No Mercy No Malice

Why Tesla Fever Is the New Tulip Mania

Elon Musk, Robinhood, and SPACs all seem to be inflating the next big bubble

Scott Galloway
Marker
Published in
6 min readOct 13, 2020

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the unveiling of the new Tesla Model Y in Hawthorne, California on March 14, 2019.
Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Every decade, there’s at least one financial crisis somewhere in the world. When asked what a recession was, Jamie Dimon responded, “Something that happens every five to seven years.” It’s been 11. One of the many strange things about a crisis is that the country of origin (this time, China) is usually not the one that gets hit the hardest. Similar to when your kid gets his first C. Yeah, it’s rough on him, but the household devolves into arguments around parenting, with an older brother who must endure new rules implemented as a function of his delinquent sibling. But I digress.

Financial crises have many causes, but they generally boil down to a few key elements:

  • easy money
  • poor regulation
  • consensual hallucination that the market always goes up

The crisis is preceded by a cocaine-fueled party, where everything and everyone looks and feels great. The party creates an asset bubble — a wave of optimism…

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Scott Galloway
Marker

Prof Marketing, NYU Stern • Host, CNN+ • Pivot, Prof G Podcasts • Bestselling author, The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona • profgalloway.com