Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
I saw people debating on Elon's contribution in his company's success. On X, Reddit and Instagram—People debate a lot about it.
Can anyone clarify this to me?
Can anyone clarify this to me?
... If you ignore Starship. SpaceX is operating on a $20 billion bridge loan which, if the IPO struggles at all, adds to the risk. Starlink depends on becoming a telco scale mass market ISP, but it's operating in a shrinking TAM, squeezed by increasingly cheap terrestrial wireless infrastructure, and the fact that high income customers are a minority in areas rural enough for terrestrial wireless to be an uneconomical.
Tesla is spending more than the market cap of Rivian to become the Allbirds of the car industry. They're gonna blow their capex on robots and AI without refreshing the car line.
Another commenter remarked that Elon's fame is a failure of skepticism. I've been a skeptic for a few years now, starting with skepticism about agile rocket development, which sounded like bullshit to me.
There is no reason to say that its development is slow. Falcon 9 took 8 years from concept to first flight and another 8 years to high cadence, reliable reusable flights. Starship is now only 10 years in development and already went through several iterations.
Falcon 9 refurbishment costs can't be high because whole thing takes under 2 weeks with less than a week spent in hangar for any refurbishment work... There may be no refurbishment at all on many flights, just some checks.
And yes, they ate entire worldwide commercial launch market and it wasn't enough... So there's Starlink. They appear to have no war around creating demand for themselves with their own payloads because others are not up to that task - there is too much rot and dysfunction everywhere in the space business worldwide except SpaceX, so they are kinda forced to vertically integrate.
But also, this feels like exactly the kind of thing he’d post pseudo-anonymously.
Elon Musk is a truly proficient capitalist. Great at creating capital. So, in that sense, no he is not overrated. There is nothing really subjective about capital — you either have it or you don't. And despite all the warning signals, people still heavily invest in his ventures.
But is he overrated as a leader, as a visionary, as a genius — the subjective measures. I'd argue, yes. Doesn't take a genius to create capital. As he's done nothing artistic or altruistic for us to debate the merits of his life, I can't imagine what other criteria he can be evaluated upon.
I can despise someone while appreciating what they built or their prowess in a given field. Pretty sure you can find plenty of people throughout history whose accomplishments genuinely impressed you (and useful for humanity) while simultaneously thinking that same person belongs in prison.
Projects are composed of many people. This idea that it's all "1 person" is nonsense. Companies that big are mostly ran by employees and leaders,not just the CEO sitting on top supervising and giving directives
Yes? If they're from a sanctioned country then I could be held criminally liable or have my service interrupted without warning. I would not evaluate professional infrastructure if the owner refused to tell me where they were located.
> This idea that it's all "1 person" is nonsense.
It's the basis of how all C-suite operations work, do you need to see an org chart for a reminder? The idea that it's "all 1 person" is baked into the concept of private capital. Arrangements that give the employees or leadership executive priority is far, far in the minority of how businesses are ran today.
This was seen as a major risk of Apple ("what's going to happen if Steve dies, last time they got rid of him it almost went under"), and held its stock back for a considerable time before market accepted that dependence on that 1 person wasn't as big as feared.
This is seen as a major risk of SpaceX now, too. Companies are not people. A company that's worth something - not just makes a profit - shouldn't be dependent on one person, because you can't sell a person due to 13th Amendment, but being worth something means that one can buy and sell.
The accident of the whom and where he was born did play into it, but I will echo another commenter that he is an amazing capitalist - and I do mean that as an insult to Elon. He has done an amazing job of playing the game in a system that rewards shrewdness, cutthroat action, and manipulation. He managed to get enough clout to be able to lie about just about anything and pay for the echo chamber that makes it real enough.
Overrated? In most aspects yes. In being everything that is wrong with capitalism he’s right on point.