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Comment by Geee | Hacker News Reader

It's not in their interest to lie in the long term. Those companies who lie are scams and they're spotted pretty quickly (e.g. Theranos, Nikola). Elon has made some mishaps, such as 'funding secured @420' tweet, which he was punished for. Public companies have to be pretty careful in their communications. Making promises with too optimistic schedules is not lying, it's just an error in forecasting, and is common in technology.

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That couldn't be further from the truth. Theranos survived for 15 years. Wirecard 22 years. Enron 10+ years. Fraud gives you a massive competitive advantage.

Not too along ago I thought of Musk as a misunderstood genius, now I'm pretty certain he knows exactly what he is doing (for the most part). If you look at all the oddities surrounding Tesla, there are clear patterns emerging.

Plainsite has a good summary [1].

[1] https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tsla.pdf

That report is a bunch of horseshit. Lot of words without any substance. He even cherry-picked some data to "prove" that Tesla's sales are declining. Everyone can see the actual progress that Tesla and SpaceX has made. Their cars are winning awards and they're innovating and building new factories as fast as they can. Who cares if they miss a couple of estimates. SpaceX can deliver payload to orbit with much lower cost than competitors.

True though that those companies survived for too long.

I don't know what world you've experienced, but lying in business is incredibly common. I've seen it personally, and there are plenty of cases of Tobacco companies, DOW, Alcohol companies, and many many more knowingly lying.

Of course they do, it's in their best interest to lie. To think that companies will only tell the truth "because it's in their best interest" is childish, and not at all historically accurate.

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