publicize how and why they're harmful, etc. Buying or not buying a Tesla is very unlikely to influence Elon at all.

Also consider: There are thousands of employees at Tesla and thousands of shareholders. Do you also need to individually vet every one of their opinions before you enrich them by buying a Tesla? What if they don't all have the same opinion? Are you supposed to take a poll and go with the majority? This is silly.

[ranger_danger]

> Buying or not buying a Tesla is very unlikely to influence Elon at all.

But it can certainly influence other people's perception of you... I think what we all have to decide though is how much that matters to us, should we decide to buy one anyway.

> Do you also need to individually vet every one of their opinions before you enrich them by buying a Tesla?

I think most people's negative image of a company/project tends to come from the leadership, or the most public leader, and not all the individual employees.

To that end I would consider Linux to be a tool mainly led by a habitually emotionally abusive person (Linus). Or when people mention Kitty I point out to them Kovid's many personal attacks on end-users, etc.

For some reason a lot of people in tech (and probably everywhere) seem to have real issues with staunch dogmatism and god complexes. I know people make mistakes and that's fine, but I'm talking about the ones that show consistent and daily life-long problems with usually no remorse.

You don't know everything, none of us do, and there can actually be other valid perspectives if you allow yourself to be wrong occasionally. Definitely not enough introspection/self-reflection going on IMO.

I'm sure people will downvote this but I don't think people should be forced to (or shamed when they don't want to) separate the art from the artist.

[imgabe]

> But it can certainly influence other people's perception of you... I think what we all have to decide though is how much that matters to us, should we decide to buy one anyway.

Yes, this is a concern, and it's a direct result of the phenomenon I'm talking about. There are violent, stupid people who will attack you because they think that buying a product means you endorse every political opinion every person who made that product ever had.

I'm actually looking to buy a car soon, and I've considered this in regard to Tesla. Do I want to deal with having my car keyed or painted or set on fire because of what someone thinks about Elon? Do I want to potentially put myself or my family in danger because someone thinks that attacking a random Tesla consumer is the best way to effect change in the world? And, frankly, no, I don't. But that's what I'm talking about. If you find yourself attacking strangers or destroying their property because you disagree with the politics of some CEO the person you're attacking has never met, you are in fact the bad guy.

[ModernMech]

I agree with you, up until the point that CEO is a verified Nazi. If you see a man give multiple Nazi salutes behind the presidential seal, and your response to that is to hand over your money to him, are you a good or even neutral person? Not in my eyes, sorry. We have to have some standards in this society. Look around, fascism is flourishing. What you are doing now is what you would have been doing as a German in the 1930s.

[imgabe]

See I think the defining quality of the Nazis was the whole gas chambers and ovens thing and not so much the hand gestures.

[ModernMech]

The defining characteristic of Nazis is authoritarian megalomania, something Musk has in spades. The hand gesture is how they identified themselves and professed their allegiance to the cause, something Musk has adopted. He's telling us who he is, we should listen.

The gas chambers are their most horrific deed, but Nazis were still Nazis before they gassed anyone. Therefore gassing does not define them.

The key to stopping Nazis is to do so before they get the gas chamber stage. If you let it get that far, you're too late. So you have to rely on other clues.

Nazi salute are about as oblique as you can get. They should have been a wakeup call.

[mrguyorama]

>If you determine a Tesla is the best car to fit your needs, there are far better ways to influence Elon's actions than depriving yourself of the best car for you.

As if "having the best car for you" is some sort of moral imperative or necessity, as if buying a less luxury vehicle is some sort of unthinkable option.

>You could write your Senator / Congressperson to support laws that would curtail Elon's actions.

Ah yes, tell the government that supports elon and that elon is part of to simply not do those things. Surely that is a workable option right now!

[imgabe]

You can vote for a different government. You can even campaign for a different government, or run for office yourself. It's this whole system we created for the people to control the government directly instead of changing buying patterns and hoping 18 levels away someone figures out you're trying to tell them to change a policy.