Summary
Dutch pension fund Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP sold its $585 million Tesla stake over concerns about Elon Musk’s “controversial and exceptionally high” pay package and unspecified labor conditions.
ABP previously voted against Musk’s performance-based compensation, which has faced shareholder lawsuits and judicial scrutiny.
A Delaware judge recently invalidated the pay package, citing insufficient shareholder approval.
While Tesla’s Model Y remains popular in the Netherlands, European sales fell 15% in 2024.
ABP stated the divestment was not politically motivated despite Musk’s ties to the Trump administration.
christians in particular like to imagine that god blesses those who are “good” with wealth, and that therefore wealthy people must be “good” because otherwise they wouldn’t be wealthy.
This then gets absorbed into more secular thought with “well they’re successful so they must be skilled”.
Truth is, his daughter-grooming daddy owned an emerald mine in Apartheid South Africa and got his seed-money from that. So he’s neither “good” nor particularly “skilled.”
It’s just Calvinism (if you are rich, that means god loves you), and Calvinism is baked into most protestant denominations.
Really Calvin and his beloved “Protestant work ethic” are behind the rise of capitalism. Look it up. Max Weber wrote about it in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”
no it’s not. Calvin might have been a huge proponent of it in his particular brand of douchery, but the concept goes as far back as- for example- Job. This is why Job is so confused about why god wrecked his life… he was a good and faithful person. The story of Job tweaked it so that wealth “wasn’t always”… (even if god did give him everything back again for being a good sock puppet.)
The real moral of Job, though, is that god is a raging fucking narcissist. (“you wouldn’t understand. you’re incapable of understanding. only I can understand.”)
the core tenet of Calvinism is rather that salvation is inevitable- it derives from god’s choice, rather than any willful act by humans. The other side of that, is of course, that humanity is irrevocably fucked without that “salvation”, and that only by submission can good things come to you. (again, this is raging narcissism.)
I was under the impression that the lesson of job was that families are fungible assets
That…wasn’t a lesson that needed to be taught. Back then you could buy a family for 50 goats. 20 if she had hit puberty.
The “point” of Job was to tackle the problem of evil. There-presumably- a rash of Bronze Age peeps asking “if god is good and unfaithful, why does bad shit happen to me” that needed addressing.
It does it through a sock-puppet story every bit as cringeworthy as the God’s Not Dead series. (Can you believe they made 5 movies?!), of which the final explanation, when Job demands one, is “who the fuck are you to question me?! You wouldn’t fucking understand, because I’m so fucking great”
Basically, god massively gaslights the shit out of job and, in typical sock puppet fashion licks the jackboot of the guy who killed off his family, his livelyhood and wellbeing.
That’s funny, because prosperity gospel is just there to indiscriminately wrench away money from the most desperately impoverished people imaginable. To think, it’s doing double work by lionizing oligarchs. It’s the purest form of evil, if you ask me.
it’s not even prosperity gospel- that isn’t about being good. Just that god will make you rich if you make Joel Osteen and his ilk rich.
Funny how that doesn’t work. (and yes… it’s fucking evil.)
The way Osteen and the other demons justify their wealth is that God appointed it to them.