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Comment by pcstl | Hacker News Reader

It is weakness in the long-term.

It's pretty clear in how people talk about billionaires: They must somehow conclude that the people most successful within a system that rewards certain things are not competent because the things the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward (it is fine to believe the system rewards the wrong things, but people walk straight into denying that those people have skill even within the system, or they claim that skill within the bounds of the system does not reflect any "real" skill - totally ignoring that elites tend to stay elites even through, say, Communist uprisings).

Hence how someone can say that Musk is "dumb" with a straight face.

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I wouldn't really call cruelty or dishonesty a "skill".

That's a choice, but the universe has no reason to respect it.

> the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward

It's the grown-up version of nerdy kids hating "the jocks" in high school. We're all just a bunch of dumb kids. Maybe obsolete children, but still children when it counts.

That said, Elon Musk celebrated cutting funding that fed starving children and supported cancer research by waving around a chainsaw on stage. The richest man on earth did this because he wanted lower taxes... for himself.

When Anubis weighs his soul against the feather it's likely to completely destroy the scale.

I'm not saying any of the people in charge are good people at all. I'm just saying that they are skilled at achieving their own goals, regardless of the morality or lack thereof of those goals.

I don't even think that. I think half of them accidentally stumbled into success. Elon was kicked out of PayPal with a nice golden parachute so he wouldn't sue.

Regression to the mean is pretty nasty. Stumbling into success can make you a car dealership owner or something like that, but being consistently successful in business requires just about as much skill as being consistently successful in, say, chess.

And he had to sue to be put on the list of founders at Tesla, and by the way, he isn’t really the founder of Tesla. He is, however, a rich investor.

To be clear, I'm just saying that I don't hate him because he's more skilled than I am. Not anymore than I hate olpymic athletes for being better at ice skating. He's certainly more skilled at Making Money.

I hate him because he is a cartoon villian, who when given enough wealth to feed the world chose to punch down instead of lifting up.

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