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Comment by iwaztomack | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure if I knew I could never lose a dime of my billions of fortune I'd be working on teleporters, warp drives, and time machines. People would call me a genius because I could pay for the press. Musk isn't a visionary, he's just a rich nerd throwing money at really cool things other visionaries imagined before he was born (all of his companies were ideas other people already had been working on; 100%), and then failing upwards when it doesn't work out.

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Yet, there are tons of people much richer than Musk was (before Tesla and SpaceX) who have achieved nothing of note with their billions.

It’s easy to shout from the sidelines that you’d do better given the opportunity, but reality suggests it’s more difficult. It’s the HN equivalent of sports fans hurling abuse at their football team’s players.

> Yet, there are tons of people much richer than Musk was (before Tesla and SpaceX) who have achieved nothing of note with their billions.

Bill Gates eradicated polio. Sam Walton re-invented shopping at scale. Jeff Bezos re-invented shipping logistics.

I know you reeeeealy want to defend Musk, but think about your argument before posting it next time.

Polio hasn't been eradicated. And the Gates Foundation wasn't existent at the time smallpox was (1980).

Why hasn’t Blue Origin done similar things then, or any of the other billionaire funded space ventures?

SpaceX is just spectacular. Something is different there.

Isn’t that difference Shotwell? It might be a bit myopic to credit a singular leader when many contributed but she feels like the obvious answer.

I don’t credit just Elon. It’s tons of people. But he did do a good job getting this thing going and has some role in pushing them to take risks and do hard things.

Shotwell is probably a big reason SpaceX does better than Tesla or the others. Elon needs to be paired with a cooler head that knows how to manage well. I get the sense the others don’t have anyone as strong in that role.

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