Tesla is basically proof positive that the market, oligarchy and fund managers are all in the Epstein-sphere of influence. No rational market would suffer the type of business management and products that Tesla produces.
You're forgetting a fan base. It's in the same category as a meme stock or NFT back in the day. Same way that haters gonna hate, believers gonna believe, and sometimes attack those who question/threaten their worldview. The boosters boost because they BELIEVE.
I don't think the comparison is entirely fair. There was never anything to NFTs. It was always a scam.
Tesla builds actual cars. For a while, these cars were innovative, and the best of their class. Their price was based on a wildly optimistic version of what they could become, but at least it had some nonzero value.
It's true that they've stopped innovating and have fallen behind, so that "optimism" has turned in the direction of "pure delusion". But I still think it's unfair to compare it to something that never demonstrated any value of any kind.
NFTs actually appreciated in price for a while. Still waiting for our FSD Teslas to appreciate and be useful as robotaxis as promised by Musk.
There is definitely a meme element here. It is fair to compare anything to anything, just not to equate anything with anything. There is, I think, sufficient overlap on certain dimensions to warrant looking at them together.
To me it is just proof that modern capitalist markets are inherently flawed in serious ways that nobody wants to admit. Everyone goes on and on about market efficiency and liquidity and capitalism doing some sort of self-balancing act, but it repeatedly fails over and over again on both individual and larger group scales. It just seems closer and closer to simple gambling, using the wealth and capital of large masses of society, but with the potential winnings mostly just going to a small few.
