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> Character flaws aside, Musk is the only billionaire alive (or even in recent memory) whose business ventures are netting any actual positive effect on society
by archagon 8y ago
> Character flaws aside, Musk is the only billionaire alive (or even in recent memory) whose business ventures are netting any actual positive effect on society whatsoever.
Wait, what? How can you possibly justify that?
> Heck, he might be the only one not having a seriously detrimental effect on society right now. You don't have to like him to acknowledge that.
What about all those recent self-driving crashes? At best, they're poisoning the well for sensible self-driving legislation. At worst, they're killing people for no reason other than corporate hubris and greed. Then there's the matter of creepy corporate policing, such as the remote lockouts whenever somebody tries to examine the firmware, or the humiliating public accident reports whenever something goes wrong with one of the cars, or the forced corralling of all self-driving taxi business into a Tesla-exclusive service in the future.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> How can you possibly justify that? Rockets! Cars propelled by faraway vibrations! Is there no room in our world for the brilliantly mad?
- archagon 8y agoSure, but it's almost absurd to argue that Musk is the only billionaire alive whose work is a net positive on society.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> that Musk is the only billionaire alive whose work is a net positive on the world No. But he’s a better bet than many. Including network effects, his work has added value, if only by accelerating retroactively obvious ideas.
- _bxg1 8y agoName another billionaire, other than maybe Bill Gates, who's presently doing anything good, at all.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dm3 8y agoI think this list of philanthropists[1] contains quite a few billionaires. That counts as "doing good" in my book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_philanthropists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_philanthropists
- jvzr 8y agoTo be fair, OP said "billionaire's business venture". So philanthropic work might not apply.
- isostatic 8y agoBezos. Amazon has revolutionised the way we buy things, meaning land is no longer needed for strip malls, oil isn't burnt driving to them, people aren't having inferior things pushed on them by dodgy salesmen, or wasting an hour to buy a single item, or buying the wrong item because the right one is out of stock.
- bopbop 8y agoI think there's still quite a significant difference between "popularizing something that may save the planet from extinction from global warming which could have been pursued for quite a while by other large companies automotive and otherwise but hasn't been" to "people prefer shopping with them over how they used to shop". But I can see that the net gain of the time saved using Amazon could be argued as a good for society.
- isostatic 8y agoHas Telsa really popularised it? Or is this looking at things from an SV perspective? Certainly in the UK it's a minor player compared with the Nissan Leaf, and plugin hybrids are even more popular
- _bxg1 8y agoThe self-driving crashes have mostly been users using autopilot irresponsibly, from what I've read. Still, I'm not arguing the finer points; both Musk the person and Tesla the company have made some bad, sometimes even ethically dubious decisions. My point was that, for all of today's Captains Of Industry "solving problems" that's don't actually exist, dismantling democracy and privacy and destroying millions of people's livelihoods in the process, Musk stands out for funding and directing actual, honest-to-god human progress, despite everything else he and his companies may have done.
- hobofan 8y ago> The self-driving crashes have mostly been users using autopilot irresponsibly Tesla has been advertising the autopilot capabilities irresponsibly. With advertising like that on their website[0] they should be held accountable (at least partially at fault) for crashes resulting from autopilot failure. [0]: https://www.tesla.com/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
- wastedhours 8y agoThis is one of my few bugbear's about Tesla - other than this I think they're doing a fine job making EVs seem cool and changing perceptions[0]. I just wish they'd not have named it "Autopilot". That is such a loaded term that to me it's exceptionally disingenuous to claim it implies anything other than self-driving. I work in marketing, I'm always looking for the best spin to put on an offering, but I shake my head every time I see "Autopilot" used when they actually just mean "better than average driving assistance". [0] whether or not they succeed as a company is a different point, their importance to me is wider than their actual business and whether they flame out or not is, presently, neither here nor there.
- eecc 8y agoAnd yet it's your responsibility to read through marketing bullshit, understand that "only 99,99$" really means 100$, crack the manual open and make sure you read all the "caution" boxes. It's a running joke here in EU when reading absurd warnings in manuals, to think "oh, an American must have tried that and sued!"
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> What about all those recent self-driving crashes? What about Apollo 1? There is a difference between a civilian and military death. But they are both pursuing progress. One can’t discount the costs without any concept of the potential benefits.
- archagon 8y agoThe Apollo 1 astronauts were willing participants and very clearly knew the risks. With poorly-designed self-driving cars, everyone is an unwilling participant.
- _bxg1 8y agoI wouldn't include the self-driving tech among the world-changing progress. Climate change is a pressing disaster for our whole species; self-driving cars are not urgent enough to be pursued with the same intensity, and are dangerous enough to deserve more rigour.
- njarboe 8y agoAutomobiles cause over 1,000,000 deaths globally per year. Not to mention the number of human hours used to drive. Elimination of the need for people to drive and reducing auto deaths by, say 95%, I think would be world-changing. What ratio of lives saved to extra deaths while creating self-driving tech would you accept?
- nickik 8y agoHonestly, in the world that you are imaging we never would get any kind of self-driving ever.
- scns 8y agoWhat about the thousands upon thousands of people killed by human drivers? Not newsworthy because it is normal and the brain can grok numbers of that magnitude. 40200 estimated in the us in 2017 which amounts to 110 people a day.