Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Jacob]

I'm no Musk fan, but that seems a fair assessment.

[Barrister]

It was not so long ago one of our regulars argued that despite all Musk's flaws, the world would be better off with 50 more Musks.  That particular person probably regrets making that argument so stridently.  But the Musk fan club would still make the same argument.

I didn't make the argument, but it's at least a debatable point.

For as much of a disaster as his ownership of Twitter has been, how much does that set against the innovations of Tesla and Space X?

[Valmy]

It was not so long ago one of our regulars argued that despite all Musk's flaws, the world would be better off with 50 more Musks.  That particular person probably regrets making that argument so stridently.  But the Musk fan club would still make the same argument.

Musk was useful as a hype man, a front man, a guy to generate investment and who generally left the work to the pros.

But his twitter adventure has put that role in jeopardy I think. Now I think both Tesla and SpaceX might be better off without him.  But neither would be where they are today without him.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Eh, I think Musk has fucked up real bad at Twitter, but I actually start from the premise that I don't think Twitter was a great thing to begin with. A convenient way for me to keep up with sports teams I follow? Yes. Somewhat convenient way to consume tidbits of news? Yes. But on the news front, it has to be weighed against the fact that it is an incredible driver of fake and deceptive "news", and the format of the Tweet has arguably dumbed down discourse for people who engage in them. Twitter had a very mixed bag reputation prior to Musk--I will note that it actually for many years barely took action against groups like ISIS recruiting and propagandizing on Twitter.

Musk shitting up Twitter is generally bad for passionate Twitter users and for Musk's co-investors (and possibly his lenders down the line), but IMO doesn't mean that much.

Something frequently forgotten about Twitter is it was a true also-ran social network, massively exaggerated in importance by journalists because they really like Twitter. But like NPR said--they get like 1% of traffic from Twitter versus some huge number from Facebook. Despite having a "boomer" reputation, Facebook is really the 800 pound gorilla social media network. And the next after that is arguably Instagram--which is also owned by Facebook. And after that maybeit's Twitter, if you are concerned only with the English language Internet. But outside of that I'd argue the huge Chinese networks are probably more important, and for non-English speakers services like WeChat and Telegram seem much more important than Twitter.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I also think it's really hard to evaluate the importance of Tesla + SpaceX as it pertains to Musk. All billionaire executives promote a sort of hagiography where they are the indispensable man. I am familiar with vanishingly few whose narratives really match that. Sometimes the history needs time to be better understood--so it can be useful to look at longer ago cases.

Bill Gates made one of the great fortunes of the 20th century, largely tied to an operating system that went hand in hand with the mass adoption of personal computing in the late 1980s into the 1990s. One could argue Gates was a pioneer who pushed computing forward in a meaningful way.

Except actual reading of the history shows there were a half dozen or more competitors in the space, some who actually got to market before Microsoft--some of whom actually had better products by almost all accounts. Gates's Mom (Gates came from a wealthy family, just like Musk) served on a charitable board with the CEO of IBM, which shocker got Gates and Paul Allen an in with IBM which got them the first contract for DOS. DOS was largely stolen from a small Seattle software firm and repackaged as a Microsoft product (the infamous movie Pirates of Silicon Valley tells a somewhat true but heavily laden with Hollywood "interpretation" story that Gates and Microsoft stole a lot of ideas for Windows first GUI from Apple and then by their marriage to IBM rushed it to market before Apple could, stealing the market--but there is a similar story involving Microsoft's pre-GUI OS, MS-DOS, which was very literally stolen from a small Seattle software firm, and then packaged for IBM.)

It is undeniable that without Gates's actions, Bill Gates would not be a mega billionaire, and Microsoft would not be one of the world's most valuable companies. But it does not seem at all likely that computing would not have developed exactly as it has developed--Gates secured himself the money and position, but IMO didn't really innovate anything, not even the business side ofit.

I would argue there's a lot of similarities to the Microsoft story and the Tesla story and Musk, except it appears Musk's largest skill was getting a lot of government funding and being able to raise more venture capital than his competitors--remember Musk took over Tesla, an extant small EV firm--there were dozens like it. I'm not really sure how much credit Musk gets for technical innovation when it appears he was just the first to suck in a lot of VC money.

SpaceX was born out of him wanting to launch some rockets with his PayPal money in the early 00s, and finding the existing launch industry really shitty. He hired a lot of people that knew what they were doing--and while some of what SpaceX has done with reusability appears to have been proposed at least 15 years prior in ULA reports (but never adopted), the ULA crowd largely never went down that path before because they had a nice revenue capture with the structure of their government contracts and actually had no real incentives to save on costs. Musk did personally disrupt this industry by going into what was largely seen as an industry dominated by a couple aerospace firms who had ironclad government connections, and no huge profit margins on the horizon for anyone else.

To me the biggest negative against SpaceX is Musk appears to genuinely want to invest most of the company's money into long range (Mars) human missions, which IMO is just a massive, massive waste of humanity's time, energy, and resources.

Cheaper satellite launches and LEO stuff is great, humans have no meaningful reason to be sent to Mars anytime in the coming decades, and attempts to do so are egregiously wasteful--and arguably in a damaging way. There's only so many top minds designing and developing rockets, and the more of them being wasted on Mars human missions, the less of them out there doing other, more important things.

[Barrister]

I also think it's really hard to evaluate the importance of Tesla + SpaceX as it pertains to Musk. All billionaire executives promote a sort of hagiography where they are the indispensable man. I am familiar with vanishingly few whose narratives really match that. Sometimes the history needs time to be better understood--so it can be useful to look at longer ago cases.

So I don't think I have any great thesis or argument to make, so I'm just going to fire off a few observations.

I don't disagree with anything you say about Bill Gates, but it's worth noting that unlike Musk (or Steve Jobs, I'll get to him) Bill Gates was actually a programmer and did write lots of the early code for Microsoft's projects.  He was an actual "doer", and not just a hype or pitch man.

Steve Jobs is also someone who comes up in these kidns of conversations.  He wasn't an engineer - it was early partner Steve Wozniak who did much of the designing of the Apple I and Apple II.  And it's well noted in history that Jobs wholescale lifted the idea of a GUI from Xerox.

Jobs is fundamentally linked though to two related inventions - the mouse-driven GUI and then the finger-driven touch screen.  People seemed quite content to use keyboards on both computers and phones up until Jobs popularized using a mouse or finger.  It seems up for debate whether those technologies would have developed and become as ubiquitous as they are without Jobs - even though he did nothing to actually invent those technologies.

So Musk - yes he's not a tech guy - he brings no technical knowledge to the table.  And both electric cars and rockets had been around for decades before he came along.  But both technologies seemed pretty stagnant until Space X and Tesla came along.  His two companies massively disrupted both areas.

SO I also think it's fair to speculate whether or not technology would have developed the way it has without Musk.

And while Otto criticizes the idea of going to Mars - remember that Starship has been selected to be part of the Artemis project to return humans to the moon.  Having that kind of heavy duty lift capability will be incredibly useful even if we never use it to go to Mars.

[grumbler]

For as much of a disaster as his ownership of Twitter has been, how much does that set against the innovations of Tesla and Space X?

Good question.  Arguably, his destruction of Twitter will do mankind more good than his work at Tesla or SpaceX.

[The Minsky Moment]

I would argue there's a lot of similarities to the Microsoft story and the Tesla story and Musk, except it appears Musk's largest skill was getting a lot of government funding and being able to raise more venture capital than his competitors--remember Musk took over Tesla, an extant small EV firm--there were dozens like it. I'm not really sure how much credit Musk gets for technical innovation when it appears he was just the first to suck in a lot of VC money.

My 2 cents is that contribution was huge.
There had always been tons of small firms dicking around with electric cars but none of them got anywhere.  Musk's contribution was to recognize that the technology and cost curve had reached the point to make it viable and commercializable, to mobilize the massive amounts of risk capital to bring it to scale, and to deploy the force of his personality behind a strong marketing concept.  IMO that is a huge contribution.

SpaceX is similar - it's all fine and dandy to say anyone could have done it given the technical possibilities, but the reality was no one did and no one was doing it until Musk came in, mobilized the capital, and make it into a viable business. 

The bird with an HQ and a bunch of production lines is worth more than 1000 birds with great ideas but nothing else.

[crazy canuck]

Musk making an ass of himself on twitter is not an edifying spectacle but it's not clear there is much broader societal harm.

On the flip side, there a case to be made that because of Musk, the timeline to transition to electric cars has been materially accelerated by the demonstration case provided through Tesla and the kick in the ass given to Detroit, Wolfburg, etc.

Then there is the benefits of SpaceX in terms of strengthening US based launch capabilities (previously a Russian near monopoly) and lowering of launch costs.  And the value of his provision of satellite communication services to Ukraine in its most desperate hours.

Bottom line, Musk is no Rupert Murdoch where the world would be a better place if his entire life's work were wiped out.

50 Musks would probably be too much to handle.  Another 3 or 4 might be worth putting up with.

I don't really want to go back around the argument to point out, he was not actually the doer, but more the one who was really good at taking the credit.  We need more doers, not more Musks.

[crazy canuck]

For as much of a disaster as his ownership of Twitter has been, how much does that set against the innovations of Tesla and Space X?

Good question.  Arguably, his destruction of Twitter will do mankind more good than his work at Tesla or SpaceX.

Truer words were never spoken.

[Tamas]

Blaming twitter for all the stupid people using it is like blaming the printing press for Mein Kampf.

[Josquius]

Blaming twitter for all the stupid people using it is like blaming the printing press for Mein Kampf.

The printing press didn't enforce artificial restrictions on what you could do with it and use algorithms to make you angry.

[mongers]

For as much of a disaster as his ownership of Twitter has been, how much does that set against the innovations of Tesla and Space X?

Good question.  Arguably, his destruction of Twitter will do mankind more good than his work at Tesla or SpaceX.

 

[HVC]

Tucker Carlson to save twitter by moving his show there.  Like rancid peanut butter and mouldy jelly. two horrible tastes that taste horribly together.

[DGuller]

I think dismissing Musk's accomplishments is a bit of motivated reasoning, and I don't recall many people doing that until he started his sharp turn to the right.  We don't dismiss the importance of a general just because the soldiers do all the fighting, and it seems extra silly to me to dismiss the importance of the person in charge of a couple of highly successful engineering companies because it's the engineers who do all the engineering.