4 ms·

Elon Musk, pfft. Mark Zuckerberg is a much more plausible concern.

os2warpman 1y ago
Zuckerberg is incompetent. He was lucky, and that's all, with Facebook and has coasted on its momentum ever since. Every single "play" after that has failed. Not only have they failed, he's even fallen into the dictator's trap: where wealthy men who surround themselves with multiple layers of overlapping and competing of staff and hierarchy which act to completely insulate and isolate them from reality start or fund outlandish, impossible, vanity projects. I don't know why these guys don't take the money and run and spend the rest of their lives scuba diving and fixing vintage sports cars in their garage-- but I'm not a sociopath. Musk is less incompetent.
- dlivingston 1y ago
  Incompetent people don't stumble their way into a global empire. Nor do simply lucky people. What a strange comment.
  - os2warpman 1y ago
    Success is almost entirely familial positioning and timing. The Great Man is a myth that needs to die. If you or any other person had wealthy parents who sent you to Philips Exeter and then Harvard and been friends and roommates with who Zuckerberg had been, you would be a wealthy banker, professional, or with luck-- Facebook founder. My best friend in the Army was a Philips Exeter cat who rebelled against his parents and joined the military, married a stripper, drank and fucked his way across a couple of countries, divorced the stripper, got out of the military, went back home with his hat in his hand, got his mom and dad to pay for Marquette, and now he's the CEO of a medical device manufacturing company his parents started. Nice guy. Dumb as hell, but nice.
  - lijok 1y ago
    So the founders of Juicero, Theranos, and WeWork must have been geniuses building sustainable empires?
  - LeifCarrotson 1y ago
    A modicum of competence, a willingness to engage in cut-throat business tactics to take more than most would think their contributions are worth, a good deal of runway/connections, a little risk-taking...and a huge, huge pile of luck are the only things that could have propelled Zuck to his empire. Do you really think it's just competence? A lot of other people also started businesses in ~2004. I worked with one yesterday, he's now a freelancing consultant who is well worth the $180/hour he charges for software development skills in the niche he's built in the last 20 years. He's technically brilliant, brings himself rapidly up to date on new tools, works hard and fast, and is also extremely professional when it comes to communication, finances, and scheduling - a rare combination. I haven't asked about his personal net worth, but he's talked about retirement in a few years, just guessing he's worth maybe a couple million? Competence cannot be in any way correlated to empire and net worth if Zuck is worth 100,000 times more than my friend. From what I've seen and read from Zuckerberg, he's maybe 0.8x? 0.7? as capable or as intelligent. Maybe, if it's all a front and he's actually the most incredible human being ever, he's 2x. Or even imagine he's a so-called 10x worker. But there's no way that any human's contributions can be imagined to be worth 100,000x more than even an average person's labor. I'll grant that maybe there's a floor on competence required to reach that level of income. Maybe Zuck isn't truly incompetent. But it's definitely not just competence.
- LeifCarrotson 1y ago
  I assume the simpler explanation to be that many billionaire/dictator's dream hobbies turn out to be starting or funding outlandish, impossible, vanity projects while completely insulated from consequence and isolated from reality. Yeah, scuba is cool, but I've got a handful of pet engineering projects I'd love to tinker on if I won the lottery (while farming off any drudge work that comes up). I assume all the businesspeople and politicians I also observe to fall into this trap just do the same with their particular area of expertise.

Zuckerberg is incompetent. He was lucky, and that's all, with Facebook and has coasted on its momentum ever since. Every single "play" after that has failed. Not only have they failed, he's even fallen into the dictator's trap: where wealthy men who surround themselves with multiple layers of overlapping and competing of staff and hierarchy which act to completely insulate and isolate them from reality start or fund outlandish, impossible, vanity projects. I don't know why these guys don't take the money and run and spend the rest of their lives scuba diving and fixing vintage sports cars in their garage-- but I'm not a sociopath. Musk is less incompetent.

dlivingston 1y ago
Incompetent people don't stumble their way into a global empire. Nor do simply lucky people. What a strange comment.
- os2warpman 1y ago
  Success is almost entirely familial positioning and timing. The Great Man is a myth that needs to die. If you or any other person had wealthy parents who sent you to Philips Exeter and then Harvard and been friends and roommates with who Zuckerberg had been, you would be a wealthy banker, professional, or with luck-- Facebook founder. My best friend in the Army was a Philips Exeter cat who rebelled against his parents and joined the military, married a stripper, drank and fucked his way across a couple of countries, divorced the stripper, got out of the military, went back home with his hat in his hand, got his mom and dad to pay for Marquette, and now he's the CEO of a medical device manufacturing company his parents started. Nice guy. Dumb as hell, but nice.
- lijok 1y ago
  So the founders of Juicero, Theranos, and WeWork must have been geniuses building sustainable empires?
- LeifCarrotson 1y ago
  A modicum of competence, a willingness to engage in cut-throat business tactics to take more than most would think their contributions are worth, a good deal of runway/connections, a little risk-taking...and a huge, huge pile of luck are the only things that could have propelled Zuck to his empire. Do you really think it's just competence? A lot of other people also started businesses in ~2004. I worked with one yesterday, he's now a freelancing consultant who is well worth the $180/hour he charges for software development skills in the niche he's built in the last 20 years. He's technically brilliant, brings himself rapidly up to date on new tools, works hard and fast, and is also extremely professional when it comes to communication, finances, and scheduling - a rare combination. I haven't asked about his personal net worth, but he's talked about retirement in a few years, just guessing he's worth maybe a couple million? Competence cannot be in any way correlated to empire and net worth if Zuck is worth 100,000 times more than my friend. From what I've seen and read from Zuckerberg, he's maybe 0.8x? 0.7? as capable or as intelligent. Maybe, if it's all a front and he's actually the most incredible human being ever, he's 2x. Or even imagine he's a so-called 10x worker. But there's no way that any human's contributions can be imagined to be worth 100,000x more than even an average person's labor. I'll grant that maybe there's a floor on competence required to reach that level of income. Maybe Zuck isn't truly incompetent. But it's definitely not just competence.
LeifCarrotson 1y ago
I assume the simpler explanation to be that many billionaire/dictator's dream hobbies turn out to be starting or funding outlandish, impossible, vanity projects while completely insulated from consequence and isolated from reality. Yeah, scuba is cool, but I've got a handful of pet engineering projects I'd love to tinker on if I won the lottery (while farming off any drudge work that comes up). I assume all the businesspeople and politicians I also observe to fall into this trap just do the same with their particular area of expertise.