Of the top of my head, these are a few things that if Tesla can get away with while having a huge fanbase and no repercussions, every future startup is going to try:

1) Tesla Had 3 Times as Many OSHA Violations as the 10 Largest US Plants Combined[1]

2) Elon Musk personally doxxing a market analyst who provided in-depth analysis of Tesla financials, by calling his boss and threatening to sue if he continued his side project of covering Tesla [2]

3) Committing blatant securities fraud by claiming he would sell Tesla to Saudi Arabian investors for $420 a share, and promising 'the short burn of the century' a few weeks before doing so.

4) Bailing out a failing Solar City run by Musk's family(cousins) with Tesla shareholder money on the promise of a product that turned out to be vaporware. [3] After the merger solar city sales are now approaching zero and it's becoming increasingly clear it was a bailout [4]. Multiple lawsuits are ongoing.

5) Claiming that Tesla cars bought today will appreciate in value to over $250,000, so it's actually an investment not a purchase.[5]. Generally making crazy statements about imminent "million robotaxis" while still not having a 'Summon' featured promised in a few weeks months ago because "parking lots are very hard"(recent tweet)

For me at least, the transition was a slow one - from "What they're doing is hard, but I hope they succeed" to "They're probably going to fail, but at least they have good intentions" to "If they don't fail, the precedent set is staggering to what you can get away with".

There's the famous James Comey saying of 'The Chickenshit Club' - prosecutors unwilling to take on corporations for fear that a loss or long case would damage their win ratio, leading to entities with a large legal team getting away with anything they want. Fundamentally the problem is consistently making statement that they know to be untrue under the guise of this being targets to be met. A generous person would of course call them "ambitious goal". But someone who has studied them closely would know it's an attempt to pump stock that has historically worked, but has recently started failing.

When blatant market manipulations, hazardous working conditions, highly questionable accounting practices, false marketing claims, doxxing critics and lies are allowed to succeed, laws don't really exist and companies operate within their bounds only because they don't want to take the 0.1% risk that they'll actually be punished in a way that threatens their continued operations.

If you believe in capitalism and regulated efficient markets, you will hope that a company that breaks the rules as often as Tesla doesn't go unpunished. But the SEC will never bring down a company who's stock is still high, as their primary goal is to protect shareholder value. To fully uncover the extent of their damage, they will have to fail first.

[1] - https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-man...

[2] - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-allegedly-silenc...

[3] - https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-t...

[4] - https://i.imgur.com/iQUJkbE.jpg

[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-16/musk-stan...