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It's so odd to see Musk become a boogeyman for the political left. I'm hard pressed to name a single individual that's doing more to combat global warming than

It's so odd to see Musk become a boogeyman for the political left. I'm hard pressed to name a single individual that's doing more to combat global warming than Musk is via fleet electrification.

antifa 5y ago
All the good things you are ascribing credit to Musk for is done by workers of companies he bought, he didn't found or invent most of these companies. It's great that he thinks SciFi is cool, but in reality he's more of an Edison than a Tesla.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
he’s a libertarian billionaire with a bunch of worker abuse claims at his companies, and you can’t imagine why the left doesn’t like him? I’m amazed anyone likes him.
psyc 5y ago
Is it odd, though? Anyone who gets loud without signaling unambiguously that they're one of them, gets called out for something. It's the same reason I'm about to get
- labster 5y ago
  Wow, canceled mid-sentence!
  - TMWNN 5y ago
moralestapia 5y ago
Electricity comes mostly from fossil fuels, so, while I side with your premise, it hasn't happened yet.
karpierz 5y ago
I think it's all the union busting, anti-vax/anti-tax stuff.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Let's not forget the pro coup shit, even if it may have been a joke.
eganist 5y ago
> It's so odd to see Musk become a boogeyman for the political left. I'm hard pressed to name a single individual that's doing more to combat global warming than Musk is via fleet electrification. I have no opinion on the following: --- Pretty easy to imagine when you consider he's pushing to re-open social media platforms to the kind of abuse that (they believe) had a hand in taking down a political candidate. He positioned himself in favor of absolute deregulation of speech by human individuals, or depending on your view, a suppression of free speech for some corporate entities by compelling them to share disagreeable viewpoints.
arcticbull 5y ago
Electrification of cars is useful -- but nothing compared to actually building livable cities, pushing bicycles, public transit and nuclear energy. That not only does far more for global warming, but it makes living in cities far more enjoyable. He's actually slowing progress towards that with his asinine tunneling projects for single-occupant vehicles. However even if you disagree with that take, the fact is, FSD is unsafe. It's kinda fun, but it's tried to kill me a few times, and there's myriad YouTube videos of it trying to kill people. [edit] Elon's vision of the future is hardly some eco-leftist utopia. It's a fairly right-wing personal property forward world where inequality continues to be perpetrated by making people own (very expensive) electric cars to get around, and socializing the cost of free parking onto the poor. He's not a left-wing icon. He's not a villain either, he's just a great marketer.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > He's actually slowing progress towards that with his asinine tunneling projects for single-occupant vehicles. From wiki: > According to Musk, the company's goal is to enhance tunneling speed enough such that establishing a tunnel network is financially feasible. No fan of Musk, but if a company can bring down the cost of tunneling so that it works well for single-occupant vehicles, that would be a huge deal for multi occupancy vehicles as well. This is a goal worthy of support, at least.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    That's just Elon's marketing. He's comparing the cost of digging a (very narrow) tunnel, with no emergency egress, to the cost of a fully-realized subway system with stations. In fact he's costing it out using commodity tunneling hardware. [1] [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traffic-b1988974.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traf...
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      So? If they can make that model work, it is still a big deal. I'm a bit tired of everyone thinking that only software can be disrupted. It could also be that they have no way of making this work, and will fail. That isn't weird for a startup either.
jcranmer 5y ago
The people who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the existence of ozone hole. Why? Because the subsequent reduction of ozone-depleting emissions has done more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than any other measure taken, I believe roughly commensurate with the reduction you'd get from switching all power plants to renewable energy.
ninth_ant 5y ago
Musk used massive government subsidies to produce a small number of luxury electric cars for wealthy people, while massively enriching himself. He openly manipulates markets without facing consequences, busts union activities, pushes to production over worker safety, uses extremely misleading marketing contrary to public safety, avoided paying taxes for years while becoming the worlds richest person... and you find it odd that the political left doesn't deify him to the same degree as the tech bros?
- sabertoothed 5y ago
  How can you still write nonsense like this: "Musk used massive government subsidies to produce a small number of luxury electric cars for wealthy people"?
  - eganist 5y ago
    > How can you still write nonsense like this: "Musk used massive government subsidies to produce a small number of luxury electric cars for wealthy people"? Technically still correct even if the intent was to use the wider margins to enable growth. But more to the parent comment's point, Musk used tax credits intended to incentivize EV purchases by everyday users to inflate the prices for his cars in order to extract more value from buyers/governments. Proven true by the fact that he had to cut pre-rebate prices after Tesla cleared the sales thresholds for the tax rebates.
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    It's surprising that you decided to nitpick on hyperbole than any of his other frankly valid claims. A "small number of electric cars" isn't nonsense. Ford sold as many F-150s in 2021, than Tesla has sold in it's lifetime.
    - chelical 5y ago
      That's not quite true. From googling really quick, Ford sold 726k F-150s. In that same year, Tesla sold 936k cars. If you're comparing the number of cars Ford sold last year, you'd be closer but still incorrect by a few thousand cars. Ford sold about 1.91 million cars in 2019 while Tesla has sold 2.3 million cars by the end of 2021. I wouldn't consider 2 million cars a small number.
FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
SolarCity wasn't as successful, but it fit squarely into this as well.

It's so odd to see Musk become a boogeyman for the political left. I'm hard pressed to name a single individual that's doing more to combat global warming than Musk is via fleet electrification.

antifa 5y ago

All the good things you are ascribing credit to Musk for is done by workers of companies he bought, he didn't found or invent most of these companies. It's great that he thinks SciFi is cool, but in reality he's more of an Edison than a Tesla.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

he’s a libertarian billionaire with a bunch of worker abuse claims at his companies, and you can’t imagine why the left doesn’t like him? I’m amazed anyone likes him.

psyc 5y ago

Is it odd, though? Anyone who gets loud without signaling unambiguously that they're one of them, gets called out for something. It's the same reason I'm about to get

labster 5y ago
Wow, canceled mid-sentence!
- TMWNN 5y ago

moralestapia 5y ago

Electricity comes mostly from fossil fuels, so, while I side with your premise, it hasn't happened yet.

karpierz 5y ago

I think it's all the union busting, anti-vax/anti-tax stuff.

boomboomsubban 5y ago
Let's not forget the pro coup shit, even if it may have been a joke.

eganist 5y ago

> It's so odd to see Musk become a boogeyman for the political left. I'm hard pressed to name a single individual that's doing more to combat global warming than Musk is via fleet electrification. I have no opinion on the following: --- Pretty easy to imagine when you consider he's pushing to re-open social media platforms to the kind of abuse that (they believe) had a hand in taking down a political candidate. He positioned himself in favor of absolute deregulation of speech by human individuals, or depending on your view, a suppression of free speech for some corporate entities by compelling them to share disagreeable viewpoints.

arcticbull 5y ago

Electrification of cars is useful -- but nothing compared to actually building livable cities, pushing bicycles, public transit and nuclear energy. That not only does far more for global warming, but it makes living in cities far more enjoyable. He's actually slowing progress towards that with his asinine tunneling projects for single-occupant vehicles. However even if you disagree with that take, the fact is, FSD is unsafe. It's kinda fun, but it's tried to kill me a few times, and there's myriad YouTube videos of it trying to kill people. [edit] Elon's vision of the future is hardly some eco-leftist utopia. It's a fairly right-wing personal property forward world where inequality continues to be perpetrated by making people own (very expensive) electric cars to get around, and socializing the cost of free parking onto the poor. He's not a left-wing icon. He's not a villain either, he's just a great marketer.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> He's actually slowing progress towards that with his asinine tunneling projects for single-occupant vehicles. From wiki: > According to Musk, the company's goal is to enhance tunneling speed enough such that establishing a tunnel network is financially feasible. No fan of Musk, but if a company can bring down the cost of tunneling so that it works well for single-occupant vehicles, that would be a huge deal for multi occupancy vehicles as well. This is a goal worthy of support, at least.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  That's just Elon's marketing. He's comparing the cost of digging a (very narrow) tunnel, with no emergency egress, to the cost of a fully-realized subway system with stations. In fact he's costing it out using commodity tunneling hardware. [1] [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traffic-b1988974.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traf...
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    So? If they can make that model work, it is still a big deal. I'm a bit tired of everyone thinking that only software can be disrupted. It could also be that they have no way of making this work, and will fail. That isn't weird for a startup either.

jcranmer 5y ago

The people who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the existence of ozone hole. Why? Because the subsequent reduction of ozone-depleting emissions has done more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than any other measure taken, I believe roughly commensurate with the reduction you'd get from switching all power plants to renewable energy.

ninth_ant 5y ago

Musk used massive government subsidies to produce a small number of luxury electric cars for wealthy people, while massively enriching himself. He openly manipulates markets without facing consequences, busts union activities, pushes to production over worker safety, uses extremely misleading marketing contrary to public safety, avoided paying taxes for years while becoming the worlds richest person... and you find it odd that the political left doesn't deify him to the same degree as the tech bros?

sabertoothed 5y ago
How can you still write nonsense like this: "Musk used massive government subsidies to produce a small number of luxury electric cars for wealthy people"?
- eganist 5y ago
  > How can you still write nonsense like this: "Musk used massive government subsidies to produce a small number of luxury electric cars for wealthy people"? Technically still correct even if the intent was to use the wider margins to enable growth. But more to the parent comment's point, Musk used tax credits intended to incentivize EV purchases by everyday users to inflate the prices for his cars in order to extract more value from buyers/governments. Proven true by the fact that he had to cut pre-rebate prices after Tesla cleared the sales thresholds for the tax rebates.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  It's surprising that you decided to nitpick on hyperbole than any of his other frankly valid claims. A "small number of electric cars" isn't nonsense. Ford sold as many F-150s in 2021, than Tesla has sold in it's lifetime.
  - chelical 5y ago
    That's not quite true. From googling really quick, Ford sold 726k F-150s. In that same year, Tesla sold 936k cars. If you're comparing the number of cars Ford sold last year, you'd be closer but still incorrect by a few thousand cars. Ford sold about 1.91 million cars in 2019 while Tesla has sold 2.3 million cars by the end of 2021. I wouldn't consider 2 million cars a small number.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago

SolarCity wasn't as successful, but it fit squarely into this as well.