> HE can do nothing of the sort because he is an idiot with very few real skills.
Management is a real skill. Salesmanship is also a real skill. I may not approve of the showboating, but drumming up enthusiasm for a future that most consider to be fantasy, was a necessary (though not sufficient) part of building an electric car company in an era when most people thought hydrogen was the future and that "electric car" meant "a milk float" and, if they had memories of any real personal electric vehicle, those memories would have been of the failure of the Sinclair C5:
Pretty sure nobody except Toyota thought hydrogen was going to be a useful intermediate fuel: handling is ridiculously difficult compared to room-temperature liquids, energy density is ridiculously low.
It would have made more sense to sell Fischer-Tropsch synthesized carbon fuel from purpose-grown crops, at a mere 3x the current production price of fossil carbon fuels, using the existing infrastructure for distribution into existing vehicles.
I don’t like the guy but he’s built companies that are implanting brain chips to give people vision and parapalegics the ability to interact in the world, has blanketed the globe in true high speed internet, have built spaceships that launch more frequently than any nation has ever done their own. And then there’s the EV thing which many see as key to fighting climate change. If he wasn’t so unlikable and part of this twitter debacle, the world would be praising each of these efforts.
Most of the passionate (embittered? salty? flavourless?) critiques of Elon always sound like a confession: His critics can't explain why he is successful, why his companies are successful, nor why he is wealthy. When they attempt an explanation, it's less an explanation and more a dismissal: luck, other people, teams, theft, subsidies, corruption, "the system is broken!", a technoaccelerationist cabal secretly pulling the levers of power.
But, fundamentally, the question whose answer eludes the majority of humans especially Elon's critics is: Why am I not as wealthy and relevant as Elon yet I'm obviously smarter and more ethical than he is? (Their implicit answer is that "life is unfair and doesn't reward the best people.")
Because if any of his critics actually had a meaningful critique that corresponds to reality, they would simply build better products and companies, become billionaires themselves and exemplify rather than pontificate about a better mode of billionaire behaviour and grandeur of vision.
I wonder if Musk fans realize that constantly deflecting all criticism with "you're just jealous, bro" says more about them than about the people they're limply trying to discredit.
> I wonder if Musk fans realize that constantly deflecting all criticism with "you're just jealous, bro" says more about them than about the people they're limply trying to discredit.
I wonder if the critics of Musk's "fans" realize that deflecting all criticism with "they're just Musk fans, bro" says more about their own anemic ability to imagine the legitimacy of another perspective, their utter lack of humility and complete poverty of intellectual honesty, than about the so-called fans they're flaccidly trying to discredit?
Any day now a Tesla Semi truck will stop by to deliver my solar shingles. I can then use them to charge my Tesla robotaxi. My Robotaxi will ferry people around when I'm not using it and pay for itself in under 2 years. Then I can start saving for my ticket to Mars, where I'll be safe from the woke mind virus that is consuming everyone here on earth.
I don't think the argument is that everything he touches turns to gold. Transforming two industries and going from in debt to the planet's richest is an achievement in itself.
I do recognise his major contributions: Made electric cars commonplace sooner than I thought with the Model S, financed SpaceX's doubtlessly awesome progress, and... well that's pretty much it.
Thing is, the illusion is fading, his previously "inscrutable" politics are on his sleeve, and you can't just pretend he's not a complete liability for any company because of his irrational, and frankly childish, behaviour.
> Made electric cars commonplace sooner than I thought with the Model S
You mean financing and leading the largest EV maker in the world and fundamentally changing a 100 year old industry.
Car industry has been considered for a long time a incredibly hard place to get into for a startup. Most new companies happened when industrial powers rose and supported local companies.
There are decades of failed car companies. And at the same time as Tesla, there were other companies who promised EV revolutions and failed.
People point to the Model S, but the Model 3 was actually just as or more important. When the Model 3 showed profitability ever car company in the world massively increased their investment in EV, before that many companies were pretending and doing research. For years the story was EV can't be profitable below 50k and you can't build them at volume.
> financed SpaceX's doubtlessly awesome progress
If with 'finacned' you mean founded and lead the largest SpaceX company in the world that has revolutionized the whole space industry and is the biggest rocket company and the biggest sat company that can also fly people to space and build the biggest rocket in the history of humanity.
SpaceX Starlink literally fundamentally changed the largest war in Europe since WW2.
But I guess all he did is 'financed progress'. You got to be fucking kidding me.
> and you can't just pretend he's not a complete liability
Can you spell out in actual real terms what this means? SpaceX is going from success to success and has been for 25 years now. Tesla is still a large company doing pretty well. Both companies are much bigger and much more important and powerful then they were 4 years ago.
In the real world, customers don't care about 'childish' behavior. And claiming he is irrational when his companies mostly act rationally on net (no companies is perfect and never makes errors) also don't really work very well.
The only reason you consider him a liability is that he opposes far-left ideology and promotes free speech. If that makes you a liability then I want every business leader to become a liability.
At the very least, if you are going to impartially assess his business accomplishments, you should completely disregard his political views when making that assessment. Otherwise you're giving him a dishonest business leadership assessment as a ploy to punish him for his politics.
