I get asked this a lot. Muttrox, what is your take on Elon Musk? Up or down? You have his cars, you’ve given him lots of money, how do you feel about that?
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The bad:
He’s an asshole. Personally and professionally. Even worse than an asshole, he’s an asshole unnecessarily. Just because he is and he can.
He’s a sellout to China. The dictionary definition of selling out – he says things he knows are wrong to carry water for a foreign power and put more money in his pocket. Not great!
His new set of right wing views are noxious (especially considering how much government aid went into propping up Tesla).
He didn’t invent Tesla, and should stop acting like he did.
He shouldn’t be so rich. Crazy.
But:
All his Twitter awfulness comes down to a larger issue. The problem is that there’s only a few social media companies with unaccountable owners who can set their own policies for those platforms. Twitter, Facebook, etc. This is the first time there’s been an owner who supported the right in the platform, but the problem is that it shouldn’t come down to the decision of him. Trump should have banned from these platforms long ago, but the conservatives were right to worry how the decisions were made.
His right wing views are noxious, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. He’s allowed to change his mind and have whatever opinions he wants. You don’t like them, stop paying attention.
And, on balance:
What I really think is that these critiques this misses the larger point. Elon Musk became the richest man in the world. And what did he do? He basically invented the electric car industry. Without him, there is no doubt in my mind that we would be much further back in the electrification of personal vehicles. He significantly changed the curve of history. This is one of the greatest things we have done to combat climate change. Twenty years ago, would you have paid out 50 billion dollars to electrify a significant portion of US cars, and get the flywheel rolling so every other OEM was moving to electric only? Of course you would have. You would have paid 500 billion dollars. Well guess what, Elon did that. He deserves the rewards for it.
What about his other companies? A battery company, again making a direct push against climate change by supporting electrification. A solar panel company. Space-X, increasing the odds humanity can expand off of earth. Notice the theme? All these companies are tackling existential threats to human existence, and doing a pretty decent job at it.
I don’t care about the other stuff. Let him own Twitter and do whatever he wants. It’s always been a cesspool, now it’s a cesspool with a slightly worse owner. Who cares. The man has done significant work to save humanity. That vastly outweighs all the rest.
Just as I do not celebrate a priest saving souls when I learn he has molested children for decades, I cannot bring myself to celebrate Musks contributions to co2 reduction.
Yes he juiced the industry but it would have started humming eventually.
Musk is dangerous to mankind and democracy. Combine his unrivaled wealth and now the power of one of the biggest communication platforms, he is a one man wrecking ball.
He is fueling hate. You can expect him to continue to manipulate markets and economies on a much larger scale.
If you thought the Koch brothers or the Federalist society have had a negative impact on our society, you have seen nothing yet.
So I guess he leaves us just enough oxygen to breath while we watch the world burn. Thank you Musk!
Steve, great to hear from you! In fairness, I did say “He didn’t invent Tesla, and should stop acting like he did.” I’m not learned it Tesla’s corporate history, my impression is that it’s much like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Either would have failed without the other. Update: I slightly tweaked the wording of the original post.
As a long time Twitter hater (I have never understand the appeal of it), I love seeing it go into a death spiral. A world without Twitter is a better place.
So much I could say here, but I want to refute one statement: Musk did not INVENT the electric car any more than I did. He didn’t even invent his own Teslas as they were engineered by others. What he did was make them marketable and practical with his ecosystem of batteries and chargers, along with his dealer-less sales model.
As for Twitter, there is every indication he will run it into the ground and flush all that Tesla equity down the toilet. Easy come, easy go although he still has Space X to fall back on. I have to think there are private equity folks out there planning to launch a true Twitter alternative with all that talent on the street and get it right this time.