Posted on 12/08/2020 6:07:23 PM PST by RandFan
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday he has personally relocated to Texas, citing repeated complaints with California’s regulations over technology companies as well as what he called innovation complacency throughout Silicon Valley.
“If a team has been winning for too long, they do tend to get a little complacent, a little entitled, and then they don’t win the championship anymore. California has been winning for too long,” Musk said at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council summit Tuesday during an interview with Editor-in-Chief Matt Murray.
When asked if he had moved from California, Musk first emphasized the presence his companies still have in the nation's largest state.
“First of all, Tesla and SpaceX obviously have massive operations in California,” the South Africa native said, according to CNBC. “In fact, it’s worth noting that Tesla is the last car company still manufacturing cars in California. SpaceX is the last aerospace company still doing significant manufacturing in California.”
“There used to be over a dozen car plants in California, and California used to be the center of aerospace manufacturing,” he continued. “My companies are the last two left. ... That’s a very important point to make.”
“For myself, yes, I have moved to Texas.”
Musk added that he believes Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area have “too much influence on the world” but that it likely will be reduced as a result of the pandemic, the Journal reported.
Musk is just the latest in a series of startup executives and employees who have moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to cheaper locations since the pandemic forced many to begin working remotely.
Last week, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced that it planned to move its headquarters to Texas, and earlier this year, Palantir Technologies Inc., founded in the Bay Area in 2003, moved its base of operations to Denver.
In August, Palantir CEO Alex Karp accused Silicon Valley of being out of touch with the principles and societal needs of everyday Americans.
“Our society has effectively outsourced the building of software that makes our world possible to a small group of engineers in an isolated corner of the country,” Karp wrote in a letter to investors. “The engineering elite of Silicon Valley may know more than most about building software. But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires.”
During his remarks Tuesday, Musk also condemned government regulations and bureaucracy that he says have limited new startup creation by favoring monopolies and duopolies.
“You have a forest of redwoods, and the little trees can’t grow,” Musk said, adding that the government should “just get out of the way” of innovators.
In May, Musk threatened to move Tesla out of California when a countywide stay-at-home order prevented his U.S. car factory from reopening, which Musk claimed was “fascist,” likening the restrictions to “forcibly imprisoning people in their homes.”
Musk eventually announced his intentions to reopen the factory in defiance of the health order, which the Alameda County Public Health Department responded to within days by saying it would allow the Tesla factory to reopen under specific safety conditions.
In July, Musk announced that Tesla would be building a $1 billion assembly plant near Austin, Texas, its second in the U.S. and first outside Silicon Valley. Musk’s SpaceX also has operations in Texas.
“You have a forest of redwoods, and the little trees can’t grow,” Musk said, adding that the government should “just get out of the way” of innovators.
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Musk is sounding a lot like Hank Reardon in Atlas Shrugged.
Yeah, if they move to Austin what’s the difference? Other than no state income tax. Will he move his businesses? Doubt it.
Translation: I hate the sky high taxes in CA and love the low taxes in TX but I can’t admit that to my throngs of Dim fans.
I assume they’re Patriots! ;o) We are in China Spring (NW corner of Waco) - that’s pretty much neighbors in Texas!
I saw what you did there. LOL
Maybe a different view? Musk seems like a grifter with a unique talent to piggyback on US tax dollars. It would be fine if he relocated to Challenger Deep. Salesman—yes. Innovator—no. He has done nothing that has not been done previously but glams on to fed money and technology and then acts as if it his own. Thumbs down.
lol. Paypal was innovative. You really know nothing about him at all.
When someone like him is involved in so many things there are bound to be some that will not be universally popular. Watching that documentary earlier this year just prior to the SpaceX launch solidified in my mind that this guy is really onto something...maybe a person for the ages. His new satellite Internet offering promising 50 to 150 mbps in 2021 with no funny charges and no idling down your bandwidth from a promised 25 mbps to 265 kB/s Promises a great deal. Please check if not familiar: https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/mediacenter/mobile-news/elon-musk-starlink/
Yes, if I were to mold an opinion of Elon musk from posts on free republic and stories on daily mail, I will be convinced that he magically conned the government to acquire the contracts for electric cars and dates hot dip shits like Amber Heard who run around with little redheaded faggots.
His history going back to the mid to late 1990s as as a budding entrepreneur is really an invigorating thing to witness. So it goes-in S. Africa (the good side!) he created some cheap little video game in the 1980s on a Commodore or Tandy, sold for like 30 or 40 bucks whetting his ambition for what tech could and would offer, hence very heady investments in products like PayPal etc. He is a programmer, engineer, leader, and visionary.
He has done nothing that has not been done previously but glams on to fed money and technology and then acts as if it his own. Thumbs down
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yeah you are right, other people have launched rockets, built electric vehicles, and started pay services. So you have proved your case, and shortly will be giving us the benefit of your latest invention while announcing you’ve just made your first billion dollars without any aid from anyone, anywhere, at anytime.
BTW: its gloms, not glams
Falcon flies for less money than any other US rocket.
Starship is not financed in any way by the US taxpayer.
Tesla cars no longer qualify for subsidies.
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