Elon Musk‘s erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, has come back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jewish man pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul baselessly suggested the recent college graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street fight between far-right groups. Musk’s excruciating March 27 deposition in the matter, which a judge ordered released to the public over the objections of the CEO’s lawyer, reveals the extent to which he has continually sabotaged both himself and the social media platform he owns.
It does seem like he’s ignorant on many subjects, but if he is a complete idiot, how did he manage to make the right investments to become among the richest of the world?
Because of dad’s money (it seems there’s no clear information about the money from the mine https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/)? That’s a good start, sure, but many smart people, with a similar good start or more, try to become richer and don’t reach this level. So what’s the additional element?
Is it really not an acceptable explanation that he had good guts at detecting the bubbles and did multiple smart investments at the right times (early internet website, internet payment, electric cars, low cost space)?
Let’s try to have an opinion of a higher quality than what Musk usually writes on his media, that is to say, not solely based on some strong feelings.
I believe a combination of inertia and “throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks” may be applicable here.
If his recent ventures are anything to go by, he’s an “idea guy” that makes a convincing case of sounding smart enough to succeed. He makes big promises about revolutionizing something, and because of his persona as a successful inventor, investors and fans buy into those ideas.
With support behind him, he’s free to burn other people’s money in the hopes that one of his fantastical projects actually succeeds. And if it doesn’t, just sweep it under the rug like the Hyperloop.
Or, you know, he could always use his capital to fund others’ ideas and then take credit as though they were his original idea, like with Tesla.
Seems like a good explanation, can a complete idiot do that?
Yes. Cunning =/= intelligence. A rat can reach the center of the maze off the smell of the cheese, not an understanding of geometry or topography.
Aren’t there thousands of rich born cunning “rats” that didn’t make as much?
Did I fucking stutter? It’s a function of mass of capital + opportunity (Peter Thiel wants your booty hole) = Inertia which breeds either people like you spending time on the defense of the morally reprehensible. Assuming you’re not the man himself, fucker has the right amount of time.
One again, mass of capital + opportunity (luck) = Inertia persistent enough for fucks like you to eat off perpetuity in the hope of scraps.
Please refrain from personal attacks. I understand your point otherwise.
I’m not defending him, I even negatively criticized him two times in my initial comment. I’m defending having a rational opinion about him, but it’s very hard, as you can observe by your own reaction to my questioning.
The fact that not all rats are given a maze with cheese in the middle to run to, should not require explanation to any moderately affected by the human condition person. You are owed basic respect in the form of your thoughts being listened to and your place as a person respected.
You are however, owed nothing, when it comes to civility.
That is a social contract.
One which you strain by repeatedly being contrarian to the point it’s either a sign of extreme neurodivergence (fine, my attitude isn’t normal either), or just disingenuous.
In the case of the later, pound sand. If the former, do you have any actual doubts left as to why people feel this way? Or can I ask you to get the fuck off my sunlight yet, Elon?
Read the first rule of this community.
Although I don’t think I am owed it, I think it’s a pretty common minimal rule for discussion. So, if it’s not respected, I will just consider we cannot discuss and ignore you in the future.
I either agree with you or I am neurodivergent/disingenuous/Musk? What kind of thoughts dictatorship is that?
I think I understand why they feel this way: it’s psychological more tolerable to demonize (or call a complete idiot in this case) someone you hate, especially when you are powerless against his misconducts such as destroying a valuable communication platform.
But I still think demonizing him now is as stupid as idolizing him a couple of years ago, which many people here did.
I prefer to fight the hate he uses for his personal marketing with rationality rather than more hate, I think this kind of person just feeds on your hate, even if it’s against him.
Failing upward is a thing.
that feels like my entire career
Obviously
Clearly!
He frequently picked markets where he was bought out for hefty sums and the rest is government contracts. Tesla was the first thing bought that shipped a somewhat usable product and you can see what he’s done to it.
He could have ruled the EV market but he had to ship inferior products, waste money crushing unions, overstate its capabilities, and now Tesla has a bunch of cars they can’t sell.
What right investments? He was born into money and failed into getting anything from his X.com (banking!) website which was bought out by PayPal long after he was fired. The only reason he got anything out of that at all was he’d kept the stocks around.
He “invested” in Tesla so that he could get a cool car (he royally fucked over the actual founders in the process).
Low cost space? Low cost space? Do you live on Mars or some shit? Every one of those “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” events cost over one Billion. That ain’t cheap buddy.
So why aren’t the other tens of thousands of people borned in comparable money not becoming as rich?
Yes, low cost compared to what NASA or Ariane, for exemple, had been doing until then.
most people born into wealth do not flaunt it like Musk or Trump do. They are the exception not the rule.
they do so because of ego. They NEED the attention. Meanwhile, most billionaires don’t go around publicly buying things like that. They do have investments similar, but they do so without appointing themselves as god emperor of the company.
The fact that Musk insists he must be the public face for any company he puts money into evidences extreme narcissism and the belief he is a genius.
Meanwhile. Other than seeing money and being a part time engineer for Space X. He doesn’t have any real direct success for actual labour / work he’s done. It’s his inherited money that seems to have done the bulk of work. Buying in to banking, buying into space x, buying into tesla, buying into X. All essentially ideas by other people who just needed seed money.
You’ve moved to points about flaunting, having an egocentric media presence, and the absence of personal engineering success. I think I agree with those, but those are different points. My point was about how he became that rich, compared to other people with similar parents money, if he is a complete idiot.
But you’re still wrong. Lots of people who inherited money grew their wealth, without the need to have their face in the media constantly.
the reason we see so much of Musk is because he purposely puts himself in the public. There are more billionaires than just Musk who have grown their wealth without you ever knowing their names. Arguably, there are far FAR more of these no-name billionaires than the Musk type.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/25-richest-billionaires-inherited-fortunes-010158127.html
some examples.
As other’s have said, He has used his inheritance to create momentum and a cult of personality around himself, which has helped him make money despite being proven time and time again to be a business idiot.
So Far, He has been removed from Paypal by the board for bad leadership. He was removed from chairman of Tesla for illegal leadership and bad leadership. And all evidence has shown that he has also tanked the value of Twitter.
he has definitely convinced you through his cult of personality that he’s some business genius. Rather than just a loud asshole with lots of money to burn.
That’s still your point not mine, you’re arguing against a point I didn make. I even told you I agree with this one.
You’re using a straw man argument, I never said I consider him a business genius. Just reread what I said, there’s nothing else to over interpret about it to make it easier to shut down.
You’re lack of understanding about this doesn’t constitute others arguing in a fallacious matter. We are not arguing a strawman but explaining to you HOW Musk got to where he was. Which is in SPITE of his intelligence, not because of it.
You’re arguing your own fallacy based on your own lack of ability to grasp concepts. Congradulations, you’re guilty of Personal Incredulity fallacy:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity
I assume you think Trump is a very stable genius.
That’s quite the opposite of the nuanced discussion I stupidly tried to have, but I guess your comment was not serious.
You sounded like you were arguing that rich means smart.
My point is becoming that rich does mean some skills and cannot be achieved by a total idiot as stated in the top comment.
Trump is that rich. What are his skills?
I think mostly communication, since his multiple frauds cases show he’s not actually good at business, and having some instinctive understanding of what he should say to appeal to the poor uneducated white people who are afraid of falling lower. I feel like in the case of Trump, it’s even more important to not use his populist and hate based tactics.
Oh yes, those excellent communication skills.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/
Link it to the second part of my comment, it does sound like crazy to educated or non-indoctrinated people, but it worked incredibly well with his base, as well as almost half of voters. There some kind of skill there, how would you call it?