mannaboy wrote:

Or a completely fabricated story one or the other for sure!

What does it bring a fabricated story or not have to do with anything?

At best he's a whimsy-driven financier/manager that derives praise and fortune off the back of the work of genuinely brilliant and interesting engineers and scientists.

GurtTractor wrote:

At best he's a whimsy-driven financier/manager that derives praise and fortune off the back of the work of genuinely brilliant and interesting engineers and scientists.

I know that's meant to be slightly baity', but do yourself believe that to be a reasonable judgement of the man, as we know him today (it could all change in an instant, of course)?

Talking of a scientist judging the man.

I don't like Musk. All his shit is illusory promise and hyperbole. Wrt his worth, I mean paper billionaires, is primarily a function of collatoralising his ridiculously valued equity. Non discerning investors have pumped all his shit up, he can take advantage of that. Greater fool theory will no doubt save him, but rate rises and Fed tapering may fuck him. I think twitter is poisonous, perpetuating society's tribal nature and bi-partisan friction, increasing distrust due to a non-uniform policy of censorship.

The fact we always seem to be looking to the 0.01% to make big important changes to our civilisation is the real issue here. It shouldn't be this way, we should not be relying on the benevolence of individuals who have exploited the system to gain as much agency as entire nations.

Gurt, any specifics in the video you disagree with?

"Elon Musk, is deeply respected by everyone who works in his company"

BIG HMMM

"He will transform civilisation as we know it"

Sigh

Honestly that video is such mental creepy fucking fawning almost cult-like shit, trying to make out like he's a truly 'great man' or the 'real deal' or something.

I stand by what I've said, that he's 'a theoretically less awful billionaire', and that we shouldn't be cheering the fact it takes one of the 0.01% to be bold and make major progress in some area. I may be wrong but I don't think Musk actually came up with any of the shit he's trying to do, he's an egotistical sci-fanboy Tony Stark wannabe.

Just looking at his wikipedia, he's got a pretty strong history of getting into stuff early. Not 'wow omg so visionary' early. Just earlier than big money tends to, which is probably part of his mystique (muskique?) among a certain class of person. 

1995 - first internet company. Did a lot of the coding himself. Part funded by his Dad. Sold four years later for $300 million. 

1999 - internet payments company. Which is very timely as this is the start of the dotcom boom and a few years later everyone is running around trying to work out how to get people to trust online payments. After some mergers and acquisitions and his departure, it becomes Paypal and gets sold to Ebay for $1.5 billion. 

Next few years he starts, from scratch, an aerospace manufacturer. Buys a huge stake in Tesla in its first year of operation for peanuts. And co-founds a solar energy company with his cousins (which, while successful, was drowning in debt and eventually got wrapped up in Tesla). 

So there's 10ish years of extremely impressive businessmanning there and a couple of slices of very good luck. He probably got high on the supply of people blowing smoke up his ass though and started puffing it out himself. Self-inflating his reputation, driving speculation in his companies. Past 10-15 years he's done the tunnel / hyperloop thing that doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. Fairly terrifying experiments with neurotechnology. And the non-profit OpenAI, which is still chugging away doing alright.

Griff is right about him I think. Dotcom millionaires / billionaires aren't necessarily anything special. They just had something that looked like the tech that big rich companies needed, right when they were all clamouring for it. After that point, he makes a series of speculative investments in future tech that either pay off unbelievably well or are a bit more mixed.

His primary accomplishments could have been achieved by say, publicly funded science/engineering programs, for example some kind of national space agency or something.

GurtTractor wrote:

His primary accomplishments could have been achieved by say, publicly funded science/engineering programs, for example some kind of national space agency or something.

History wouldn't refute your point entirely, but I didn't mention the Borgias for nothing.
 
Incidentally, I've been reading about Chernobyl recently. 

Some would say it failed, partly because of the culture fostered by publicly funded institutions.
A widely shared ideology can very often reward arse-licking, it seems. And like light touch regulation in capitalist industry, that kind of culture isn't conducive to the running of critical systems either.

Electric cars aren't new, neither were mobile phones. Public institutions tend to step in after such markets are proven, except in rare cases, usually inspired by a martial catalyst (like the space race and the NHS, edit - and nuclear power).

If it's Billionaire Wars, then I've got to go with Steve Ballmer. Largest individual shareholder of MS, worth over $100 billion, just happened to know Bill Gates at Harvard and got in at MS early doors and maximised his stock options. No discernible talents. Absolute legend.

dynamiteReady wrote:

Incidentally, I've been reading about Chernobyl recently.  Some would say it failed, partly because of the culture fostered by publicly funded institutions.

I don't think the rampant corruption and culture of lies can be blamed on public funding...


I'm well aware of the usefulness of private enterprise and the competition that ensues, when capitalism is working well it brings many benefits. I'm not against it as a whole. This model seems to work best for innovation and optimisation within a given sector, smaller organisations typically.

Some causes are so important and require so much resources that more powerful entities need to take the reins. Projects of that scale are ideally funded by society as a whole, with proper accountability and focus on achieving the end goal, not just making a profit.

If Musk really understood what humanity needs and wanted to 'transform civilisation', he would have committed to putting $43 billion into initiatives to reform and provide material support for the education system, instead of buying fucking Twitter.

'A robotics lab for every school' or something.

Out of curiosity if a billionaire like Musk did want to do something like help fund education on a massive scale, how could they effectively achieve that? There must be some way presumably? I'm not very clued up on these kinds of economic actions.