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> People are acting like Musk changed course for no reason I'm not sure that's the case. I think many people, myself included, assumed Musk's course was always

> People are acting like Musk changed course for no reason I'm not sure that's the case. I think many people, myself included, assumed Musk's course was always "just do what's best for me." So he's really just holding to that. You should give people in your life the benefit of the doubt, but large corporations and billionaires usually found success by acting in their own interest so they will just keep on doing that.

throwaway894345 4y ago
> large corporations and billionaires usually found success by acting in their own interest so they will just keep on doing that I mean, if you have to irrationally hate someone, I guess billionaires are going to be the ones with the resources to handle it, but I'd really rather we as a society move away from this sort of cathartic scapegoating altogether. The more we normalize taking our anger out on some group or another, backed up by flimsy excuses like "x usually found success by acting in their own interest" the more likely it becomes that "x" will be "The Jews" or some other group.
- Retric 4y ago
  That suggests people hand out equal hate to all billionaires. JK Rawling seems like an obvious exception to that narrative. From what I have seen billionaires tend to get more hate because they simply have more negative impact on peoples lives. Elon kicking out Tesla’s founders is hard to judge objectively because they might have done a worse job, but it’s easy to identify lots of dumb shit he did that harmed the company. Presumably he did plenty of positive things, but the negatives are just easier to identify.
  - yunwal 4y ago
    JK Rowling isn’t exactly well-loved these days https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-defends-speaking-out-against-j-k-rowling-controversial-comments/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-defends-speaki...
    - Retric 4y ago
      The point is you can see people responding to her statements not her status as a billionaire. Just like people clearly dislike Bill Cosby because of rape not his status as a former entertainer.
      - yunwal 4y ago
        > not her status as a billionaire There's a fair share of that as well[0]. But yes, Elon, the worlds richest man (as of earlier this year), draws more ire for his wealth. It's expected since he's about 160x richer than Rowling (she's no longer a billionaire), and uses his money to rig the economy in his favor. He's a more apt symbol of the billionaire class than Rowling. 0 - https://twitter.com/lewisjwr/status/1513219862373584902 https://twitter.com/lewisjwr/status/1513219862373584902
        Retric 4y ago
        I don’t know the specifics about her finances but: “As of 2022, J.K. Rowling’s net worth is an estimated £820 million, or around $1.1 billion, per The Sunday Times. According to the site, this makes Rowling the 196th richest person in the U.K. overall.” https://stylecaster.com/jk-rowling-net-worth/ https://stylecaster.com/jk-rowling-net-worth/
        sumeno 4y ago
        Nobody gives a shit about Bernard Arnault who is now the richest man so maybe people don't like Elon's actions more than they don't like his money. If you look at the top 10 list of richest people Elon is the only one who draws this level of negative attention because he's the only one who is having a huge public meltdown and constantly being in the news for being a garbage human being
        yunwal 4y ago
        About 20% of America thinks Bill Gates put microchips in the COVID vaccine.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    > That suggests people hand out equal hate to all billionaires I don't think it suggests that, or at least I certainly didn't mean to communicate as such. I was responding narrowly to the parent's remarks (explicitly rationalizing targeting billionaires as a group) and not trying to imply anything broader.
  - dkubb 4y ago
    > billionaires tend to get more hate because they simply have more negative impact Not just billionaires, the specific type of billionaire that seeks out fame. There are plenty of billionaires with names you'd not recognize.
- cto_of_antifa 4y ago
- caust1c 4y ago
  Found Elon in the thread!
- marricks 4y ago
  > The more we normalize taking our anger out on some group or another, backed up by flimsy excuses like "x usually found success by acting in their own interest" the more likely it becomes that "x" will be "The Jews" or some other group. That is some wild logic. People are angry for material reasons. It's often misdirected or invalid but there's a cause. I think anger is valid and useful when it's directed at the root of the cause. And I'm sorry, but billionaires and politicians are the ones with more power than anyone else so if something is materially broken in our world they probably deserve an outsized portion of that anger. It takes work to misdirect that anger to other groups, which some politicians and media groups often do. I'd argue that is the thing which should be examined quite carefully.
- psychoslave 4y ago
  >I mean, if you have to irrationally hate someone, I guess billionaires are going to be the ones with the resources to handle it, I wonder, what could be a rational hate? Personally I also wonder what is the supposed rationality behind any society granting some becoming billionaires. All the more when there is no social enforcement loop that ensure that the gap between richest and poorest remain in decent state. Otherwise the hate of the richest is an obvious outcome of the inequity structure.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    > I wonder, what could be a rational hate? Personally, I'm pretty much an "anti-hate" absolutist, but I recognize that a lot of people in this audience aren't, so I'm leaving room for "rational hate" which is maybe something like "this person did something bad, so I hate them" versus "this person belongs to a group, and some people in that group have done bad things, ergo I hate this person" which is the explicit reasoning in the comment that I originally replied to. > Personally I also wonder what is the supposed rationality behind any society granting some becoming billionaires. All the more when there is no social enforcement loop that ensure that the gap between richest and poorest remain in decent state. Yeah, I empathize with this. > Otherwise the hate of the richest is an obvious outcome of the inequity structure. It may be "an obvious outcome", but it doesn't mean it's rational. It's certainly not a moral outcome.
    - psychoslave 4y ago
      > Personally, I'm pretty much an "anti-hate" absolutist, but I recognize that a lot of people in this audience aren't, so I'm leaving room for "rational hate" which is maybe something like "this person did something bad, so I hate them" versus "this person belongs to a group, and some people in that group have done bad things, ergo I hate this person" which is the explicit reasoning in the comment that I originally replied to. There are two different point here: - describing the flow events leading to hate generation - pretending that that hate can be defined has a rational thing The former seems completely legitimate to me. The latter seems to me to result only from confusion. Hate is an emotion, which to my mind means that is not rationally grounded. Not everything need to be rationally grounded to be considered legitimate. Rationality itself is not rationally grounded obviously. > It may be "an obvious outcome", but it doesn't mean it's rational. It's certainly not a moral outcome. Sure, rationality doesn’t come with moral integrity hardly bounded. I think "rational" is a bit polysemous here, as it is might be heard as "ethically sound", and not purely "logically sound".
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  irrationally hate premise rejected You seem to be arguing that only billionaires can rationally hate other billionaires, and anyone who is not on that level can't be rational, because they don't understand what's going on with billionaires. If they they did, they too would be billionaires. This might be narrowly correct in pure business terms, but the problem is that you subordinate everything else to the most unusual characteristic. It's like arguing that the controversial political opinions of a successful athlete aren't subject to debate, because critics haven't won any sportsball championships.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    No, that's not what I'm saying, nor is that a reasonable interpretation of my comment. I'm saying that this formulation is irrational: "many billionaires do bad things, ergo it's justified to hate any billionaire".
patrec 4y ago
> I think many people, myself included, assumed Musk's course was always "just do what's best for me." So he's really just holding to that. As far as I can tell Musk is currently self-destructing for no apparent reason -- how is that best for him? Some of the questionable stuff he's been doing for a while has obvious upsides for him. Lying about the capabilities of your products and market manipulation are both obviously nice if you can get away with it. So is demonstratively skirting laws and regulations. Similarly, building a reputation for going after people who did something that contravened your personal interests, even if doing so was their professional or legal duty, has its benefits. It encourages careful consideration of whether dereliction of duty would not be preferable over getting in your way. All these are demonstrations of strength. But streisanding elonjet just looks weak and pathetic. As does trying to stiff your suppliers. If you build up a reputation for being completely unprincipled and erratic, and try to wheedle out of both your word and your legal obligations even in cases when you probably can't get away with it and there is not even a particularly compelling reason to try to do so in the first place; well -- surely that can only hurt your brand and also mean that people who would otherwise have done business with you won't or will now only do so on much less favorable terms? Or am I missing something here?
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > As far as I can tell Musk is currently self-destructing for no apparent reason -- how is that best for him? Musk is currently in a bubble where everyone around him is giving him unlimited "attaboys" for his behavior. He probably doesn't have a great read on how poorly things are going for him.
  - patrec 4y ago
    That's the impression I'm getting as well. Whatever one thinks about Musk's failings and failures, I find it hard to believe that he can't come up with something better than a series of unforced own goals like the Elon Jet suspension (already backpedaled on) unless he's surrounded himself by people who only tell him what he wants to hear.
    - 4y ago

throwaway894345 4y ago

> large corporations and billionaires usually found success by acting in their own interest so they will just keep on doing that I mean, if you have to irrationally hate someone, I guess billionaires are going to be the ones with the resources to handle it, but I'd really rather we as a society move away from this sort of cathartic scapegoating altogether. The more we normalize taking our anger out on some group or another, backed up by flimsy excuses like "x usually found success by acting in their own interest" the more likely it becomes that "x" will be "The Jews" or some other group.

Retric 4y ago
That suggests people hand out equal hate to all billionaires. JK Rawling seems like an obvious exception to that narrative. From what I have seen billionaires tend to get more hate because they simply have more negative impact on peoples lives. Elon kicking out Tesla’s founders is hard to judge objectively because they might have done a worse job, but it’s easy to identify lots of dumb shit he did that harmed the company. Presumably he did plenty of positive things, but the negatives are just easier to identify.
- yunwal 4y ago
  JK Rowling isn’t exactly well-loved these days https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-defends-speaking-out-against-j-k-rowling-controversial-comments/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-defends-speaki...
  - Retric 4y ago
    The point is you can see people responding to her statements not her status as a billionaire. Just like people clearly dislike Bill Cosby because of rape not his status as a former entertainer.
    - yunwal 4y ago
      > not her status as a billionaire There's a fair share of that as well[0]. But yes, Elon, the worlds richest man (as of earlier this year), draws more ire for his wealth. It's expected since he's about 160x richer than Rowling (she's no longer a billionaire), and uses his money to rig the economy in his favor. He's a more apt symbol of the billionaire class than Rowling. 0 - https://twitter.com/lewisjwr/status/1513219862373584902 https://twitter.com/lewisjwr/status/1513219862373584902
      - Retric 4y ago
        I don’t know the specifics about her finances but: “As of 2022, J.K. Rowling’s net worth is an estimated £820 million, or around $1.1 billion, per The Sunday Times. According to the site, this makes Rowling the 196th richest person in the U.K. overall.” https://stylecaster.com/jk-rowling-net-worth/ https://stylecaster.com/jk-rowling-net-worth/
      - sumeno 4y ago
        Nobody gives a shit about Bernard Arnault who is now the richest man so maybe people don't like Elon's actions more than they don't like his money. If you look at the top 10 list of richest people Elon is the only one who draws this level of negative attention because he's the only one who is having a huge public meltdown and constantly being in the news for being a garbage human being
        yunwal 4y ago
        About 20% of America thinks Bill Gates put microchips in the COVID vaccine.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  > That suggests people hand out equal hate to all billionaires I don't think it suggests that, or at least I certainly didn't mean to communicate as such. I was responding narrowly to the parent's remarks (explicitly rationalizing targeting billionaires as a group) and not trying to imply anything broader.
- dkubb 4y ago
  > billionaires tend to get more hate because they simply have more negative impact Not just billionaires, the specific type of billionaire that seeks out fame. There are plenty of billionaires with names you'd not recognize.
cto_of_antifa 4y ago
caust1c 4y ago
Found Elon in the thread!
marricks 4y ago
> The more we normalize taking our anger out on some group or another, backed up by flimsy excuses like "x usually found success by acting in their own interest" the more likely it becomes that "x" will be "The Jews" or some other group. That is some wild logic. People are angry for material reasons. It's often misdirected or invalid but there's a cause. I think anger is valid and useful when it's directed at the root of the cause. And I'm sorry, but billionaires and politicians are the ones with more power than anyone else so if something is materially broken in our world they probably deserve an outsized portion of that anger. It takes work to misdirect that anger to other groups, which some politicians and media groups often do. I'd argue that is the thing which should be examined quite carefully.
psychoslave 4y ago
>I mean, if you have to irrationally hate someone, I guess billionaires are going to be the ones with the resources to handle it, I wonder, what could be a rational hate? Personally I also wonder what is the supposed rationality behind any society granting some becoming billionaires. All the more when there is no social enforcement loop that ensure that the gap between richest and poorest remain in decent state. Otherwise the hate of the richest is an obvious outcome of the inequity structure.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  > I wonder, what could be a rational hate? Personally, I'm pretty much an "anti-hate" absolutist, but I recognize that a lot of people in this audience aren't, so I'm leaving room for "rational hate" which is maybe something like "this person did something bad, so I hate them" versus "this person belongs to a group, and some people in that group have done bad things, ergo I hate this person" which is the explicit reasoning in the comment that I originally replied to. > Personally I also wonder what is the supposed rationality behind any society granting some becoming billionaires. All the more when there is no social enforcement loop that ensure that the gap between richest and poorest remain in decent state. Yeah, I empathize with this. > Otherwise the hate of the richest is an obvious outcome of the inequity structure. It may be "an obvious outcome", but it doesn't mean it's rational. It's certainly not a moral outcome.
  - psychoslave 4y ago
    > Personally, I'm pretty much an "anti-hate" absolutist, but I recognize that a lot of people in this audience aren't, so I'm leaving room for "rational hate" which is maybe something like "this person did something bad, so I hate them" versus "this person belongs to a group, and some people in that group have done bad things, ergo I hate this person" which is the explicit reasoning in the comment that I originally replied to. There are two different point here: - describing the flow events leading to hate generation - pretending that that hate can be defined has a rational thing The former seems completely legitimate to me. The latter seems to me to result only from confusion. Hate is an emotion, which to my mind means that is not rationally grounded. Not everything need to be rationally grounded to be considered legitimate. Rationality itself is not rationally grounded obviously. > It may be "an obvious outcome", but it doesn't mean it's rational. It's certainly not a moral outcome. Sure, rationality doesn’t come with moral integrity hardly bounded. I think "rational" is a bit polysemous here, as it is might be heard as "ethically sound", and not purely "logically sound".
anigbrowl 4y ago
irrationally hate premise rejected You seem to be arguing that only billionaires can rationally hate other billionaires, and anyone who is not on that level can't be rational, because they don't understand what's going on with billionaires. If they they did, they too would be billionaires. This might be narrowly correct in pure business terms, but the problem is that you subordinate everything else to the most unusual characteristic. It's like arguing that the controversial political opinions of a successful athlete aren't subject to debate, because critics haven't won any sportsball championships.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  No, that's not what I'm saying, nor is that a reasonable interpretation of my comment. I'm saying that this formulation is irrational: "many billionaires do bad things, ergo it's justified to hate any billionaire".

patrec 4y ago

> I think many people, myself included, assumed Musk's course was always "just do what's best for me." So he's really just holding to that. As far as I can tell Musk is currently self-destructing for no apparent reason -- how is that best for him? Some of the questionable stuff he's been doing for a while has obvious upsides for him. Lying about the capabilities of your products and market manipulation are both obviously nice if you can get away with it. So is demonstratively skirting laws and regulations. Similarly, building a reputation for going after people who did something that contravened your personal interests, even if doing so was their professional or legal duty, has its benefits. It encourages careful consideration of whether dereliction of duty would not be preferable over getting in your way. All these are demonstrations of strength. But streisanding elonjet just looks weak and pathetic. As does trying to stiff your suppliers. If you build up a reputation for being completely unprincipled and erratic, and try to wheedle out of both your word and your legal obligations even in cases when you probably can't get away with it and there is not even a particularly compelling reason to try to do so in the first place; well -- surely that can only hurt your brand and also mean that people who would otherwise have done business with you won't or will now only do so on much less favorable terms? Or am I missing something here?

ModernMech 4y ago
> As far as I can tell Musk is currently self-destructing for no apparent reason -- how is that best for him? Musk is currently in a bubble where everyone around him is giving him unlimited "attaboys" for his behavior. He probably doesn't have a great read on how poorly things are going for him.
- patrec 4y ago
  That's the impression I'm getting as well. Whatever one thinks about Musk's failings and failures, I find it hard to believe that he can't come up with something better than a series of unforced own goals like the Elon Jet suspension (already backpedaled on) unless he's surrounded himself by people who only tell him what he wants to hear.
  - 4y ago