Mark Zuckerberg: ‘It’s time to move on’ from potential fight with Elon Musk
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Icarus syndrome?
My theory is: he's surrounding himself by people who put him on a pedestal and will therefore only be yes-men. In such a situation I imagine that you lose track of what's a reasonable way of thinking, and possibly remove the few remaining sensible people out of your life because they tend to disagree with you.
He found two bits of low-hanging fruit, picked them, and started taking random useless actions when he couldn't find more.
I don't like Musk very much these days, but he did undeniably change the world not once but thrice.
I mean, comparatively, Bezos improved logistics, Gates made office software, and Jobs made a telephone. Are these notable "inventions"?
Same can be said with reusable rockets - why weren’t anyone else pursuing this? I think I know the answer(weak leadership from ULA etc).
I don't know enough about the space industry. SpaceX did introduce some pretty significant advances. But EVs: yeah they would have happened - eventually.
Big car makers sat on their asses (concerning EVs), and would have kept doing so for another 5..10y or longer.
Tesla took the lead, broke that market wide open, scaled up battery production enormously (which also served other applications like grid storage), and forced car makers to get in on the game or be left behind.
Those car makers would have produced EVs on their own. On their timeline.
But Musk kickstarted that market on his timeline. Years sooner than would have happened otherwise. Debate how many years all you want. But net effect is an enormous benefit to society.
Personally, I think it may come down to stress / pressure. Musk has worked hard, for a long time. Maybe he didn't get enough sleep. Or didn't get laid (often enough, anyway :-). NOT saying he did, but if it turns out he's been popping pills or snorting coke, I would be neither surprised nor hold it against him (or even care, tbh).
Regardless, such pressure tends to bring up the darker side in people. But who am I to tell Musk he needs a vacation?
Fun fact: bought a pack of 70 Li-ions recently (21700) for use on my boat. These were manufactured and/or designed by Samsung... for Tesla. I didn't buy them 'cause Tesla fanboy. They're not even the chemistry I preferred. But I got 'em because they worked out to the lowest price per Wh stored (in my case, ~800 Wh total for just over €100). Tesla-initiated economies of scale.
And in the meanwhile, there's now global internet access thx to StarLink.
Like him or not, feel free to think he's a lunatic or an asshole, but Elon Musk has pushed humanity forward.
EVs were dead in the water for decades until Tesla. Space travel has stalled since the Cold War. Satellite internet... DirecTV was a joke that used dialup or DSL upstream.
A lot of industries are driven by the difficulties of operations, not necessarily innovations. He jumpstarted all three where even nation states could not.
To this day I can't get better satellite internet from any other company, all electric cars are still measured against Teslas (even though I'd prefer a Rivian or Subaru/Toyota myself), and SpaceX is the doing more launch development than the US, China, and Russia combined.
That doesn't make him a great inventor, perhaps, but it does make him a great something... businessman, organizer, dreamer perhaps?
No one's accusing him of singlehandedly advancing science or anything like that. But he did tackle three very difficult and capital and labor and logistics and legal problems and made them all a reality where many other companies and countries have tried and failed (and continue to lag behind). Those aren't trivial accomplishments and we'd be lucky to see any of them in a generation, much less all three from the same person. There is no guarantee another person could've done all that, not even a president.
SpaceX is doing great work. That same talent would have been available in the market for hire by anyone if SpaceX hadn't been around.
He didn't invent satellite Internet connectivity.
I don't understand this hero worship that goes on in the tech sphere for a known grifter who thrives on Daddy's money and taxpayer subsidies.
You keep saying anyone could've, but the fact is they didn't and still don't. Armadillo, Blue Origin, Virgin, NASA, all gave up or remain bit players. None of them invented rockets, any could've hired engineers, but SpaceX is the only one that actually made all that happen. And on automotive front, the big car markers are STILL playing catchup.
No one is saying Musk is a great inventor, or even an inventor at all. Just that he successfully organized others into worthwhile projects.
It's not hero worship, it's giving credit where it's due. Compare Musk to someone like Trump or Ellison or Zuckerberg or your average crypto bro founder. He's contributed far more to society by taking huge risks in industries that others had already given up on. Not every rich asshole does that.
Citation needed. Thanks.
All these sectors are driven by politics and or military because there is no ROI via the legit avenues: consumers trying to improve their lives
The big push for EVs started under Obama and after many years and many billions of handouts people are still on the fence and you literally need to threat a mandate to stop ICE cars production in order for them to take EVs into consideration.
Musk is nothing without D.C. and as much as all the other guys on the Forbes 400 are still unsufferable assholes, you can’t claim the same for them.
Zuck and Bezos for example built their companies not on D.C. but AT&T. It’s a big difference and consumers benefit from this
The federal government gives out money for lots of things, but they fail often (rural broadband? functional healthcare? prisons? education?).
Arguably the government acts as a research incubator for new sectors, and I'm glad he turned them into functional everyday businesses that consumers can afford (well, except SpaceX).
Zuck and Bezos also built off government research and funds... the transportation and communication networks. So what?
Nope. AT&T built on top of governmental transportation and communication network, Zuck built on top of AT&T , his billions are less tainted because they are further removed from the horrendous practice of pointing guns at taxpayers heads to finance the centrally planned economic project du jour such as the Apollo rockets or the LHC or the Bubble telescope which won’t ever yield anything for the poor shmucks who financed it
Tesla found no investors and were a half dead garage company.
Musk deciding to finance Tesla and have JB be the CTO is quite a bit different then just buying in.
The difficulty in building an EV company was never the initial prototpye as anybody who has studied this space knows.
Tesla was an utter shitshow until Musk took over the CEO and the company since then has been incredibly successful.
Its baffling that look at that and then dismiss it because he didnt start the company in a garage.
And your history of SpaceX is even worse. i don't even know where you got that nonsense. You timeline is off byany years at least. The DoD was looking at responsive launch at the time and that was far more relevant then NASA. But the DoD outside of a little student sat didn't book any flights.
Invention is just a strange term, are we only consider the guy by himself sits in a lab and figures out some new thing an inventor? Musk is not that. But that doesn't make what he did less impressive.
The companies he has built, and has lead are certaintly innovative.
Tesla and SpaceX are massive achievements. The space industry was basically dead for years and electric cars were considered a joke or toy.
Elon doesn't do everything, and he often unfairly overshadows his team, but he is great at getting attention (from investors and customers) and he's gifted at optimizing manufacturing processes. I'm really impressed with how he speaks about assembly lines in particular and the relentless drive for simplicity. I'm less impressed by the empty promises, but he does inspire many with his vision.
The problem is when he leaves his lane and assumes his success in one domain translates to all domains. He's hardly the first successful person to lose their mind when they reach the top. We often talk about how inequality is bad for the average person but for me, it's shocking to see what it does to the people at the top too. Soaring at that height they leave reality far below.
What happened here is those layers kept getting new holes. By him becoming increasingly bolder posting on Twitter, and now by trying to run it without his trusty lieutenants. The stress of buying Twitter and it losing billions, unstoppably, is adding to his self-restraint fading away. This is Elon, himself.
Always was.
And... it's hard to believe this, but Twitter can change you, addict you to certain behaviors, even if you're a billionaire. He craves the likes, the retweets, the replies. Despite being the richest person, he's incredibly lonely. Everyone around him is fake, trying to stay afloat and maybe profit somehow from their proximity to Musk, or having no choice. He has no friends, no wife. And he has no connection with his children aside from couple of photo ops per year with "lil X".
Twitter is his social life. And Twitter wants circus. So he delivers.
As for Elon being public... yeah. This is what we're discussing. He's very public and it's very embarrassing. Has been for along time.
And anybody that thinks a CFO who has made millions leaving after 13 years is a major problem is just delusional.
This just more evidence that people literally lose their brain anytime Musk comes up.
He knows he's smart, he has a burning passion for what he does, and he's probably been surrounded by sycophants for decades now.
I would watch this fight, even though I have zero interest in MMA fighting, but I wouldn't pay money to watch it.