What do YOU think? One superyacht's okay but two is pushing it? Is this you saying "I'm not going to be made to feel guilty about buying my kid a new Playstation when people are starving in Yemen"?
No, it's a stupid thing. Tesla did no such thing - the MARKET did that, and it's widely seen as completely irrational. How can a company that produces a tiny fraction of what the big companies produce (and not even as good - Musk is always driving the company to cut corners) be "worth" so much more?
I agree, so long as we're talking about that billionaire who went on that sub to the Titanic. And I definitely endorse Musk "showing us the way" to Mars as soon as possible.
Because he built a car that actually broke safety ratings scales. That was a cool car. In 2023 the model Y sold more by some metrics than any other car in the world. https://search.app/cARkG83jgnEvZ3Br8 You can say they suck but the people I know who own them love them. Yes, the market did that. And Musk took advantage of that and forced other manufacturers to make more electric vehicles as well. Once again, I'm not a fan of his, but to deny that he kickstarted the electric car market is just flat out wrong. They even made the best electric car charging system, and everyone is adopting it. That is now the standard.
Yeah, absolutely. Because we're learning as they do that. We're learning more than we would have otherwise. Now, the submarine guy just taught us not to do that. There is a reason for those restrictions and regulations. But the "cutting corners" that Musk does is actually often very smart mechanical engineering. Eliminating failure points and weak points. Eliminating inefficiencies. Sometimes it goes too far. But the point is that he is pushing the envelope. That is what I'm giving him credit for.
Wow, hope that Gatorade is worth it. Musk is certainly incredibly good at convincing people he's fucking Einstein crossed with Henry Ford. Looking forward to the inevitable Trump-Elon blowup, and very happy about that clause in the constitution that says you can't be president if you're foreign-born. I will concede one thing: it's not 100% Musk's fault he's a psychopath - his father was a real piece of work. And I'll admit he did at least one good thing: he made me quit Twitter and I've never regretted it.
And then turned around and spent $250 million helping get the "drill baby drill" guy get elected, who has promised to undercut all the measures Biden made to encourage electric car buying. It's almost as if he doesn't really care about the planet, huh.
I'm not sure how any of this has anything to do with what I posted. Musk's father is a piece of shit. So is his mother. Musk is pretty well a piece of shut as well... Except that he's actually pushed a lot of technologies forward further than they would have been without his actions.
You have literally no way of knowing that, as you do not have access to the Multiverse. What we do know is that he's a horrible boss and his employees despise him and have contempt for him. Does he drive them to success? Well, imagine how much more success we'd have if we kidnapped their families and literally worked them to death! And hey, it's so fashionable to knock the Nazis nowadays but they really pushed the frontiers of research on twins.
Biden did everything he could to piss Musk off. I'm not sure why he did that. I don't know what that dynamic is about. But Biden is pretty well a piece of shit as well. Definitely not as big of a piece of shit as Trump. But if you and your party are going to go out of your way to exclude and ignore the richest people in the world there are going to be consequences. And unfortunately the system that we have encourages Musk to use what he has to further his goals. He has money, and he invested it in a way that could have a very big payoff for himself and his ambitions. It really sucks that he destroyed Twitter (which really was the public square) and helped Trump get elected. Those are definitely some of the shitty things he's done. But the real failure in Trump getting elected was the failure of the Democrats. They are supposed to be the ones protecting the people from these oligarchs.
Yes I can. I can remember everybody (car guys, Ford, GM, Toyota) saying that electric cars wouldn't work. We didn't have the battery tech. Then Tesla actually made one that did work and was really freaking cool. It cost a lot of money, but it funded the mass market models. That was a great plan. It worked incredibly well. Nobody else could do reusable rockets. That wasn't even a consideration. They made fun of him for that. Until he and Gwynne Shotwell got it done. Nobody else is even close yet. Starlink is State of the art. Better than anything the US government has. I don't know how you can sit there and say his companies didn't give us technologies we wouldn't have. His companies have given us technologies that we currently have now that nobody else has given us. Nobody else was even working on them seriously.
Not content with fucking up one country... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politic...rage-meets-elon-musk-trump-mar-a-lago-reform/ Boy, sure glad such a wonderful guy has all that money to spend
Some billionaires are really evil. They don't care how many suffer or if planet is destroyed so long as they get richer. Some have decent instincts, they support schools and health care and museums and so on. But Trump's one piece of legislation was $2 trillion tax cuts for the rich. He plans additional $4 trillion. We are the only major country without national health. Many countries have free childcare and college. And they don't have as many homeless. We could have health care, childcare, education, housing if so much of national wealth wasn't going to a few people. Who pay very low taxes. You think Musk couldn't live well if he had only $1 billion instead of $400 billion? How many schools and homes could $399 billion build?
A rich person contribute some of his income to his foundation, then doesn't have to pay income tax on that amount. A good foundation, like Clinton or Gates, gives its money to charitable organizations. A selfish foundation, like Musk, gives its money to improve the reputation/profit of his own companies, or his relatives' companies. The IRS has a definition for a foundation, and for a charitable organization. Every year, a foundation must give away at least 5% of its money. Musk's foundation flaunts that IRS rule. The NY Times has a paywall, so here's a reprint of its article. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2024/12/14/musk-foundation-didnt-give-away/
But unless he gets FULL compensation, Musk won't be as motivated and we won't get all those wonderful life-improving innovations that only he could ever provide
I've started a new religion. Our divine being is Elon Musk. The religion is known as Free Musk. Why Free Musk? Because he wishes to be free of the constraints of Earth. Because he's persecuted. Because we free ourselves of our burdens by giving Musk our money. And most of all, because the faithful are known as "Free Musketeers" Today, open your heart and your wallet and quite possibly your vagina to Free Musk. barfo
Nobody suggested that only he could provide anything. The point is that he is the only one with the means who is motivated to provide these leaps and is actually doing it, rather than just talking about it.
