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musk has a vast amount of power and influence due to his wealth, links to several corporations, links to other rich people, and his control of a social media si

musk has a vast amount of power and influence due to his wealth, links to several corporations, links to other rich people, and his control of a social media site. I believe that someone with that much power has an obligation, a responsibility to improve the world for humanity. Whether elected or not. he instead chooses to do what he does. That is why I dislike him. he could offer so much more but messes around "trolling" the world like a 13 year old insulated from consequences.

bhauer 3y ago
I don't care for his tweets or his political thoughts, but I personally think he has done more good through his companies than most others with similar resources. In my opinion, when Gates was still running Microsoft, he did considerably less "good" for humanity than Musk is doing now. And Musk's contemporaries (Zuckerberg, Bezos, et al) don't seem to be interested in doing much good either. It's easy to be an armchair critic and say you would do more good if you had those resources at your disposal. But I will admit that I have never worked and will never work a quarter as hard as any of the names I've mentioned here. Despite my criticism of Gates, for example, he has done more good with his resources post-Microsoft than I expect I would have been able to do with the same.
- palata 3y ago
  > less "good" for humanity than Musk is doing now Sorry, but... what is Musk doing for humanity now? SpaceX makes a business out of space, which will use more and more energy, which is exactly the biggest problem of humanity right now (fossil fuel is not unlimited, and CO2 is killing the planet). Tesla makes heavy vehicles that use a lot of energy, too. And somehow, some people think they are "green" because they are electric, but the truth is that driving such a heavy vehicle for (usually) one person is the opposite of green. Now let's be honest, his contemporaries are not helping humanity either. But if we talk about humanity, we would be better off without SpaceX, without Tesla, without Facebook and without Amazon. Let's not forget that. Gates, post-Microsoft, seems to be working hard to make good things, I have to say.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- thereare5lights 3y ago
  > I am thoroughly disinterested in the unhinged vitriol I see so often from Musk's haters. The incessant lazy discourse about how Twitter is dying, for either technical or other reasons. > but I personally think he has done more good through his companies than most others with similar resources. It's always odd to me how people say Musk is doing good though his companies without backing it up while criticizing how people are critical of Musk as if it's unhinged.
nancyhn 3y ago
Literally who has improved humanity more this century? I ask with all seriousness. Electric cars and rockets would not be where they are if he had chosen a different and much less difficult path.
- bentlegen 3y ago
  Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Google (made near-infinite knowledge reachable), Chrome/Chromium, GMail, YouTube, Android (powers billions of handsets), Google Maps … If you credit Musk directly for all the aforementioned things, why not them? And yes, Google bought some of those properties, but so did Musk. What’s the difference? Marketing? (I don’t actually think Larry and Sergey “most benefitted humanity” or deserve a bunch of humanitarian awards, but I’m curious why they’re not credited with Google’s achievements in the way Musk is with his companies.)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - nancyhn 3y ago
    That's a good answer, although it's arguable their best contribution was in the prior century with search and page rank, whereas this century has been dominated with contributions to the ad space.
    - bentlegen 3y ago
      PageRank was developed in 1998. I assure you Google did not immediately come out and crush search. Altavista, Yahoo, and Lycos might have all been bigger properties during 1999.
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    I think there is a ‘but for’ aspect, without google it’s reasonable to expect the some other search engine could have evolved into the same thing. Given the scope and scale of the investment required to get Tesla and SpaceX to a viable state it seem that only a somewhat crazy person could would even attempt that. It’s difficult to find an optimum level of crazy, and is often difficult to distinguish between crazy and stupid. That said, I do think Elon would be even more successful if he was a bit less crazy and a bit less stupid.
tomatotomato37 3y ago
Compared to average finance billionaire #293 bragging to their golf buddies how they got the Toys-R-Us bankruptcy to pay for their third private yacht he has definitely done his duty for improving the world, even if he's lately been acting like a major idiot while doing it. Yes I know there are other tech billionaires who do better, but for every one of them there's a mile of those who instead actively work to make the world worse for their own self interest
- kaba0 3y ago
  Yeah, he gave us fking paypal.. Also, we surely needed some more ass-licker for Russia, as if we don’t have enough already, or some high position person shittalking about covid. Definitely a good gal..
  - sillyfluke 3y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but you might not be aware that Paypal like Google is known to have been Less Evil back in the day. So much so that--and I'm going completely by memory so I might fuck this up--Douglas Crockford went to Paypal when he was pissed off with a patent play Yahoo made and took a moral stand, quitting in protest. It was one of those companies that had a rep of putting developers first. Now how much genetic material Paypal retained from Musk's x.com I have no idea and whether Musk was responsible for any of "the good stuff" in Paypal during those years is debatable (See Founders At Work for the windows/linux debates).
somedude895 3y ago
> a responsibility to improve the world for humanity > he instead chooses to do what he does That just depends on your view of what is and isn't an improvement to the world and we arrive back at partisan politics.

bhauer 3y ago

I don't care for his tweets or his political thoughts, but I personally think he has done more good through his companies than most others with similar resources. In my opinion, when Gates was still running Microsoft, he did considerably less "good" for humanity than Musk is doing now. And Musk's contemporaries (Zuckerberg, Bezos, et al) don't seem to be interested in doing much good either. It's easy to be an armchair critic and say you would do more good if you had those resources at your disposal. But I will admit that I have never worked and will never work a quarter as hard as any of the names I've mentioned here. Despite my criticism of Gates, for example, he has done more good with his resources post-Microsoft than I expect I would have been able to do with the same.

palata 3y ago
> less "good" for humanity than Musk is doing now Sorry, but... what is Musk doing for humanity now? SpaceX makes a business out of space, which will use more and more energy, which is exactly the biggest problem of humanity right now (fossil fuel is not unlimited, and CO2 is killing the planet). Tesla makes heavy vehicles that use a lot of energy, too. And somehow, some people think they are "green" because they are electric, but the truth is that driving such a heavy vehicle for (usually) one person is the opposite of green. Now let's be honest, his contemporaries are not helping humanity either. But if we talk about humanity, we would be better off without SpaceX, without Tesla, without Facebook and without Amazon. Let's not forget that. Gates, post-Microsoft, seems to be working hard to make good things, I have to say.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
thereare5lights 3y ago
> I am thoroughly disinterested in the unhinged vitriol I see so often from Musk's haters. The incessant lazy discourse about how Twitter is dying, for either technical or other reasons. > but I personally think he has done more good through his companies than most others with similar resources. It's always odd to me how people say Musk is doing good though his companies without backing it up while criticizing how people are critical of Musk as if it's unhinged.

nancyhn 3y ago

Literally who has improved humanity more this century? I ask with all seriousness. Electric cars and rockets would not be where they are if he had chosen a different and much less difficult path.

bentlegen 3y ago
Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Google (made near-infinite knowledge reachable), Chrome/Chromium, GMail, YouTube, Android (powers billions of handsets), Google Maps … If you credit Musk directly for all the aforementioned things, why not them? And yes, Google bought some of those properties, but so did Musk. What’s the difference? Marketing? (I don’t actually think Larry and Sergey “most benefitted humanity” or deserve a bunch of humanitarian awards, but I’m curious why they’re not credited with Google’s achievements in the way Musk is with his companies.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nancyhn 3y ago
  That's a good answer, although it's arguable their best contribution was in the prior century with search and page rank, whereas this century has been dominated with contributions to the ad space.
  - bentlegen 3y ago
    PageRank was developed in 1998. I assure you Google did not immediately come out and crush search. Altavista, Yahoo, and Lycos might have all been bigger properties during 1999.
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  I think there is a ‘but for’ aspect, without google it’s reasonable to expect the some other search engine could have evolved into the same thing. Given the scope and scale of the investment required to get Tesla and SpaceX to a viable state it seem that only a somewhat crazy person could would even attempt that. It’s difficult to find an optimum level of crazy, and is often difficult to distinguish between crazy and stupid. That said, I do think Elon would be even more successful if he was a bit less crazy and a bit less stupid.

tomatotomato37 3y ago

Compared to average finance billionaire #293 bragging to their golf buddies how they got the Toys-R-Us bankruptcy to pay for their third private yacht he has definitely done his duty for improving the world, even if he's lately been acting like a major idiot while doing it. Yes I know there are other tech billionaires who do better, but for every one of them there's a mile of those who instead actively work to make the world worse for their own self interest

kaba0 3y ago
Yeah, he gave us fking paypal.. Also, we surely needed some more ass-licker for Russia, as if we don’t have enough already, or some high position person shittalking about covid. Definitely a good gal..
- sillyfluke 3y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but you might not be aware that Paypal like Google is known to have been Less Evil back in the day. So much so that--and I'm going completely by memory so I might fuck this up--Douglas Crockford went to Paypal when he was pissed off with a patent play Yahoo made and took a moral stand, quitting in protest. It was one of those companies that had a rep of putting developers first. Now how much genetic material Paypal retained from Musk's x.com I have no idea and whether Musk was responsible for any of "the good stuff" in Paypal during those years is debatable (See Founders At Work for the windows/linux debates).

somedude895 3y ago

> a responsibility to improve the world for humanity > he instead chooses to do what he does That just depends on your view of what is and isn't an improvement to the world and we arrive back at partisan politics.