Looking back has the world richest man ever been refered to as a complete idiot? | Hacker News Reader

Looking back has the world richest man ever been refered to as a complete idiot?

Looking back at the history of the Forbes 400, has it ever happened that the prevalent opinion of the world richest man was for him to be referred to as a complete idiot?

I am trying to trace it back:

Jeff Bezos: evil but not an idiot

Bill Gates: evil but not an idiot

Page+Brin: Smart Californian Nerds

Warren Buffett: savvy granpa, great reputation

Carlos Slim: Savvy, maybe involved w/ crime and cartels but not an idiot

Masayoshi Son: ??? Asking those who remember

John Kluge: ??? Asking those who remember

Pablo Escobar: Rutheless, murderer, started a civil war in Colombia, but not idiot.

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I personally don't care either way about the guy. (Wouldn't work for him though, heard too much dirty laundry.) But recently waded into the BoringCompany-LasVegas thread at… arstechnica I think.

Don't really care about that either. Interesting but not critical. I mean, maybe it will work out? Maybe it won't. It's not my money. Let them try and fail or succeed on the merits. Either way it pushes knowledge a bit forward and costs me nothing to observe.

The discussion? Complete, over the top, absolute negativity—from every single poster, and no one even questioned it.

Who are these people that hate everything about an engineering experiment so much that they go online overwhelmingly to bad mouth it relentlessly? Before its even finished? Haters need to go outside for a bit, take a walk, and rethink their lives.

The counterpoint to that is that people with a loudmouth and promotional attitude are proven to be more often than not like the monorail guy from the Simpsons

Especially as it pertains public transport systems.

Right, because paypal, spacex, and tesla have a track record of being complete failures. So the "foaming at the mouth" is warranted.

Twitter is kind of a mess, but not the same kind of project I think. It is ultimately unfixable to a large degree.

> > Right, because paypal, spacex, and tesla have a track record of being complete failures

Musk was kicked from Paypal in the early days, and yes...SpaceX and Tesla have done nothing for the consumer, they are 2 companies leeching off government money for political goals.

Musk managed to be the vehicle of both Left wing goals (climate change and electrification) and right wing goals (Military-Insustrial complex domination of space), if they went bust tomorrow the consumer won't be affected one bit.

> SpaceX and Tesla have done nothing

They revolutionized two major industries as a matter of fact. People benefit from their existence every day. Trying to dismiss that is silly—it's the most objective part of the argument.

> > They revolutionized two major industries

Re-inventing the wheel for political reasons isn't a merit.

I remember life before Amazon, before Windows, before the iPhone, before Facebook, before Uber....those were real struggles and the quality of life jump that such companies provided is tangible.

Life before Tesla actually meant nicer quality interiors, buttons and doing away with the touchscreen nonsense which is a danger that should be abolished by the government

People who claim Tesla and SpaceX are a revolution are so brainwashed that they can't even compute where their quality of life comes from. Or more likely they treat the stock as it was a product but it's not and won't ever be.

Masayoshi Son used to be considered a genius, but people definitely think he's an idiot now.

There are likely British monarchs and some popes who were among the richest people and considered idiots, but it's not really the same because they didn't preside over the accumulation of the wealth.

> prevalent opinion of the world

No, since you never know what the prevalent opinion is. You think the prevalent opinion is X and Y, but in reality, you are just projecting your own opinion onto the rest of the world.

Statistics tell us that carefully sampled batches of 1100something Americans can be representative of the whole country for political polls purposes

Duh... Sample selection bias, non-response bias, or even the wording and ordering of questions can significantly impact the results. On top of that, political opinions are complex - a small sample might not capture the diversity of opinions across different regions. Relying solely on this method could lead to a skewed or incomplete understanding of the true political landscape.

1000 is a bit low, 2000 is ok and it gets better after that.

Has that ever been verified through empirical verification, or has a statistician just said don't worry about it?

Two entirely different circumstances there.

Intelligence and goodwill towards others are often conflated by the good-hearted, whereas people are not always motivated by lovingkindness - and surely not always in the case of self-made superbillionaires.

Up until recently, there hasn't been massive social platforms worth ruining for profit. It may simply happen that people have never felt as strongly towards rich people as they do today.

Complete idiot is a bit of a stretch. He does have Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink that seem to be OK...

And we don't even know how the things people say he did were stupid will turn out. For example throwing away an established brand seems foolish but who knows.

Regardless of the financial outcome people's opinion about Musk is forever compromised.

In the last 3 years the world has been invited in the backstage to finally meet the rockstar and they realized that he's a massive douche and it's much better not to associate with.

The old legendary managers such as Peter Grant who managed Led Zeppelin would be maniacally precise about sampling groupies before letting them backstage and make sure to avoid repetitions and most importantly make sure groupies wouldn't talk with the press and make a 180turn live on TV as far as their opinion of the guys.

Musk has let the whole world in and everybody can see the douchy mess that he is, whereas those who precedeed him at #1 in the Fobes list have always kept a much more cautious approach (a la Peter Grant) in order not ruin their reputation (Rich man = smart man, richest man = smartest man) that they achieved due to the big number always printed near their face.

I don't think any of the other rich people have inspired so much jealousy to the point people can't stop talking about them the way Elon has. Anyone who really thought he was an idiot would just ignore him.

It's not jelousy as much as it is disappointment. People want to believe the #1 on FOrbes is the super smart theoretical physicist who could solve the mysteries of the Universe but decided to make money instead.

It's such a bitter feeling for people when they realize it's mostly all luck and surviorship bias, because they immediately think at what it means for their own ambitions: you can get smarter and work harder, you cannot get any luckier.

So they come to hate the person who exposed them to the hard truth.

"They're just jealous" is rarely actually true. It's usually said by people who don't want to hear the actual reasons for whatever resentment exists.

"The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference". My point is there's a vocal group that "resents" him to use your term, but can't stop talking about him. There's more to it than just thinking he's an idiot. Same for another popular reality star turned politician that's in the news all the time. Everybody hates him but can't go for ten seconds without thinking about him. It's like a high school crush.

It's less like a crush and more like he's perceived as a threat.

> > The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference

That's for people. I don't the population at large thinks Musk (or Trump for that matter) are people, they are both mostly a signal of where the country is headed.

Trump is a signal of the fact that not all Presidents are hard working calculating political animals who switch back and forth from Ivy league vernacular to common working people expressions. Also an indicator that not all Presidents can be considered "not an idiot". GWB also provided such signal but it was really in your face all the time during Trump presidency.

Musk is a signal that not everybody who gets #1 on Forbes can be considered "not an idiot"

The signal hits hard and enrages people because as I said earlier you can work harder and make yourself smarter (to a degree) but you cannot make yourself any luckier.

elon is not rich, he is wealthy. and he is only wealthy because everyone gave tesla their money during the pandemic.

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