Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Jacob]

Gates bight the DOS operating system iirc for 50k

Best purchase ever - and he was lucky enough to have a dad who could front the cash.

Gates success, as I understand it, was built on smart business practices. Getting DOS packaged with IBM computers, and the series of acquisition and development decisions that put Microsoft into a near monopoly position during a technological revolution.

I can't really fault him for that. Nor can I really fault Jobs nor Elon for their successful business practices. It's the way of the world, and they did well at it.

EDIT: but I'll still enjoy people taking the piss out of all three of them, and Bezos too for that matter. I'm sure they'll be okay.

[crazy canuck]

Musk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.

If A Mars colony becomes necessary then one wonders whether the billions spent on that would have been better spent keeping the world below 1.5C of warming.

[The Brain]

Musk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.

If A Mars colony becomes necessary then one wonders whether the billions spent on that would have been better spent keeping the world below 1.5C of warming.

[Barrister]

Again in the example of very bright and successful people almost making huge mistakes...

Steve Jobs was mostly successful in business, but he also cost himself his life by delaying treatment for his otherwise very treatable pancreatic cancer until it was too late and it ultimately killed him.

[Barrister]

Gates bight the DOS operating system iirc for 50k

Best purchase ever - and he was lucky enough to have a dad who could front the cash.

Just a friendly suggestion CC - google before posting. 

Bill Gates famously SOLD DOS for $50k to IBM.

DOS was largely copied from another OS - CP/M (the extent of which is debatable).  Now in the interests of fairness Bill Gates did purchase the rights to QDOS (later renamed 86-DOS), which was what was copied from CP/M, for $25k.

But nevertheless to my original point - while it wasn't DOS that Bill Gates was involved in writing (my bad), Gates did primarily write the original BASIC interpreter.  Which went to my side point that unlike Musk of Jobs, Gates was actually an inventor of stuff.

I have no idea if Gates's dad fronted the money to buy 86-DOS or not.  It's certainly possible, but also by then Microsoft had been a going concern for several years so they might also have been able to front the money themselves.

[Berkut]

Musk is one of the great entrepreneurs of our time; perhaps the greatest of the century so far.  He has achieved extraordinary success in industries where many before him failed badly and which have very significant social impact as well.

But he is also erratic and self-absorbed.  And when big men with big ideas make mistakes, they tend to make big mistakes.

If business geniuses never made big mistakes, I'd be out of work, or at least have a lot less of it.  Fortunately, they make big mistakes quite a lot, and thus keep me and thousands like me gainfully employed.

No argument from me.

And no argument from me that the guy is pretty much an asshole. I would not want to work for him. But I wouldn't have wanted to work for Microsoft either, and I suspect I am considerably less wealthy then I would be had I went to work for Microsoft.

[Berkut]

Musk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.

If A Mars colony becomes necessary then one wonders whether the billions spent on that would have been better spent keeping the world below 1.5C of warming.

That is a really, really interesting question. And one that I am not sure I know the answer to, honestly.

I suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

[viper37]

He is smart.  Certainly a businessman.  His success though, a lot of it comes from hype.

Yes, he did delivered electric vehicles, he was the first.  They are overpriced for their category, but it's allright, people want them.  And they're generally better for the environment than a combustion engine, even though we have problems with the batteries.

SpaceX was created with the promise of drilling asteroids for minerals.  So far, it  has put satellites in orbit and his creating risk for future space navigation by crowding the higher atmosphere of various clutter and objects.  And he's not a team player, refusing any attempt at discussion with NASA toward solving this.

There were many, many accidents with SpaceX, which might have been excusable if he were the first, but he wasn't.  We've been launching rockets since the 50s.  He's just trying to do his own thing insisting he knows better than everyone else.  Just because he's smart does not mean everyone else is dumb.

Now, SpaceX.  It's still not close to drilling asteroid and he's promising to send people to Mars.  It is still hype.  Pumping stock with hype.

Doesn't mean he isn't a genius.  He is.  But he can be an asshole too. And lot of other things too.  His Twitter bid was just one more example of his dickish behavior.  He never wanted to seriously buy Twitter to preserve freedom of expression on the platform.  FFS, I don't think he even cares about wether Trump is there or not.

[Barrister]

SpaceX was created with the promise of drilling asteroids for minerals.  So far, it  has put satellites in orbit and his creating risk for future space navigation by crowding the higher atmosphere of various clutter and objects.  And he's not a team player, refusing any attempt at discussion with NASA toward solving this.

There were many, many accidents with SpaceX, which might have been excusable if he were the first, but he wasn't.  We've been launching rockets since the 50s.  He's just trying to do his own thing insisting he knows better than everyone else.  Just because he's smart does not mean everyone else is dumb.

Now, SpaceX.  It's still not close to drilling asteroid and he's promising to send people to Mars.  It is still hype.  Pumping stock with hype.

Doesn't mean he isn't a genius.  He is.  But he can be an asshole too. And lot of other things too.  His Twitter bid was just one more example of his dickish behavior.  He never wanted to seriously buy Twitter to preserve freedom of expression on the platform.  FFS, I don't think he even cares about wether Trump is there or not.

Where to begin...

I've never heard that SpaceX started by promising to mine asteroids.  Googling suggests no such thing.  Pretty much from the beginning it was just about cutting the cost of orbital launches.

Many, many accidents... the first three Falcon 1 rockets blew up on launch.  Not sure that counts as "many, many".  Also not sure that's all that out of the ordinary.  The other option is to pull a Blue Origin and just not launch anything at all for years.

'his own thing insisting it's better' - SpaceX has done something revolutionary in rocket launches - making re-usable rockets.  It really is better than anyone else in the sector.  It really has dramatically cut the cost of reaching orbit.  This is not just hype.  (not that Musk doesn't do a lot of hyping - just that in this area he's matched the hype)

[The Brain]

Musk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.

If A Mars colony becomes necessary then one wonders whether the billions spent on that would have been better spent keeping the world below 1.5C of warming.

That is a really, really interesting question. And one that I am not sure I know the answer to, honestly.

I suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

Global warming is extremely unlikely to lead to the end of human population on Earth, so picking out that one as the standard to compare Mars colonization to when discussing a situation where the Mars colony saves humanity from extinction doesn't make much sense. For starters.

[Valmy]

Yes, he is clearly making error after error.

Well that is what twitter does. It eventually rots your brain and makes you spend a billion dollars not buying it.

[Valmy]

I suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

It always seemed like it would be cheaper and easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica first. By which to say it would be ungodly expensive and almost impossible to successfully colonize those areas on a permanent basis but still orders of magnitude easier than colonizing Mars. Already I think the short term inhabitants in Antarctica demonstrate many of the mental strains of living in such a hostile environment.

[Berkut]

I suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

It always seemed like it would be cheaper and easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica first. By which to say it would be ungodly expensive and almost impossible to successfully colonize those areas on a permanent basis but still orders of magnitude easier than colonizing Mars. Already I think the short term inhabitants in Antarctica demonstrate many of the mental strains of living in such a hostile environment.

This is an interesting discussion, but well outside the relevance of Elon Musk's douchiness.

The point of colonizing Mars is not really about just colonizing Mars, and that is true in a way that colonizing the bottom of the ocean does not meet. 

It's like saying it would be easier to go to some inhospitable place on the Earth then it is going to the Moon. That is almost certainly true, but isn't really the point of going to the Moon.

[Josquius]

The colonising Mars stuff is a good point about Musk.

His absolute cuntishness derives from elsewhere.

[Sheilbh]

It feels like it'd be weirdly fitting if Twitter was owned by someone who doesn't want it and was literally forced to buy it