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Eventually you need the superstars to do the innovative work. Elon musk & his top employees are not reproducible on demand

• inglor_cz 6y ago
  No, but it is obvious that Musk could mobilize a lot of talent that might have been spent on less innovative work elsewhere. It is my suspicion that there is actually a lot more talented people than we tend to think and the real problem is educating and managing them well. There is an interesting case of Florence, Italy, which in the 14th and 15th century produced an incredible set of world class painters. That school is unmatched until today. We think that world class painters must be principially very rare, but maybe not so much. In a relatively short span of time, recruiting mostly students from Northern Italy only, the Florence school could produce quite a significant percentage of artistic heritage of the whole humanity.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    I don't understand what a bunch of engineers at one of Musk's companies, or the ease of generating bunch of very good painters in Firenze in the 15/1600s have to do with the problem of improving/fixing city/local governance.
• HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Consider Hsue-Shen Tsien, father of Chinese rocketry. He returned to China in 1955, when it was a developing country. Talent can be built up, it depends on the environment. Elon Musk, who got his start through his sapphire-mining family is the best example of that, he knows how important access to money and politicians is.