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Imagine you're incredibly wealthy. You have access to all the finest things in the entire world. You have access to the most elite, exclusive, desirable places

Imagine you're incredibly wealthy. You have access to all the finest things in the entire world. You have access to the most elite, exclusive, desirable places and people in the world. Do you want to go back to work to make the worlds most profitable ad tech company "cool" again?

robertlagrant 3y ago
I think this might be the most notable thing about Elon Musk. He's made it, but he hasn't turned to politics or investing or behind the scenes activities. He seems very drawn to a crazy lifestyle.
- prepend 3y ago
  Musk has said he has a goal of going to Mars and getting humanity off fossil fuels. Maybe that’s true, maybe not, but he has a mission. Page and Brin wanted to organize the world’s info. I think they accomplished that and I suspect the googleplex can answer all their questions.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > He's made it, but he hasn't turned to politics or investing or behind the scenes activities. Of course he has turned to politics, just not in the conventional way - he's not a native US citizen, so he can't do a Trump and run for President. Instead he's messing around with Twitter by allowing the far-right to run completely rampant on it.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I don't think he's turned to it, though. He certainly seems keen on speech, but that's not his only thing he's got going on by any stretch.
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    Not only allowing, massively boosting.
- consumer451 3y ago
  > I think this might be the most notable thing about Elon Musk. He's made it, but he hasn't turned to politics It appears to me that he has absolutely turned to politics, if you look at his tweets, they are almost entirely political these days. He wanted to buy Twitter purely for political reasons, and said as much.
- cromwellian 3y ago
  He’s not running for office but he sure does seem to waste a ton of time arguing politics on Twitter and getting into public battles with people. I’d also argue he technically is investing, given all of the companies he’s starting, even OpenAI started from his investment. There’s Neuralink, Boring Company, and probably others. Though in Musk’s case it might be his autism/adhd.
- 10xDev 3y ago
  Musk literally bought Twitter mostly for political reasons. Why else do you think?
hyperbovine 3y ago
This. The founders are not hungry, and "running the world's largest advertising firm" is a far, far cry from the "don't be evil" and "make all the world's information free" ethos that they espoused in their 20s. I honestly wonder what Sergey and Larry think of what their creation has become.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  “Huh. It's funny how you stop caring about these things when you can afford to jet off to Saint Tropez for the weekend just because you have a hankering for bouillabaisse.”
mschuster91 3y ago
>Do you want to go back to work to make the worlds most profitable ad tech company "cool" again? Elon Musk fits that to a T: he was the richest dude on the planet by far, with not just one but three wildly successful companies under his belt as either founder or at least very significant investor (I'm not interested in the usual "Musk didn't found Tesla" debate), more women, wives, affairs and kids than most people will ever have had, being wildly beloved by progressives for kicking the legacy car industry so hard in their butts that they haven't recovered to this date, and being beloved by the "fiscal conservative" crowd as well for pulverizing the Boeing/ULA monopoly on spaceflight. Normal wealthy people would be perfectly content at that point - they'd live out their days on some yacht with a better wine chamber than many 5-star restaurants, do a bit of gambling here, a bit of charity fundraising there, that kind of stuff. But not Elon Musk, he goes and blows dozens of billions of dollars of his own and Saudi oil sheikh money to buy Twitter, a failing social media platform. Just WTF?
sircastor 3y ago
And more so, you’re not digging in to work on cool technology. You’re likely just fighting board members and investors to do something that’s not immediately or obviously “make more money.”
ThrowawayB7 3y ago
Much as he was criticized, a fair bit of which was deserved, the one thing that you could say about Steve Ballmer is that he was still very, very passionate about making Microsoft succeed right up until he was ousted. Being some kind of passionless drone that can't imagine anything greater in life than some kind of decadent "access to all the finest things in the world" is really not aligned with the hacker mindset. I think I speak for many here when I say that if I were fabulously wealthy, I'd just be hacking things on a much larger scale.
- Solvency 3y ago
  "I speak for many here when I say that if I were fabulously wealthy, I'd just be hacking things on a much larger scale." No one can possibly say this with full absolute certainty, the same way no one truly knows how they'll act in the face of (or aftermath of) parenthood, poverty, war, death, illness, etc. One doesn't end up at Brin levels of wealth without some part of their psyche changing.
yowzadave 3y ago
The weird thing to me is that this hasn't happened to Zuckerberg—despite having more money than anyone can imagine, he's still plugging away, showing up to work, trying to juice the stock price of his corrosive adware company. Amazing how he can have those kinds of resources, that insane drive...and such a pedestrian imagination.

robertlagrant 3y ago

I think this might be the most notable thing about Elon Musk. He's made it, but he hasn't turned to politics or investing or behind the scenes activities. He seems very drawn to a crazy lifestyle.

prepend 3y ago
Musk has said he has a goal of going to Mars and getting humanity off fossil fuels. Maybe that’s true, maybe not, but he has a mission. Page and Brin wanted to organize the world’s info. I think they accomplished that and I suspect the googleplex can answer all their questions.
mschuster91 3y ago
> He's made it, but he hasn't turned to politics or investing or behind the scenes activities. Of course he has turned to politics, just not in the conventional way - he's not a native US citizen, so he can't do a Trump and run for President. Instead he's messing around with Twitter by allowing the far-right to run completely rampant on it.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  I don't think he's turned to it, though. He certainly seems keen on speech, but that's not his only thing he's got going on by any stretch.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  Not only allowing, massively boosting.
consumer451 3y ago
> I think this might be the most notable thing about Elon Musk. He's made it, but he hasn't turned to politics It appears to me that he has absolutely turned to politics, if you look at his tweets, they are almost entirely political these days. He wanted to buy Twitter purely for political reasons, and said as much.
cromwellian 3y ago
He’s not running for office but he sure does seem to waste a ton of time arguing politics on Twitter and getting into public battles with people. I’d also argue he technically is investing, given all of the companies he’s starting, even OpenAI started from his investment. There’s Neuralink, Boring Company, and probably others. Though in Musk’s case it might be his autism/adhd.
10xDev 3y ago
Musk literally bought Twitter mostly for political reasons. Why else do you think?

hyperbovine 3y ago

This. The founders are not hungry, and "running the world's largest advertising firm" is a far, far cry from the "don't be evil" and "make all the world's information free" ethos that they espoused in their 20s. I honestly wonder what Sergey and Larry think of what their creation has become.

Freak_NL 3y ago
“Huh. It's funny how you stop caring about these things when you can afford to jet off to Saint Tropez for the weekend just because you have a hankering for bouillabaisse.”

mschuster91 3y ago

>Do you want to go back to work to make the worlds most profitable ad tech company "cool" again? Elon Musk fits that to a T: he was the richest dude on the planet by far, with not just one but three wildly successful companies under his belt as either founder or at least very significant investor (I'm not interested in the usual "Musk didn't found Tesla" debate), more women, wives, affairs and kids than most people will ever have had, being wildly beloved by progressives for kicking the legacy car industry so hard in their butts that they haven't recovered to this date, and being beloved by the "fiscal conservative" crowd as well for pulverizing the Boeing/ULA monopoly on spaceflight. Normal wealthy people would be perfectly content at that point - they'd live out their days on some yacht with a better wine chamber than many 5-star restaurants, do a bit of gambling here, a bit of charity fundraising there, that kind of stuff. But not Elon Musk, he goes and blows dozens of billions of dollars of his own and Saudi oil sheikh money to buy Twitter, a failing social media platform. Just WTF?

sircastor 3y ago

And more so, you’re not digging in to work on cool technology. You’re likely just fighting board members and investors to do something that’s not immediately or obviously “make more money.”

ThrowawayB7 3y ago

Much as he was criticized, a fair bit of which was deserved, the one thing that you could say about Steve Ballmer is that he was still very, very passionate about making Microsoft succeed right up until he was ousted. Being some kind of passionless drone that can't imagine anything greater in life than some kind of decadent "access to all the finest things in the world" is really not aligned with the hacker mindset. I think I speak for many here when I say that if I were fabulously wealthy, I'd just be hacking things on a much larger scale.

Solvency 3y ago
"I speak for many here when I say that if I were fabulously wealthy, I'd just be hacking things on a much larger scale." No one can possibly say this with full absolute certainty, the same way no one truly knows how they'll act in the face of (or aftermath of) parenthood, poverty, war, death, illness, etc. One doesn't end up at Brin levels of wealth without some part of their psyche changing.

yowzadave 3y ago

The weird thing to me is that this hasn't happened to Zuckerberg—despite having more money than anyone can imagine, he's still plugging away, showing up to work, trying to juice the stock price of his corrosive adware company. Amazing how he can have those kinds of resources, that insane drive...and such a pedestrian imagination.