Perhaps some of what makes him capable of making these mistakes is also part of why he has multiple revolutionary companies.

Being unconstrained by reality? You might actually be onto something there; I know a few people who are similarly unconstrained and they end up bringing just the right mix of crazy and sweat together to make something novel. It also has a serious downside in this particular case, however.

Not wanting to make this political, but one could say the same about the current US president. Based on his social media output it seemed he was downright batshit insane when he got elected (some might say even still, although he seems to have calmed down a bit). He seems to be achieving things though and we didn't end up with WW3 as a lot of people predicted.

Perhaps the world needs these crazy people occasionally to come in and stir up the pot?

(Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the guy and not being from the US my opinion doesn't really matter, but thought I'd give me $0.02 so to speak)

"Achieving things"? What things?

I guess there's a difference between "head of a large public company" and "founder of a large public company".

His track record at the latter speaks for itself. But the fact that someone who founded a company isn't necessarily the best person to run it long term is uncomfortable. Especially on a website like this one, with so many aspiring founders.

Why is that uncomfortable? I don't think anybody takes issue with the idea that some engineers are great at being engineers but not great at being managers, and so it's important to have a career track for senior engineers to continue doing the engineering work that they're great at instead of forcing them into a role that's not fulfilling.

That idea shouldn't be more uncomfortable just because the engineer is a founder. It should be reasonable for a founding engineer to let somebody else come in and do the boring management work that a CEO has to perform while the engineer continues doing the work that got them to where they are.

Except, you know, he didn't found Tesla.

Wikipedia lists him as a co-founder, but even ignoring that you still have zip2, x.com, space x, the Boring Company, Neuralink, OpenAI...

People keep saying this, and it makes very little sense. The Tesla that he "didn't found" was a boutique outfit formed to modify another company's obscure sports car to make it run on batteries. That company no longer exists in any sense beyond the name on the business license. The Tesla that exists now is indisputably there because of Musk's ambition, willpower, and engineering instincts, for better or worse.

I'm actually confused.

By "another company's obscure sports car" I assume you're referring to the Lotus Elise - arguably one of the world's better known and more successful sports cars.

I'm British so I also take offense to this (how very dare you!) but I'm assuming this was written from a US-centric point of view. The Elise and Exige may have been fairly common this side of the pond but I get the impression they're very rare outside of the UK.

No more rare than any other sports car. I’ve seen more on the streets here in the middle of the country than I have seen of nissan gtrs.

Lotus's best sales year in the US was 2007, with about 3,000 sold across all models including the Elise. That year, the Corvette alone sold 33000 units.

Not in the US, it isn't.

In any case, the point still stands.

Just taking a shot in the dark here. Perhaps, just perhaps, he had more information to base his decisions on than is available to you from a 'Tweet' and a couple of lines in a media article.

Musk-ites will be saying the same thing even if he's eventually ousted from Tesla and banned from running another public company --- an outcome that is now explicitly on the table thanks to how he managed Tesla over the past 3 months.

This kind of thinking makes sense (Musk is smart, he must make decisions rationally) but it is sort of empirically denied. If Musk was so smart he wouldn't have called a random guy a pedo or violated securities law in public. After all, he has more information/advice available to him on securities law than you or I do.

Don't you find something off that you need to reference things that have yet to be resolved to find instances of him acting unjustifiably irrational? Neither statement he made has yet been shown to not be a statement of fact. If he was simply making up things in either case then he will pay, quite literally. If he wasn't then instead this will end up just being yet another 'sky is falling' moment that people will quickly forget before moving onto the next one.

I find that the easiest explanation is the God complex that has brought down many men before Musk and will bring down many more after him.