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Comment by satvikpendem | Hacker News Reader

I finished reading the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, and, for all his faults, Musk really knows how to get shit done. I was constantly amazed by his ability to strip a process to its essentials before embarking on its construction. SpaceX single-handedly* brought down the cost of space flight by using off-the-shelf and custom-created-from-metal components, where they only had to pay for the raw cost rather than the markups by others (the "idiot tax" as mentioned in the biography).

Generally, I simply don't give a shit about what a founder says, I have a Toyota in addition to a Tesla, and I don't care what the CEO of Toyota says at all, so I always find it puzzling when people talk about their dislike of Musk in particular, as if that should matter when buying their products.

*for some definition of the theoretical hand of a company

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Elon Musk's biggest problem is his chronic inability to shut the hell up.

No one would care who he was as a person if he just let his media people do their jobs, and stuck to corporate press releases to respond to things.

Plenty of people say they dislike Jeff Bezos, but barely anyone even thinks about Jeff Bezos or knows what he sounds like.

I basically get what you're asking but having followed Musk for a long time and having a similar personality, this would be very similar to asking him to lie and break his principles, on which I think is motivation -> progress of his companies (at least SpaceX) are reliant on.

He's a VERY different person from the likes of Bezos for whom it is easy to "get" the benefits of the idea of not expressing themselves in their role, for the benefits they are personally after.

I wonder though, considering the amount of other popular people who do not share the same achievements who you probably just ignore anyway (think some influencers and youtubers), do we really want him to shut up? His opinions and promises might not sit well with everyone but I definitely think you can learn a lot by analysing him.

I personally prefer him over the random billionaire #362682 who haven't achieved half as much and won't share anything.

Also, I would recommend reading his biography, changes your perspective on a lot of things.

I mean, what's the point of getting where he is and shutting up just to make random people happy?

To efficiently reach his target goals?

It would be such shame if Starship never flew because he squandered $45B on Twitter and made a lot of political enemies being an edge lord online..

If I was the richest person on the planet and still gave any shits whatsoever about making random people, who often probably have poor values themselves, upset online, then I would be living my life extremely wrong

Transphobic and and similar problematic tweets aside

That’s his money, not SpaceX money. Do you think he pays for everything out-of-pocket?

How do you think "his money" works. How do you think credit works on this scale? Musk making a $45B investment in Twitter obviously carries risk to SpaceX.

Making random people happy means having less people unhappy about you which increases your global status, which gives you more ability to extract resources from the world to augment your goals. Yeah, it's very long reasoning, but it is why most people try not to offend others.

Because it would just be nice if he shutup ?

Him shutting up does the same thing as you ignoring him, for you. Him shutting up is not fixable by those who actually want to hear him.

TL;DR: No, you shut up and never say that extremely selfish and destructive thing again.

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