Professor Glenn A. Okun
The Rabid Capitalist: The Big Point is a summary of a detailed note available to paid subscribers.
Last week, Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Roadster. It is another in a long line of stage-worthy product introductions by Tesla that inevitably will not be introduced as a commercial product. Will investors continue to blindly follow this era’s P.T. Barnum?
Barnum would have admired the staging. On October 15, the new Roadster appeared in a cloud of compressed air at SpaceX’s rocket test site in McGregor, Texas. It was Mr. Musk’s personal brand distilled to a single evening: an epic announcement packed with grandiose promises, and a magic act that kept the audience staring at the smoke while the real trouble happened backstage. Backstage, at headquarters, Elon is surrounded by misfit toys: a humanoid robot with a repeatedly delayed reveal, a Cybercab production line devoid of meaningful units in service, and a “Full Self-Driving” system that still requires human supervision that is nearly a decade overdue.
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