It’s important to also note that one of Musks strengths is marketing. He makes bold claims that makes headlines. We should be all used to his charade by now.
A lot of the stuff he claims that actually works has teams of people supporting him. Those weren’t one man efforts like this.
As you can see yourself, he's saying "great job team!" not "great job me!".
I just don't get all these olympic level contortions around denying the achievements of an immigrant who made good on the American dream, and has done more for climate change than literally anyone. This is to be celebrated and embraced!
FSD, Starlink never being jammed in Ukraine, Tesla Solar Roofs, and other such things are all things Musk has hyped up that are somewhat counter factual.
He was a RICH immigrant that made good on the American Dream. Having a truckload of money ready for you before you venture out in the world would be inspiring for anyone, believe me.
He may have started with less than the median American when he emigrated. Rich parent doesn't always equal rich kids. The ones that are mostly just consume. It's plainly obvious he's not some rich trust fund kid.
Which is why so many people are threatened by Elon's success and project their own insecurity onto him. Unresolved personal insecurity and envy are a potent combination. I promise this is unhelpful and it's better to resolve one's own insecurity than to spend time projecting it.
> He may have started with less than the median American when he emigrated
Except it is known that he didn’t. There is no need to speculate on the facts.
Elon Musk is far more successful than anyone else who started with his financial resources. He has outperformed everyone in his wealth bracket. There’s no need to pretend he was abandoned by his family and came to the US destitute.
There are internet rumors vs what he, his mom and brother say about him showering at the YMCA and only being able to afford one computer when starting Zip2.
That's why I said "may have", because his mom and brother aren't non-bias sources, and nor are insecure people on the Internet who want to explain away why they have achieved little despite having relatively the same or more privilege. The latter project this discomfort the most aggressively.
"After two years at Queen's University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on two majors, but his time there wasn’t all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub."
Exactly! Many people underestimate the value of privileges'. Privileges' give "unfair" advantage. Anyway, there are many people like these and Elon is few among them that have successful ventures like Tesla or SpaceX.
Very interesting editing to your original post, when making such drastic edits that change the tone as much as you did it would be useful to make note of them so everyone knows.
You asked about things he had said/promoted, or something like that, which I listed in the first sentence of my response, care to respond to them?
The idea that his success is due to that is another olympic level contortion. He wasn't given millions of dollars to start, let alone billions. Even if he was, it would still be impressive converting that into Tesla and SpaceX, as opposed to a yacht.
Realize that most people born to well off parents don't do shit. If insecurity needs an outlet, maybe redirect it to the rich kids of Instagram, not the guy who is helping solve climate change and get us back into space.
I was not really commenting on how he achieved his success.
I was commenting on the appeal to the "American Dream(tm)".
Though if you want to follow it to the root if he was born black in the townships he likely would not have amounted to much, no matter how hard he worked it is unlikely he would have ever made it out of the country.
I don't understand why there would be something ironic, postmodern, satirical, or unexpected about a relatively privileged white South African who grew up in the era of apartheid being associated with space travel or other technology that is considered futuristic.
Nothing has changed. It is still as it has always been.
The US space program and the Moon landings can be traced directly back to Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun and his work at Peenemünde, utilizing slave labor to build rockets for Nazi Germany.
"More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon"
The course of history was shaped by Von Braun being terrified of the Soviets and choosing to surrender to Americans.
Some people see this sort of historical note as extremely relevant to everything today, and some don't. I see nobody trying to bridge that gap.
Okay i explain the joke to you: First and foremost note how the comments upthread used the term "the american dream". Second note that "the american dream" is a media trope, a literary device and story we tell people to inspire them to follow certain ethics.
The traditional american dream is about social upwards mobility from rags to riches, about a promise that all that is needed to become wealthy is hard work, determination, a bit of ingenuity and puritan virtues. In its classic version it often features an immigrant family who comes to america with nothing but worn out clothes, works hard jobs and long hours to create a livelihood, overcomes hardships and struggles so their kids can get an education and better jobs. It often also calls out oppression, poverty and war in the old world as reasons for migration and to further highlight the ideals of liberal society in america.
The modern version ignored the generational aspect and instead focused on individuals becoming millionaires. Entertainment loves extremes, the lower the start and higher the end, the better. The quicker the journey, the better. And this became accelerated to the absurd. Be poor, wash dishes, millionaire. Since this is so very unlikely, and real people who fit it, like Rockefeller, became so unpresentable, media turned more and more towards fictitious comedies. Yet this version is still very dominant in culture, because it calls out a truth: when asked what the american dream is, many will say it is about becoming very rich. That is, what the modern american dreams of.
Now in contemporary media we see a return to the original idea, but with twist lampshading its problems. Migration is no longer a central topic, america no longer the beacon of hope for the tired, poor, huddled masses. Instead we see a focus on the disenfranchised and marginalized within american society. The post-modern MTV generations version of the american dream is B-Rabbit living in a trailer park with his alcoholic mom, making it as a rapper despite his peers attacking him for having the wrong skin color. It plays the core straight about making it with hard work and being virtuous, but it doesn't only look at materialism and individualism, as it also expects society to hold its promise of being liberal. The postmodern loves to play with dualities and reversing structures.
Lastly the post-modern satire version instead picks up the part that got dropped, the dream of becoming very rich. It teasers a protagonist from an african minority and reveals a wealthy and well educated white man from south africa. It shows upwards social movement from upper class to ultra rich, subverting the idealistic to instead highlight the reality that those who start well have more opportunities to venture and do even better. It holds up "being born rich" like Diogenes holds a plucked chicken, and calls out "behold: the american dream"
The pattern that I pointed out, that includes Von Braun, and Musk, is of people who, whatever their advantages and sins, were not privileged enough to be born in the US, and they then found unimaginably more opportunity in the US than in their homeland.
Is that how some people conceive of the "American dream"? I don't know, but I think it's the easiest to find factual evidence of happening over a long period of time.
The only version of the "American dream" I've ever heard was getting a small house on a ~1 acre lot and starting a family. I don't know what all this about becoming a millionaire is from.
-- a idk probably 10th generation American living on the East Coast.
> and has done more for climate change than literally anyone
What a sensationalist claim! What is the carbon offset of one rocket launch? If Elon stopped focusing on Mars, and instead bought every coal plant to then shutter and replace them (could be done for under 40b), then maybe. Until then, the few percentage of market share for EVs does not justify this claim. You also have to assume that every purchaser of a Tesla would have bought a gas car instead, which is seemingly not a safe assumption. So, citation needed!
Maybe if elon purchased a train system and made public transit exceptional and widely used could a person start to make this claim.
I thunk the sad reality is that elon is bored and us focused in sci fi that is more possible 500 to 100p years in the future (ie mars), at the expense of actually solving present day problems.
Any regulation reducing coal emissions has an out-sized impact compared to a few percentage of emissions from non-commercial transport, the claim "more than anyone else" seems hyperbolic and just flat out wrong
I don’t deny that, but it is not what he is doing here.
I am not sure why people shy away from the obvious: another of Musk’s strengths is market manipulation.
On 4 April, the announcement[0] of his becoming the largest shareholder jumped his Twitter stock[1] from a 73486938×33.03 = $2.4B purchase to a $3.7B asset, a $1.2B gain.
He sold 371900 stocks, for a $6M gain.
His 14 April announcement[2] of his offer to purchase Twitter was likely intended to boost the price further before the expected poison pill would justify him divesting everything as he stated he would do in the SEC filing[3], thus netting an even bigger gain.
It didn’t boost as he expected, but the value has remained higher than it started at. He will still make half a billion and his actions, this time, are hard to sue, since he did not lie on anything but intent, which is impossible to prove.
These paper profits are hard for him to realise, since he has to sell 9.2% of Twitter's stock without the price falling. Given the current price depends on his claimed intent to takeover, the market will react swiftly to any evidence that he is in fact reducing his stake.
> On 4 April, the announcement of his becoming the largest shareholder jumped his Twitter stock[0] from a $2.9B purchase to a $3.7B asset, a $779K gain.
I would upvote this as insightful if we were still on Slashdot. These one-man pioneers like to further the impression that they are the sole reasons for their success, but the reality is that we all build on the shoulders if giants. I am not shitting on his ability to make his endeavours successful - I am just saying that the proportion of his responsibility for it is much lower than most people think.
I'm not sure what it is about some societies that like to make a single person out to be an idol. We see it in team sports, scientists who work in large teams, businesses where CEOs are deemed several thousand times more of a factor than other workers, medicine where doctors are placed on pedestals. I guess people like a hero, and the alternative explanation, that hundreds of hard working and bright people came together to make something happen, is less compelling.
I would also mod your comment insightful ;) Egocentric individualism makes people forget that everyone, absolutely everyone, is indebted to people past and present, from his current fellow co-inhabitants of earth to the past generations all over the world that bequeathed him the world and the culture he inherited.
Ad hom is pushed by the media because “small minds talk about people,” and that sells ads/clicks. Another example beyond personal fanboyism is the vilification of a person which surpasses rationality. Or the vilification of other groups of people. In all of these you will see fundamental attribution error, ignoring the situational factors and placing all perceived agency on the individual, like most all of our media were doing from 2016-2020. The reality is, few humans are all that important in and of themselves, and those that are often have become so as the result of external factors like the quality of the people that surround them, or “luck.”
This rings so true for Elon Musk fanboys. I also like the full quote, "Small minds talk about people. Average minds talk about events. Great minds talk about ideas."
1) It's not a Trumpian charade because many of the things he says actually work out. He'd already be done otherwise.
That's what makes it so interesting. I suggest he would buy Twitter if he could - and - he benefits from the free PR either way.
Yes, it's a bit cynical of him, but the PR is worth it, and, it's not like he's playing with election outcomes, or starting wars.
2) We know he's not 'doing it himself' and I suggest his Eng. knowledge is way overstated, at the same time he is very 'detail / hands on / insightful at that level' and with the big vision stuff he gets people motivated. I disagree with almost everything he says publicly and loathe is fanboys, but he still deserves enormous credit.
A lot of the stuff he claims that actually works has teams of people supporting him. Those weren’t one man efforts like this.