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Comment by rapsey | Hacker News Reader

> From the case details below, even if it romanticizes a little bit the Tesla journey, while forgetting the more than 5 Billion in government subsidies, his companies received until 2015, is pretty clear there is no Corporate Governance at Tesla. At least not as you learn about when studying for a MBA :-)

Why do government subsidies get brought up so often as if those alone are to credit for the success of Tesla and SpaceX. As if the other companies in the same space do not get them.

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Because it is informative about his true intentions when he talks about going to Mars. He is not stupid enough to think that we currently have the capability of building a Mars colony that would be even remotely close to sustainable in the face of a global disaster on Earth.

Rather, it's quite obvious he's a modern day Ross Perot who has perfected billowing up his companies on the taxpayer dime. And a manned trip to Mars represents the fattest international contract the world has ever seen.

If he bamboozles the world into financing this interplanetary field trip, he's going to personally end up with a net worth in the trillions...

Because these companies simply would not exist without them?

Without gov help Ford and GM would have gone bankrupt also. Not to mention the space industry entirely.

That doesn’t mean they’d have ceased to exist.

Likely shareholder equity would be wiped out and they’d reorganize. Isn’t the whole deal that investors get the upsides for taking the risks on the down?

Does anybody remember mega bailouts of 2008 still? There are so many companies that arguably won't exist without those. And that's only one example, there are massive subsidies, tax breaks, preferences, etc in a ton of industries. I mean, some think it's a good thing, it's helping - ok fine. But each time Musk is mentioned it's "oh he got subsidies" as if it were in any way unique and special. He's playing exactly the same game literally every other company is playing. You hate the game - fine, yoh like the game - fine, but you cannot honestly be ok with the game and single out Musk for playing it by the same rules as others do.

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