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What's sad to me is, OK, if being a real hard-driving exploitative ass really is what it takes to organize people to make amazing products (mostly Jobs, a littl

by lupire 4y ago

What's sad to me is, OK, if being a real hard-driving exploitative ass really is what it takes to organize people to make amazing products (mostly Jobs, a little of Musk), why aren't there any good people who do that to make their employees do great things for the world, and then put the profits to good use? (better use than Musk's "buy a $1M car and crash it immediately" style .) I think a lot of people would be OK with being pushed hard to really do something great, if they were paid fairly and the economic profits spent on good areas of society/customers, but not to enable a man-child's ego and waste. (It related to the philosophical idea (not the implementation details) of Gates's "tax my consumption, not my income".)

naasking 4y ago
> why aren't there any good people who do that to make their employees do great things for the world, and then put the profits to good use? (better use than Musk's "buy a $1M car and crash it immediately" style .) You mean like the guy who's trying to address the main existential risks facing humanity right now? Last I checked, Musk created Tesla to counteract the existential risk of climate change, Neuralink to counteract the existential risk of AI, and SpaceX to counteract the existential risk of asteroids and other planet-killing catastrophes. Maybe that's why the people at his companies stay despite being pushed so hard? He could definitely stand to be less of an ass, but I can at least recognize that Musk is actually doing the kind of good work that you're talking about.
- tsunamifury 4y ago
  Buddy you’ve drunk too much of the kookaide. Musk is telling stories. Look at what he did to the ca bullet train. Don’t believe his “vision” Is for good.
  - naasking 4y ago
    My claim was not that Musk was "good" in whatever way you conceptualize that. My claim was that Musk's main focuses are commercial ventures that are very targeted at combating the main existential risks facing humanity. This is exactly the kind of good that the OP was talking about.
    - simiones 4y ago
      That's your claim, but it's simply and obviously false. SpaceX is not about "making humanity interplanetary", it is about selling cheap rockets for commercial exploitation of space (and/or it is a DoD weapons "defense" program). Tesla is a car company, aimed at making and selling cars. Stopping global warming requires more mass transit, and Musk is actively opposed to that. "Making humanity interplanetary" is simply impossible with current or forseeable technology, so there is no sense in attempting yet (especially since we can develop this technology on Earth, by creating self-sustaining habitats in the Arctic desert, if we really want to).
      - naasking 4y ago
        > SpaceX is not about "making humanity interplanetary", it is about selling cheap rockets for commercial exploitation of space (and/or it is a DoD weapons "defense" program). Sure, as an interim step to making humanity interplanetary. Are you suggesting that he could find commercial success without taking those intermediate steps? > Tesla is a car company, aimed at making and selling cars. Tesla make solar roofs and grid level energy storage. Like I said, it's portfolio is very clearly geared at climate change solutions. > Stopping global warming requires more mass transit, and Musk is actively opposed to that. Maybe he is (I've heard he's a bit of a germaphobe). I suspect he also recognizes that America is a car culture and that that won't change anytime soon.
        simiones 4y ago
        > Sure, as an interim step to making humanity interplanetary. Are you suggesting that he could find commercial success without taking those intermediate steps? My point is that the rockets are the easiest part of settling Mars. We already had rockets, and scaling that up was never a huge unknown. The real problems with settling Mars are the things that Musk is spending nothing on - building safe self-sustaining habitats in extreme conditions. Until we have a 10000+ self-sustaining city underground in the Arctic, there is 0 reason to send more than a handful of people to Mars (like we did to the Moon). So, if you actually care about that, you should be investing in the Arctic city, not Mars. > I suspect he also recognizes that America is a car culture and that that won't change anytime soon. We can try to guess what he believes, or we can look at his actions and their results - and in the latter case, he has repeatedly spoken and acted against public transport (in most hyper-loop and Boring Company presentations at least).
  - roamerz 4y ago
    If Musk did have anything to do with slowing or stopping that colossal waste of taxpayer funds I would say his “vision” is superior to any of the politicians who supported it.
    - aunetx 4y ago
      Yeah, a what a "waste" to build high-speed trains... I don't even understand how such a gigantic country can even exist without a safe, quick and inexpensive way to transport its citizens (so not by plane or by car).
      - trothamel 4y ago
        How many citizens has the California High Speed Rail project transported?
      - roamerz 4y ago
        Safe? Shall we use BART as an existing example of that? Quick? No. Fast maybe. It’s hard to replicate the quickness of jumping into your car and hopping onto the freeway to get somewhere. Little or no planning required. Yeah the train if it is deployed as envisioned would be faster. Inexpensive? The latest estimate is 107 Billion. Hardly inexpensive.
    - wittycardio 4y ago
      You are an active detriment to progress
      - roamerz 4y ago
        Progress is a very subjective term. It’s very okay that your view of progress is different than mine.
        wittycardio 4y ago
        Some aspects of progress are subjective but mass transit isn't
  - themgt 4y ago
    "Musk killed the California bullet train" is basically a pizzagate-level conspiracy theory. The NYT reporting among many others makes clear the tragicomic level of shambolic mismanagement from the CA gov't. The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex. SNCF, the French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system. The company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF. The company pulled out in 2011. “There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.” Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018. But sure, blame Elon for California setting tens of billions of dollars on fire with nothing to show for it. Also Florida just built a high speed rail in under a decade for about 1/30th the per-mile cost of the CA project and it'll be open early next year. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-...
    - enragedcacti 4y ago
      This is what people are referring to w.r.t Musk and HSR, not that he caused the mismanagement: https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1167410460125097990 https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1167410460125097990 Separately the Florida "HSR" isn't all that comparable because it only goes 80mph with a planned max of 125mph for future routes, and afaict a lot of it was built on an existing corridor. Again, not to say California HSR has been well managed, but imo it's not a particularly useful datapoint to compare against.
      - BurningFrog 4y ago
        So Musk was one of the huge number of people who could see the California HSR was a disastrous project before it even started. Is that really the meat of this "allegation"?
        4y ago
  - mc32 4y ago
    The HSR was boondoggle from the start. It's like designing a downtown to airport subway but then in the political process all political entities in between make it required it serve their community before approving the plan so you end us with a snaking line that takes 60 minutes to get to the airport instead of a straight line taking 15 minutes.
- jddil 4y ago
- falcolas 4y ago
  > Last I checked Might want to check again. He didn't create Tesla, he invested in it. ~Musk didn't create SpaceX, he invested in it.~ EDIT: the SpaceX one is wrong. And IMHO, if he was really concerned about the existential risk for AI, perhaps he shouldn't have let the Ethical AI research team go from Twitter. To be clear, Ethical AI - being able to trace an AI's decisions and vet that those decisions aren't being biased by improper input data - is a big topic in research groups right now. It's actually quite fascinating.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > He didn't create Tesla, he invested in it. Musk didn't create SpaceX, he invested in it. Even if true (Wikipedia disagrees), it's a distinction without a difference. Arguably, neither SpaceX nor Tesla would be where they are now without him. > And IMHO, if he was really concerned about the existential risk for AI, perhaps he shouldn't have let the Ethical AI research team go from Twitter. Arguably the kind of AI Twitter needs doesn't pose an existential risk. He's trying to make Twitter profitable so that's obviously a waste of money.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - adoxyz 4y ago
      Literally from the second paragraph from Wikipedia: "Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. The company's name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. In February 2004, via a $6.5 million investment, Elon Musk became the largest shareholder of the company." How does Wikipedia disagree?
      - naasking 4y ago
        Look up the SpaceX entry.
        falcolas 4y ago
- f1refly 4y ago
  You're a bit off on your points, but that's okay. He really talks a lot, doesn't he? > Musk created Tesla to counteract the existential risk of climate change, He created Tesla for the money that's in the growing electric car market > Neuralink to counteract the existential risk of AI, Neuralink exists for the possible future where neural computer interfaces are successful and popular so he can make lots of money > and SpaceX to counteract the existential risk of asteroids and other planet-killing catastrophes. Actually, SpaceX exists because there's tons of money to be made with government and commercial contracts. > Maybe that's why the people at his companies stay despite being pushed so hard? It's probably more because they like getting paid so they can afford nice things while they're not working. It might also be because Musk enterprises are in "interesting" areas of the job spectrum and thus workers might be more tolerant to bullshit because they get to tell themselves they launched a rocket into space.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > He created Tesla for the money that's in the growing electric car market He arguably created that market. The same applies to your other points. Musk created the markets that didn't exist before. Others had tried and failed, so I'm sorry, but you just can't deny that. It could be luck, so I suppose we'll see. I have no doubt that Musk is interested in making money. I also have no doubt he enjoys that money from time to time. However, I think it's indisputable that no other billionaire works as hard as he does at his ventures, and I think a lot of his interest in that money is so that he can continue funding work to combat those existential risks. > It's probably more because they like getting paid so they can afford nice things while they're not working. Maybe you should read up on the working environment at these companies. There's not as much downtime as you imply. I personally wouldn't want to work for him given his management style, even on these existential problems.
    - f1refly 4y ago
      > He arguably created that market. He didn't, he started the company at a time where governments all over the word started to really (depending on the country, obviously) kick companies butts for not innovating. There where electric cars before he started his company. Now, you could argue that he made it popular with the people, but I argue that the market penetration, especially during the early years, hasn't been sufficient for that. Musk also didn't invent space travel. You may have a point with neuralink, but I have yet to see a successful product come from that so if he is to create that market I'll give him that. He's really good at making his opinions heard though. Other companies don't have a relatively unfiltered channel like this, so it's easy to see how his viewpoints stick out.
- EricDeb 4y ago
  It would be funny if Musk's long con was to get all the liberals driving his electric cars and then change his political affiliation to get all the conservatives on electric cars all in the service of reducing co2 emissions
- manmal 4y ago
  Building more cars (basically racing cars that rub tires to dust 2-4x as fast) to save the planet? Sounds like quite the roundabout way to do so. I suspect he just likes driving fast cars? Digging tunnels and conceptualizing hyperloops instead of improving public transport and bikes? IMO he‘s just afraid of public transport and hates traffic jams. Ok, so maybe he needed to become the richest person in the world before tackling the really big issues? Yeah, not sure whether distracting himself with the Twitter acquisition is the best way of addressing climate change or even preserving survival of the human race long term. I think that, like Jobs, he’s mainly scratching his own itches. And paints himself as the world‘s savior in the process.
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    I also have my doubts about the wisdom of the Twitter move, but it isn't hard to see a line of reasoning that puts fixing twitter as a key part of the path to addressing climate change. If you view the massive endemic corruption and polarization of our political system as one of the key reasons we are failing to solve climate change, and you also view Twitter as the core public square through which our political system can be fixed, then Twitter is not a distraction at all. I don't personally think that twitter has a major role to play in fixing our political system, but maybe I'm wrong.
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      Dude. If he wanted to make humanity link arms and sing Kumbaya, he’d be investing in water facilities and dropping LSD into it. Musk got bullied into buying Twitter by a bunch of WallStreetBets folks, took a puff and tweeted out a number, and surprise surprise, the offer was accepted. And he’s been struggling to get out of the deal ever since.
      - naasking 4y ago
        I agree he's probably regretting it. I suspect he's going to try to make Twitter more profitable as fast as possible and then maybe sell it when it's on its way to being good. It's a distraction from things he cares about more, but it's not unimportant.
- fassssst 4y ago
  He did all that to maximize government subsidies.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  > Last I checked, Musk created Tesla to counteract the existential risk of climate change Musk didn't create Tesla, he bought it. I don't claim to know why he bought it, but here are two options: maybe it was to solve climate change, and if so it was a failure. Maybe it was to make himself immensely wealthy, and if so it was a success.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Why do you think it is a failure on the first count? Do you think Tesla EVs are bad and we would be better of without them?
    - simiones 4y ago
      Yes. To solve global warming, we have to greatly reduce our reliance on cars, and come up with other solutions in as many places as possible - replacing all ICE cars with EVs will not be anywhere near enough.
      - naasking 4y ago
        "Needing" to reduce reliance on cars is debatable; that's certainly one way but not the only way. I doubt Musk would deny that replacing all cars with EVs would be enough. That's why Tesla also offers the solar roof (which needs more attention from Musk IMO) and grid level energy storage.
        simiones 4y ago
        Tesla has discontinued the solar roof, as far as I know. That was basically just a stunt to use Tesla's money to bail out Musk and his brother. The solar wall is a better example of what you mean though.
        naasking 4y ago
        It looks like you can still order the solar roof on their site: https://www.tesla.com/solarroof https://www.tesla.com/solarroof People are great at finding ulterior motives for people they've already decided they dislike. I don't think Musk is an altruist, and I'm certain he has multiple motives for the ventures he cares about, but I think it's hard to deny that he's found success where others have struggled, and that his ventures will ultimately benefit humanity.
- suzumer 4y ago
  Elon musk is no friend of the climate. He proposed hyperloop to distract California from building its high speed rail system, a rail system that will do more to help the climate than any electric cars will.
  - naasking 4y ago
    I think this comment above clarifies what actually happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33467505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33467505
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  How does Neuralink counteract the risk of AI? If it ever works, it seems like it would exacerbate that risk. How does SpaceX counteract the risk of asteroids? NASA has developed a successful asteroid-killing rocket, and SpaceX's work has nothing to do with that field.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > How does Neuralink counteract the risk of AI? If it ever works, it seems like it would exacerbate that risk. AI is a threat because of human information processing limits. Neuralink's ultimate goal is ostensibly to remove eyes and hands as inherent limits to I/O, and augment human information processing in the ways in which we are weak (formal computation). > How does SpaceX counteract the risk of asteroids? NASA has developed a successful asteroid-killing rocket, and SpaceX's work has nothing to do with that field. Cheap launch to orbit is critical in any efforts to counteract asteroid threats. Musk has also been very vocal about colonizing Mars in case something happens to the Earth.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    The idea behind neuralink- the real one, not the publicly stated mission- was to make it possible to put elon in a robot body so he could fight the AI singularity.
    - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
      I genuinely can't tell if you're trolling.
- seanw444 4y ago
  I'm not an Elon hater myself, but: He didn't create Tesla. He bought it. He may have grown it, which is impressive, but he certainly wasn't the creator, or funder of the original creators. Ironically, he's more of a Thomas Edison than a Nikola Tesla, in that regard. Starting an AI/transhumanism company as a CEO who's known for software-locking and remote-controlling his sold cars, isn't very reassuring. I'm quite certain we're going to see "pay $80 a month to unlock your now-societally-vital brain-to-brain communications!" Or a tiered model to his probably inevitable digital eyeballs replacements. "$20 a month for 720p vision, $40 a month for 1080p, $60 for 4K..." As for SpaceX... so far that's been pretty badass. Government/NASA hasn't been doing crap for exploration or transportation innovation. Nor satellite internet advancements. He's doing all of it himself. To that, I applaud his efforts (and his impressive engineers, to that extent).
  - megaman821 4y ago
    He bought Tesla before it had sold its first car. People try to use the fact that he didn't technically create Tesla as some gotcha that implies he bought his way into the car market.
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  Musk is not solving climate change. if he wanted to do that, tesla would stop selling carbon credits. but that would cost $1.6b and stop tesla being profitable.
Medox 4y ago
He did "put the profits to good use", donating $5.7 billion of Tesla shares to charity in 2021: https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/elon-musks-philanthropy-and-donor-privacy/ https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/elon-musks-philanthro... After the Twitter poll for offloading 10% of his stake.
- fishywang 4y ago
  that was for tax reasons.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    You can't net money by donating to charity. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a tax deduction is.
    - pmonks 4y ago
      No one said you could. That doesn’t mean it’s not still financially beneficial.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        How can it be financially beneficial if you lose money doing it?
- vletal 4y ago
  Or. Maybe, just maybe, he used it to avoid paying taxes like other billionaires do. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-funds-tech-tax.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-fu...
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    This article is about DAFs. Is there evidence that's what Musk is doing?
ttoinou 4y ago
Because no one has the same definition of what "great" is, and right when you start making money others will hate you and consider your vision bad (cf. Other comments replying to you)
- yafbum 4y ago
  Musk indeed appears to see himself as an agent of humanity's salvation, including in its treatment of Twitter employees. And to be honest, while I and likely many people would see it as self-serving delusion of grandeur, it's hard to believe he's not at least genuine in his belief: you can't really suspect him of wanting to take over Twitter (and all of its headaches) for money.
  - georgeg23 4y ago
    Sadly his whole save humanity thing is a schtick.. If you investigate his back story, who he works with, it becomes clear it's not about Mars. His real enterprise is a massive DoD program, built off the Strategic Defense Initiative (the "real" Star Wars). Republicans have been trying to resurrect it for decades and Elon was part of it since at least 2001. The idea is to intercept ballistic missiles from space and end the threat of nuclear armegeddon. In that sense he is trying to "save humanity", but it's misguided because the project is already aggrevating China and Russia and is fundamentally destablizing to the nuclear stalemate/M.A.D. This project, operating under the Space Development Agency and working with the Missile Defense Agency, requires Republicans to fund--Biden and most Democrats been trying to stop it. Twitter helps Musk with the elections and boosting Republican power, while currying favor from them when it comes to these contracts. If you're interested to know more, Mike Griffin is the ringleader.. he goes way back with Elon. Read his career history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career Starlink is building up the basic tech for these constellations--currently just sensing ballistic missiles and hypersonics--but with Starship, putting kinetic weapons in orbit become feasible. Some good references here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
    - 4y ago
yafbum 4y ago
Look up Bosch. It's a very large family-controlled company, and their dividends are 92% allocated to a foundation. I think in time we'll see similar examples in tech. EDIT: Bosch is a tech company too, just an earlier generation.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I think what would help with that is that we start not contrasting Bosch with tech, given that Bosch is a technology company in the most literal sense of that term. A lot of tolerance for these mistreatments comes from the mistaken illusion that 'tech' somehow requires people to act like megalomaniacs. A fair amount of car parts in Musk's very own car company come from Bosch
  - yafbum 4y ago
    Absolutely agreed. But they're also an old school manufacturer as opposed to the more modern form of IP-focused tech company that tries as hard as possible not to be in the manufacturing game.
  - pedrosorio 4y ago
    > I think what would help with that is that we start not contrasting Bosch with tech, given that Bosch is a technology company in the most literal sense of that term Took the words out of my mouth.
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  Patagonia does the same.
  - yafbum 4y ago
    Yes (and it represents ~2% of Bosch by revenue)
- alephnerd 4y ago
  To be fair, foundation ownership is used more as a way to bypass estate taxes in German businesses [0] as a charitable foundation can continue to give 30% of it’s income to the family who founded the foundation. This is a common corporate structure for a number of other family run German companies (ThyssenKrupp, Aldi, Lidl, Bertelsmann, etc) to bypass estate taxes. In American terms, it would be the equivalent of the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation owning 60-70% of Meta’s stock, and Zuckerburg’s children continuing to get dividends and a significant ownership stake in FB while also bypassing estate taxes. [0] - https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f1b666a8-1257-4d81-b28c-26f81ecba298 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f1b666a8-1257...
nucleogenesis 4y ago
It doesn’t take being horrible and exploitative to build amazing things - it takes that kind of to make insane amounts of money building amazing things.
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
Lots of companies are in this space doing what they can, but they’re focused on actually doing the work and getting their hands dirty as opposed to Musk’s wide noise making. Look at immunotherapy and age research, the trying to find a cure and mechanism for Chronic Fatigue (an illness which disables millions), the people who documented the genome of humanity, and NASAs astronomy stuff. There are biologists trying to prevent further extinct amphibians. There’s linux, and git, and countless open source software we use daily.
BurningFrog 4y ago
To me, at least SpaceX and Tesla do do great things for the world. Not with their profits, but as their primary product. Tesla is getting the world off fossil fuels, and SpaceX is getting humanity into space. > Musk's "buy a $1M car and crash it immediately" style When did that happen?
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  We don't really have a plan to stop using fossil fuels for electricity generation so this is a bit overstated. Electric cars are good but it's not a complete solution.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Sure, I used too big words. Tesla is arguably doing more than any other company to decarbonize the world, but that is very far from a complete solution.
- sgarland 4y ago
  He bought a McLaren F1 and wrecked it ~1 year later. [0] If you don't follow cars, this is an extremely special car. It was designed and built before the modern supercar era, long before computer design had the power it does not, and it still utterly destroyed anything that had come before it, and would come after it for quite some time. The engineering detail in it borders on absurd. They only made ~100 of the road-legal versions. [0]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/32191/did-you-know-elon-musk-wrecked-an-uninsured-mclaren-f1 https://www.thedrive.com/news/32191/did-you-know-elon-musk-w...
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    So it was an actual accident, that he and Thiel were lucky to walk away from. The post I commented made it sound like he destroyed it for fun, perhaps to taunt poor people. Maybe you can see why I'm unimpressed with the quality of the anti Musk rants here?

by lupire 4y ago

naasking 4y ago

> why aren't there any good people who do that to make their employees do great things for the world, and then put the profits to good use? (better use than Musk's "buy a $1M car and crash it immediately" style .) You mean like the guy who's trying to address the main existential risks facing humanity right now? Last I checked, Musk created Tesla to counteract the existential risk of climate change, Neuralink to counteract the existential risk of AI, and SpaceX to counteract the existential risk of asteroids and other planet-killing catastrophes. Maybe that's why the people at his companies stay despite being pushed so hard? He could definitely stand to be less of an ass, but I can at least recognize that Musk is actually doing the kind of good work that you're talking about.

tsunamifury 4y ago
Buddy you’ve drunk too much of the kookaide. Musk is telling stories. Look at what he did to the ca bullet train. Don’t believe his “vision” Is for good.
- naasking 4y ago
  My claim was not that Musk was "good" in whatever way you conceptualize that. My claim was that Musk's main focuses are commercial ventures that are very targeted at combating the main existential risks facing humanity. This is exactly the kind of good that the OP was talking about.
  - simiones 4y ago
    That's your claim, but it's simply and obviously false. SpaceX is not about "making humanity interplanetary", it is about selling cheap rockets for commercial exploitation of space (and/or it is a DoD weapons "defense" program). Tesla is a car company, aimed at making and selling cars. Stopping global warming requires more mass transit, and Musk is actively opposed to that. "Making humanity interplanetary" is simply impossible with current or forseeable technology, so there is no sense in attempting yet (especially since we can develop this technology on Earth, by creating self-sustaining habitats in the Arctic desert, if we really want to).
    - naasking 4y ago
      > SpaceX is not about "making humanity interplanetary", it is about selling cheap rockets for commercial exploitation of space (and/or it is a DoD weapons "defense" program). Sure, as an interim step to making humanity interplanetary. Are you suggesting that he could find commercial success without taking those intermediate steps? > Tesla is a car company, aimed at making and selling cars. Tesla make solar roofs and grid level energy storage. Like I said, it's portfolio is very clearly geared at climate change solutions. > Stopping global warming requires more mass transit, and Musk is actively opposed to that. Maybe he is (I've heard he's a bit of a germaphobe). I suspect he also recognizes that America is a car culture and that that won't change anytime soon.
      - simiones 4y ago
        > Sure, as an interim step to making humanity interplanetary. Are you suggesting that he could find commercial success without taking those intermediate steps? My point is that the rockets are the easiest part of settling Mars. We already had rockets, and scaling that up was never a huge unknown. The real problems with settling Mars are the things that Musk is spending nothing on - building safe self-sustaining habitats in extreme conditions. Until we have a 10000+ self-sustaining city underground in the Arctic, there is 0 reason to send more than a handful of people to Mars (like we did to the Moon). So, if you actually care about that, you should be investing in the Arctic city, not Mars. > I suspect he also recognizes that America is a car culture and that that won't change anytime soon. We can try to guess what he believes, or we can look at his actions and their results - and in the latter case, he has repeatedly spoken and acted against public transport (in most hyper-loop and Boring Company presentations at least).
- roamerz 4y ago
  If Musk did have anything to do with slowing or stopping that colossal waste of taxpayer funds I would say his “vision” is superior to any of the politicians who supported it.
  - aunetx 4y ago
    Yeah, a what a "waste" to build high-speed trains... I don't even understand how such a gigantic country can even exist without a safe, quick and inexpensive way to transport its citizens (so not by plane or by car).
    - trothamel 4y ago
      How many citizens has the California High Speed Rail project transported?
    - roamerz 4y ago
      Safe? Shall we use BART as an existing example of that? Quick? No. Fast maybe. It’s hard to replicate the quickness of jumping into your car and hopping onto the freeway to get somewhere. Little or no planning required. Yeah the train if it is deployed as envisioned would be faster. Inexpensive? The latest estimate is 107 Billion. Hardly inexpensive.
  - wittycardio 4y ago
    You are an active detriment to progress
    - roamerz 4y ago
      Progress is a very subjective term. It’s very okay that your view of progress is different than mine.
      - wittycardio 4y ago
        Some aspects of progress are subjective but mass transit isn't
- themgt 4y ago
  "Musk killed the California bullet train" is basically a pizzagate-level conspiracy theory. The NYT reporting among many others makes clear the tragicomic level of shambolic mismanagement from the CA gov't. The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex. SNCF, the French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system. The company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF. The company pulled out in 2011. “There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.” Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018. But sure, blame Elon for California setting tens of billions of dollars on fire with nothing to show for it. Also Florida just built a high speed rail in under a decade for about 1/30th the per-mile cost of the CA project and it'll be open early next year. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-...
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    This is what people are referring to w.r.t Musk and HSR, not that he caused the mismanagement: https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1167410460125097990 https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1167410460125097990 Separately the Florida "HSR" isn't all that comparable because it only goes 80mph with a planned max of 125mph for future routes, and afaict a lot of it was built on an existing corridor. Again, not to say California HSR has been well managed, but imo it's not a particularly useful datapoint to compare against.
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      So Musk was one of the huge number of people who could see the California HSR was a disastrous project before it even started. Is that really the meat of this "allegation"?
      - 4y ago
- mc32 4y ago
  The HSR was boondoggle from the start. It's like designing a downtown to airport subway but then in the political process all political entities in between make it required it serve their community before approving the plan so you end us with a snaking line that takes 60 minutes to get to the airport instead of a straight line taking 15 minutes.
jddil 4y ago
falcolas 4y ago
> Last I checked Might want to check again. He didn't create Tesla, he invested in it. ~Musk didn't create SpaceX, he invested in it.~ EDIT: the SpaceX one is wrong. And IMHO, if he was really concerned about the existential risk for AI, perhaps he shouldn't have let the Ethical AI research team go from Twitter. To be clear, Ethical AI - being able to trace an AI's decisions and vet that those decisions aren't being biased by improper input data - is a big topic in research groups right now. It's actually quite fascinating.
- naasking 4y ago
  > He didn't create Tesla, he invested in it. Musk didn't create SpaceX, he invested in it. Even if true (Wikipedia disagrees), it's a distinction without a difference. Arguably, neither SpaceX nor Tesla would be where they are now without him. > And IMHO, if he was really concerned about the existential risk for AI, perhaps he shouldn't have let the Ethical AI research team go from Twitter. Arguably the kind of AI Twitter needs doesn't pose an existential risk. He's trying to make Twitter profitable so that's obviously a waste of money.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - adoxyz 4y ago
    Literally from the second paragraph from Wikipedia: "Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. The company's name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. In February 2004, via a $6.5 million investment, Elon Musk became the largest shareholder of the company." How does Wikipedia disagree?
    - naasking 4y ago
      Look up the SpaceX entry.
      - falcolas 4y ago
f1refly 4y ago
You're a bit off on your points, but that's okay. He really talks a lot, doesn't he? > Musk created Tesla to counteract the existential risk of climate change, He created Tesla for the money that's in the growing electric car market > Neuralink to counteract the existential risk of AI, Neuralink exists for the possible future where neural computer interfaces are successful and popular so he can make lots of money > and SpaceX to counteract the existential risk of asteroids and other planet-killing catastrophes. Actually, SpaceX exists because there's tons of money to be made with government and commercial contracts. > Maybe that's why the people at his companies stay despite being pushed so hard? It's probably more because they like getting paid so they can afford nice things while they're not working. It might also be because Musk enterprises are in "interesting" areas of the job spectrum and thus workers might be more tolerant to bullshit because they get to tell themselves they launched a rocket into space.
- naasking 4y ago
  > He created Tesla for the money that's in the growing electric car market He arguably created that market. The same applies to your other points. Musk created the markets that didn't exist before. Others had tried and failed, so I'm sorry, but you just can't deny that. It could be luck, so I suppose we'll see. I have no doubt that Musk is interested in making money. I also have no doubt he enjoys that money from time to time. However, I think it's indisputable that no other billionaire works as hard as he does at his ventures, and I think a lot of his interest in that money is so that he can continue funding work to combat those existential risks. > It's probably more because they like getting paid so they can afford nice things while they're not working. Maybe you should read up on the working environment at these companies. There's not as much downtime as you imply. I personally wouldn't want to work for him given his management style, even on these existential problems.
  - f1refly 4y ago
    > He arguably created that market. He didn't, he started the company at a time where governments all over the word started to really (depending on the country, obviously) kick companies butts for not innovating. There where electric cars before he started his company. Now, you could argue that he made it popular with the people, but I argue that the market penetration, especially during the early years, hasn't been sufficient for that. Musk also didn't invent space travel. You may have a point with neuralink, but I have yet to see a successful product come from that so if he is to create that market I'll give him that. He's really good at making his opinions heard though. Other companies don't have a relatively unfiltered channel like this, so it's easy to see how his viewpoints stick out.
EricDeb 4y ago
It would be funny if Musk's long con was to get all the liberals driving his electric cars and then change his political affiliation to get all the conservatives on electric cars all in the service of reducing co2 emissions
manmal 4y ago
Building more cars (basically racing cars that rub tires to dust 2-4x as fast) to save the planet? Sounds like quite the roundabout way to do so. I suspect he just likes driving fast cars? Digging tunnels and conceptualizing hyperloops instead of improving public transport and bikes? IMO he‘s just afraid of public transport and hates traffic jams. Ok, so maybe he needed to become the richest person in the world before tackling the really big issues? Yeah, not sure whether distracting himself with the Twitter acquisition is the best way of addressing climate change or even preserving survival of the human race long term. I think that, like Jobs, he’s mainly scratching his own itches. And paints himself as the world‘s savior in the process.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  I also have my doubts about the wisdom of the Twitter move, but it isn't hard to see a line of reasoning that puts fixing twitter as a key part of the path to addressing climate change. If you view the massive endemic corruption and polarization of our political system as one of the key reasons we are failing to solve climate change, and you also view Twitter as the core public square through which our political system can be fixed, then Twitter is not a distraction at all. I don't personally think that twitter has a major role to play in fixing our political system, but maybe I'm wrong.
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    Dude. If he wanted to make humanity link arms and sing Kumbaya, he’d be investing in water facilities and dropping LSD into it. Musk got bullied into buying Twitter by a bunch of WallStreetBets folks, took a puff and tweeted out a number, and surprise surprise, the offer was accepted. And he’s been struggling to get out of the deal ever since.
    - naasking 4y ago
      I agree he's probably regretting it. I suspect he's going to try to make Twitter more profitable as fast as possible and then maybe sell it when it's on its way to being good. It's a distraction from things he cares about more, but it's not unimportant.
fassssst 4y ago
He did all that to maximize government subsidies.
karaterobot 4y ago
> Last I checked, Musk created Tesla to counteract the existential risk of climate change Musk didn't create Tesla, he bought it. I don't claim to know why he bought it, but here are two options: maybe it was to solve climate change, and if so it was a failure. Maybe it was to make himself immensely wealthy, and if so it was a success.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Why do you think it is a failure on the first count? Do you think Tesla EVs are bad and we would be better of without them?
  - simiones 4y ago
    Yes. To solve global warming, we have to greatly reduce our reliance on cars, and come up with other solutions in as many places as possible - replacing all ICE cars with EVs will not be anywhere near enough.
    - naasking 4y ago
      "Needing" to reduce reliance on cars is debatable; that's certainly one way but not the only way. I doubt Musk would deny that replacing all cars with EVs would be enough. That's why Tesla also offers the solar roof (which needs more attention from Musk IMO) and grid level energy storage.
      - simiones 4y ago
        Tesla has discontinued the solar roof, as far as I know. That was basically just a stunt to use Tesla's money to bail out Musk and his brother. The solar wall is a better example of what you mean though.
        naasking 4y ago
        It looks like you can still order the solar roof on their site: https://www.tesla.com/solarroof https://www.tesla.com/solarroof People are great at finding ulterior motives for people they've already decided they dislike. I don't think Musk is an altruist, and I'm certain he has multiple motives for the ventures he cares about, but I think it's hard to deny that he's found success where others have struggled, and that his ventures will ultimately benefit humanity.
suzumer 4y ago
Elon musk is no friend of the climate. He proposed hyperloop to distract California from building its high speed rail system, a rail system that will do more to help the climate than any electric cars will.
- naasking 4y ago
  I think this comment above clarifies what actually happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33467505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33467505
ProjectArcturis 4y ago
How does Neuralink counteract the risk of AI? If it ever works, it seems like it would exacerbate that risk. How does SpaceX counteract the risk of asteroids? NASA has developed a successful asteroid-killing rocket, and SpaceX's work has nothing to do with that field.
- naasking 4y ago
  > How does Neuralink counteract the risk of AI? If it ever works, it seems like it would exacerbate that risk. AI is a threat because of human information processing limits. Neuralink's ultimate goal is ostensibly to remove eyes and hands as inherent limits to I/O, and augment human information processing in the ways in which we are weak (formal computation). > How does SpaceX counteract the risk of asteroids? NASA has developed a successful asteroid-killing rocket, and SpaceX's work has nothing to do with that field. Cheap launch to orbit is critical in any efforts to counteract asteroid threats. Musk has also been very vocal about colonizing Mars in case something happens to the Earth.
- dekhn 4y ago
  The idea behind neuralink- the real one, not the publicly stated mission- was to make it possible to put elon in a robot body so he could fight the AI singularity.
  - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    I genuinely can't tell if you're trolling.
seanw444 4y ago
I'm not an Elon hater myself, but: He didn't create Tesla. He bought it. He may have grown it, which is impressive, but he certainly wasn't the creator, or funder of the original creators. Ironically, he's more of a Thomas Edison than a Nikola Tesla, in that regard. Starting an AI/transhumanism company as a CEO who's known for software-locking and remote-controlling his sold cars, isn't very reassuring. I'm quite certain we're going to see "pay $80 a month to unlock your now-societally-vital brain-to-brain communications!" Or a tiered model to his probably inevitable digital eyeballs replacements. "$20 a month for 720p vision, $40 a month for 1080p, $60 for 4K..." As for SpaceX... so far that's been pretty badass. Government/NASA hasn't been doing crap for exploration or transportation innovation. Nor satellite internet advancements. He's doing all of it himself. To that, I applaud his efforts (and his impressive engineers, to that extent).
- megaman821 4y ago
  He bought Tesla before it had sold its first car. People try to use the fact that he didn't technically create Tesla as some gotcha that implies he bought his way into the car market.
KaiserPro 4y ago
Musk is not solving climate change. if he wanted to do that, tesla would stop selling carbon credits. but that would cost $1.6b and stop tesla being profitable.

Medox 4y ago

He did "put the profits to good use", donating $5.7 billion of Tesla shares to charity in 2021: https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/elon-musks-philanthropy-and-donor-privacy/ https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/elon-musks-philanthro... After the Twitter poll for offloading 10% of his stake.

fishywang 4y ago
that was for tax reasons.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  You can't net money by donating to charity. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a tax deduction is.
  - pmonks 4y ago
    No one said you could. That doesn’t mean it’s not still financially beneficial.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      How can it be financially beneficial if you lose money doing it?
vletal 4y ago
Or. Maybe, just maybe, he used it to avoid paying taxes like other billionaires do. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-funds-tech-tax.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-fu...
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  This article is about DAFs. Is there evidence that's what Musk is doing?

ttoinou 4y ago

Because no one has the same definition of what "great" is, and right when you start making money others will hate you and consider your vision bad (cf. Other comments replying to you)

yafbum 4y ago
Musk indeed appears to see himself as an agent of humanity's salvation, including in its treatment of Twitter employees. And to be honest, while I and likely many people would see it as self-serving delusion of grandeur, it's hard to believe he's not at least genuine in his belief: you can't really suspect him of wanting to take over Twitter (and all of its headaches) for money.
- georgeg23 4y ago
  Sadly his whole save humanity thing is a schtick.. If you investigate his back story, who he works with, it becomes clear it's not about Mars. His real enterprise is a massive DoD program, built off the Strategic Defense Initiative (the "real" Star Wars). Republicans have been trying to resurrect it for decades and Elon was part of it since at least 2001. The idea is to intercept ballistic missiles from space and end the threat of nuclear armegeddon. In that sense he is trying to "save humanity", but it's misguided because the project is already aggrevating China and Russia and is fundamentally destablizing to the nuclear stalemate/M.A.D. This project, operating under the Space Development Agency and working with the Missile Defense Agency, requires Republicans to fund--Biden and most Democrats been trying to stop it. Twitter helps Musk with the elections and boosting Republican power, while currying favor from them when it comes to these contracts. If you're interested to know more, Mike Griffin is the ringleader.. he goes way back with Elon. Read his career history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career Starlink is building up the basic tech for these constellations--currently just sensing ballistic missiles and hypersonics--but with Starship, putting kinetic weapons in orbit become feasible. Some good references here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
  - 4y ago

yafbum 4y ago

Look up Bosch. It's a very large family-controlled company, and their dividends are 92% allocated to a foundation. I think in time we'll see similar examples in tech. EDIT: Bosch is a tech company too, just an earlier generation.

Barrin92 4y ago
I think what would help with that is that we start not contrasting Bosch with tech, given that Bosch is a technology company in the most literal sense of that term. A lot of tolerance for these mistreatments comes from the mistaken illusion that 'tech' somehow requires people to act like megalomaniacs. A fair amount of car parts in Musk's very own car company come from Bosch
- yafbum 4y ago
  Absolutely agreed. But they're also an old school manufacturer as opposed to the more modern form of IP-focused tech company that tries as hard as possible not to be in the manufacturing game.
- pedrosorio 4y ago
  > I think what would help with that is that we start not contrasting Bosch with tech, given that Bosch is a technology company in the most literal sense of that term Took the words out of my mouth.
sam_lowry_ 4y ago
Patagonia does the same.
- yafbum 4y ago
  Yes (and it represents ~2% of Bosch by revenue)
alephnerd 4y ago
To be fair, foundation ownership is used more as a way to bypass estate taxes in German businesses [0] as a charitable foundation can continue to give 30% of it’s income to the family who founded the foundation. This is a common corporate structure for a number of other family run German companies (ThyssenKrupp, Aldi, Lidl, Bertelsmann, etc) to bypass estate taxes. In American terms, it would be the equivalent of the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation owning 60-70% of Meta’s stock, and Zuckerburg’s children continuing to get dividends and a significant ownership stake in FB while also bypassing estate taxes. [0] - https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f1b666a8-1257-4d81-b28c-26f81ecba298 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f1b666a8-1257...

nucleogenesis 4y ago

It doesn’t take being horrible and exploitative to build amazing things - it takes that kind of to make insane amounts of money building amazing things.

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago

Lots of companies are in this space doing what they can, but they’re focused on actually doing the work and getting their hands dirty as opposed to Musk’s wide noise making. Look at immunotherapy and age research, the trying to find a cure and mechanism for Chronic Fatigue (an illness which disables millions), the people who documented the genome of humanity, and NASAs astronomy stuff. There are biologists trying to prevent further extinct amphibians. There’s linux, and git, and countless open source software we use daily.

BurningFrog 4y ago

To me, at least SpaceX and Tesla do do great things for the world. Not with their profits, but as their primary product. Tesla is getting the world off fossil fuels, and SpaceX is getting humanity into space. > Musk's "buy a $1M car and crash it immediately" style When did that happen?

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
We don't really have a plan to stop using fossil fuels for electricity generation so this is a bit overstated. Electric cars are good but it's not a complete solution.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Sure, I used too big words. Tesla is arguably doing more than any other company to decarbonize the world, but that is very far from a complete solution.
sgarland 4y ago
He bought a McLaren F1 and wrecked it ~1 year later. [0] If you don't follow cars, this is an extremely special car. It was designed and built before the modern supercar era, long before computer design had the power it does not, and it still utterly destroyed anything that had come before it, and would come after it for quite some time. The engineering detail in it borders on absurd. They only made ~100 of the road-legal versions. [0]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/32191/did-you-know-elon-musk-wrecked-an-uninsured-mclaren-f1 https://www.thedrive.com/news/32191/did-you-know-elon-musk-w...
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  So it was an actual accident, that he and Thiel were lucky to walk away from. The post I commented made it sound like he destroyed it for fun, perhaps to taunt poor people. Maybe you can see why I'm unimpressed with the quality of the anti Musk rants here?