From the outside, I am rather unlikely to be affected by your child in any way. On the other hand, I am much more likely to enjoy the results of Musk’s aerospace and/or energetics efforts in the years to come.
I thought it was obvious. It’s for him.
And by extension, the rest of humanity. Of which he is a pre-eminent member.
He knows what’s best because of his wisdom and experience. You’ve seen the evidence. Look at all that money.
What’s good for him is good for you. And if you don’t get it, you’re not important enough to matter. Because, look at all that money.
If aliens came down and said, “Take me to your leader“ to you, I’m sure he’d be insulted if you took him to the President of the United States, when you could have gone and gotten the aliens to talk to him.
Don’t you see? He’s a Hero. The only clear-eyed visionary in a sea of fools.
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Well, he is building spaceships while the sea of fools is arguing on the internet…
You make the assumption that he’s building it for you.
Isn’t he? Or is he going to keep the inventions under his bed forever?
I don’t know about this email. When something this comically bad comes up, I have to question the veracity of it. I don’t know whether Elon is a dick or not,( though successful businesses tend to be headed by somewhat ruthless people.) That said, I think Elon is savvy enough to appreciate the power of his public image and wouldn’t want to jeopardize it over something so petty. I’m no CEO, but if I took offense over one of my workers leaving to be at the birth of his own child, I’d at least have one of my henchmen speak to him on “his own” behalf, instead of me coming off as the bad guy and affecting moral.
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You’re making the assumption that the technological processes that he’ll be responsible for funding will be used to benefit you, specifically. They don’t need to be kept under his bed forever. They can be used against you.
Maybe he thinks he’ll benefit humanity as a whole when he outsources material industry into space, because 1) microgravity environments are great for certain forms of industry 2) power and materials are easily available in space in ways that are trivial after you get out of Earth’s gravity well, 3) space is literally international space outside of any single government’s jurisdiction and 4) there’s nothing to pollute.
Sure, it’ll make him rich. He’ll definitely get the benefits of all of that wonderful tech. Will it trickle down to you? Does the trickle-down model even work?
Let me put it in another context. Since the War on Terror, we’ve had an explosion on anti-personnel weaponry, drone technology, personal and infantry armor, methods of counter-insurgency and SIGINT surveillance. I mean, the growth on this market is fucking insane, all right? It’s not worth literally billions, if not trillions. So much so, that quite a lot of it is now trickling down to American law-enforcement agencies for use during periods of unrest.
See all that tech? That tech wasn’t kept under someone’s bed. It was used, beta-tested, and verified by experts. It’s been refined. And it’s coming home. Is it to benefit you?
And a comment on the nature of this entire discussion. Sure, we’re idiots arguing on the Internet. But you know what? Who’s the bigger idiot here, me, the idiot who’s raising a lot of ruckus over what you consider “nothing”, something that will be forgotten over some Great Man’s Contributions to Mankind, or the gibbering fanboy who keeps responding to me?
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You seem to be assuming that Musk and Shaddack are distinctly different people. The actual, empirical differences between people are basically negligible, so I think it is practical to assume that everybody are essentially the same person.
…so we live in Neon Genesis Evangelion?
Anyhoo, doesn’t matter who it was, if I got that memo my answer would be, “my commitment is to my child. Here is my resignation letter. We will work together again one day, but not tomorrow.”
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Pretty much. Essentially, if true, Musk did the thing that Dan Ariely once wrote about with regards to social norms — that he laid bare the underlying market norm mechanics under the social norms.
He literally said, “Your participation in your family < My enterprise”. Which may, arguably, be true! But that’s not how employment works. There is, despite the wet dreams of market libertarians, you are still working with people, not economic units.
I hear Musk and his transhumanist friends are looking for ways around that, but until the day he and his friends can legally toss us into CHON disassemblers to be remade into more optimized configurations of matter for maximum value, one suggests that he keeps his mouth shut and tries to get buy-in from people who matter.
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You can grow protein crystals way larger up there than in the gravity well. Which is kind of important for determination of structure. And there are way more benefits of microgravity, for both research and production.
Platinum, iridium, name it - if space tech makes the price of these highly useful metals crash through the floor, more power to the rockets! What’s bad on the vision of a world where every garage lab can afford a platinum crucible or three?
Which is good. At least their bickering and fucking lawyers won’t slow things down.
Which is even better.
In money, it doesn’t work. In technology, it does. Just look at all the things that were originally designed for military. Look around the room and you will find a dozen or more examples of WW2 tech, invented or developed back there for war purposes. I myself am toying with a thought of a nickel-based ultrasonic transducer for sonochemistry or cleaning applications, derived from a Japanese Type 3 sonar.
Everything is dual-use. Every sword is a wannabe plowshare and every plowshare is a sword in disguise. The same material for a flexible body armor that can stop a bullet can save you in a motorbike crash. And then there are the decommissioned devices to be bought for pennies on a dollar later, like my pulsed laser.
Yes. Don’t know in all cases how yet but yes. These things cut both ways, as a rule.
Some question. Some do. I admit strong preference for those who do.
Oh, true DAT. And if true I am not even positing musk is wrong. But my commitments are to eventually be a farmer and musical instrument maker again. And while not glamorous, and won’t take us into the next age, that is my trajectory.
And to be blunt in the history books I’d rather be remembered as kind than revolutionary. And that is my choice.
(Sincerely, nice comment)
Actually, yes. Not with wealth, obviously, but technology does in fact trickle down. Less than 50 years ago, a computer cost $4.6million. Today, people who can’t afford a pair of new socks are likely to have one. In 1989, a handheld GPS was $3,000. Today, you can get one for $40.
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Yeah but I don’t care about you when it comes to my life.
Besides you could easily say the same thing about Stalin or Mao.
Spin me the scenario where this out of context excerpt looks good in context. I can’t think of one.
-
It’s 1942: You are helping Enrico Fermi construct an atomic reactor.
German forces have just taken a large swath of France and are talking
about crossing the Atlantic, while Russia is starting to look
sideways at Japan. -
It’s 1962, and you’re a switchboard operator for the White House.
Photos have just shown missile bases being constructed in Cuba. -
It’s a Tuesday morning in 2001. You’re a Brooklyn firefighter/EMT who
has just seen a second plane has hit the WTC. -
It’s 2015, and the ecosystem is on the verge of collapse. You are
part of a team rushing to develop the technology to save humanity
when Earth is no longer able to support life.
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Psychopaths rule.
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That has to do with how Musk’s email is out of context?
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I realize that I didn’t get you a baby gift on time, or any acknowledgement of this important event in your life. I am sorry, I can’t believe you are letting me off the hook so easily. That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We’re changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don’t. I failed to commit to my goal of being a decent person and you need to keep up the pressure on me here…
That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We’re changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don’t. 
Kidding. You are the best,
your pal,
Elon.
P.S. Let your wife know we loved the cookies, look forward to seeing you once you’re back from paternity leave, we want you here, of course, but realize that you have to put your family first. On your death bed do you want your loving family there giving support, or to be a lonely forgotten burned out shell of a man, cast off once your utility to the company was gone?
Best I could do. It’s very hard.
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“It’s always a strange surprise to find that highly-driven billionaires are so mean to their staff!”
I assume this is sarcasm, because it’s quite the opposite – the billionaires who aren’t complete jerks are the surprising anomalies. Their behaviors (and the between-the-lines attitudes in their books and talks) reveal that most see their staffs as a slave race of inferiors, a necessary evil because they haven’t been able to clone their mighty selves to do every job right.
Sorry, I had better things to do than to read your argument.
