5 ms·

I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time. I used to be a huge fan and cheerleader, and enthusiastically pointed to him as inspiration. But

I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time. I used to be a huge fan and cheerleader, and enthusiastically pointed to him as inspiration. But slowly I started to realize that I was buying a lot into carefully crafted propaganda. The way SpaceX used lawyers to keep PSLV at bay, all the while Musk gassed on about free markets and competition made me a bit mad. Then he had that quip where he said he was "nauseatingly pro American" and that America was the biggest force for good the world had ever seen. Then he said he was a proud centrist and donated money to anti-environment republicans. And so on and so on. Accusing employees of shilling for unions. Misleading people about his level of technical expertise. Calling lane-assist "auto-pilot" for profit. At some point I realized that his "brilliant" approach to tech was essentially promising elite people that they could be ultra-green, better than vegetarians and hippies, while keeping the luxuries of sports cars, mansions with solar shingles, and rockets to mars. You don't have to do anything other than express support for him, and you're already better than people making personal sacrifices for the environment. Amazing! I now think of his "luxury-first" approach as "trickle-down environmentalism". And I think it will be about as successful as its economic counterpart.

Synaesthesia 10y ago
I had a similar epiphany about Apple. Basically corporations are all profit seeking entities and we shouldn't look to them to be our saviour. It's not really their agenda.
RichardHeart 10y ago
His company makes the quickest, safest family car ever made. His rocket company has greatly reduced the cost of getting into space. Now he wants to revolutionize tunneling. Maybe it's good that you separate the man from the great achievements of the engineers that actually design and build the great things. It's not the CEO's job to be an engineer. Seems like Elon is doing his CEO job fabulously.
AYBABTME 10y ago
You've managed to let cynicism overcome the actual good his companies do. We now have good electric cars, we now can launch stuff to space at a fraction of the price. Assume that you're right and he's not that nice a person: still because of him we're now somewhere we would not be otherwise. I think what he brings to the table far outweight any thing like "doesn't like unions" or "is an opportunistic campaign donor".
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Decent electric cars are a natural product of basic research on batteries. That was driven more by the consumer electronics business than by Tesla. Telsa is likely a quite smart option on the future demand for batteries though.
yokisan 10y ago
> I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time. There's your problem: being enchanted in the first place. The tech world likes to build these epic hagiographies of people who never asked for them and then huff when reality—inevitably—fails to keep up with the myth. Flawed human accomplishes great things is the story of most of history's pioneers.
- jkelsey 10y ago
  This is a good point, however... > The tech world likes to build these epic hagiographies of people who never asked for them This is not true. These people, by the very nature of their positions as chiefs of well-known organizations, have to maintain near untarnished super-human public perceptions (at least to the people that support their organization/company/ideals). They ask for it by accepting the position in the first place. You don't think Elon has a PR team? It's good advice to not let one's self to become enchanted with these sort of figures, but don't act surprised when other people fall for it. All those people wouldn't have their jobs if it wasn't effective.
  - yokisan 10y ago
    > They ask for it by accepting the position in the first place. The spotlight is thrust upon them, that's true. However I think equating leading tech figure with righteous human being is something we take as axiomatic. It may often be true, but don't be crestfallen when it's sometimes not. Plus the scale tips over the course of one's career. Bill Gates spent decades crushing the competition before he took upon the task of eradicating disease.
mikeash 10y ago
Which anti-environment Republicans has he donated to? As for the rest, look at what he (or at least his companies) have actually done. Tesla has succeeded in making electric cars cool. Their stated mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport, and given the many long-range EVs announced by major car companies in the past few years, I think they've already succeeded at that. SpaceX has succeeded in building a remarkably cheap rocket, has recovered them in a way nobody else has done, and is making great strides towards reusing them (although we can't count reuse itself under the "already done" umbrella). Does he have some weird opinions? Sure. Does he sometimes do bad things? Yep. But who doesn't? Unlike your typical billionaire, he at least has some pretty awesome achievements to balance that out.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  Marco Rubio. As per my last point, I don't know if Musk's "moonshots" will actually pan out. His businesses certainly are taking credit for just about everything that happens in tech, but I'm not convinced they're the ones leading the revolution.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Thanks for the info on Rubio, I wonder what the reason was for that. On the other stuff, my point was that a lot of his stuff has already panned out, so your point doesn't make sense to me. Sure, it remains to be seen if EVs will take over the world, and you could certainly argue that they aren't responsible for all these other manufacturers starting to build EVs, but the fact remains that they built a pretty great car, and managed to be the first successful American automotive startup in a century. It remains to be seen if SpaceX's reusability plans will pan out, let alone the crazy Mars stuff, but the expendable Falcon 9, and the landings, are already great achievements.

Synaesthesia 10y ago

I had a similar epiphany about Apple. Basically corporations are all profit seeking entities and we shouldn't look to them to be our saviour. It's not really their agenda.

RichardHeart 10y ago

His company makes the quickest, safest family car ever made. His rocket company has greatly reduced the cost of getting into space. Now he wants to revolutionize tunneling. Maybe it's good that you separate the man from the great achievements of the engineers that actually design and build the great things. It's not the CEO's job to be an engineer. Seems like Elon is doing his CEO job fabulously.

AYBABTME 10y ago

You've managed to let cynicism overcome the actual good his companies do. We now have good electric cars, we now can launch stuff to space at a fraction of the price. Assume that you're right and he's not that nice a person: still because of him we're now somewhere we would not be otherwise. I think what he brings to the table far outweight any thing like "doesn't like unions" or "is an opportunistic campaign donor".

maxerickson 10y ago
Decent electric cars are a natural product of basic research on batteries. That was driven more by the consumer electronics business than by Tesla. Telsa is likely a quite smart option on the future demand for batteries though.

yokisan 10y ago

> I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time. There's your problem: being enchanted in the first place. The tech world likes to build these epic hagiographies of people who never asked for them and then huff when reality—inevitably—fails to keep up with the myth. Flawed human accomplishes great things is the story of most of history's pioneers.

jkelsey 10y ago
This is a good point, however... > The tech world likes to build these epic hagiographies of people who never asked for them This is not true. These people, by the very nature of their positions as chiefs of well-known organizations, have to maintain near untarnished super-human public perceptions (at least to the people that support their organization/company/ideals). They ask for it by accepting the position in the first place. You don't think Elon has a PR team? It's good advice to not let one's self to become enchanted with these sort of figures, but don't act surprised when other people fall for it. All those people wouldn't have their jobs if it wasn't effective.
- yokisan 10y ago
  > They ask for it by accepting the position in the first place. The spotlight is thrust upon them, that's true. However I think equating leading tech figure with righteous human being is something we take as axiomatic. It may often be true, but don't be crestfallen when it's sometimes not. Plus the scale tips over the course of one's career. Bill Gates spent decades crushing the competition before he took upon the task of eradicating disease.

mikeash 10y ago

Which anti-environment Republicans has he donated to? As for the rest, look at what he (or at least his companies) have actually done. Tesla has succeeded in making electric cars cool. Their stated mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport, and given the many long-range EVs announced by major car companies in the past few years, I think they've already succeeded at that. SpaceX has succeeded in building a remarkably cheap rocket, has recovered them in a way nobody else has done, and is making great strides towards reusing them (although we can't count reuse itself under the "already done" umbrella). Does he have some weird opinions? Sure. Does he sometimes do bad things? Yep. But who doesn't? Unlike your typical billionaire, he at least has some pretty awesome achievements to balance that out.

RodericDay 10y ago
Marco Rubio. As per my last point, I don't know if Musk's "moonshots" will actually pan out. His businesses certainly are taking credit for just about everything that happens in tech, but I'm not convinced they're the ones leading the revolution.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Thanks for the info on Rubio, I wonder what the reason was for that. On the other stuff, my point was that a lot of his stuff has already panned out, so your point doesn't make sense to me. Sure, it remains to be seen if EVs will take over the world, and you could certainly argue that they aren't responsible for all these other manufacturers starting to build EVs, but the fact remains that they built a pretty great car, and managed to be the first successful American automotive startup in a century. It remains to be seen if SpaceX's reusability plans will pan out, let alone the crazy Mars stuff, but the expendable Falcon 9, and the landings, are already great achievements.