Pure speculation, but my guess is that he’s invested in the commercial real estate market and hoping for a turnaround. I don’t think it’s some profound or insane ideology he has, I think he’s just trying to prop up CRE like he does with crypto.
He’s famous for buying distressed commercial properties and for gaslighting, it just makes sense and the whole moral argument was a great way to get people talking about it.
But he's not the only business leader using heavy-handed techniques to get workers back in the office. I think it's likely that he genuinely believes that working from the office is better - he's not playing 4d chess.
The morality argument is just him rationalizing what he already believes. This isn't the "first principles" thinking that he demands from others.
My brother calls return-to-office policies "panicking, in Boomer."
Tech company profits are declining. Management (especially Boomer management) needs to be seen as "doing something" or they're the ones on the chopping block. So they force everybody back into the office so they can be seen to be managing.
God forbid the cause of declining profits be things like national monetary policy or years of short-term decision-making that propped profits up to unsustainable highs.
No. It must be that Andy works from home. Better bring everybody in to keep an eye on them (to read their faces and find out for sure just how much shit they'll take from you before they quit).
I doubt there are that many Boomers left in tech management - almost all that age cohort are in retirement or semi-retired, they're enjoying their Saga cruises and golf courses (or if they're unlucky, their Walmart greeter jobs).
I suspect there are managers panicking about losing relevance in a post-office world, but those will be middle-managers, not CEOs. Much of the panic is from owners of commercial real estate and their flying monkeys in the media who are seeing empty office blocks and declining property values and rents.
As for Musk, who knows. He's in his own very weird bubble of long-terminism or cosmism or whatever it is he believes in. Maybe he thinks if everyone works from home it will lead to a drop in birth rates or decline in Western society or something.
I'm specifically talking about the middle managers. They're the ones who need to be seen "doing things," so when it's time to surface any ideas for how to fix the problem, especially when it's their butts on the line, this is what comes out.
But I also refer to the boards and investors. We'd love to think it's all a young person's VC game, but behind all that money is still, more often than not, someone who panics in Boomer.
Baby Boomer generation is 1946-1964, which would make them 59-77. I expect only the younger range is likely to still be middle managers.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the use of "boomer" as a derogative to be reductionist and ageist, not to mention most of the time incorrect, as I've seen it applied all the way to Millennials.
They've been criticizing my generation for receiving the "participation trophies" they gave us as kids, as well as screwing over our entire economy with shortsighted self-protectionism, so I definitely mean it in a derogatory way against people their age.
To be fair, I criticize them for the shit they did when they were my age too, so I'm criticizing them as a cohort, not because of their current age.
Yes, 100%, Boomers are the parent generation of Millennials. They spent our whole childhoods giving us participation trophies, and our whole young adulthood criticizing us for having received them.
I criticize them as a generational cohort for being the most entitled, wasteful, short-sighted generation that has ever lived, and has done more to screw up the entire world they are handing on to their children than anyone in history.
They have done this at every stage of their lives, but especially once they were old enough to be having children.
> Yes, 100%, Boomers are the parent generation of Millennials. They spent our whole childhoods giving us participation trophies, and our whole young adulthood criticizing us for having received them.
I don't mean as a cohort, I mean as individuals. I have my doubts that the exact same person who has given out participation trophies is the one who criticized. I think you are mixing two separate groups into one, by using their birth years as a commonality.
Also, I suspect that participation trophies is a Western creation, perhaps even an American phenomenon, and the Boomers who are not part of those cultures did not participate in those actitivities.
I'd say this of low- or first-level managers, but not the middle layers.
Those are filled with people who are clinging to their roles well past their usefulness, because even though they're ruining social supports like Medicare and Social Security by pulling out multiples more funds than they ever contributed, they also failed to save anything of their own or are otherwise refusing to retire and leave the workforce (even though they've already started receiving "retirement" benefits).
There’s no way that someone as wealthy as he doesn’t own at least some commercial property. Even if not himself, Tesla alone owns billions in CRE, not to mention his other companies.
Commercial properties are some of the most valuable assets a company owns, of course the guy wants to keep CRE values up. Just because he owns some transportation companies doesn’t mean he’s allergic to CRE, that’s kinda naive.
That’s like arguing guys at his level don’t donate to both political parties when they clearly do. Because by doing that, you get to own the whole system, not just a piece.
But they definitely own a ton of stock in companies that own real estate. 10 percent of their portfolio is in Bank of America, which has a huge commercial real estate lending portfolio. Berkshire doesn’t need to own CRE directly when they own companies that do CRE.
Commercial real estate is foundational in corporate finance. I guess I just don’t this argument that these huge companies aren’t somehow exposed. I guarantee you that if the CRE market tanks, Berkshire is gonna feel it too.
>Pure speculation, but my guess is that he’s invested in the commercial real estate market and hoping for a turnaround. I don’t think it’s some profound or insane ideology he has, I think he’s just trying to prop up CRE like he does with crypto.
We should assume any public statements on morality from powerful people out of the blue are motivated by a secondary factor.
You don't even need that rule of thumb here. I believe Elon's very public tantrums on and regarding Twitter have shown that he lacks even basic integrity. The gall that he would discuss what is or is not moral from that position.
It must be some form of gaslighting for an obviously amoral person to make public announcements of moral platitudes. Why people agree with them is beyond me, is there perverse pleasure in being deeply wrong?
Being a billionaire in America transforms the person in some kind of super hero. People are mentally incapable to disagree with them, even on basic topics that everyone knows are wrong. The media exploits this every day.
Elon has shown us all how to make a small fortune in social media. It’s not his fault that we don’t have 40 billion to burn buying a 20 billion business with a 13 billion mortgage
They are, but at least in my city, comparing traffic at rush hour (a.k.a. commuting hour) to other times of the day makes it fairly clear commuting is one of the primary use cases.
It also edges your car mileage from the circumstance where electric cars excel (daily medium distance trips ending at home every day to charge) towards less advantageous use (long multi-day trips).
This is an excellent way to put it and a great observation. I was never able to put my finger on it even though the BS meter was off the charts. Here it is. Thanks.
By adding "morally" it enforces questioning one's own principles in support of the thing.
Without "morally" it's dismissable nonsense (ie. bullshit). With "morally" it requires pulling at strands that make up our world-view.
It's not necessarily a bad thing to question one's world-view on occasion, but causing that level of fundamental questioning, for a comment that would otherwise be easily dismissable, is gaslighting.
Personally I think the repeated part of the gaslighting definition is really important (and the implication that the repetition is conducted abusively). Otherwise you'd argue that any dialog that causes one to question one's world-view is gaslighting, and that's simply not true under the colloquial use of the term.
If I make a statement that killing is not justifiable even in self defense, and that causes you, who believes that killing is justified as a measure of self defense, to question your worldview, I'm not gaslighting you into believing me, I'm simply sharing a viewpoint. If I repeatedly show you propaganda where innocent people regularly die because they are not allowed to defend themselves, and where people who do are punished, perhaps by being put in mental hospitals, etc. then I'm gaslighting you. Generally gaslighting refers to using lies and other statements that do not reflect reality, repeatedly, to manipulate someone into a false worldview.
I actually think it's dangerous to throw gaslighting as a term around so casually. Gaslighting, very specifically, means to repeatedly question someone's worldview, while ignoring their anecdotal experience, and that of general reality assuming they roughly align, in order to emotionally abuse them into submission or indoctrination. It's pretty serious and ugly. I know it's fun on HN to throw the term around, but Elon (regardless of how much you dislike him, and how many people follow him) arguing that WFH is morally wrong, is not an instance of Musk gaslighting the public at large. Not even really by a fun shot.
Preemptive corollary: to repeatedly espouse one's viewpoint, even if it pertains to the mental health of a class or group of people, is also not to gaslight, though that is more recently how the term has been used and how we bridge from a serious topic to a rhetorical device used as a Kafka trap. Gaslighting is targeted at an individual, with the specific goal of essentially brainwash. It's not espousing a political belief that may negatively impact a group of people, even if the result would be oppression of the faction's liberty. That's just politics, and politics in the west is all about choosing which factions to oppress and at what cost to the majority.
For example, repeatedly arguing that you think the idea of unchecked ownership of assault weapons is a stretch too liberal of an interpretation of the 2nd amendment, and that it's crazy to think it's okay for anybody to own one without training, and that you think it'd be a good idea to limit gun ownership and require mental health checks and registered firearms lists of trained individuals, and even that you think it's immoral to allow such easy access to acquire devices that make killing trivial, because it puts too much responsibility in the hands of civilian organizations to protect people from maniacs, which they clearly can't do at scale, and even to go so far as to argue they're insane to think otherwise, is not an instance of gaslighting gun owners or rights advocates into thinking their worldview is broken and in need of an update. But by the casual interpretation, it is, since you're arguing to oppress the liberty of some group of people on practical and/or moral (designation doesn't matter, anything that causes them to question their worldview) grounds.
If I were to refuse to pay my rent. My landlord would post an eviction notice and if I refused to comply, I would likely be arrested or forcibly removed.
Why can’t the landlord “evict” twitter? Does the process look significantly different for commercial real estate? Does twitter provide value to the landlord in some form other than rent? Maybe they’re afraid of bad PR?
Having run a small business for some years, refusal to pay an uncontested debt is (very unfortunately) a routine part of business and negotiation. It's a very ugly part, but creates a bit of a prisoner's dilemma where you wonder if you're the only sucker paying debts on time and in full.
That remains to be established. People often have no idea what renter protections are like. If he's in California, he might find that he can't be evicted without the landlord going through a multi-year process.
Take years, or even a year, is very much hyperbole, even for SF. Particularly when dealing with non-paying tenants. This may have been different during eviction moratoriums at the height of the pandemic.
He’s famous for buying distressed commercial properties and for gaslighting, it just makes sense and the whole moral argument was a great way to get people talking about it.