🏛️ Federal agencies run a coordinated regulatory campaign against Elon's companies
Off the FCC's cancellation of Starlink's $885M rural-broadband award, with FCC commissioner Carr naming DOJ, FAA, FTC, NLRB, SDNY and Fish & Wildlife as already acting, Sacks' claim is that the Biden administration is running open political retaliation against Elon and that the cost lands on the listed vehicle: Tesla loses the whole $7,500 EV credit as of 31 December after a surprise IRS decision, and a 2-million-car autopilot 'recall' was forced by regulatory pressure. Chamath's mechanism is death by a thousand cuts - drip-drip enforcement distracts management and makes companies misfire (Jason's precedent: Microsoft's antitrust decade) while subsidy is diverted to less innovative competitors. Friedberg takes the other side: Elon operates beyond every existing regulatory framework, so scrutiny is a necessity, not harassment.
also touching these tickers, same direction: Blue cities ban or license-cap robotaxis 28 (TSLA)
⚖ Why this verdict
fully deterministic — evaluate.py replays this from daily closes; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2023-12-16 → 2024-12-16 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▼ SHORT TSLA (primary play). TSLA rose 83.7% over the window → direction-adjusted R = -83.7% (the call lost money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +29.8%
→ α = -83.7 − (+29.8) = -113.5%
— what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the verdict uses.
Stock-selection read: -53.9% — did TSLA move the predicted way relative to the market. The two only differ on a SHORT: this call was right about direction relative to the index but still cost money versus holding it.
- Rule fired:
· HIT — R ≥ +10% AND α ≥ +5· PARTIAL — R ≥ +5% OR α ≥ 0▶ MISS — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a MISS earn 0 each, opposers the inverse — this feeds the scoreboard weights. supported: Chamath, Friedberg, Jason | opposed: Sacks
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2023-12-16)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▼ SHORT | TSLA | stock | PRIMARY | the only listed Elon vehicle - directly loses the full $7,500 EV credit on 31 Dec 2023, carries the regulator-forced 2M-car autopilot fix, the DOJ/NLRB actions and the management-distraction drag |
Mention log
“This is now part of a pattern of the federal government harassing Elon and his companies.... the administration is putting the thumb on the scales against Elon in favor of these less innovative competitors who have worse products”
“it was presumed, just based on the trend, that Tesla would lose half the credit, keep half the credit. And in a bit of a surprising move, the IRS came out and said the whole thing, we're not going to acknowledge anymore.... one could guess that there is an attempt here to kind of do the death by a thousand cuts approach”
“But look, you have to wonder how much of this is political. I mean, Delaware is Joe Biden's state. He's the senator. There were describing how this judge was connected to a law firm that had helped Joe Biden get elected.”
“It's pure naked retaliation. The Biden-Harris administration doesn't want to admit that Elon has the best solution for rural Internet, just like they couldn't admit he made the best electric cars.”
“do we want to live in the kind of administrative state where they will pick people that they dislike based on totally random criteria, a tweet, a meme, a post, and then all of a sudden punish a bunch of the rest of us because of that?”
“So now you're punishing the guy who actually built the infrastructure for both of these projects. So the reward for actually doing the right thing, which Starlink did, SpaceX did and Tesla did, is to be punished.”
“this is the truth about lawfare. They're using the agencies of the federal government to exact reprisals against their political opponents. If there's not a punishment for that, it's going to keep going.”
“For example, Tesla, it's gone from roughly $250 to $320 a share since the election. And you could call that the lawfare discount. I mean, that basically is the discount on Tesla stock because the market was pricing in the risk of retaliation and if the Republicans lost, there's a widespread belief that the Democrats would go after Elon and his company. So you can actually measure the lawfare discount based on Tesla stock.”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total force on the score — supports and opposes from every mention, weighted exactly as the replay applied them · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -72.3 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E157 2023-12-16 | init | +42.9 | 42.9 | E157 born by Chamath (explicit_prediction x3) [w=1.02] |
| E157 2023-12-16 | reinforce | +14.9 | 57.8 | E157 Sacks support x3 (new voice) [w=0.97] |
| E157 2023-12-16 | oppose | -10.1 | 47.7 | E157 Friedberg opposes x2 [w=0.84] |
| E157 2023-12-16 | reinforce | +11.8 | 59.5 | E157 Jason support x2 (new voice) |
| E158 2023-12-23 | decay | -2.4 | 57.1 | E158 silent |
| E159 2023-12-29 | decay | -2.3 | 54.8 | E159 silent |
| E160 2024-01-06 | decay | -2.2 | 52.6 | E160 silent |
| E161 2024-01-13 | decay | -2.1 | 50.5 | E161 silent |
| E162 2024-01-19 | decay | -2.0 | 48.5 | E162 silent |
| E163 2024-01-26 | decay | -1.9 | 46.6 | E163 silent |
| E164 2024-02-02 | reinforce | +7.7 | 54.3 | E164 Sacks support x2 [w=0.97] |
| E164 2024-02-02 | reinforce | +6.9 | 61.2 | E164 Jason support x2 |
| E165 2024-02-09 | decay | -2.4 | 58.7 | E165 silent |
| E166 2024-02-16 | decay | -2.3 | 56.4 | E166 silent |
| E167 2024-02-23 | decay | -2.3 | 54.1 | E167 silent |
| E168 2024-03-01 | decay | -2.2 | 51.9 | E168 silent |
| E169 2024-03-08 | decay | -2.1 | 49.9 | E169 silent |
| E170 2024-03-15 | decay | -2.0 | 47.9 | E170 silent |
| E171 2024-03-22 | decay | -1.9 | 46.0 | E171 silent |
| E172 2024-03-29 | decay | -1.8 | 44.1 | E172 silent |
| E173 2024-04-05 | decay | -1.8 | 42.4 | E173 silent |
| E174 2024-04-12 | decay | -1.7 | 40.7 | E174 silent |
| E175 2024-04-19 | decay | -1.6 | 39.0 | E175 silent |
| E176 2024-04-26 | decay | -1.6 | 37.5 | E176 silent |
| E177 2024-05-03 | decay | -1.5 | 36.0 | E177 silent |
| E178 2024-05-10 | decay | -1.4 | 34.5 | E178 silent |
| E179 2024-05-17 | decay | -1.4 | 33.2 | E179 silent |
| E180 2024-05-24 | decay | -1.3 | 31.8 | E180 silent |
| E181 2024-05-31 | decay | -1.3 | 30.6 | E181 silent |
| E182 2024-06-07 | decay | -1.2 | 29.3 | E182 silent |
| E183 2024-06-14 | decay | -1.2 | 28.2 | E183 silent |
| E184 2024-06-20 | decay | -1.1 | 27.0 | E184 silent |
| E185 2024-06-29 | decay | -1.1 | 26.0 | E185 silent |
| E186 2024-07-04 | decay | -1.0 | 24.9 | E186 silent |
| E187 2024-07-12 | decay | -1.0 | 23.9 | E187 silent |
| E188 2024-07-19 | decay | -1.0 | 23.0 | E188 silent |
| E189 2024-07-26 | decay | -0.9 | 22.0 | E189 silent |
| E190 2024-08-02 | decay | -0.9 | 21.2 | E190 silent |
| E191 2024-08-09 | decay | -0.8 | 20.3 | E191 silent |
| E192 2024-08-16 | decay | -0.8 | 19.5 | E192 silent |
| E193 2024-08-23 | decay | -0.8 | 18.7 | E193 silent |
| E194 2024-08-30 | decay | -0.7 | 18.0 | E194 silent |
| E195 2024-09-06 | decay | -0.7 | 17.3 | E195 silent |
| E196 2024-09-20 | reinforce | +14.4 | 31.6 | E196 Sacks support x3 [w=0.97] |
| E196 2024-09-20 | reinforce | +10.5 | 42.1 | E196 Chamath support x2 [w=1.02] |
| E196 2024-09-20 | reinforce | +8.7 | 50.8 | E196 Jason support x2 |
| E197 2024-09-27 | decay | -2.0 | 48.8 | E197 silent |
| E198 2024-10-03 | decay | -2.0 | 46.8 | E198 silent |
| E199 2024-10-11 | decay | -1.9 | 44.9 | E199 silent |
| E200 2024-10-18 | reinforce | +8.3 | 53.2 | E200 Friedberg support x3 (flipped from oppose) [w=0.84] |
| E200 2024-10-18 | reinforce | +8.1 | 61.4 | E200 Sacks support x3 [w=0.97] |
| E201 2024-10-25 | decay | -2.5 | 58.9 | E201 silent |
| E202 2024-11-01 | decay | -2.4 | 56.6 | E202 silent |
| E203 2024-11-08 | decay | -2.3 | 54.3 | E203 silent |
| E204 2024-11-16 | reversal | -32.6 | 21.7 | E204 Sacks flips |
| E205 2024-11-23 | decay | -0.9 | 20.8 | E205 silent |
| E206 2024-12-07 | decay | -0.8 | 20.0 | E206 silent |
| E207 2024-12-13 | decay | -0.8 | 19.2 | E207 silent |