3 ms·
Indeed, the anti-musk meme around here is weird. The guy is making an effort to make the world better, and he's spending large amounts of his own money to do it
by darawk 8y ago
Indeed, the anti-musk meme around here is weird. The guy is making an effort to make the world better, and he's spending large amounts of his own money to do it. He's built several multi-billion dollar companies, so he's clearly not an idiot.
It's weird that after succeeding at creating two companies that tons of people predicted would fail at every turn people don't give him a little more benefit of the doubt than this.
- normal_man 8y agoIf you think he's purely altruistic you're very naive. He's doing all this to both enrich himself and feed his massive ego. And there are plenty of reasons to dislike him - inserting himself unnecessarily into the cave tragedy, then throwing a tantrum when called out on it? The fact that Tesla and this frankly dumb-sounding tunnel idea receive large subsidies from public funds that no citizens got to vote on?
- chrisco255 8y agoNobody does anything out of pure altruism. But then again, there's also plenty of selfish reasons to retire to Tahiti once you've had a $1 billion exit.
- Isinlor 8y agoWhat subsidies did the recently unveiled tunnel receive?
- darawk 8y ago> If you think he's purely altruistic you're very naive. You think he started Tesla and SpaceX out of greed, too? Two insanely difficult and competitive industries, that he almost threw away his entire personal fortune from Paypal getting into? Do you know anything about his history at all?
- escape_goat 8y agoIt's not weird to me that it exists. I like Musk, I like that he has created some amazing things, but he can also be very flaky and a bit of an asshole, and I don't think many people who aren't white have serious hopes of him not being, by instinct if not intent, basically yet another internet tech guy / entitled libertarian / white supremacist. He's created a lot of noise and dissent on Twitter, most seriously with his error-riddled disparagement of journalists who have investigated labour conditions at Tesla. On that platform, his de facto fan club of Musk bros have made great strides in alienating people who wouldn't even otherwise have an opinion. The criticisms in this article are painful for those of us who wish him to succeed, but they aren't really that unfair. The big unveiling WAS a public relations flop. They HAVEN'T yet succeeded in reducing the price of tunnelling. If the tunnel is only usable by automated electric cars, then it IS essentially a private highway for the wealthy. If the tunnels are used to capacity, then entrance/exit congestion IS a real problem that needs to be dealt with. I think the article takes a few truisms to heart (more roads means more congestion) that might not be as applicable to an underground network as to a surface network, and the author clearly has an agenda with regards to social utility. However, it's not an unreasonable reaction from someone who hasn't already bought into the hope that Musk will be successful in his various endeavours.