Well put. His accomplishments are long and impressive but it seems social media has distracted, if not corrupted his line of sight.
I say as I type into a seperate social network. It's hard to escape, honestly...
1 - make it uncool (no more james bond smoking in cinemas, packaging that reminds of diseases)
2 - make it expensive (tax the hell out of it)
3 - make it a hassle (no smoking in closed spaces, airplanes, universities etc)
The thing is, both weed and social networks became popular right about when smoking stopped being popular. So maybe there is an extra step, a perverse one:
4 - provide a substitute addiction.
It is a slippery slope.
What's next?
No more cup cakes because sugar gives you diabetes?
How about no more hip hop music because it largely celebrates violence and influences kids to join violent gangs?
No more cars because AOC might whine with another 24 tweet wall of bar-stool wisdom?
Internalizing externalities is one of the primary functions of government. I’m incredibly happy I rarely have to smell cigarette smoke.
Personally, the thing that got me to quit smoking weed was getting really into brazilian jiu-jitsu.
It may be possible to generalize this.
Besides that, I really like your post, the 1st 3 points are solid. ^_^
Yes, but could mean a lot to the talent pool discussed in the open letter, in the face of growing competition to SpaceX and Tesla, which ultimately will impact the product, revenues and value. Seems shortsighted or almost as if he’s done working on hard problems.
Umm no. Just no. Ignore media hype and look at the numbers - SpaceX is arguably closer to monopoly in all areas of its business than ever before.
Social media is the effect, not cause, of his bad behavior.
He was known to be an impulsive bully long before he ranted on Twitter.
What are Elon Musks accomplishments? His ability to get financing? Hiring the right people to push the success of SpaceX and Tesla? His ability to inflate the stock price of his company (above that of a historic bull market).
This isn't a cynical comment, I'm honestly trying to understand his actual accomplishments other then the ancillary praise one gets in America just for getting rich(er).
Fisker Automotive and Better Place are two electric car startups that were founded after Tesla that you've probably not heard of, even though between them, they raised close to a billion dollars.
The reason why he gets so much praise is because he tends to do quite well—better than other smart folks that are similarly resourced (i.e. access to VC capital)—in industries notorious for high rates of failure or where it is hard to break even.
Probably this. Its not easy to do.
I think there is also something to be said about the singularity of vision Musk brought to these companies. Its easy to dismiss (and I haven't been a fan of him much since the whole Thailand incident) but its one of those annoying aspects that eludes the desire of developers' (i.e. the average reader of this site) desire to quantify everything.
It makes me think of the story of Steve Jobs after his return to Apple, where he called a meeting of team leads, made a quadrant on a white board with the edges labeled "desktop" and "portable" on the vertical, "consumer" and "professional" on the horizontal, and demanded the company only produce 1 product to fill each of the four squares, eliminating the rest.
I'm obviously not a fan but I agree he likely deserves a lot of credit for this. But at the same time, don't a lot of people participate in hiring decisions throughout a company? The board? Other executives?
It irks me that Musk should get all the credit of what is undeniably a team effort.
If you're actually curious there is a good book on SpaceX early days.
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53402132-liftoff
If you read the book I think you'll agree, desperate is the correct word in the title of that book and Elon did plenty.
I still can't believe they're landing rockets backwards. When I took control systems it was the canonical example of an unstable system. Guess those books need updating. :)
Regarding the landing rockets issue, I've found BPS Space's youtube series on trying to land a model rocket in a similar matter very enlightening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMT44LFUjs
The word we use to describe people-managing at this high level is "leadership".