Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[The Larch]

Like BG, Musk isn't good at making money.

I have no idea what this means, unless you completely ignore that they are two of the wealthiest human beings ever to have existed.

I *think* I guess what he means. My assumption is that he means that both Gates and Musk didn't make their fortunes through savvy business deals, but by developing companies that became increadibly valuable.

[The Larch]

Is the new lady Canadian? Grimes & miss Wilson both are. He has a thing for our women.

Turns out she is Canadian too, yes. Btw, Musk himself is Canadian as well (got the citizenship at 17 through her mother).

[The Minsky Moment]

Yeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?

It's not impossible for a smart, successful businessman to make big mistakes.  In fact, it happens all the time.

[Berkut]

Yeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?

It's not impossible for a smart, successful businessman to make big mistakes.  In fact, it happens all the time.

Of course. Not under dispute.

But if the overall theme of your opinion of the guy is just "OMG HE IS SO DUMB AND SUCH AN ASSHOLE" then you are rather obviously missing the forest for the trees.

Being wrong on a Bitcoin investment? I suspect there might be a couple people here on languish who were wrong on that as well. Are we calling them out?

I bet Warren Buffet has been wrong on literally dozens, maybe hundreds, of investments. Is it reasonable to sit around and tell each other how stupid he is, and what a failure, because he was wrong a bunch of times?

Or should we examine the totality of his investments and notice that regardless of how many he was wrong about, he is rather obviously amazingly good at investing? 

And I don't see anything from the Musk haters about him being a "smart, successful" businessman - exactly the opposite in fact.

It's bizarre the level of hatred people have for him. You would think they are his kids moms.

[Berkut]

Like BG, Musk isn't good at making money.

I have no idea what this means, unless you completely ignore that they are two of the wealthiest human beings ever to have existed.

I *think* I guess what he means. My assumption is that he means that both Gates and Musk didn't make their fortunes through savvy business deals, but by developing companies that became increadibly valuable.

You cannot create Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla/Space X and manage them into the spectacular successes they are (the "incredibly valuable" part), without some savvy business dealings.

Also, I find it rather amusing that the knock on them is now going to be that their companies just became incredbily successful via the technology their founders had a key role in inventing, rather then "savvy business dealing".

Isn't that normally the knock on the right - that they don't really actually invent or do anything, they just make savvy business deals to create wealth?

Now, the knock on them is that they are not savvy, they just invent amazing shit that is incredibly successful?

[garbon]

 

[The Larch]

Like BG, Musk isn't good at making money.

I have no idea what this means, unless you completely ignore that they are two of the wealthiest human beings ever to have existed.

I *think* I guess what he means. My assumption is that he means that both Gates and Musk didn't make their fortunes through savvy business deals, but by developing companies that became increadibly valuable.

You cannot create Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla/Space X and manage them into the spectacular successes they are (the "incredibly valuable" part), without some savvy business dealings.

No arguing from my part, I only tried to make a guess at what GF meant.

Btw, Musk didn't actually create Tesla, he joined the company as an investor when it was already created, became chairman, and eventually kicked out the two original founders.

[Eddie Teach]

It's all Monopoly money at this point.

[crazy canuck]

So... Musk might have to pay a fair sum it seems. Twitter taking him to court

https://mashable.com/article/can-elon-musk-be-forced-to-buy-twitter?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

they will settle for the 1B$ penalty.

There is a good chance Musk will pay more - there could be a court order that the sale go through if that remedy is sought.

[alfred russel]

Being wrong on a Bitcoin investment? I suspect there might be a couple people here on languish who were wrong on that as well. Are we calling them out?

Bitcoin is really dumb. As is all cryptocurrency. That applies to Elon Musk plus anyone on languish who were "investing" in it. I'll stand by that even if bitcoin recovers and goes to $100k.

[Barrister]

You cannot create Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla/Space X and manage them into the spectacular successes they are (the "incredibly valuable" part), without some savvy business dealings.

Also, I find it rather amusing that the knock on them is now going to be that their companies just became incredbily successful via the technology their founders had a key role in inventing, rather then "savvy business dealing".

Isn't that normally the knock on the right - that they don't really actually invent or do anything, they just make savvy business deals to create wealth?

Now, the knock on them is that they are not savvy, they just invent amazing shit that is incredibly successful?

The knock against Steve Jobs or Elon Musk (note: not Bill Gates) is they they aren't engineers, they didn't invent anything - they were just the CEO while their own engineers did the inventing.

I don't think this is a particularly compelling argument (see how Apple floundered for years without Jobs until he came back), but that's the argument.



(As I understand it Bill Gates did write a lot of the early DOS code)

[crazy canuck]

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.

[Jacob]

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.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?

It's not impossible for a smart, successful businessman to make big mistakes.  In fact, it happens all the time.

It is also not impossible for successful business people to not be smart but just lucky that they were in the right place at the right time.  Lots of very smart business people have business ventures that fail.

[The Minsky Moment]

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.