Or... people like saying things that make them appear witty.
No need to ascribe political malice where typical internet popularity-seeking will suffice.
"Elon didn't have anything to do with his companies' technical successes" and "Elon had everything to do with his companies' technical successes" are both low-energy, groupthink-supported replies at this point.
Or we could take the middle ground, which is likely the most accurate.
I don’t see anyone claiming Steve Jobs personally designed the iPhone PCB by hand while mining cobalt on the weekends to stay in shape, but on the other, I don’t see anyone claiming that he just provided money and the vision and engineers just manifested themselves.
I’ve said this before. The reasons SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla are the successes they are, is because of the “true believer” leadership it draws. Those endeavours have a clear social-good aspect to them at the “good for humanity” scale. Those endeavours have continue to succeed because Musk’s genius was in hiring them, and in focusing on the regulatory context that allows them to be even more successful. His personal engineering acumen is largely overstated compared to his actual skill set. It also helps that those industries are heavily regulated and those constraints temper his ability to fuck things up.
Social media on the other hand doesn’t attract the same kind of believers at that level and there’s no one who cares enough to make it work in spite of him. Being a far less (or barely at all) regulated industry means he’s free to intervene and meddle in the most egregious ways, and the results are obvious for all to see. As a result of Twitter he’ll likely be in lawsuits (from investors, banks etc) for decades. Meantime SpaceX and Tesla will continue to do well. Not because of Musk but in spite of him.
SpaceX's mission is to spread humanity to the planets.
Bezo's mission is to offer orbital fun rides to cashed up tourists.
Fisker failed due to its major investor (DOE) halting future financing, and then being hit with the loss of a large number of vehicles in Hurrican Katrina. Up until then they were following a similar startup arc (with the same sorts of problems) as Tesla had in their first few years. [0]
With PayPal, Musk was insistent that the venture proceed as X.com (despite brand testing showing that people were likely to associate it with porn), but was overruled. He was also opposed to the sale to eBay, which actually catapulted PayPal in terms of growth, and embedded it as a "must have" for e-commerce. [1] [2]
Getting a huge head start by being a privileged narcissistic raised by Apartheid emerald mine owners (aka Slave Owners) is not success on your own merits by any reasonable measure.
"According to a Facebook post from Errol, the Zambian emerald mine he held a stake in "collapsed in 1989.""
Which by definition means he owned an emerald mine during the apartheid Era.
Regardless of his political beliefs or leanings, there is no means or manner in which such a mine could have operated _at_all_ without being advantaged by said apartheid norms and thereby being dependent on whar in effect slave labor.
Just a FYI your argument is that Elon got a Huge Head Start to his serial entrepreneurism just because someone in relation to him had a business 40+ years ago in South Africa. Far after which he lived almost as a destitute during his college years.
Don't accuse me of such BS. Especially when you're the one not doing research (No, disproven myths and a misleading, generalized LMGTFY don't count when we have specific, up-to-date info). Facts seem at best that Elon had a good childhood, not much reason to believe greatly "better" than a common well-aligned western family could give.
After that, he seems to have been in the position of having to make his own way, while only getting help by a partial investment from his family in a further round of his already-succeeding company that he set up living in his office. So in the positions millions have been. There aren't millions of Musks around but there are millions of younger adults that have more than they deserve. But facts don't bend for your weird fantasies to be true.
Funny thing is, some time ago I thought Elon came from a background where he got a lot of money to start his successes, and still cheered him for making so much more from that than really anyone else. Then people started trying to show in him bad light, which backfired hilariously and now his origin story puts almost anyone to shame.
I think you're trying to somehow include fancy concepts and bending your arguments to fit them, which is becoming a bit silly (No, Poe's law doesn't relate to the current conversation).
I am not shifting goalposts. Note that I'm not the original arguer here. I just noted that you basically doomed Elon from birth regardless of what good he's done during his life, which is a crazy weak argument.
I know people who think that casually considering non-comformists delusional is reasonable. They come in many sorts, but most often its Occam's razor so I don't hate and won't get more involved.
I am not disingenuous. I just hope people would cheer on the people of our time who push on innovation instead of attacking them for their money or pecularities. With enough mass just throwing lazy attacks things can only get worse for everybody.
I think you still don't realize I'm not the original arguer. I just came here to point out this:
>Just a FYI your argument is that Elon got a Huge Head Start to his serial entrepreneurism just because someone in relation to him had a business 40+ years ago in South Africa. Far after which he lived almost as a destitute during his college years.
Which you can't retort and makes other arguments meaningless. Which are already so badly-colored (narcissism, trying to dredge up race relations) that are not worth deliberating on for anyone's sake.
He got a head start through acess to better education, access to equipment others wouldn't have had (just like Gates), his fathers social snd business connections, and more, as a direct result of his father's wealth and connections. This lead to immediately improved outcomes compared to his "competitors".
I wasn't talking "global scale" I was speaking about domestically, which is what matters.
"top 5% childhood positioning, services, access to material and equipment, and more.
Strawman, moving goalposts, etc."
Nope what i listed were specifics, those advantages he gained.
You know that but chose to misrepresent with a red herring.
This is the SOP for Elon fanbois, just more trolling type behaviors just like thier wannabe lord and savior.
Really... it's rather sad and disheartening to know you folks actually drank the Kool aid and aren't just playing games, rather actually think like this and genuinely believe you arent fools.
Except he didn't succeed life on his own merits. This is an outright provable falsehood.
He fell upward every time and started with a sizable fortune. He absolutely didn't work so hard that he "built" a multi-billion dollar empire, no one human can work that hard.
> Revealing about his father's business, Musk stated "My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was successful for 20 to 30 years, but it fell on hard times. He has been essentially bankrupt for about 25 years, requiring financial support from my brother and me.".
Give it a rest.
Besides which, I can absolutely guarantee you that if I gave you a “small loan of one million dollars”, you’d be bankrupt by the end of the decade.
You actually can't absolutely guarantee anything of the sort, but it makes sense that this is something you'd think because you apparently also believe Elon Musk over this and not Elon Musk (or his dad!):
It's like they have a personal investment in Elon not having done the things that Elon has very clearly actually done.