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Comment by unsupp0rted | Hacker News Reader

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> working 12~18 hours doing one moonshot after another.

Does anyone actually beleive Musk works 12 - 18 hour days?

He hires the right people and his companies solve hard problems, but they make a few electric cars, design and build some rockets, and launch some satelites. Most of that shouldn't require much of Musk's time since he has experts working on it.

Other than designing new rockets, there doesn't seem to be many new innovations coming out of Musk-owned companies.

To me, it feels like we all think he must be doing a ton of work even though his companies don't seem to be generating much output.

I've heard people that work/worked with Musk that say he works a lot and is very knowledgeable about technical matters. I have never found someone that worked with him or knows him personally that contradicts this. So this idea that Musk just got lucky in the 7 companies he founded and he's just a bozo who happened to trip upon some new rocket designs is just insane.

> So this idea that Musk just got lucky in the 7 companies he founded and he's just a bozo who happened to trip upon some new rocket designs is just insane

I don't know who's saying that. Of course he's smart, but the amount of hours he works each day is almost certainly exaggerated to maintain this "Tony Stark-like genius narrative" he needs to keep the money coming in.

Elon knows how to hire, how to raise money, and how to profit from govt subsidies. That doesn't mean he's this lone genius who works himself to death, and that's a very unlikely story.

Nobody in their right mind would start a rocket company in order to make more money. I feel like he just wants to play real life Factorio and he wants everyone to tune in on his Twitch account and watch him play. Meanwhile he was trying to fix democracy [1] (and protect his own companies) by buying Twitter and at some point he realized he fucked up.

But who knows, I could be wrong.

I'm not exactly a fan. I'm not exactly against him either. He just seems like a hardcore geek to me that got way too much money and way too much buy-in.

[1] I'm not saying I that I think he was fixing democracy. I'm saying that I think that he thought he was fixing democracy.

Meanwhile he was trying to fix democracy . He was literally giving checks for people if they voted a certain way and promoted it. There is not more anti democratic than this.

right because true democracy is when you give cheques to people to convince other people to vote a certain way

Well, he is famous for axing down middle management in companies. Might as well get rid of Super PACs and buy voters directly.

probably also preferable to buying votes by making and executing promises to give people free stuff/programs. at least they aren't using tax payer money

I don't understand how those two are connected. Both are bad though.

my point is that there isnt much difference, and #2 happens by every politician in every democracy.

i have no desire to defend musk but imo people should be criticized for valid reasons or you risk diluting the other arguments.

But the reason given was very valid and specific against Musk.

You introduced a separate issue that is much more widespread, but that doesn't detract from the original criticism, nor dilute it.

you should really listen to one of his full town-hall videos and reflect if anything he said could not have have been said by any of the Clintons or McCain. Then compare the few differences to what you might think of Elon Musk.

Yet he has got richer on the back of spacex …

I don’t think we need to over complicate a megalomaniac desire for more power and wealth.

I am just saying: the whole SpaceX IPO and spinning that as an AI play: that looks like a cash grab. So nowadays yea it looks like it.

But when he started it? Nah

He started SpaceX because he had a pipe dream of colonizing Mars, and too much money.

beyond a point of absolute comfort, the point of money is to accumulate power and power can be spent to make more money. musk doesn't need more money, he needs more power. dangling starlink to ukraine treasonously is that power that money can't buy but space x can.

moonshots are the external story told to maintain social acceptance. tax credits for spacex would be lot harder to sell to taxpayers if everyone unambiguously knew its just another profit seeking private company. tesla gets a lot of lenience because of its supposed pushing of frontiers.

musk can exchange his social capital to manipulate stocks to make others money in exchange for backchannel favors.

idk if musk actually believes mankind will terraform mars but he sure seems to be getting a lot back on earth from saying it.

This is really a matter of taste, but i (personal opinion) think that Zuck, Karp, Thiel and others who (partly by sucking the inauguration dick) have the ear of the current powers that be, produce much more demented shit than Musk. But the exact personalities really don't matter, the whole jolly crew running the show does not seem very humanistic in their writings or actions.

> how to make a lot of money from his existing assets without working 12~18 hours

This is the biggest lie in today's society. "Make money from assets". There is no such thing. Money cannot work. People can work. He's figured out how to extract a lot of money from his employees, without them realizing the trick that's being played on them.

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