Hacker News Reader

Comment by morpheuskafka | Hacker News Reader

> Why do you hate arrogant people?

At least in American English, the connotation of the word "arrogant" is so universally negative that it would only ever be used to express distaste for someone. Now whether he is arrogant or just (over)confident is another question but I think you acknowledge there is at least a good case for the former.

> We want this man to keep investing and running capital.

Why? If you ask the folks at the SEC, they probably wouldn't agree with you. From a public perspective, he hasn't exactly been great on regulatory compliance and market protection. From a shareholder/company perspective, he is a major liability. No company ever wants a CEO or any employee that picks fights with regulators, has a massively oversized media spotlight, and entangles the business in unrelated politics and personal fixations. That's textbook bad news for a business.

View on HN

I can't believe this is a real take. I know this account is a bit new and slightly trolly.

I've used Tesla's products, so as a consumer I'm very grateful for it. I am not a direct investor in Tesla (ie., only via index funds).

The take I can't believe is the SEC should decide how capital gets allocated. Elon created a tremendous amount of value. Both for consumers and for investors. Does he sometimes do things that appear/are dumb. 100%. However, net-net he's been such crazy value add to humanity i can't see why we would want to take this man out.

Is the world really a better place where this man just sits on the beach and does nothing? I think not. You may counter and say, why doesn't he follow the rules like everyone else, well sometimes to get something special we need to make special exceptions.

I think i'm just trying to reconcile that your view is genuine given the age of your account. I'm sadden by this being a real take. We want creators. We want folks to build. It's hard to build to follow all the rules. There are soooo many.

You say this as though creativity is the exclusive attribute of a billionaire who got really lucky during the dot-bomb era (and has since had to rely on government assistance for both of his “successes”).

There are thousands of people smarter than Musk in tech but who didn’t have his money and connections. Give his billions to those people and you’ll get a thousand Teslas.

I'm sure there are thousands of people smarter than Musk.

Intelligence is necessary but not sufficient. In fact, being a little too smart is quite detrimental to success.

I almost want to say intelligence is orthogonal to running a company but that wouldn't be true. You have to have some intellect, anything above that is not that important.

> The take I can't believe is the SEC should decide how capital gets allocated.

That's literally its job, and they charged him with securities fraud didn't they?

The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market manipulation.

Their job is to regulate not allocate. They aren't here to pick winners or losers they only control who is allowed and not allowed to take money and from whom.

SEC protects investors cause investors from its perspective need protecting. It is like a father looking out for his kids. Some of us don't think we are kids that need protecting.

> They aren't here to pick winners or losers they only control who is allowed and not allowed to take money and from whom.

That's the context of what was being replying to - the "who" part.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com