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Comment by system16 | Hacker News Reader

It's just another thing to add to the pile that should make anybody question why on earth people think he is a genius.

The mythos he has created around himself is comical and it's mind-blowing that anyone actually believes it. He literally spends his entire day trolling on social media, yet people think he's out there solving the world's greatest engineering problems.

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The things SpaceX and Tesla have done under his direction speak for themselves. Of course you can find silly exaggerations of his contributions, but it is likewise ridiculous to deny his influence on their success.

If nothing else house trolling on social media helps to hype up a dedicated fanbase which drives up the multiple on the stock value and allows to hire people to work on moonshot projects. Several of those projects of his would have never gotten funded in more conventional companies and even if they had, the funding would likely have gotten cut when no immediate, monetary success was visible. All this is only possible because of Musk's confidence/arrogance and his ability to take others with him.

We can only dream of such a world where those projects hadn't been funded. Along with the immeasurable wastage of resources, diversion of human talent, and theft of tax revenue.

I'm not a big Musk fanboy (anymore), but the work SpaceX has done is clearly ground breaking. I also wonder where electric cars would be without Tesla. They were all but dead after GM killed theirs.

Yes, but there's no doubt any and all of that could have been done in a way that's less harmful to society at large. Which isn't a specific criticism of Musk, rather of our corporate culture in general.

What's the harm?

What wastage are you referring to specifically?

You really managed to fool yourself into thinking that his sad attempts to be Funny Online are him playing 5D chess somehow

Does it matter if it's 5D chess or his behavior just happens to create the environment needed to create rockets that can land and revitalize the electric car market after GM had killed it? I don't like the guy much, but his companies are creating great results and innovation. Do they live up to the hype? Does her understand himself why? I'm not sure how much it matters.

Please provide a mechanism by which a person can amass $200B in wealth from the general public via non-smart behavior.

Note: not all smart behavior is programing, engineering, or even product design.

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