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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

What's up with the weird Elon hate recently? I don't care for the guy one way or another, but it's just bizarre. Plus, I have friends that worked for both Tesla and SpaceX and from what I hear, apart from being big and corporate-y, it's a pretty awesome place to be at.

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It is not weird. He is the world's biggest grifter. Precisely, a great deal more of what he says is a lie than is true, and he has profited more from his grift than anybody except (maybe!) Putin.

Pedo Guy. Hyperloop. Full Self-driving. Electric truck-tractor. Cybertruck. Sub-orbital passenger service. Sub-orbital freight. One-day turnaround. Mars Colonization.

(To be clear: Starship, even 1000 of them, is totally inadequate to colonize Mars, and barely enough, maybe, to maintain an outpost. And it takes 9, not 6 months to get there. And one ship could take 17, at most, not 100 people.)

I used to work with an ex paypal employee who carried around a block of salt for Elon Musk. I never did get the full story. You could see the hate-lines coming off of the guy any time you accidentally mentioned the two in the same sentence.

On the Starship front, I don't doubt that he's moved the needle, but I think people are also glossing over that whole, "Send up multiple ships, have them all transfer fuel to another ship in zero G" bit. It's presented as a 2:1 thing but does the math work out for that, or is it three ships combining fuel into a single vessel?

More than 3. I am seeing 10.

> He is the world's biggest grifter

I mean, this is a bit dramatic, don't you think? Or do you not know who Jordan Belfort and Bernie Madoff are? Apart from annoyingly trolling Twitter, I don't really think Musk's really done anything that terrible.

Just seems like weird and reactionary "rich guy = bad" groupthink. I remember when everyone hated Bill Gates, but I guess now he's a humanitarian so it's totally cool.

Bill Gates, Bernie Madoff, and Jordan Belfort are smaller grifters, the latter two much smaller. (Gates, additionally, was tight with Jeffrey Epstein for decades, also a much smaller grifter.)

Rich does not mean bad. Grift is bad. I think there is a difference. Or do you mean that nobody can be that rich without being a grifter? That might be true, but I don't think of Warren Buffet as one. Or even Jeff Bezos.

How did Bill Gates grift anyone? I think you have some sort of moral chip on your shoulder. People aren't perfect, and I don't know enough about Bezos or Buffet, but I'm sure they've done some shady things in their past.

But the reactionary response is just very odd. I'm too busy, worried about my own life, plans, goals, etc. to so vehemently hate some random billionaire who doesn't even know I exist. If it was personal, I'd understand, but it just seems to be part of a certain zeitgeist to hate on the guy, and everyone does it without question.

Missing the point. I don't hate Musk. (Anybody who does probably was fired during one of his tantrums.) I do recognize him as a grifter, for reasons. Can you understand the difference?

This isn't the place to explain Gates's failings, or Putin's; that's easy to look up.

I don't think you are using that word "reactionary" in any meaningful way. Have you ever looked it up?

Of all the people to call a grifter you choose the one who's doing the most to solve climate change, pushing forward EVs and space, is employing thousands of great engineers and inspiring new generations of engineers?

Get a grip.

Musk is doing very, very far from the most to solve climate change. He puts batteries in pathologically unreliable self-crashing cars. And burns thousands of tons of kerosene or natural gas in each rocket.

> puts batteries in pathologically unreliable self-crashing cars

I don't even own a Tesla or Tesla stock, and I can tell that you've got some serious issues going on. Calling Tesla cars "self-crashing" and "unreliable" is just flat out lying[1]. This website is not a Twitter echo-chamber, and it's certainly not your personal soapbox. People are going to call you out.

Get a grip, indeed.

[1] https://electrek.co/2021/12/21/tesla-model-y-achieves-highes...

Consumer reports identified Tesla's as the least reliable American car.

> Consumer reports identified Tesla's as the least reliable American car.

Going from "self-crashing cars" (which is a really serious allegation) to "cars that break down" (citing consumer reports of all sources); you keep moving the goalpost and are clearly not debating in good faith.

Good luck out there.

I said "unreliable" in my first post, which you quoted yourself. (See.) Consumer Reports is the most authoritative source on car reliability, and its absence.

And even you must be aware of numerous widely reported cases of Teslas autonomously ramming concrete barriers and stopped vehicles. There are even dramatic vids on YouTube. (See.)

We need not discuss the common "burst into flame, incinerating the vehicle down to the pavement".

Elon has enough money to buy shills, and does. He does not need volunteers.

He challenged the narrative and now he's a sworn enemy of the establishment.

The stuff he’s criticized for doesn’t “challenge” any narrative. It’s all self inflicted like lying about FSD or calling someone a “pedo”.

And what do you consider “the establishment” to be exactly?

He’s of the wrong tribe now it seems

No.

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