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In the last couple of months I’ve seen him absolutely destroy a BBC journalist in an off-the-cuff battle of wits. Is luck the only reason you’re not richer than

• withinboredom 3y ago
  Luck is great for modeling capitalism, actually. Elon… is not that smart. Take the “hyperloop” for example, invented in the 1800’s, IIRC. When I considered it in the 90’s as a thought experiment, I quickly realized how dumb it would be. The earth moves, all the time. The pressure wave of a failure somewhere in the system would literally kill everyone on board. If any parts were above ground, a simple sniper bullet from several miles away could kill hundreds of people. I was a teenager, simply writing a report for school. In my report, I quickly (within hours of discovering the idea) realized the expenses and risks of maintaining such a thing would quickly overwhelm any benefits. Yet this “novel idea” a random billionaire came up with is somehow different? I don’t think so. I could go on with dozens or potentially hundreds of examples where it’s clear he didn’t apply any critical thought at all. Just to be clear, I’m not saying he is dumb. He just doesn’t think things through before saying them out loud. I think the majority of normal people do this. In other words, I think he’s a normal person who got lucky, and works hard to keep what he has. Just like everyone else. However, we live in a world that idolizes lucky people…