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Comment by megaman821 | Hacker News Reader

You think Elon Musk's motivation is greed? That people going back to work or not will greatly affect his lifestyle?

Is there any nuance when it comes to Elon Musk, or only fan-boys and haters?

Not the OP. I don't think his motivation is greed in a strictly financial sense but he's a complete narcissist. When a government guy comes and shuts his factory down due to a pandemic he apparently can't live with the fact that he's a non-essential business and needs to lay low for a while.

It's the same thing with the mini-submarine paedophile fiasco. Some regular dude who has experience in what he's actually talking about tells him to go away and he can't handle it because he thinks he's Tony Stark or something.

I don't think his eccentric behaviour really leaves much space for nuance, that's not really on anyone commenting here.

He has lofty goals that require massive resources. Each also requires a long timeline. Specifically he is attempting to populate another planet, link computers to brains and turn transportation green. Each is an earth shattering accomplishment on their own. He is trying to do all 3 and in his mind at least he is driven by saving humanity not greed. He feels the current restrictions are going to have severe impact on what are for him lifetime goals.

Now is it narcissistic to think that he has to do it? Maybe. Often times though I would think that the people that changed our way of life have to be narcissistic. Gates, Jobs, Rockefeller, Ford, Edison. They are real people with flaws but sometimes those flaws also drive them. Not malignant narcissistic though, there is a difference.

He is definitely ill served by his twitter account though and these recent tweets are not great in regards to the opinions of many of those that support him.

Along the lines of what others have said elsewhere in this thread:

No one reasonable is criticizing Musk for being a visionary CEO, someone who is interested in taking risks that overcome historically difficult challenges.

They're criticizing him going completely off the handle; calling someone a pedophile on Twitter when they disagree with him, talking completely out of his ass about "taking the company private", or trying to play armchair epidemiologist when he _clearly_ has a vested interest in a potentially risky avenue of behavior.

I'm very happy to see the things that SpaceX has achieved [0] and I'm also happy that Tesla has done such a good job popularizing EVs [1], but I'm blown the fuck away whenever I see people responding to _entirely justified_ criticisms of Elon's character by pointing out what he's accomplished and how lofty the rest of his goals are.

Do we just not have standards for people in Musk's position? Do folks really think it's reasonable for someone to comport themselves the way he _routinely_ does?

[0] Although let's be honest, the company treats its employees pretty damn badly.

[1] Accurately representing the self-driving capabilities of their vehicles, on the other hand, leaves quite a bit to be desired.

I mean at least 45% of the country things its totally fine for the president of the united states to 'comport themselves the way he _routinely_ does' so I have to think that many people are willing to overlook how Musk acts. For the most part I am too (in regards to Musk), I don't expect perfection from business leaders. He is a flawed person as are we all. Unfortunately for him he chooses to amplify his flaws to a massive twitter following.

I think the guy is a once in a life time visionary. With that said I would never want to work for him but I hope he succeeds.

Um, it could greatly depending on how Tesla is affected by this current lockdown and the recession afterwards. Close to half of Elon Musk's stock has been used in loans to finance his lifestyle of buying mansions, flying around in a private jet, and financing his other unprofitable companies.

If the price of Tesla stock ever goes down too far his whole empire risks crumpling.

I feel like a there is a large percentage of the population that doesn't realize just how dire things are getting as a direct result of these lockdowns.

It really is frightening and there are some strong responses, both rational and irrational on many sides.

I haven't seen him announce that he would make Tesla or Space X a non-profit so it's gotta be at least a little bit about money.

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