"The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer," Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer programmers around the world, so using it let's us build our own chips. And HTML 5 is very secure. Every component is linked on the data network, all speaking the same language. It's not a bunch of separate systems that somehow still manage to communicate."
https://www.truckinginfo.com/330475/whats-behind-the-grille-... - April 24, 2019
What skills does he have that I completely lack?
As George Carlin would say, it's a big club, and you ain't in it.
A lot of smart people get woo-ed by bad pitches or wrapped up in cults too. It's all about how the message is coded for the target audience. An astute MLM seller uses very different language to sell to a small farmer vs a young silicon valley graduate[1]. There's also the aspect of how vulnerable the audience is at that point in their lives, cults are especially good (bad?) at finding people in tumultuous periods in their lives, looking for any sort of hope and/or support system to pull them through it. Then the cult provides the community and short-term structure they crave at the time, to their long-term detriment.
Personally, how relatively smart and even generally skeptical people fall for cults and conspiracy theories is one of the most fascinating sociological phenomena out there.
[1] leaning somewhat on general stereotypes for the sake of argument, not insinuating all these people are the same, or implying anything about the relative intelligence of a farmer vs a silicon valley graduate.
That said, looks like this guy is actually more of a "self made man" as he started several businesses out of college with moderate success. The first was an alarm company (Spoiler, those are generally MLMs and there's 100 of them). Looks like he was just successful enough at it.
It's not shocking to me that someone who starts an MLM ends up in trouble with the SEC.
And it's not shocking that someone from Utah starts an MLM. MLM and other scams seem to be the main industry in Utah.
A non-snarky comment is in my experience the LDS church puts a great deal of emphasis on entrepreneurship, wealth, and "excellence in all things" that leads some to do great things and others to shamelessly steal and cheat.
This does not make it less wrong but fraud is essential.
> wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain
There is no reason entrepreneurship has to involve deception.
The truly great founders, CEOs, and investors of our generation have generally been people who could see the difference between articulate and intelligent, and valued intelligence as the driving characteristic of people who built their products.
He certainly could have made billions if he had been greedy (not given any away) and lazy (just lived off the dividends and never sold) and never done another thing in his life - more billions than Bezos.
I'm going to have to disagree. There are many things that make the two Steves different. Woz was just never interested in the same things Jobs was. Woz wanted to make cool shit. Jobs wanted to have his products rule the world.
1. The ability to lie shamelessly.
2. Charisma.
3. Confidence.
The last two (or all three, really) can be combined into ‘salesmanship’, more or less.
Key point is to not let yourself forget what is that you're doing: manipulating people. Or in other words, don't forget that there is such thing as reality. Many fell into this one trap.
Shameless Conviction.
The ability to tell tall tales that are completely disconnected from reality. And be able to do so with utter confidence.
Either way, it's maximum corruption.
And we, the people, continue to choose "public discourse" as a mechanism to bring awareness and, perhaps, attend to the issue; yet, the discourse available to the people is limited, both economically and even in social media, algorithmically.
I hate to sound like a decentralization fanatic, but decentralizing power away from centralized actors is the only way we will be able to right these wrongs and essentially bring fairness to society.
We, the people, deserve to reap rewards based on skill and the proper application thereof.
And if you think decentralization brings fairness I suggest you visit some of the more decentralized parts of the world. Decentralization can solve some problems, but that's not one of them.
You'd be amazed how "successful" one can be if willing to lie, cheat and/or steal.
It does not take any special skills to do this. All it takes is having no integrity.
Even this site is maybe a good example. You can apply to YCombinator with little more than a partner, plan, and pitch. The worst that happens is they say no, and if they say yes then you get a $500k funded shot at your idea with lots of advice on top and people trying to help you succeed. Yeah the chances of acceptance are low, but if you've ever read applications for pretty much anything, a ridiculous amount are just complete garbage, so your chances are better than the numbers suggest if you're halfway competent.
At the same time, I think going from mid-6 to 7 figure income is a lot less controversial than 10 figure net worth. It's still unlikely to be related to whether someone is a scaled up version of another, but at what point you consider the reasons for earning that much "fair" tend to go a lot deeper than plain fraud.
(Don't get me wrong there are systemic issues with both of the examples above, but the point is fundamentally there's value in understanding and taking on risks that others might be less willing to take)
Also, just generally, the question is wrong. Perpetrating a massive fraud is very time-consuming and, ultimately, requires a level of self-deception that most people don't have the energy for. Milton, SBF, etc. did the things they did because they wanted to believe they were someone other than who they were. There is nothing wrong with knowing who you are and just being that person. To say this another way, Milton was clearly unwell, he is now unwell with more money than can be actually used, being unwell is not an example for anyone particularly when you trade it for something with extremely limited marginal value.
Jason Zweig:
There are three ways to make a living:
1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
Also remember survivorship bias: lots of folks with "initiative and [high?] risk tolerance" fail, but you may not hear about them.
Obligatory:
If you clocked the hours they spent and compared it to a decent consulting fee then yeah - they're losing lots of money. But in reality they're doing that stuff during the time that most of us are shit posting, browsing the web, playing games, and so on. And so if you compare it to that, they're making a hefty chunk of change with the upside that they do have a chance, whatever it may be, of something really sticking and that being their to the Moon project. And you know, even just getting to the atmosphere is enough for a life changing result.
Or getting back to the Y Combinator thing. It costs $0 to apply, and the worst that happens is that they say no. All it takes is giving up a bit of time off our shitposting time. But that's somehow not an offer many of us are willing to accept, which is really pretty weird if you think about it!
The Führer is never wrong.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardons-nikola-trevor-...
Presidential pardons do not limit or prevent private civil lawsuits.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/politics/sec-trump-cle...
Also, CEOs of public companies lie persistently, huge lies that directly cause people to lose money. Nothing happens because that is the part of the game: they lie, you try to work out if other people will believe it for long enough. For startups, because there is no existing revenue, the lies are criminal. There is no distinction in reality.
I'd prefer to not give liars and cheats even more money so that they can improve their grifting - this is not behaviour that benefits society at all.
1) investors caring that management is lying and being unwilling to invest in known fraud and
2) the United States being a nation of laws.
Both seemed like solid bets as recently as a decade ago
https://hindenburgresearch.com/
But some may find amusing my initial interpretation, that this was an oblique reference to Paul von Hindenburg effectively abdicating to a different government (which has been likened by some to the current USA leadership).
Australia taxes more, make no mistake, and the earning potential is less. Living in Australia though was the biggest improvement to quality life I've ever had. I've lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose, SF, Portland, Seattle, Honolulu, and Sydney, and Sydney is #1 by such a large margin it shocked me.
My taxes went to funding public transportation that works. They funded government services like ServiceNSW that made me shocked how bad the DMV experiences were in the states. There's nationalized healthcare where I no longer had to worry if my friends could afford healthcare. The government has plenty of its own issues, but none of them felt as on the edge of the event horizon as US politics do.
I felt safe in Australia. With how things are again, I'm so glad I hold a passport with a kangaroo.
Do you work for a US company in Australia?
I worked for Atlassian at the time, so kinda both. An Australian company fiscally located in the US.
The filing last month noted that “President Trump expressly decided here that Milton is factually innocent, the pardon did, contrary to the debtors’ assertions, wipe the slate clean.”
Absolutely disgusting. Now he's trying to pull 69 million in legal fees from the company.
https://apnews.com/article/nikola-trevor-milton-fraud-trump-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/politics/sec-trump-cle...
Each of the above guys did the smart thing of buying influence (Milton retained the attorney general’s brother as his lawyer, for example). In the past you’d have to hide that better, but now it’s out in the open.
One of the guys mentioned in the article is now cleared to work on his new crypto venture. Of course.
Edit: not to “both sides” this, but it is interesting and mentioned in that NYT article that Biden pardoned a guy involved in a multi-billion dollar ponzi after serving 10 years (with 10 to go). Found an article from 2008 showing that the Bidens were linked with the firm. Not as direct of a quid pro quo but more the standard back scratching …
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/stanford-reportedly...
One of the most glaring examples of the effect is how in his previous term he led all of all of his supporters to the opposite side of a clear second amendment issue - the summary execution of Breonna Taylor in retaliation for Kenneth Walker's Constitutionally-protected act of night time home defense. This is one of the exact situations the NRA and wider gun lobby always invokes to rally support, and yet they just completely discarded it in favor of cheering on the jackbooted home invaders that came to make those "cold dead hands".
I'm just waiting to see where Trump's current gun control push is going to go. Gun registration/prohibition for "trans, foreign-looking people, liberals, antifa hiding under your children's beds, etc", but really anyone and everyone who might have some semblance of a spine. These cultists really have no values left.
Remember when half this forum was convinced that both parties are equally corrupt, based on their feeling that he will certainly walk?
(That half of it is still convinced they are equally corrupt, but since their guy won and the ends justify the means, they no longer feel the need to articulate reasons for why they would feel that way.)
That's why tips are tax-free!
If the country isn't a petrostate it's certainly cosplaying one to a psychotic degree.
About 17% of the GDP is paid to the federal government in taxes. Nationalizing oil production is equivalent to lowering the effective federal tax rate by 35%.
I'm not sure what the reference to "democracy is for peace" is about, unless you count Nazi occupation and rule as the same government or something.
It's easy to verify and see who will lead during non peace times. Thank you for your attention.
Norway's government is elected through open, free elections. While the king is nominally the head of state, this is a symbolic position with extremely limited powers, and the king has not played a meaningful role in politics since World War 2. The royal family has no power over the government.
"King Harald holds the rank of General in the Army and Air Force, and of Admiral in the Navy. He is the nation's highest-ranking officer."
As head of state, the king has a very limited role in political affairs.
Not saying people should blindly trust their government, but we went for the other end of the spectrum instead, which is similarly unhealthy.
Bradley Bondi is Pam Bondi's (yes the attorney general) brother.
Outrage fatigue. The actions are so constant and outrageous that it's hard to keep up. There's an item every single week that would've gotten a president impeached 20 years ago.
Even when you drop the detail level down to exclude individual names it's just too damn much.
I wonder if there's some prior-art in The investigative journalism field which could be relevant...
[1] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-atr...
A Trumpedia documenting the extent of the case, with cross-links and what not, could be one of the game-changing educational tools of the century.
If you figure out write rights and moderation.
That is exactly the idea... By dumping non-stop the most nonsense things into the news cycle, the actual interesting events gets overshadowed.
Oooo, oooo, Trump said X ... lets all focus on X, ignoring corruption or people's rights slowly being dismantled... This was literally in that 2025 Plan.
And the issue is that people actually seem to have more and more comprehension issues.
A while ago i made a post regarding a specific hosting provider not releasing any new products in 2025, clearly talking and listing hardware releases from the previous years.
The first two comments pointed out that a interface change was a new product (its not) and a product launch from end 2024 (2024 != 2025). Point out that those comments are wrong. downvoted, ... again, and again.
Its like people seem to lose the ability to read, or critically think about what is written. Its one of the main reasons i do not like to post on most social media platforms anymore. Its like people want to argue, need to oppose what is written, be outraged by what they see. Like we all gotten dumber or maybe social media / forums etc only showed how we really are.
And all that news feeds into this. The people behind Trump understand that people have this lacking ability, and know that if they flood the news with nonsense, actual journalism simply dies. It also does not help that most news is owned by big corporations, with often dubious links, and the main motivation being profit!
The number of articles about a measly $3B is far down the list (which is impossible to verify anyway).
Yes. I wish more people had the balls to say it...
"It has also been reported that Trevor Milton gave $920,000 to Mr. Trump’s political campaign (or $1.8 million combined with his wife) and was represented in this case by Pam Bondi’s brother."
- Extortion example: Trump in a White House Lawn gaggle interview this week complained at / threatened Australia's ABC reporter and then Australia itself with additional tarriffs, after the reporter asked about loss of freedom of speech relating to FCC complaining & threatening "big stick or little stick, you decide" to ABC/Disney who needed FCC's near-future approval for a pending business-merger, which ABC/Disney then terminated a thorn in the side of the President .. comedian Jimmy Kimmel. It's pretty clear, in my personal opinion, that this was extortion
Again, these are my personal opinions.
Essentially what corporate law is all about. Huge drain on innovation and an accelerant for corruption. We’ve grown so used to it now that we don’t even see it. Agree to terms, move on. Hear about some class-action lawsuit relevant to you, but never get anything from it. Nowadays we don’t even have a right to class-action in most agreements we sign with corporations. The same vultures in corporate law are making their way into public law. It’s like mixing bleach and ammonia.
they're trying. https://theinventors.com / https://theranoslabs.com are up on billboards around LA with 'Elizabeth Holmes Innocent' marketing.
This is a big one, but was settled https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/18/business/tesla-black-worker-h...
Well that is extremely inappropriate, but it is neither a crime nor was it committed by Elon Musk.
As for your other claim is there ever an instance where Elon Musk claimed to sell fully self driving cars? Because I haven't heard it. When Tesla sells those cars it makes you sign a contract stating specifically that they aren't able to do that, and then on top of that puts in safety features that don't allow the software to even be active if the driver is not attentive.
“I had to [stay in school]..otherwise I’d get kicked out of the country.” ... “since I already had my undergrad, I could..get an H1-B visa” (not correct, he had no degree in 1995, so he's already on record lying about many aspects of his visa and schooling situation)
"I was legally there, but I was meant to be doing student work," adding to The Post, "I was allowed to do work sort of supporting whatever." You cannot work "supporting whatever" on an F1, exceptions like OPT are restricted to specific programs. Musk has (more than once) admitted to violating the terms of his visa and working illegally.
> Derek Proudian, a board member for the Musks' former internet startup Zip2, which they founded in late 1995, told the Post, "Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.," adding, "We don't want our founder being deported."
Musk had no degree in 1995. And it sounds like he was on an F1. If those are both true he was working illegally.
Snopes has a lot more details https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/musk-undocumented-immigran...
Has anyone gone to prison for 30 year old visa irregularities? I'd say it's not normal.
Plenty of companies out there that are just plain frauds like Nikola waiting to be discovered.
In any case, the fact we're even talking about this kind of behaviour speaks volumes.
I followed Nikola from the beginning and it was patently obvious that the company was a scam. And they managed to get the company to the stock market and valued at many billions. Totally insane.
The way they did it was basically to run a huge amount of Facebook ads, but they were selling the stock, not the product. And once the stock goes up, everybody just gets in a mode 'surely if it goes up it will continue to go up'.
They played on all the pent up 'hydrogen' is the real future bullshit that people have been talking about for decades. He was also pretty good at reading the social media and always pivoting the the new thing.
The ended up raising such an absurd amount of money they legit had to start building a real company (try to).
> The filing last month noted that “President Trump expressly decided here that Milton is factually innocent, the pardon did, contrary to the debtors’ assertions, wipe the slate clean.”
Ok so it's maybe not the very most important of the things that people have claimed the president has the power to do, but it sounds like this guy is saying not only does the pardon mean he's "innocent" but that he doesn't _owe money to people_? B/c the presidential pardon power is also an ability to declare what debts everyone does and doesn't have?
yencabulator•4mo ago
It's the party of rules for thee, not for me.
lokar•4mo ago
estearum•4mo ago
lokar•4mo ago
overfeed•4mo ago
SCOTUS ruled that official actions of POTUS can't be illegal, and can't even be investigated.
ahmeneeroe-v2•4mo ago
Downvoting because I don't think it meets the bar at HN.
kelnos•4mo ago
I no longer consider SCOTUS rulings as good measures of what the law actually is. Instead I look to the lower court decisions that brought us there. If they agree with SCOTUS, or there's no consensus, then sure, ok. But if the lower court rulings are largely the opposite of the final SCOTUS rulings -- especially if the lower court judges include folks appointed by Trump or another conservative president -- I think it's fair to assume that SCOTUS's decision is partisan, ideological bullshit that bears little resemblance to actual law in the US.
It pains me to say or even think this, because in the past I've had a lot of respect for our Supreme Court, but that respect is completely gone at this point.
estearum•4mo ago
This SCOTUS has used the shadow docket to overturn (without actually ruling on) lower court decisions extremely frequently. These “decisions” (really delays in the administration’s favor) are increasingly offered without rationale and even without the majority Justices signing their names to the order.
IMO they know the administration is way afoul of the law (which is why so many lower courts are finding such in 50-150 page considerations) but they don’t want to have to decide on that. So instead they’re relying on the shadow docket and not providing any rationale or signatures to try to escape the shame they know history will bring upon them.
twright•4mo ago
CamperBob2•4mo ago
_DeadFred_•4mo ago
rtkwe•4mo ago
CamperBob2•4mo ago
rtkwe•4mo ago
BJones12•4mo ago
Before politics can be boring and fair, adherence to actual religion must be rebuilt to satisfy the people's need for religion, so that politics doesn't have to.
CamperBob2•4mo ago
Mainstream Christianity gave us Trump, so it's not exactly the moral foundation it claimed to be. There are plenty of cults and factions that could potentially salvage it, but how will any of them get traction? Or are you thinking of something even further afield than that?
psd1•4mo ago
America didn't invent those tenors of self-serving cant, but it is the exemplar today
This supposed Christianity was one of the bigger factors in the assassination of reality, but ultimately we have these cunts because Zuckerberg gave a platform to perennial losers.
BJones12•4mo ago
I think it's worth taking a closer look at what Trump is to the American and religious right. Some people think he's their savior, and that they approve of his actions. I don't. I think he's their champion, in the historical sense - a champion is one who fights for you. A champion is not above a king, but is useful, admired, and dear. I think the usefulness of Trump was proportional to the number of culture wars that the American Christian population was losing a decade ago, and is now winning. Some of those battles were dumb, like even AOC deleted her pronouns after the last election, but the fact that they were being fought meant that people needed someone effective to fight for them, and the most skilled fighter was Trump.
> There are plenty of ... factions that could potentially salvage it, but how will any of them get traction?
I think they need to figure out how to provide the most value possible to the population, and I think that following the teachings of Jesus is integral to this. I also think there are a number of things that must yet be figured out by trial and error.
thinkingtoilet•4mo ago
yencabulator•4mo ago
CamperBob2•4mo ago
yencabulator•4mo ago
What'll really mess with your right wing sensibilities is that equality, happiness and ranking high on various democracy indexes all correlate. Arguing against happiness sounds just weird.
CamperBob2•4mo ago
It's your goal. Speak for yourself, please. You seem to be quite good at that.
yencabulator•4mo ago
braebo•4mo ago
tempodox•4mo ago
throw0101a•4mo ago
Hypocrisy is a virtue:
> It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
> It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
> It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
> It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
> For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
* https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267
* Via: https://kottke.org/25/03/for-fascists-hypocrisy-is-a-virtue