This author does not understand innovation, nor what it takes to truly innovate in a large corporation:
- Many ideas must be tried to the fullest. Had Xerox implemented what was invented at PARC, 20% might have been wildly successful, and the rest fail. But those blockbusters pay for the rest.
- It pains me to say this, but if you are trying to do impossible things, nothing can stand in your way, not even people. Employees have bad days, bad months, and bad years. You can spare no time for that at all, you must be relentless, or the company or product will fail.
- People are motivated by vision (the carrot) and termination (the stick). Titles and money do nothing, they just create job stickiness, they don't promote action. If you have a strong vision, and promote a relentless ethic, and a driven culture, you might 'just' make it.
I also wonder about the successes. I have to attribute them to people he hired--or to people they hired. There is a degree of luck there, and of being able to buy valid evaluations of prospective employees. But that isn't enough; there is still a mystery. You can see Google trying to achieve moonshot things, and failing repeatedly. Musk has lots of failures, but two actual successes.
Since he is not a genius, but has certain very good people doing really unusually good things on his behalf, I am forced to conclude he must have an HR trick that gets the best people to do their best work, and he is (just?) smart enough to get and stay out of their way.
Of course he doesn't build rockets. Logically no one builds rockets. Yet somehow without him SpaceX rockets wouldn't get built. What are the number of individuals at SpaceX that we can say, "Without that exact person the company would not work?"
I'm not saying it's absolutely the case that he's the only person who answers that question but I would say that the number of people who do is a number somewhere between one and something very small. I'm also saying that he's in that group of people.
Was curious if anyone better was going to be proposed.
Now, if Carl Sagan inherited such money,or if he became director of NASA, would he do better than Musk? We won't know.
It struck me as typical socialist disdain for personal initiative/agency. Which rarely happens under fair circumstances and is always going to bear flaws of the person doing it. But there's no alternative.
> It struck me as typical socialist disdain for personal initiative/agency.
In my view, you have to be trying pretty hard to get this from the article. The second sentence is:
> Tesla, Inc. makes innovative and genuinely impressive electric vehicles that can hold their own against the fastest performance cars in the world.
More importantly, the article's aim is right up front, too:
> Now that the president of the United States is no longer a climate change denier, and there may be some kind of broad national effort to electrify American transit, Musk may take on an even more important role in shaping our national vision for transit, power, and the human future in space. It is therefore vitally important to see through the myths around him, to understand the bleakness of his vision for the future, and to present something better. [Emphasis added.]
If this is broad or fundamental disdain for personal initiative, well, you've lost me. It's more accurate to say that the author is wary of what hagiography, myth making, cults of personality, and denial can do to both person who's been given vast amounts of power (Musk) and the society that gave him that power (us). I see this is as not much more than a call to criticality, to skepticism, in a country that's done few other things more fluently or consistently than generate frauds, hucksters, and showmen. From Barnum to Madoff to Trump to Elizabeth Holmes, we're really good at it. Whether Musk turns out to be a volatile but misunderstood and fundamentally benevolent genius or a contemptible huckster (or maybe both) is maybe undecided, but the article is right in asking us to tread very carefully with men like him.
Rhetorically, this isn't much different than what the WSJ editorial page publishes about Democrats every week.
For every doing there arises plenty of myth busting and (often rightful!) finger pointing how it could be done better. But it's all worthless unless anyone actually tries to do better (in turn exposing themselves to above). The article does everything to mud this distinction. It's why giving Sagan as example is so grating and hints me at disdain for doing. I'd expect someone like Tomáš Baťa instead.
So the entrepreneur behind revolutionizing electric vehicles, space, worldwide internet accessibility, payment tech, and a few other bleeding edge techs out there is kind of jerk who says and does dumb things on occasion but is apparently brave enough to take risks that move a needle.
Maybe that is just the kind of person that it takes to do it.
I'm glad you left out the hyperloop/boring company and the intercontinental travel rocket out of your list. He might be a great computer engineer, but i think the most stupid thing i ever saw is the Vegas loop. At least it was entertaining (and oh boy, i hope his intercontinental travel rocket have a few launch, this is promising).
I do like Elon, though my sympathy for Tesla and SpaceX will probably be overshadowed by contempt and amusement at another "Vegas loop" (the "loop" for the Dodger Stadium was even dumber, i'm a bit sad that this did not work.)
When you take risks like he does, you are gonna have a flop or two. I don't fault him for that. Besides every new idea for a product that doesn’t have an immediate need is stupid, until someone makes it work, someone else exploits it for something new, then all of a sudden it’s brilliant
The Nissan Leaf came out in the same timeframe, simply because the time was ripe for electric vehicles, the technology was in place. We'd still have electric vehicles, but we'd have missed out on the self-driving hype.
Tesla though created the psychology that an electric car could be a premium car which relaxed the economics and eased ‘range anxiety’ and concerns about performance. That is, other luxury sedans are ‘nothing special’ just expensive and prove the owner has bad judgement, the Tesla was so sexy it got my wife’s attention.
Meanwhile in Japan electric vehicles were a niche product that took off when the time was right. The psychology around automobiles is just plain weird, especially in the US.
Elon Musk, like anyone, has faults. Unlike others, he doesn’t bother trying to hide them. He’s not perfect. He’s probably not even the best he could be. But he’s not a “liar, cheater, and grifter” either.
Elon Musk wants people to believe that the SolarCity buyout was good for Tesla, and not a thinly veiled attempt to rescue his cousin's money.
This comes up now, because the SolarCity / Tesla court case is up in court right now.
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> But he’s not a “liar, cheater, and grifter” either.
He's really good at it. Solar City solar-roof seems to be a lie made up to help sell that company to his shareholders.
But its not just that: the battery-day replacement demo (back in 2013 or something) seems to have been for obtaining California EV credits for fast-charging, even though the battery-replacement technology never even was ever mass produced or developed.
Elon Musk said "Coast to Coast Autopilot" will exist in 2016. Its been 5 years, thousands of people have bought $5000 to $10,000 autopilot packages on this promise.
The grifting is so obvious when you step back. FSD doesn't work. Solar roofs don't work. Solar City wasn't a good buy for Tesla shareholders. Etc. etc. And now Elon Musk is pumping BTC again, as if people haven't realized that he's utilizing Tesla assets to create a one-man manipulation engine to pump-and-dump BTC and/or DOGE.
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Lets just focus on the Cryptocoin aspect alone. What do you think of Elon Musk's antics over the BTC / DOGE prices? This alone should be proof of his grifting attitude.
All valid points. It's a Devil's Bargain, the Cerberus of the transportation electrification movement, a necessary evil driven by obsession and existing on the spectrum. Tesla's success is what's driving future bans of fossil fuel vehicles [1], and forcing legacy automakers to accelerate their transition. I ain't mad, I'm just sad.
We've known for decades what fossil fuels were doing, so if this is what it takes, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. As an environmentalist, I don't want to be PC, I want to win (to have a functioning habitat & planet for my kids).
There's some highly incompetent government officials handing out money.
In the abstract, I think EV-credits are still a good idea. But some of these side-bonuses... such as the "fast charging EV" credits Tesla got for that silly replacement-battery demo... that was bullshit. They took the government's money and then never actually delivered the product (and seems to never have even intended to go beyond taking the government's money).
I mean, sure. We can maybe clap that Elon Musk managed to grab an easy-to-get tax credit and make himself richer. But people's tax dollars were supposed to go towards finding a way to make EVs charge faster. Not for a grifter who didn't even intend to make battery-replacements a real thing.
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The good news is that I'm learning. I dunno if everyone else is learning, but I'm watching this guy. I know what to watch out for if these things pop up within my sphere of influence.
But that's about it. I don't know what to do about it from a policy / political standpoint. Some people want to get grifted: they cheer at these events that haven't actually made any progress.
Solar Roofs, New York / Buffalo jobs, Solar City making revenue for the TSLA shareholders... etc. etc. Same thing. Lots of promises, lots of lies, and very little effort towards making it true. Over and over and over again.
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Its PT Barnum all over again. Mark Twain's fence-painting parable says it best...
