You lost me when you started attacking him personally for being antisemitic and a bigoted racist. That hearsay nonsense has no place in a logical intelligent conversation about a car manufacturer & layoffs. You can take your politically charged personal smear campaign agenda elsewhere.
Interesting. I thought it was just getting real when KelvinMace wrote: "His pushing of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, his amplifying of racist bigots on a media platform he was so obsessed with that he bought for about three-four times what it was worth, and his courting of politicians who are destroying the mission of EV/green energy transition is, to put it mildly, not rational behavior at all. He has now become the enemy of what he espoused."
Although there are 90 CEOs of the Fortune 100 companies that the vast majority of people cannot name, there are a few who stand out, because they make a point of standing out. Musk is one of those. If Musk were to fulfill the fiduciary responsibility of a CEO to act in the best interests of the company, he would have to be far more taciturn regarding his egregious and offensive political views. However, he appears to be too unhinged and narcissistic to act as a mature, caring, thoughtful CEO.
A "logical intelligent conversation about a car manufacturer" necessarily will, at the time of large layoffs, put the spotlight on the CEO. Is he or she perceived as cruel, or shortsighted, or foolish? If so, the company value and future prospects can be affected.
As you are no doubt aware, Henry Ford was a Nazi sympathizer and an inspiration to Nazis. That means that Jewish people around the world were less likely to by Ford products. Can you see that connection? Then perhaps you can see that Musk's personal life can affect the Tesla corporation in adverse ways. There are certainly other CEOs who are antisemitic and racist, but they are not so wildly narcissistic to broadcast their views so strongly to the world as Musk does. Do so, and you can expect to get kicked out as CEO.
The publicized views of any CEO will affect sales in obvious ways, but will also affect who wants to work for the company, who wants to lend money to the company, who wants to buy the stock, etc, etc. When a CEO says "DEI must DIE", that makes many people less likely to want to work at the CEO's company.
When you wrote, "You lost me when you started attacking him personally for being antisemitic and a bigoted racist," were you thinking that it is not nice to criticize any person for being antisemitic and a bigoted racist? To me, attacking a person for being antisemitic and a bigoted racist seems like a good thing.
Although your ideas may seem odd to me, I am not going to suggest that you take them elsewhere. You have livened up the discussion here.