It always surprises me how anti Elon Musk BoingBoing comment threads are. If anyone can name a single person on the planet who has done more to hasten the demise of the internal combustion engine car, I’d love to hear it. He’s at least in the top 10, which you’d think would count for more.
And of course this particular odd Elon project is a full-on Silicon Valley cliche.
No human being is perfect. We are all a jumble of good and bad things. I’m certainly happy that Elon had the money to hire to best people to create electric cars and reusable space craft. The folks he employs deserve all their accolades. His teams have done some remarkable things in the last decade, and although stuff like the Hyperloop appear to be nothing but giant wastes of cash, at least he’s thinking outside the box technology wise. That’s a good thing for humanity.
Elon himself is a narcissistic, arrogant, worker abusing, pandemic ignoring, insulting jack ass, willing to crash his own stock because he got shit to say. He’s very much the model of the modern tech bro moron, libertarian from bone to blood, and his ideas of governance, employment, housing, and other necessary social concepts is a shit show. The views here tend to reflect that more, because we focus more on total outcomes for the good of humanity than cool science shit (much as we also love that).
But yeah, thanks for pushing the electric cars, Elon.
thanks for pushing the electric cars
You make it sound like he’s a mere salesman. I’m sure he’s not the sole prime mover at Tesla, but he’s certainly one of them. I find it hard to understand how environmentally conscious people can possibly not be massively thankful to him for that. Even if he’s made his share of mistakes.
never mind the voting system… you will be able to see all the voters…
Ftfy,
I give Elon his due regarding electric cars, though in all honesty all he did was provide the capital to get them going. He did not invent them, his designs are not that different than what came before, he merely made sure to hire the right people and invest in it, which is all they ever needed to grow in popularity (that, and making them a “status symbol”, which is an effective method of creating demand).
But I find it hard to understand how people can only see ONE measure of a person and not all the other shit they bring to the table. I find this take no different than those who laud Christopher Columbus for his voyages of discovery while ignoring his utter destruction of the indigenous populations of the new world. Or those who scream America is perfect and great and ignore all the horrible, shitty, destructive things we’ve done to the world and our own people. Or lionize Ford for his improvements to the industrial line and worker pay while ignoring his racism and antisemitism, the propaganda he promoted that become fodder for the Nazis and their atrocities.
I criticize where criticism is due. And Elon’s libertarian views are anathema to me, no matter what his company has done for the world. It’s no different than how I view the Rockefellers, the Gettys, and all the other rich people who grew their wealth on the backs of their employees, their attacks against fair pay for fair work, the destruction of the world, but built museums and schools in their names to “give back” to the people. Your good deeds are noted; so are your shitty ones.
Frankly, I do not engage in idolizing people other than Fred Rogers, because he’s the only one beyond reproach as far as I’ve found.
EDIT: one final note - I consider this worshiping of “singular genius” as no better than celebrity worship. I find it gross and sickening, the more so because its often others who did the work that led to their success and they rarely get any credit.
China, probably, they already consider most of Earth historically part of China, so why shouldn’t Mars be included - I believe they’ve recently made a claim to the Moon…
No, not at all. I suspect he’d get an equal proportion of women and men. All I mean is that pretending there’s a deity on your side seems to be a golden ticket to irrationality. Manipulation of faith is gender neutral.
Nobody disputes electric cars are great and Tesla did a lot to advance them. Neither does that give a pass for Musk to be a giant asshole. Virtually every time he opens his mouth he says something stupid, arrogant, self-absorbed, or all three. Look at how he reacted to the trapped miners in Chile, for example.
Also don’t make the mistake assuming if Musk hadn’t done it, nobody else would have. That’s the Great White Man Myth of history. Electric cars are coming of age and the world is full of visionaries. Technologies like that are inevitable and thousands of people have been working to get them to this point, Tesla just happened to break through first. We can have great leaders who aren’t douchebags, but everyone just accepts that as though it’s normal.
I drive an electric car (a Chevy Bolt) and I recognize that Chevy probably wouldn’t have built it if Tesla engineers hadn’t pressed the issue with a competitive car and if Musk hadn’t decided to use his PayPal money to hire those engineers. That’s great, but he needs to shut up. It’s okay to thank him for his contributions while also asking him to please stuff his stupid pie hole and be a better human being.
Capitalism will not save the environment or humanity.
This point doesn’t get made often enough in threads like this. It’s all moot really, because Musk will have been dead for hundreds years before there is a human being living on Mars. Laypeople way way way underestimate the magnitude of this problem. Look at how many people died trying to colonize the Americas from Europe- and that was easy. There were already people living here and it still took hundreds of years and countless deaths to do what people are imagining doing. Mars is ten orders of magnitude harder than that.
That’s exactly what he is.
And his merchandise is - Elon Musk.
I mean, he basically is a salesman.
It could be much sooner though before we have a human or humans dying on Mars so the Elon can get a paragraph in the history books.
Maybe. But he’s also an asshole. I see no contradiction here.
So what I am hearing is:
Space Thunderdome may be a viable option?
https://www.netflix.com/title/80144355
It was a good series.
Yes! I watched it with my pop while I was recovering from a series of surgeries and he stayed with me. Thoroughly enjoyed it, as did he!
Also love the Expanse series and the political interplay between the Mars Republic and the UN of Earth (and the colony on Luna, the Outer Planets, the 'Belters, etc).
Okay, thanks for clarifying.
I will say that there are plenty of people who follow him blindly already. He doesn’t need to make it a religious thing, when he already has fanbois who will stan for him no matter what… I’m guessing that includes women, too.
Cult of personality is a strong force and it doesn’t need a religious angle to work. It’s working now. 
I don’t. I’m guessing that we first need something on the moon and that’s decades away at best… It’s also going to take a more global approach, but that seems to be impossible right now.
It will be a short paragraph about what an asshole he was and how bad his labor practices were… also that he called people pedophiles when they were not…
