Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Syt]

His brand appears to have taken a hit, at any rate.

[Valmy]

He can do whatever he wants. He has more money than the nominal GDP of most of the countries in the world. Everybody will kiss his ass and he is basically above the law and accountable to nobody. His "brand" doesn't matter.

So that's fun.

[Barrister]

It does kind of baffles my brain that having a decent EV company and doing some space stuff makes you this rich but if I knew how to be super rich I wouldn't be sitting here chatting with you dudes.

Yeah, no offence my brother-by-a-different-mother, but if I could trade Languish for $400 billion dollar net worth I wouldn't have to think very hard about it. 



I think Musk made EV's "cool" by making them good. Previous EVs were all focused around being economical.  Musk said 'screw that' and introduced an EV with "ludicrous speed" that could out-accelerate almost any other vehicle on the planet.  Now I know - naming a vehicle module after a reference from a 1980s Mel Brooks movie isn't exactly "cool" but the performance itself was.

[Valmy]

It does kind of baffles my brain that having a decent EV company and doing some space stuff makes you this rich but if I knew how to be super rich I wouldn't be sitting here chatting with you dudes.

Yeah, no offence my brother-by-a-different-mother, but if I could trade Languish for $400 billion dollar net worth I wouldn't have to think very hard about it. 



I think Musk made EV's "cool" by making them good. Previous EVs were all focused around being economical.  Musk said 'screw that' and introduced an EV with "ludicrous speed" that could out-accelerate almost any other vehicle on the planet.  Now I know - naming a vehicle module after a reference from a 1980s Mel Brooks movie isn't exactly "cool" but the performance itself was.

Right, previously EVs were thought of something only environmentalist crunchy types would want and Musk marketed them to car people. And hired people to make them cool for car people. That was great.

Just baffled that was enough to make somebody richer than the entire annual economic production of a country of millions.

[Sheilbh]

It's always open to the US government to say "screw it, not interested".  Not that I think the US government will just zero out NASA funding, but sending probes to Mars or a new lunar mission are certainly not anything required.  The US now, sadly, has a long history of mostly ignoring space travel.  They could continue in that trajectory.

On the lunar/space travel bit but I think Space X and Starlink are providing quite core infrastructure - and I think Trump was right (as much as we laughed) in the whole Space Force idea. In the same way as Russia and China are targeting sub-sea infrastructure there is a lot of satellite infrastructure that's really important to our society now - and I think Musk's companies are really integral to that area of US policy.

I think Tesla in the US specifically were really important in the early EV charging infrastructure too - not sure if that's still the case. But they were very aligned with a 2000s centre-left way of doing things, as under Obama.  I think in both cases of Space X or Tesla, the conventional view was that they were probably going to fail until they were both saved (at different times) by fairly massive government contracts under Obama.

It was very third way. A progressive ends through private sector means - with a fossil fuel enthusiast like Trump involved I can't help but feel the private sector means are probably key to keeping the progressive ends going.

Although obvs the other side is China and that might have been enough to stop Trump turning against EVs in full.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

His brand appears to have taken a hit, at any rate.

ah yes, and there are the troglodite vandals too of course

[Valmy]

I think in both cases of Space X or Tesla, the conventional view was that they were probably going to fail until they were both saved (at different times) by fairly massive government contracts under Obama.

It was very third way. A progressive ends through private sector means - with a fossil fuel enthusiast like Trump involved I can't help but feel the private sector means are probably key to keeping the progressive ends going.

Here we had Obama trying to help achieve progressive ends through private sector means and all it ended up doing was putting the right wing fossil fuel enthusiasts in charge and empowering them. It seems like that project failed.

[Barrister]

It does kind of baffles my brain that having a decent EV company and doing some space stuff makes you this rich but if I knew how to be super rich I wouldn't be sitting here chatting with you dudes.

Yeah, no offence my brother-by-a-different-mother, but if I could trade Languish for $400 billion dollar net worth I wouldn't have to think very hard about it. 



I think Musk made EV's "cool" by making them good. Previous EVs were all focused around being economical.  Musk said 'screw that' and introduced an EV with "ludicrous speed" that could out-accelerate almost any other vehicle on the planet.  Now I know - naming a vehicle module after a reference from a 1980s Mel Brooks movie isn't exactly "cool" but the performance itself was.

Right, previously EVs were thought of something only environmentalist crunchy types would want and Musk marketed them to car people. And hired people to make them cool for car people. That was great.

Just baffled that was enough to make somebody richer than the entire annual economic production of a country of millions.

So I follow car culture a little bit.  In particular for this reference, I follow youtube channel Donut (which is about cars, not fried dough).  It's pretty successful with (checks quickly) over 8 million subscribers.  So not quite Mr. Beast level success, but pretty successful.

Several months ago they did a video called "we drag race our daily drivers".  Which was exactly that - all the hosts and other "on air" personalities took the cars they actually drive out to a drag strip.  They had some moderately cool cars to be honest.

The winner though?  Their accountant driving his Tesla Model X.  Not cool in the slightest (and of course they played up the "not-cool" feature of both the Tesla and the accountant), but EVs just have such insane torque compared to conventional vehicles.  The Model X left cars like the Mustang or Miata in the dust.

So again - I don't think Tesla's have ever been "cool" - just they have enough performance (both in battery life and acceleration) to make up for it, which was what was lacking on earlier EVs.

[Valmy]

Well anyway he made a successful (well...successful-ish) car company so now he is worth more than the entire annual economic output of Pakistan. That is what baffles me. How?

[Sheilbh]

Here we had Obama trying to help achieve progressive ends through private sector means and all it ended up doing was putting the right wing fossil fuel enthusiasts in charge and empowering them. It seems like that project failed.

I don't think there's any doubt that Obama's presidency was a profound historic failure. I don't think you can look at it except through the lens that it ends two groundbreaking terms with Donald Trump being elected.

Obviously the other side of this is perhaps none of it mattered very much? Maybe the technology reached a point where someone was going to find a successful mass produced model and build the infrastructure - the VC money would be there. Similarly now maybe it doesn't matter and again it's reached a point of affordability where it will just be on the road to mass adoption.

[Grey Fox]

Well anyway he made a successful (well...successful-ish) car company so now he is worth more than the entire annual economic output of Pakistan. That is what baffles me. How?

Saudi & China money.

[Barrister]

Here we had Obama trying to help achieve progressive ends through private sector means and all it ended up doing was putting the right wing fossil fuel enthusiasts in charge and empowering them. It seems like that project failed.

I don't think there's any doubt that Obama's presidency was a profound historic failure. I don't think you can look at it except through the lens that it ends two groundbreaking terms with Donald Trump being elected.

This is far afield, but was Obama's Presidency in fact all that groundbreaking?

I mean yes there's the identity politics angle - Obama was the first black president (although even there - half-black).  And he did pass the ACA.

But there's lots of debate about whether he dealt with the financial crisis correctly (nobody went to jail).  The ACA - you can write whole essays on it (and people have).  As I understand the thumbnail is it increased the numbers with insurance, but perhaps decreased the quality of insurance for many others.

And then of course it went from a Democratic supermajority in 2008, to GOP control over all branches of government in 2016.

[Valmy]

And then of course it went from a Democratic supermajority in 2008, to GOP control over all branches of government in 2016.

Well the GOP took control of tons of vital things in 2010, just in time to transform the country after the 2010 census.

So Obama really only had two years to get anything done and he failed. The rest of his term was just sitting around being powerless.

But we got the ACA. Not exactly hope and change.

The thing is that a lot of people who voted for him wanted him to be the big disruptive force and instead he tried to play nice. So they went with the guys who promised to be a disruptive force.

[Sheilbh]

This is far afield, but was Obama's Presidency in fact all that groundbreaking?

I mean yes there's the identity politics angle - Obama was the first black president (although even there - half-black).  And he did pass the ACA.

But there's lots of debate about whether he dealt with the financial crisis correctly (nobody went to jail).  The ACA - you can write whole essays on it (and people have).  As I understand the thumbnail is it increased the numbers with insurance, but perhaps decreased the quality of insurance for many others.

And then of course it went from a Democratic supermajority in 2008, to GOP control over all branches of government in 2016.

I agree. I think probably not and I think that probably is a big part of the failure resulting in Trump.

[Valmy]

It is the same with Biden. He should have come right out of the gate swinging and made everything he did as big of a deal as possible. Instead everything was done very slowly and the good things he did were mostly kept quiet.

While Trump is out there announcing some private investment he has nothing to do with and now it is going to be the Trump AI whatever.

It is why we lose.