Musk is eccentric sure, but at the end of the day the two companies are building emmission-free vehicles and trying to make humanity an interplanetary species. Both of these are pretty worth-while goals, imho.
I would love to see a CEO who doesn't have flaws.
This is like hearing people talking about how it's worth-while to give money to the church in the hope to secure themselves heaven.
Tesla and SpaceX are not young companies, they have been around for 20 years now. Quality of life provided to the American consumer in this timeframe? Zero, zip, none.
In the same timeframe Google became ubiquitous, Microsoft put a PC on every desk and Amazon became the way we shop.
The stark contrast between the presence of Tesla and Musk in the financial press (or every press he can summon really) and the absence of products in the real world is all an educated person needs to characterize this individual and the scheme he engineered.
You haven’t heard of Starlink or the Model S? I can drive 120 electric miles to my country cabin, where there is no cell service and wired broadband tops out at about 32 kilobit per second USR modems, and I can open a RDC connections to my CNC machines, play low latency games, blow things up with det cord and cast boosters. It’s pretty cool, man.
> the absence of products in the real world
Again, you haven’t heard of Space-X or Tesla? They make some very successful and widely used products. No marketing department - I guess that’s why this is all new to you?
Widely used by who exactly? Go Karts for rich people and rockets? What's the quality of life for the broad population in that?
People ranging from NYC Billionaire's Row all the way to Subsaharn Africa use Google Search every day, Android, Microsoft Windows too, likewise Facebook and Youtube.
Your message only evidences how bubbles of wealth manage to isolate wealthy individuals from regular people problems.
Read my handle, I have nothing against toys for rich people, what I am against is pretending they are anymore than toys for rich people. Google is ubiquitous in our lives, so are Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Exxon, Shell, Walmart, Facebook, Berkshire etc.
Yet the social and market consensus is that Tesla is more important than all the above companies even though it's not ubiquitous, frankly speaking Tesla is the opposite of that.
Like Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren, Corvette... they produce toys for rich people. Badly assembled and badly refined I should add.
> NASA users Space X to launch their people to the ISS, they're singlehandedly reviving space aeronautics.
And what's the quality of life improvement for the American consumer in that whole ordeal? I can pinpoint exactly where and how Google makes my life easier, same for Exxon, Facebook, Microsoft etc.
Watching the rocket go up and land on its butt is at best a form of entertainment for rich people who are too depressed by the daily routine and are too scared to try drugs or too proud to go to therapy.
To reiterate in order to include non tech companies Walmart sold 600B dollars worth of products, Amazon 400B.
Berkshire has 800B worth of premiums under management. These are real life being impacted with straight injections of quality of life.
The Boring company is about subsurface construction on Mars.
Fully automated factories are about manufacturing on mars (and in orbit).
Electric cars, self-driving technolgy and hyperloop are about transportation on mars.
Solar City and batteries are about the power grid on mars.
SpaceX is about getting to mars.