The funny thing about the fallen is that they do not know they fell.

Mr. Rogier, the ever tireless peruser of assorted heresy and nonsense, dropped a link in the log yesterday. It isn't much, random derp swimming in the UStard soupⁱ. Nevertheless, through the magic of random effort, this ten millionth monkey pressing randomly on a keyboard has actually come up with two nuggets which are informative - not of the world, of course, but of the country of the happy typist monkeys.

Tesla has a strange way of communicating with customers I think is best described as customer service vaporware. That is, they spend more time trying to create the illusion of customer service, rather than actually providing it. There is no mechanism for them to get feedback, as I tried to provide, so its difficult to see how they can improve if they don’t know where they are going wrong.

In the end, I cancelled my order and Tesla agreed to refund my money. If a tech-savvy $100k car buyer can have this experience, what hope is there for this organization to go mainstream? Tesla is a publicly traded company that loses money. So, strictly speaking, it doesn’t need customers as long as it can fund its losses via Wall Street. In my experience, its a hobby masquerading as a company, and it can probably run as a hobbyist organization for some time. But, at some point, customers will matter, they always do. Hopefully, if this posts reaches the right people in Tesla it will serve as a wake-up call to right their ways before its too late.

The path I propose through the fetid swamp of UStardian discourse in this case goes like so : first, we take note that the word "meta" does not once appear in the 2`000 word text, and then we see that the fellow considers himself "tech savvy". Thus we must ask : what sort of savvy would this be, where the subject encounters a meta-problem and yet fails to deploy the obviously adequate tools of analysis, satisfying himself to try and discuss it in improper, lower level terminology ?

The answer almost forces itself upon us : TECH savvyⁱⁱ. Tech savvy, the indisputable macula of UStardism, the sad result of a few decades dedicated to "technical education" in the sense of nominally "resolving actual problems rather than wasting time with theory" (a pile of nonsense with a lot of fans, among the culturally marginal for reasons of geography or mere youth) but in practice merely conveying a substitute for knowledge and understanding. If the educational processes that result in UStardian "tech savvy" were applied to ordinary literacy, the manual would be called "How To Never Learn The Alphabet While Successfully Avoiding Notice".

And so, to make this circle full : yes, it is true that Tesla is trying to merely try. Their customer service is not in the business of providing actual customer service, but in negotiating the provision of customer service into being. "What do I have to do to get you to say you were customerily-served" is the direct equivalent of children playing : "let's say this is a palace". And sure enough, if the kids do agree "this is a palace", then those self-same kids can go on for a while playing about a kingly court and what else goes on there.

But then again, the engineers did the same throughout school : "here's your reading list" "what would it take for you to say I read the list ?". This meta-stasis of the normal workings of the world, whereby any fact is replaced with a socially negotiated imago has of course a lot in common and a lot to do with socialism, so much so that it can't be readily distinguished whether the insanity drives the politics or rather the politics drive the insanity. It's plainly possible they have a common root - once one accepts the patently insane "human life is the greatest good" then both socialism politically and insanity socially are unavoidable consequences, for instance. In all likelihood we'll never know (but what would it take for you to agree we have ?)

So then : Tesla does not exist in a vacuum. It is not merely driving a new way to make cars, or to sell cars. It is actually and outright driving a new way to have customers! "What would it take for you to pretend you're my customer ?" It worked splendidly for apple, and the engineers that didn't go to engineer school but to meta-engineering meta-school said, and so they must be believed, that Apple is "the most valuable thing in the world". What'd it take for you to agree ? No, "it actually being that" is not among the multiple choices listed. What'd it take for you to try again ?

This regression to infantilism, in line with general neoteny in the generally idle, and generally worthless UStard population is both a necessary ingredient of the end of that sad, pointless world as well as an unavoidable consequence of its circumstances. Relative security and relative abundance drive misvaluation of human life, which drives an inability to maintain security and control resources, and here we are.

I am firmly persuaded that there is nothing that can be done to fix the swamp, and the only reasonable move is to leave.

1. One Manoj Puranik, if you're curious, runs a provincial ISP in the South East. [↩]
2. Partial credit for "I just wanted to". [↩]