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Musk is going to discover (and maybe admit?) that fixing Twitter is harder than he thought.

Yeah I think he's going to intensely focus on Twitter for ~6 months, not change much, get bored, and then move onto something else.

The way he got bored running Tesla and SpaceX for ~20 years?

I really don't get where this meme of "impulsive, erratic, hotheaded Musk" comes from given he demonstrated ability to stick with a business in the toughest of times.

Tesla was literally days away from bankruptcy at one time and Musk made it work.

After first 3 failed launches he was about to run out of money and yet he financed another launch, which worked.

He hasn't had a business failure yet.

Is that a guy who gets bored and moves on to something else?

The Boring Company is a failure. He's had many other failures within companies: automated driving, Tesla solar panels

Though he's the CEO of SpaceX, it's really run by Gwynne Shotwell.

You look at his wikipedia, and there's like 10 different things he's currently involved with, so yes, he looks like a guy that gets bored and moves on the other things.

The Boring Company is not a failure. It's actually a major success, for Tesla. It successfully led a generation of politicians and journalists think that there's no need for public transportation, that Elon Musk will solve all our infrastructure needs. It's a modern day GM Streetcar.

> successfully led a generation of politicians and journalists think that there's no need for public transportation

What makes you believe this? And that Musk was responsible for it?

It's not far fetched when he brought back the hyperloop in fashion to kill USA high speed rail.

https://i.redd.it/n76d16xg94h91.jpg

California high speed rail (the only real attempt at high speed rail in the US) didn’t need Musk to kill it, it killed itself due to incompetence in building quickly and affordably. This is a shame, because an actually affordable, working high speed rail system in America would be amazing, but won’t happen until we learn how to build again quickly and affordably in America. And who knows how to do that? Elon Musk!

I don't think it makes sense to compare a giant, multibillionaire organization like Twitter to something like the Boring Company, which was never really intended to be a main venture.

I would wait for the first product to launch before pronouncing a company dead, which should be fairly soon: https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/traffic/officials-aim-to...

They already launched a "Loop" in Vegas, and it's a small tunnel with manned taxis running in it, operated by the city. And it took longer from project start to inauguration, per mile, than the Channel tunnel linking the UK and France.

That’s false.

The LVCC Loop started boring in 15 November 2020 and opened to the public on 15 April 2021 - so 5 months, for the 2.7km. The Channel tunnel began construction in June of 1988 and opened for freight trains in June of 1994, so 72 months for the 50.4km.

So, the LVCC was built at 0.54 km/month, while the Channel tunnel was buildlt at 0.7 km/month.

Which part is false?

Isn’t it expected that a longer tunnel would take less time to build per mile than a shorter one? That just seems obvious. Just like how a 2000 square foot house isn’t going to take twice as long to build as a 1000 square foot house.

Not really - especially when that longer tunnel is an international project and is being drilled under the sea, not a straight line in a desert.

Now calculate km per month per dollar.

I didn't say anything about cost in my initial post. Still, you're right that the cost difference is hugely in favor of the LVCC tunnel if we only look at length.

However, if we look at freight+people crossing the tunnels, the Channel tunnel surely wins again - it may be roughly 10 times more expensive per km, but it carries orders of magnitudes more, by rail + by car.

Why would the boring company be a failure?

I expect creating tunnels 20 years from now as important as right now.

Traffic jams are not going away magically, but automation can bring the cost of creating tunnels down, which can increase the total market significantly.

Time is helping the company (just like other projects Elon has started), so there's no rush to scale up and turn profit.

Tunnels don't really solve the problem well - they cost too much for what they do, and don't even do it well. Public transport (specifically expanding trains + e-bikes) is a much better, easier and already available solution.

The Boring Company takes machines made by other companies, and digs tunnels that anyone with those machines can dig to provide a solution that is largely impractical.

Pretty easy to get rid of traffic jams actually, you just get rid of the cars. Never been stuck in traffic in places where there aren't cars.

So throw the baby out with the bath water? Great plan.

In cities? Yes. You start preferencing more space efficient modes of transport, and traffic jams go away, while transport time decreases. If you’re going to put a tunnel with fixed access points under a city, it makes a lot more sense to run trains than private cars.

If you’re going to have a 4 lane road reserve two of the lanes for super high capacity vehicles (busses).

Traffic jams are a byproduct of the limits of physics. Once you reach a certain density it is simply impossible to provide enough private car parking and lane capacity.

How are tunnels solving traffic jams?

Not solving but alleviating, by rerouting transiting traffic through bypass routes underground. For example, in Washington DC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_and_12th_Street_Expressway...

But does rerouting traffic through other bypasses actually alleviate traffic?

> Motorways and bypasses generate traffic, that is, produce extra traffic, partly by inducing people to travel who would not otherwise have done so by making the new route more convenient than the old, partly by people who go out of their direct route to enjoy the greater convenience of the new road, and partly by people who use the towns bypassed because they are more convenient for shopping and visits when through traffic has been removed

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

A traffic network's purpose is to move people from point A to point B. If you double the lanes and they fill up, you've doubled the throughput. If traffic doesn't move any faster, it's because the old traffic jams were a bigger problem than was visible. You've still alleviated the issue by allowing twice as many people to reach their destination in the same amount of time.

There's an argument that assumes that building more lanes does not increase the number of people who travel, only the number of people who choose to do so by car. Then with fewer lanes, the same number of people still get from A to B but on bicycles or using public transport instead of cars.

These photos illustrate it well:

https://www.streetroots.org/news/2015/04/03/streets-are-ever...

Do look at the "Studies" section of the same article, too.[1] It is far from established that induced demand outweighs the capacity increase from road construction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Studies

Mayors of big towns are clearing city centers from cars and making them walkable again anyways (at least in Europe, I don’t know how it is being done in other places). If tunnels are the shortest path to get from one part of the city to another (like in Zurich), cars will use them.

Less cars on the road solves traffic jams. Not more roads. Traffic jams are insane, we see a single person sitting alone in a 3+ ton box idling his time and instead of seeing how absurd it is, we want to make bigger roads for more almost empty boxes. Nuts. The solution to traffic jams is excellent public transportation and last mile mobility. Not more roads and definitely not tunnels.

> I really don't get where this meme of "impulsive, erratic, hotheaded Musk" comes from

The same guy who tweeted "Funding secured". His tweets about starting boring company, and buying twitter. His email exchanges that are now public. He is VERY impulsive and erratic (maybe not hotheaded).

All his tweets on Bitcoin:

https://www.rockwelltrading.com/articles/coffee-with-markus/...

> I really don't get where this meme of "impulsive, erratic, hotheaded Musk" comes from

His behavior like… every day and the fact that he apparently accidentally just bought a $44B company doesn’t at least let you see where people are coming from?

These musk heads are insane. The projection is ridiculous, portraying the characterization of musk as impulsive as a "meme" when they are so deeply steeped in reality denial... drives me insane. They need a serious correction, crypto style.

I wish my impulsive decisions led me to become the richest person in the world over the courese of decades.

Being born rich helps the odds somewhat

> The way he got bored running Tesla and SpaceX for ~20 years?

For all practical purposes, doesn't Shotwell run SpaceX and Elon just shows up to give "input", whenever the capital raise du-jour is necessary, and to do the marketing and PR?

It does seem to me he will need another Shotwell for either Tesla or Twitter, though. You can be CEO of as many companies as you want, but if the CEO is also doing the Operations part of the work, then you're constrained to pretty much one company at a time. I wonder if we'll see Jack come back to Twitter.

So the best argument you have here is that Musk is good at hiring competent people? Sounds to me like this makes him an excellent CEO.

For all practical purposes, doesn't Shotwell run SpaceX and Elon just shows up to give "input", whenever the capital raise du-jour is necessary, and to do the marketing and PR?

No.

So no he doesn't give "input"? Shotwell is definitely in charge.

Is that so?

Those companies are solving problems with logistics and engineering.

Twitter is fundamentally trying to solve a people problem, which is much fuzzier. Every impression I've had from "public Elon" is that he is absolutely wretched at people-problems-at-scale. I'm also not sure there is any human ever who has been able to solve people problems at Twitter's scale.

John Maynard Keynes

Could you elaborate? He wrote a book that many considered important, but how specifically did he solve people problems? To me it sounds like he understood emergent behaviors in economics, but didn’t those economicists also believe in the rational actor? That is not an accurate assumption about humanity.

Keynes’ solutions to human problems on a macro scale lifted millions upon millions of people out of poverty in the post-war era

keynesianism eventually failed because corporations and large capital holders will not act rationally towards the whole when they have interests that benefit themselves. so I suppose you’re right. but that doesn’t change the fact that for a good 30 years his ideas and solutions made life better for a huge number of people

> He hasn't had a business failure yet.

I don't know why people say this when stuff goes wrong for him all the time. He literally just failed to get out of this Twitter deal.

there are people worshipping him like he is Jesus, something is really wrong here, how do people say he has not had a business fail? seriously SpaceX was a failure without the government stepping in at the last moment even he admits it.. look how he scammed the US government to keep Tesla going... i guess these are not "real" failures but from his own words government shouldn't be subsidizing business .... never mind all the failures he has had.

Musk of today does not feel like the one of even 5 years ago.

He called that diver "pedo guy" 4 years ago.

I don't feel like Musk has really changed, he's always been a bit nuts. He just has a bigger reach now.

That remains a turning point for me.

Autonomous Tesla's were also ready by the end of the year 5+ years ago. He's always been the way he is, the difference is the number of people who have caught on to his schtick by now.

Falcon Heavy was delayed for 8 years. Launching another one and simultaneously landing 3 rockets there after.

Hard stuff takes time. People with no patience and perseverance never gets big stuff done. Musk is not the same.

Did we ever find out if was right about the diver?

Musk admitted in court that the term ‘pedo guy’ was not meant to be taken as a literal accusation of pedophilia.

Basically Musk said that he was just insulting him in a general sense and that the man was not a pedophile

Sounds like bs to me.

how about i unfoundedly call you a nonce and we can let the people around you debate whether it's true for the rest of your life?

People have Dorsey a lot of shit for being part time CEO of Twitter and Square. Not sure how an even more split CEO is supposed to make things better

Twitter has always been a failed business, which he bought, so...?

Maybe.

He hasn't given up on self-driving after it turned out to be much harder than he thought. He's still pouring money and time into it.

And he hasn't given up on Starlink, even though it is not nearly as profitable as he hoped originally. He's just launching more satellites.

And he hasn't given up on Starship even though it is years late. He's doubling down on its development.

But I conceded that he might not see Twitter as critical for his ultimate goals. Maybe he'll just sell it to a bigger fool in a few years?

People just don't know Musk. Falcon Heavy was delayed for 8 years. It took 8 years longer. He still got it to work. With all 3 rockets landing simultaneously at the same time.

SpaceX also beat Boeing with a smaller budget (NASA gave more to Boeing) in sending astronauts to the ISS. Boeing still is not able to get a successful test launch 2 years after SpaceX got the first astronauts to ISS from US domestic soil.

Then there's Tesla, where the Model Y, despite being double the price of a Corolla, outsold the Corolla - https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/10/tesla-model-y-passing-...

If you can stumble into so many achievements by luck. Or just by oh, lean on a few Shotwells and engineers.... then why are companies like Meta and Snap etc in the trash bin? Why is Boeing still stuck on the ground? Why after a half a decade of Tesla killers than nobody is getting killed but legacy automakers (all declining revenue and deliveries).

For what it's worth, two of the Falcon Heavy cores landed simultaneously at the launch site, the third was intended to land on a barge at sea, but came in too hot and crashed into the ocean.

For every example you stated, there are more for things he has changed his mind on:

> https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-snake-charger-elon-musk/

> https://insideevs.com/news/326869/elon-musk-comments-on-fail...

The latter he said was due to low uptake (which is nonsense - you can find YouTube videos of how unfindable the place is).

> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1017149641991680002

More stuff he has given up on.

I think it's not exactly fair to compare Twitter with his other endeavours. Others are very hard problems. What Musk will do with twitter is figure out an action plan: IMO changing twitter into X will be a viable way of letting it survive. He's gonna chart a course of action that could work and give the reins to someone else for execution.

Musk's time is valuable given that he's leading a lot of companies. He's not going to sit around and mull over twitter. The best thing he can do is spend time => chart a plan => hire a capable CEO who is best at execution (Tim Cook for instance). If he spends more time on twitter, his other bets will get hurt disproportionately.

Twitter is a very hard problem because it’s not a technological or engineering challenge.

It’s politics, politics, politics. From all angles and perspectives, in the possibly most annoying way. You have to make so many politics and policy decisions that all have many up- and downsides and that are just plain hard to make.

From a technology perspective Twitter is not at all interesting and the rest is just plain annoying. Plus, it’s a small social network, mostly relevant because important people (imagine myself rolling my eyes here) are on it. So doing other social media stuff that rely on network effects? (Messenger, payment, ...) Not really realistic. Not because the technology is infeasible. None of this is a technological challenge. It’s just politics and network effects.

This is my guess as well, but on a bit longer timescale. I think we'll see some noteworthy features over the next year as he tackles low hanging fruit(the reply button for example, although it sounds like that was already in development). This will be followed by a year or two of slow down as they run into social/technological issues, followed by Musk selling off the company.

Seriously considering #3 a solid idea to even discuss is a delusion. Twitter already has videos (YouTube, Twitch), a feed (Facebook, Google News), images (IG), etc. did it replace any of the above mentioned services or do you think the only missing element in this massive intercontinental cross-technological enterprise is Elon Musk?

They just need his guidance and leads, PMs, design, engineers, … and, most importantly, users of these existing platforms will all align and populate this brave new super app.

4) don't overestimate cut of transaction and underestimate ad revenue (promoting the transaction seekers). Let's use Amazon as an example: They run a 3P marketplace with a transaction cut business model, and it's not very profitable. Vs. their ads based sponsored product which is extremely profitable (soon to larger than AWS for profit at Amazon). This is a very different ad business than twitter's current performance marketing ad product.

I think first party ads promoting commerce on your platform can be very lucrative. And % of transactions tend not to be, with the exception of Android / iOS app store markets.

Fair point.

I haven't done the math because nobody is paying me to. But your example of Amazon might reinforce my point in that all three components (retail, ads, AWS) reinforce each other. Amazon is trying to be the "Everything App" also because they see synergies (even if only in shared infra).

And Amazon can afford to be less agressive with ads because it's a smaller part of their business, compared to (e.g.) Meta or Twitter. Apple is in a similar place: they can afford to care more about privacy because they don't make money from ads.

The more revenue Twitter can get from non-ad sources, the better the user experience (in my opinion).

But you're right that there's no guarantee that they will be able to get much non-ad revenue.

> Even something as simple as only showing you tweets from people you follow (what a concept!) would revolutionize the experience and drastically reduce the need for moderation.

You can do that right now by turning off retweets for the people you follow. You have to do that individually for every user you follow but it allows for a highly curated timeline. I turn of retweets for about 80% of the people I follow because I am interested in their original content but not in their random retweets. The other 20% introduce me to new content through their retweets.

> his goal is the Everything App (which he calls X). The Everything App has news, social media, games, videos, and a payment infrastructure

so, AOL?

More like WeChat, where you have micro apps within the app, and payments.

He doesn't have to completely fix Twitter. All he has to do is make Twitter Ads actually produce a decent ROI for the average customer.

With respect to the name “X” - I’ll bet he revives the OG x.com brand - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com

I had a chance to buy 76.com before the oil company realized they should buy it. Had I any access to capital as a kid I would have bought it for $2k. well at least I get it as a trump in dns stories missed out on.

> his goal is the Everything App (which he calls X). The Everything App has news, social media, games, videos, and a payment infrastructure

so, WeChat?

Having used WeChat, LINE and the like I shudder. Not just because they naturally become bloated slow ugly behemoths to use but also because they more generally become de-facto monopolies. Not having to compete with anyone is the ultimate killer of innovation.

Same, I’m happy I have a bunch of different apps which are good at different things.

WeChat for Anglosphere/the West could be a great innovation, to be fair.

WeChat in China, LINE in Japan, Gojek in Indonesia... A lot of those platforms are crazy profitable

The platform may be innovative, but monopolizing attention is horrible for future innovation.

The reason we don’t need an everything app is because we have a lot of good apps, that’s not the case in Japan, for example.

Some kind of e-commerce system will definitely be on his mind. People seem to forgot that he was involved in PayPal.