Elon Musk became the richest man on earth on the same day that Nikolas Tesla died penniless...

[Crazed_Insanity]

How ironic is that?

[Rare White Ape]

Maybe Tesla should've pulled himself up by the bootstraps and inherited a diamond mining fortune built upon slavery like Musk did.

[FaultyMario]

In 1943? What the fuck?

[sandydandy]

Maybe because Tesla was a bad businessman who didn’t do his due diligence and kept getting screwed. Then again they say he didn’t really care about the money so he died content. Maybe.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Anyway, that just made me wonder if Elon Musk is destined to make back the money supposedly owed to Nikolas Tesla...

His current fortune is only based mostly on Tesla stocks right now..., SpaceX isn't even public yet so it's value won't fluctuate much... When SpaceX goes public, it'll be hard for anyone to catch up to him...

Hope he'll continue to do good for humanity and not let all the money inflate his ego.

[Rikadyn]

You don't get that kind of money without ruthless exploitation.

[FaultyMario]

Because money IS an indicator of the value of labor-time. You have a lot of money, you command control of a lot of working time. And a person can only exercise that kind of command thru violence.

[Crazed_Insanity]

But Elon’s current wealth is mostly speculation...

Only violence I can see are the combustions of the rocket engines... and of course sometimes the explosion of rockets! :D

[samoht]

I don't get all the hatred directed at Musk.

He has two clear goals, (1) make electric cars practical and desirable to help stop global warming, and (2) scale up space travel so that humanity has a plan B in case Earth becomes uninhabitable, through global warming, nuclear war or otherwise.

Those goals both seem significant worthwhile things to work towards, and he's worked at them for many years with determination and persistence, in the face of significant risks, challenges and setbacks, and has made really significant progress in accelerating both of them.

While I understand the arguments against super-rich people overall, Elon Musk seems to be someone who's genuinely trying to use his vast wealth and power to improve the situation of humankind, not just with charitable giving but with his actual businesses themselves.

Now, he's clearly quite a prat personally, on the smaller scale he's done quite a few despicable things. But his overall contribution looks positive to me.

So if you're going to shoot all the billionaires, I'd make a strong argument for Musk being at the bottom of the list.

[Crazed_Insanity]

I’d agree with that sentiment.

The only problem I had with Elon was he didn’t like his factories shutdown during the pandemic... he also is a notorious slave driver, but the thing is he is slave driving himself too. He just expect everyone to work as hard as he is... it’s not like he’s living la vida loca while exploiting low wage workers... people can always quit. You have to share a common dream and be young to work for him I guess... it’ll be hard, but payoff could be great.

Anyway, yeah, if we absolutely have to shoot billionaires, please place him at the bottom of the list ! :p

If only Tesla had Elon’s business sense, our world would probably be a lot different...

[Tom Servo]

I have to say I've got a significant problem with him claiming people are pedophiles when they point out his stupid submarine idea wasn't going to work to save those kids in a cave in Thailand, his continued insistence in the face of all evidence that covid was no big deal, and his continued pushes to sell cities on pie-in-the-sky ideas to fix traffic that never actually do anything and, even if they would, would only do it for people who pay out the nose for his cars. Oh, and the people who've died because he likes to do that "wink, wink" thing about Tesla autopilot.

[FaultyMario]

Yes, people in urban development hate his expensive, unsustainable ideas for making public spaces more private and more isolating.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Rarely people like his ideas, not even his friends! They all begged him to not waste his money on EVs and rockets because there had been plenty of folks who’ve tried and failed. There were zero successes in the past and you won’t find investors supporting you... but he decided to move fwd with his own money anyway...

So if even his friends hated his ideas, I can imagine his enemies probably hated him more.

Nikolas Tesla probably amassed lots of enemies too and that’s why he ended up penniless...

Actually Elon was nearly penniless multiple times with SpaceX and Tesla... Maybe he’s just luckier?

Oh regarding the pedophile comment... com’on, even if his submarine idea was completely stupid, one could’ve kindly refuse it or perhaps just not use it. Why did he need to insult Elon publicly?

[Dicknose]

He is an amazing mix of engineering and business skills. That doesnt happen that often.
Its not like he is just some guy sitting in a board room, he gets involved in the ideas.

[Tom Servo]

Oh regarding the pedophile comment... com’on, even if his submarine idea was completely stupid, one could’ve kindly refuse it or perhaps just not use it. Why did he need to insult Elon publicly?

Am I reading this incorrectly or are you misunderstanding that Musk accused someone else of being a pedophile because his feelings were hurt when the guy told him Musk's submarine idea was asinine? Nobody accused Musk of being a pedophile, Musk accused someone, publicly, sans evidence, of being a pedophile because he got his feelings hurt when someone pointed out that his stupid idea was, in fact, stupid.

[Crazed_Insanity]

When people get their feelings hurt, they can end up doing stupid things including calling names.

My point is when somebody out of the kindness of their heart offer to help, we shouldn’t insult their goodwill in the 1st place, no matter how stupid. A simple thanks, but no thanks would’ve been the end of it. I don’t think Musk was ready jam that submarine up somebody’s ass forcibly...

If it was a simple thanks but no thanks and musk still call him a pedo, then I’d agree with you. However, if I remember correctly, he insulted musk 1st. So musk naturally assumed that he prefer to hold on to the boys rather than use his tech to save them...

Anyway, I just thought that incident was blown out of proportion and both sides were not very diplomatic.

[samoht]

Tom S - I understand and agree on your points.
(I think Autopilot probably does some good as well as some harm, but I agree that over-selling it is irresponsible and unhelpful; Waymo are now avoiding the term 'self driving' mainly because Tesla have misused it to describe semi-automatic systems).

I still think that Musk's net contribution to humanity is positive, despite all the dumb and selfish things he's done - I think the impact of the positive achievements is orders of magnitude greater than the bad. This isn't to excuse the bad things, he is and absolutely should be held accountable for breaking the rules. But I feel like simply seeing him as 'a bad guy' is to overlook positive contributions which are, in the long run, more significant.

I also acknowledge that this point of view does depend critically on two factors; (a) whether you think that electric cars and space travel are positive things, and (b) the extent to which you believe that Elon Musk personally advanced their development and adoption. I'm strong yes on (a) and (b) but I appreciate that some people may not see the technologies as beneficial or perhaps more likely may feel that they would have happened with or without Musk.

[Rare White Ape]

Musk could easily, easily, do the good guy stuff without the bad guy stuff.

That he chooses to continue as he is without checking his behaviour is his own undoing, and thus he deserves to be heaped with scorn.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Everyone has some sort of faults. It’s always easier for someone who’s not an addict to look down on an addict...

Or put it another way, it’s always easy for conservatives to blame liberals, likewise for liberals to blame conservatives...

However, I wholeheartedly agree that I don’t mind seeing Elon getting rich for creating cool EVs and cool rockets.

Jeff Bezos probably exploited more people. :p I also don’t like to see Wall Street bankers making all the money. If I have to give my money, I’d rather give to Elon..., but ironically I don’t own a Tesla yet... :p Also I suppose Elon owes a bit to Wall Street for becoming the richest dude...

I think I can understand why some folks hate Elon... he probably has a bit of Donald Trump in him. Hope he won’t become one in the future. However, before being President, Donald wasn’t as rich nor did he accomplished much for humanity. Donald was just selling his brand. Elon has sold a bunch of important things that helped advance humanity and possibly more to come.