I don't know if he still takes that approach. In fact, I kind of doubt he ever really did, but he certainly projected that image publicly, and most importantly to workers of those companies - whether he "really believed" it I guess is a moot point.
When you take the "businesses exist to return a profit to shareholders" approach you're always going to focus on leadership that has a track record of doing that, even if that excludes building a good product or for that matter even the long-term viability of the business. Thus, you see these CEO hires that don't seem to make sense - most of us unconsciously still think of businesses as things created to make a thing or do a specific thing, because that's a natural thing to believe.
Anyway I think you can attribute some of the success of both to this, as well as Musk's public image at least ca 2008-2018 or so.
Communication and agreement are what add cost and misdirection to development. When a tiny set of people with one clear goal pull the strings, it is much more efficient to reach the north star product.
Even this, you need to put asterisks on "created" because he spends so much time building out lies about the companies he runs/ran because the creation myth is so important. The amount of unforced errors behind his tenure at Paypal, a lot of it around trying to be taken as the guy who "made Paypal"... it's just very silly!
And I think ultimately in a place like HN, where there are supposedly a lot of "builder" types, when you hear every Musk company say "yeah the way we stay productive is to keep Musk out of things...." everyone's natural bias against bullshitters kick in!
I think it's hard to discount Tesla really pushing forward EVs. I think it's extremely easy to discount all of his other stuff if you're cynical (yes I include SpaceX in there, though it's easy for me because I think manned spaceflight, let alone "going to Mars", is extremely silly). But this stuff isn't really fungible...
[1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...
For a person who does and says so much, the need to egregiously pad a "top ten" list of "lies" like that is, IMHO, a compelling case for the inverse.
When Musk said “we can do this right now” he meant it’s possible with today’s technology, and that Tesla had probably run experiments to that effect already.
The hypothetical ability for a vehicle to act as a robotaxi would absolutely lift the value of the asset. That’s not even controversial. It’s a separate question whether the technology is ready to go in time for people to take advantage of it.
He made some good choices with Tesla. And some boneheaded ones. And SpaceX is a great example of success, because he made a really great decision there -- he hired Gwynne Shotwell. Then there's Twitter. Which is less about overt lies and more about gross incompetence. I think being a billionaire might have gone to his head and made him think he could only be successful.
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/tesla-cybertruck-beast-vs...
My zero-evidence guess is that the Cybertruck team predicted the outcome in simulation, hyped everyone up about this as a visual demonstration, then spent tens of millions of dollars replicating the outcome in the real world, buying two Porsche 911s, renting a film crew etc. Except they couldn't replicate it in the real world. So instead of admitting the wasted money/time, they covered their asses and misled their boss.
There are many possible explanations for the discrepancy. The failure might have been in predicting the performance of that base model 911. Maybe the data they used was someone who was very slightly less urgent on the manual transmission.
The failure might have been a failure to predict the performance of their own product when it was still in the late stages of tuning. A last minute change to tyre compounds or stability control algorithms could have made enough of a difference in this very very close race.
It could be argued that in a fair comparison between cars, the stopwatch should begin when the driver slams the pedal, not when the car itself starts moving. The latter is how races are timed, but I'd argue that the former is more honest. Including the split-second delay of the ICE engine might make enough of a difference.
“___ is a pedo” ?
Like, the guy has done good shit (better than most), but he has certainly set his reputation on fire with many of his (at best “inaccurate”) tweets. At that point you gotta caveat praise lol.
Never heard that from people at Tesla or SpaceX.
This happens for many online debates where extreme positions are common.
What an understatement. He’s one of the most impactful humans in the world and one of the greatest entrepreneurs America can claim as our own (despite him not being born here). I find it beyond unfortunate that so many in this community constantly feel the need to belittle Elon or downplay his accomplishments simply because they don’t like the guy, his politics, etc.
That man need a therapist.
The public hatred he has gotten is his making, ultimately.
His dark side is out in the open for everyone to see. What you are saying is the people prefer someone who is apparently appears not have a dark side. IMO such people are just adept at camouflaging their dark side, politicians do it routinely.
>That man need a therapist.
Well, IMO it's mostly the public that needs therapists.
Quote: It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
>The public hatred he has gotten is his making, ultimately.
Agreed.
When this person owns one of the largest communication platforms on Earth and regularly spreads conspiracy theories, disinformation, and transphobia... yes, I would prefer they hide that. That rhetoric does real harm to people.
Accusing someone of being a pedophile without evidence isn't something you just say "Well at least he's speaking his mind!" to.
The richest man on Earth should be able to afford a therapist, or at least a PR firm. If his ego is preventing him from doing so, well, that's a fair thing to criticize.
Good thing Elon owns it and not you. One person’s conspiracy theory is another person’s unpopular assessment that later turns out to be correct. I want to hear it all whether you want to or not. There’s a pretty long list of things that are now considered facts but were once fringe conspiracy theories. An easy and recent one is the COVID-19 lab leak theory [0][1a][1b][2] (I could easily post links for hours of all of the “dangerous conservatives” who were called every derogatory name in the book for what turns out was the correct assessment).
And terms like “misinformation” and “disinformation” have completely lost their meaning after watching how they’ve been used as a tool to censor views those applying the labels don’t like…
[0]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
[1a]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto...
[1b]: https://cis.mit.edu/news-media/news/2020/tom-cotton-keeps-re...
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-...
The only thing that does exist is racism
What you are saying indirectly are that common people are idiots to believe those 'conspiracy theories' ? or am I misinterpreting you?
>Accusing someone of being a pedophile without evidence isn't something you just say "Well at least he's speaking his mind!" to.
No I did not quite mean that. No excuses for him to call someone names. But if you know people ( or along lines of what I understand of people), actions speak louder than words. The most evil people manage to hide their evilness though glib talk.
I think people have a hard time separating out the good work someone has done vs the bad. We humans are imperfect, but ironically have the tendency to put a binary label on people as good or bad without leaving much room for gray area.
Ex. Shockley got a Nobel prize for his foundational work on transistors and semiconductors - inarguably one of the most important 20th century inventions, but he was also an extremely vocal racist and eugenicist. Was Shockley a brilliant scientist or a vociferous racist? He can be both while acknowledging the good contributions to society he made.
I find this is often the case of many historical figures that made their mark on humanity. Is Elon Musk a brilliant entrepreneur or a micromanaging arrogant narcissist who carries some deeply rooted insecurities? (Among other "flaws" such as being an absentee father) Why not both? Perhaps the dark side has enabled their success to some degree? Who knows.
Its hard to do anything important without a carrying a little bit of controversy in life.
A soldier dying to save his friends - nobody can give more than their life and nothing can compensate a person for losing it. That's an example of 'admirable' to me...or a doctor working for Medecins sans Frontiers.
He was vocal about scientific evidence and what conclusions he drew from that evidence. I wouldn't draw the same conclusions but the evidence was quite clear (and is now clearer still).
You're well versed in all the possible hurdles he'd run in to in all of Asia, are you? If you are, you're more impressive than Elon Musk I think.
(Surely the most dangerous social media platforms are the ones used to influence kids/teens? Twitter and Facebook are for the oldies at this point)
To me, there has been no significant change, aside from hearing more people on the left bemoan that Elon is giving "dangerous" people on the right a platform.
But I honestly don't see an actual difference aside from people saying there is one.
Perhaps it was the weird hyperbole about democracy his comment was targeting?
Yeah, but everyone who does use Twitter will see it. The place is going down in flames - no matter what you write, you'll get likes from a "<firstname><bunchofnumbers>" bots, and replies such as "P U S S Y I N B I O" in a matter of seconds.
Allow the right to have opinions and speak their minds just like the left does? No! They’re dangerous, so we should silence them. Okay, so let’s just silence half of the American population. That’ll do it. Democracy.
Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, so let’s do the most pro-democracy thing by using the law and the justice system to persecute him, even though he’s leading in the polls as Biden’s opponent. You know, the same type of behavior we usually lecture other nations about (e.g., Russia), because we consider them undemocratic. Totally the pro-democracy move right there.
The most fascinating one for me was Colorado’s attempt at disenfranchising their Republican constituents in order to “save democracy” [0]. Truly incredible and democratic stuff.
The worst part is, the irony of it all completely escapes them.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1230453714/supreme-court-trum...
That's who Elon unbanned.
Now if you've bought into the lie that Elon is a free speech absolutist, which he absolutely is not, you might consider that a good thing. Now take a look at a partial list of Twitter accounts Elon has banned [2]. This includes many journalists and a guy posting where his private plane is (from public information), many of whom were banned for simply hurting his feelings or calling out one of his lies.
[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgwa7z/twitter-elon-musk-dom...
[2]: https://observer.com/2022/12/elon-musk-suspend-twitter-accou...
Heavy moderation is a technique that makes dang’s job easier by perpetuating rigorous standards and makes people police themselves. See Broken Window Theory.
Nonsense. Buying X is probably one of the best things Elon did for the world and democracy worldwide.
Before Elon, X was a bubble that only one political viewpoint was allowed to thrive on (the exact opposite of what a democracy should enable and empower). I avoided most of the social media platforms prior to Elon buying X and that was one of my reasons why. Even though I have my own beliefs and biases like everyone else, I hate the idea of only one narrative being shoved down my throat. I want to hear all sides, in good faith and in their own voices. I’m willing to listen to Fox News as often as I listen to MSNBC, and then I make up my own mind. X under the previous regime didn’t allow that. The left-wing voices were given a platform while they worked behind the scenes to figure out ways to silence right-wing voices (the Twitter Files exposed this quite well).
During the pandemic, they blacklisted Stanford doctor Jay Bhattacharya [0], because he was out of line re the establishment/leftist narrative, even though the doctor’s posts weren’t politically motivated at all (as it turns out, most of his views that were silenced are slowly being proven right).
When I go on X now, I can expect to see posts from every corner of politics, business, etc. I don’t need some random and unelected folks choosing for me what I’m allowed to see. No thank you.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-twitter-blacklisting-of-jay...
Aren't these examples far right and center-right? Or have I fallen off the other end of the spectrum?
I am well aware that that is not what I looks like to people from the US.
Clearly, the context is within the U.S. Why use a straw man to respond to my question? I wouldn’t enter a topic about Canadians to talk about Brazilians. Very bizarre.
(I’m very well aware that American politics is quite different from the rest of the world. E.g., a neoliberal like Hillary Clinton is considered a leftist in America, which wouldn’t fly in most of the rest of the world.)
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
For the record, if, for whatever reason, you just don’t want me here, as much as I love this community, I’m happy to leave, because I’d rather do that than have my views silenced because they’re unpopular or be targeted like this for responding in kind to others who openly share their own views.
You're not being targeted personally and we don't take ideological sides nor care what your (or anyone else's) views are. If other people are breaking the site guidelines too, and their posts don't look moderated, it doesn't follow that moderators have deemed it ok. That's a gigantic non sequitur. Far more likely is that we just didn't see it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
> The thread got more ideological as more folks commented.
In my experience, the feeling "other people just started behaving badly for reasons that had nothing to do with my post" is generally not very reliable. It does happen sometimes of course. But it's more likely that you (I don't mean you personally—I mean any of us in this position) are underestimating the degree of provocation in what you posted.
Funnily enough I was just writing about this in a different context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601722.
It's hard to learn to recognize one's own part in the way things are and set ego aside, but it's one of those essential growth milestones that makes everything better.
I’ve reread my initial comment [0] probably a couple dozen times (at least) trying to see why it’d be considered a flamewar comment and I just don’t see it. What am I missing? Is it me calling the text I quoted an understatement? Or is it the last part where I object to the consistent negative rhetoric re Elon I see on HN? I have a feeling it might be the latter, since it specifically calls out the community. Do you mind clarifying so I can understand?
> You're not being targeted personally and we don't take ideological sides nor care what your (or anyone else's) views are. If other people are breaking the site guidelines too, and their posts don't look moderated, it doesn't follow that moderators have deemed it ok.
You’re generally pretty fair from what I’ve seen (and also from communicating with you via email), so I believe you and I appreciate that. Thank you for making that clear though.
> […] it's more likely that you (I don't mean you personally—I mean any of us in this position) are underestimating the degree of provocation in what you posted.
Fair enough—I’ll keep that in mind moving forward.
"I find it beyond unfortunate that so many in this community constantly feel the need to belittle Elon or downplay his accomplishments simply because they don’t like the guy, his politics, etc."
When I read a sentence like this it breaks down something like the following:
I find it beyond unfortunate - pejorative rhetoric
so many in this community - "me vs. the mob" is a provocation trope (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)
constantly feel the need - this is a putdown as well as an assumption about the inner state of the other
to belittle Elon or downplay his accomplishments - more or less fine, except that "belittle" and "downplay" are pejoratives so it adds to the provocation
simply because they don’t like the guy - another putdown and imputation of inner state to the other
his politics, etc. - ups the ante at the end
I know I'm exaggerating quite a bit! I'm sure these interpretations are not what you intended. But this is exactly the sort of exaggeration that takes place in the reader's mind, so if the reader happens to be one of the people who you are criticizing, there's no doubt that all these signals will pack quite a punch, even if it wasn't a punch you intended to land.
It's hard to remember in these discussions that other people have thoughts and feelings and perspectives and fall back on assuming they're just being irrational, or trying to obfuscate their true motives.
This is why I'm a fan of this particular guideline:
>> "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Maybe my interlocutor is a sniveling suck-up to power driven entirely by fantasies of becoming the next boot on my neck, but we sure aren't going to go anywhere in a discussion if I launch off with that assumption. Especially if I'm wrong.
I like it so much that I even wrote a mini essay about it a little while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40602266.
I am European and they look very left of center to me.
To enable liars is absolutely evil and you cannot avoid making decisions about who is lying without risking being wrong and evil yourself.
The guy is a huge asshole. He gets away with being blatantly libellous by accusing someone of being a pedophile because they didn't think his idea was realistic. Which is all feasible when you're the richest guy in the world with good lawyers. Some people need to experience what it's like to be punched in the face.
Where are they?
EM (as far as i know) didn't crash and burn other EV startups or rocket companies.
Who are you talking about? I'm talking about the guy who declared "cis" is a slur and promised to ban people for saying it on his private free speech platform.
Cybertruck. That's the real Elon. A child's fridge drawing of a fantasy car whose build quality seethes with barely hidden contempt for his adoring stans.
Mars? From the man who gave the world a car that can't handle rain?
* Please note that I’ve driven a Tesla in rain just fine, but I’ll pretend the critique is legit and in good faith for the sake of the argument.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Values are important. A business that is successful that embraces values which differ from those many people hold is going to be seen as "bad."
It's not unfortunate that people belittle Elon. They don't belittle his business acumen. They belittle the values that he holds dear.
There are many other successful people whose values don't align with society's values. It's OK to critique that.
It's sad that Elon's waves of fans come to his side, even after the incredibly offensive "pedo diver" episode. He is not the "man of the people" he'd like you to believe. It surprises me that hackers think Big Tech CEOs are on their side
Upon reflection this is also a problem with me, but I don't own SpaceX or Tesla, so fewer people are going to call me out on it.
[0] I will accept that choosing a side is fine if it aligns with your goals, but Elon's most ambitious goal appears to be going to Mars, and voicing his opinions about politics on Xwixxer appears to be hampering his efforts to achieve that goal
You know why people really do it? It has nothing to do with Elon Musk, but rather is a response to our own fears for our own social standing. We fear that if we say something good about a person that our social group has, in defiance of your complex human point, decided is "a bad guy" that we'll just as cavalierly be excluded or derided from that group.
So when you acknowledge that complexity or something good that this "good for nothing" person has done, you have to start off with with virtual signaling: "oh this guy is terrible, but... ", (meaning "please see that I'm still one of you").
I find the whole act kinda craven, perhaps even moreso than a social group that demands it.
Boring Company was always bad so I guess that doesn't count.
Twitter is doing fine.
Then Musk came in with several million dollars and got it created in any real sense of the word.
As for Twitter, what's your evidence that it isn't doing well? I use it regularly, and it works fine.
... and since then called a rescue diver a pedo, got into quite the mess regarding his partnerships and offspring [1], burned dozens of billions of dollars in Twitter, seems to be doing the public customer service for a bunch of literal neo-Nazis on Twitter [2], and is apparently on a truckload of drugs on the regular [3].
It takes years to build up trust, but it's very easy to completely erode it in a few weeks.
> Why do people always have to preface Elon praise with some initial criticism.
Because otherwise, people might accuse one of being a Musk shill, and there's unfortunately quite a bunch of these, completely ignoring any of the countless issues with Musk.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Relationships_and_ch...
[2] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/12/19/c...
[3] https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-e826a9e...
He does remarkably well for someone on a truckload of drugs on the regular. Perhaps other CEOs should copy that? ;)
He also has a section of people that are cult-like in their defense of him which adds fuel to the fire. “You’re jealous” or “you’re just angry he’s rich” or some other such nonsense seems to come out of the woodwork for anyone who has anything even slightly negative to say about him.
He says what he thinks. Unlike most public figures who filter everything through their PR person.
Tesla lists Elon Musk as a founder but he didn't found it. He was an early investor who essentially took over the company. Tesla only exists through government largesse, specifically carbon tax credits. Also, it arguably only survived thanks to a 2009 Department of Energy loan (for $465 million). If you look at the history here, this loan is under a cloud.
This is particularly funny given Elon's self-made propaganda.
SpaceX succeeded (IMHO) in spite of Elon not because of him. I've read (admittedly unverified) accounts where someone in SpaceX's leadership essentially built a wall around Elon to insulate the rest of the company from him. SpaceX engineers themselves are a byproduct of NASA to a large degree. Also, SpaceX could not have succeeded without government loans, grants and contracts. Even today, it's completely reliant on the government purse.
Both Tesla and SpaceX have made huge promises and under-delivered on them or delivered late. People forget how delayed the Falcon timeline was. It just didn't matter because there was no competition: the ULA, for example, is a jobs program with no interest in competing on price or features.
And self-driving Telsas, anyone? Anyone?
Attributing the success of Tesla to a government loan they paid back early is also joke and insulting to all the hard work of the employees and other investors.
This assumes no subsidies for oil and gas (plenty, including depreciation below cost basis!)
In terms of credits - those are in the 2%-3% range of revenue.
In terms of SpaceX being the most dependent on the govt - totally false. Things like SLS are cost plus, have cost $20 billion with almost nothing to show for it. SpaceX is so available, cheap and reliable they are literally launching ESA payloads (ESA won't even mention them its so embarrassing), most commercial payloads that can actually go to bid and competitors payloads (looking at you Amazon).
For both National Security and other missions SpaceX is FAR cheaper. I'm not sure if that still counts as government "largesse" - which is more about a generous gift or contract. To keep more than one provider in mix the government has been doing some largesse to try to get some money to other providers.
Taking a car which was essentially at concept car stage to mass production levels and becoming the most valued car company in the world, more so than all other car companies in the world combined is a ridiculous accomplishment in itself.
"IMHO based on unverified anecdotes I've read on internets" please keep those to yourself. Many verified people that worked at SpaceX vouch for his knowledge/leadership being crucial to SpaceX's success.
As for the loan, Fisker got an even bigger one and went bankrupt[1]. Ford take a much bigger one (justified by their size) and in 2020 still didn't manage to pay it back[2]. What is wrong with the loan Tesla took, kept it alive, and it paid back early with interest?
USA likes to tout free markets and lobby against protectionism, but aside from the UK as a first mover nobody ever industrialized without protectionism and directed industrial policy, and I would argue it is impossible or at very least inefficient.
I agree SpaceX could not have succeeded w/o the government contracts, but that is true to any space launch company. All SpaceX contracts were acquired as the lowest bidder, often offering dramatically lower prices and higher value than anyone. Just look at the Commercial Crew where Boeing got $4.49B, SpaceX got $2.6B and did a better job.
Elon time is a known phenomenon. "At SpaceX we specialize at converting the impossible to late". And delays are a common thing in the aerospace industry. Can you name a rocket in recent times that was developed faster, or even just less delayed than Falcon 1? Or than Falcon 9? I bet you find much easier to name those who were more.
Musk succeeded in two industries that were certified money pits. You have a big graveyard both before and after 2002 of bankrupt companies in both fields.
It's ludicrous to believe SpaceX succeeded despite Musk when all other "new space" companies started before or around the same time, with the same NASA/Military complex boosted engineers and contracts available to them, failed, and when Musk has been so involved in SpaceX. Instead of unverified accounts, what about hearing about the organizational structure of early Spacex from a senior NASA scientist that worked with them[3] (the whole series of videos with him is very interesting), or many other similar accounts [4]?
[1]https://publicintegrity.org/politics/two-doe-electric-car-lo...
[2]https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-...
[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06X2TZUKZU&t=197s
[4]https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
Any proper understanding of the term "self driving", including the way Musk advertises it, is 'tell car through the UI where you want it to go, sit back and it reliably gets you there with zero further input, better than the average human driver'.
Please post a video of it doing this for any route on real roads, with no driver input. Seriously. I'd love to see it, because I never have.
I've seen Tesla videos with few required driver interventions. But not none. And from the accidents I've read about, I sure as shirt would not give it a destination and recline reading a book. Especially on left-turns and near emergency vehicles, turning trucks, or construction barriers.
So, what is your definition of self-driving, and what performance can you show? And in what road conditions?
You still have provided ANY example of the topic of the discussion — a car that is actually self-driving, as in can get from one location to another on public roads with zero intervention by a human.
Telling us about another less capable car with driver-assist tech advances the conversation how?
Well it doesn't. Mercedes will gladly sell you their much less capable self driving.
Sure I agree, it'd be great if self driving meant absolutely zero interventions. The market is elsewhere though.
It does NOT tell me that either have achieved anything near the stated standard: "for practical purposes it is self-driving."
I don't think anyone promotes (or any reasonable person understands) L2 as self driving. SAE defines L2 assist [0] as "You ARE driving... you must constantly supervise and support these features ... lane centering and adaptive cruise control at the same time".
"Self driving" implies to me and everyone I know as "the car drives itself". As in I can safely sleep in the back seat as if another human were driving, or I could ask the car to come or go to a destination, as I could ask another human to drive my car to/from a destination.
Can you provide an example of ANY car doing this yet?
- None of the markets he participates in could ever truly be free markets no matter what due to their very high (and necessarily high) capital requirements. It's not like other tech companies which use government money to monopolize markets that have low entry barriers and end up messing with millions of little guys who think they're operating in a free market... Then it takes a decade for them to learn that they actually had 0 chance of ever competing in that market due to asymmetries in margins caused by gov subsidies.
- He consistently gave the government value for money. If his companies weren't there, the government would have spent the same amount of money (or more) and obtained worse results.
He invested in a 6 month startup that consisted of an office and desk. Tesla had no money, no plan, and a borrowed electric kit car. Musk was the early investor.
From a practical point of view, Musk was indeed the founder.
In spite of all your criticism, neither Tesla nor SpaceX would exist without Musk, and Musk has greatly pushed forward the technology of both, creating two new major industries.
This is in opposition to the usual "the only point of a business is to make money" ethos that so permeates neoliberal capitalism that we hardly even notice it anymore. The latter is dysfunctional, inhuman, and ultimately bad for business.
Call it cynicism, but decision calculus from upstairs always work in that direction (i.e. gotta hit arbitrary financial goals for this quarter because that's how bonuses and comp gets dictated) so I think in that mindset so I don't setup myself for disappointment or surprise if a decision that doesn't appeal to that shorted-sighted thinking doesn't gain traction.
Thanks for putting it words that I could not normally articulate. On HN, I find people are quick to label capitalism=only for profit,hence bad for people and the supposed opposite i.e socialism=good for people. The lack of nuance among cranial challenged is annoying, without realizing that the later embodies the quintessential the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions.
Capitalism is about the accumulation of capital goods into private hands and centralization and socialization of production. To my mind, that's what it does and what drives it forward - most everything else is secondary. That's not quite the same as "only for profit" but it's close. People under capitalism don't all think of it that way, but unfortunately the humans aren't in charge. The logic of capitalism, is.
What you are saying is that if people are told that meaning of life = make money, then they will do so, with little or no compassion for their fellow humans? ( it's not a rhetorical question, so please answer)
But all I was getting at with my comment is that we can't even be said to be ruled by capitalists, I don't think. Our government acts at the behest of capital not capitalists, and our society is shaped by that as well. All our institutions are bent toward it. It may seem like a trivial distinction but it means that people - even capitalists - who for whatever reason act against the interests of capital accumulation, will find their influence wane and eventually wink out of existence. They'll be pushed out. As such we're ruled by capital i.e. "the humans aren't in charge."
My original understanding socialism = mostly control by government. ( which is a perverted version of 'let's co-operate as a society', and since that does not quite work it's need a central authority to force co-operation). Nearly all business end up be controlled by the state.
Capitalism = Govt. should not involve itself in ordinary and other activities such as enterprises, businesses of citizen, except when there is direct harm, like stealing, murder etc. Or so this was the original definition.
Note: I realize that neither is perfect, and that there can be nuances and different definitions. What's yours?
Note that the centralization and socialization of production is regarded as a good thing here. You get greater economies of scale and thus greater productive capacity when this happens. This is why Marxists view capitalism as a progressive historical development - we just don't fixate on it as though it's the pinnacle of human productive relations or the "final step" or something like that.
The main problem with capitalism comes when you have a great degree of centralization and control at which point the profit motive inherent in capitalism tends to produce a ton of rent-seeking behavior which drags the economy down and makes further progress difficult or impossible. I would argue that in most industries we reached this point decades ago, or even a century ago in some cases. Tech is a notable exception, though we're reaching the point there as well.
This is the point at which reformists will say "well you just need to break up monopolies" but it's like I said: social, cultural, and government institutions tend to bend toward the economic paradigm more than the other way around. The economic base tends to influence the societal superstructure more than the other way around. This is mostly because, day-to-day, people are more focused on their material needs than they are on ideology and culture. So, our government is much more reluctant than it should be to break up monopolies, our media is dominated by capital interests (to control public opinion in favor of capital interests) and so on. Idealists will insist we're "not doing capitalism right" or something but that argument is not persuasive if the long-term result of doing capitalism "right" is that you eventually stop doing it "right" as government and culture bends toward capital interests - which seems inevitable.
And, anyway, remember that the centralization of productive capacity and control is a good thing. It is more efficient, at least until the rent-seeking behavior starts to assert itself and drags the economy down. So breaking up monopolies is kind of a regressive course of action. It would be nice if we could have highly-developed productive forces with a great degree of specialization and centralization, etc., but without the rent-seeking behavior. In order for that to happen you need to keep the accumulation of capital but get rid of the profit motive - or at least remove it as the primary driver of economic activity. Marxists identify the working class as the only class that has the correct incentives to make this happen: capitalists won't do it because they won't benefit from it personally and in fact stand to lose out personally if it happens.
And then, from there you have 150+ years of history of trying to figure out the best way to do that, usually in the face of violent reprisals from capital interests. A history filled with success and failure and lessons learned. A history I'm not going to get into here because I've already typed a massive wall of text and need to get back to work - I'll just say that IMO China has done a lot of good work in this regard but they still have a long way to go.
To the extent I have read about the term capitalism, one area is almost completely ignored - private land ownership as 'birth' right. ( a subject in its own right)
It's a larger discussion though - both so called capitalism and socialism as normally characterized misses many fundamentals of human life, but has huge appeal for the simplistic minded economists, philosophers and masses alike. When you get the fundamentals wrong, sooner or later things turn sour. And my firm belief is that one cannot get the fundamentals right with an IQ of 100 except for tiny groups of people, say less than 150.
Do you think blue origin is focused on making money? They haven’t done anything that would indicate that.
SpaceX on the other hand focused on landing rockets completely to make money. There is no other reason to do it and it’s why NASA never focused on it.
Starlink is entirely to make money to feed the mars mission long term.
You might say that his visions aren’t focused on money, but the execution is ruthlessly so. It’s why both companies are famous for squeezing their suppliers so hard and inhousing when they can.
It's the exact same reason as it is now for air travel...profits. It doesn't matter the size of the ship. If you can squeeze the space to increase the number of occupants per flight on the same ship, you increase revenue. That's all corporate bean counters will care about. I would not be surprised if they hire a similar team that airlines have now that get paid to specifically redesign seats to squeeze more in per flight.
His companies where all founded based on his own engineering idea about how an important (existing) product/service could be fundamentally !at least an order of magnitude! better in multiple areas by designing it with a different approach or even different goal (going to space as a country vs commercially building a precense on mars for example).
His vision about the future, substantiated by (simple) physics calculations + drive to actually do it make him outright unique in the world right now.
There would be no SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, etc without Elon Musk. Period. I don't get why people must insist on what a terrible personality he has (often based on gossip and outright lies).
Starlink was a fantastic way to ensure long term high profitability, and is set to bring them $6.6bn this year alone. For some context the Falcon 9 development costs were estimated by Nasa to be around $300 million, and Starship's development is estimated to going to have cost anywhere from $5-$10 billion by the time its fully operational.
Starlink's profitability is what's going to make it possible for some monumentally huge projects once Starship is in full swing.
In terms of Elons involvement in SpaceX it does seem to be a bit more than just a money making venture for him.
The comment starts out with "long term high profitability", then offers "bring them 6.6B", and the central proposition of the comment is extremely high Starlink profits allows for free moonshots.
6.6B is a recent revenue projection, not profit.[1]
Their finance people say it's unprofitable, still. (off the record) [2]
Rooting for them and it will be profitable IMHO, but I've never heard any reporting it's profitable.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1co60j0/starl...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-10/is-elon-m...
Note: I don't have a point, I'm just relying content!
Note #2: *your
This popular meme is all a gross exaggeration.
Your comment wouldn't be so bad if you had taken out the obvious provocations ("awful personality traits" etc.), but in any case it flew too close to the planet Musk and the whole thread got sucked in. We don't want to die that way.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40589501.)
Alas, my efforts were in vain.
Ultimately there's no way to win with these.
I don't know if either of those are actually true, there are plenty of good CEOs who came from zero experience in the industry. And plenty of bad CEOs who came from plenty of experience in the industry. Both of these run successful and not successful companies.
For example the currently Boeing CEO does not have experience in airplanes, came from a business background. And is considered a bad CEO by the average person (though considered a good CEO by stockholders, or at least was before the past few months).
the only assumption i see is the counter to that - a bad CEO equals an unsuccessful company. and i don't think that's a very controversial assumption.
Seems to imply there is an issue with a CEO of a space company previously working on Kindles.
> Bezos had the former Honeywell CEO in charge of Blue Origin, which to me was such an odd choice
Also seems to imply the CEO is bad because their previously only worked at Honeywell on thermostats.
In my mind none of the above has anything to do with how good or bad a CEO is. Perhaps I am misreading it. In which case ignore me.
Long term value, employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction are all intertwined. New management is more likely than not to harm at least one of those 3 .
I also reject the financialization of modern companies where we put accountants in charge who aren't subject-matter experts whose only playbook is to cut costs and jack up prices.
It's exactly what's wrong with Boeing today.
Obligatory Steve Jobs quotes on "idea people" [1] and Xerox [2].
Musk is an enormous risk taker.
"Elon Musk" by Ashlee Vance, pg 210
I refuse to think any sufficiently clever billionaire doesn’t have $1-10M in gold buried in a couple geographically distributed places. I know several people with NW of <$50M who have stashed 2-4% of their assets away in this fashion.
World wars happen, governments collapse, favor shifts, etc. Why wouldn’t you have a backup plan when it’s just pennies?
I refuse to believe that he was ever at risk of having less than 5-10M in pocket money left over after everything implodes.
I'm likely missing something here, but to me this minimises the problem to just a reduction in the number of properties you can move into (assuming some are lost and some of the others sold).
10-20kg of gold coins buried at gps coordinates in the deep desert has no such limitations.
I think a lot of ultrawealthy who have experience playing the geopolitical game probably must have some hedges like this. Doesn’t Thiel have NZ citizenship without any explicit intention of residing there?
It’s not like value stored like this loses its utility even if the state doesn’t collapse/confiscate your assets/persecute you.
I can’t imagine circumstances where one would end up being a billionaire then ever being a not-millionaire unless you’re thick as a brick.
Ok :-)
Maybe you don't remember this, but Elon wasn't a Billionaire with his exit from Paypal. He made his bones with Tesla/SpaceX (honestly, mostly Tesla, but we'll see how SpaceX turns out, it could be bigger in the end).
> In August 2013, Carmack indicated that following the crash of the STIG-B rocket earlier that year, he had wound down the company operations and had put the company in "hibernation mode."
> In 2015, the assets of Armadillo Aerospace were sold to EXOS Aerospace Systems & Technologies, Inc.The BE-4 was launched earlier this year. I wouldn’t assume that late means never.
There's a phrase "failure to launch" that would imply the opposite sentiment
You can't fail if you don't try, but you can't succeed either.
So, the full stack of SLS costs $4.1B. But that includes the cost of Orion which is ~$1.3B when you include the European Service Module, and it includes the cost of 1 year's worth of ground support equipment including upkeep for various buildings like the VAB, etc.
The marginal cost of a cargo SLS (should one ever launch, which is looking increasingly unlikely) is a bit over $2B. Which is still a horrifically high price.
For people who don't know much about SLS, one way to put its cost into context is, every time the full stack with Orion launches, that's about 1/6th of NASA's yearly budget. And that doesn't count any development cost which is several tens of Billions.
You can of course get higher if you add development cost as well. But that depends on how many launches there are.
From the OIG report[1]:
> We project the cost to fly a single SLS/Orion system through at least Artemis IV to be $4.1 billion per launch at a cadence of approximately one mission per year.47 Building and launching one Orion capsule costs approximately $1 billion, with an additional $300 million for the Service Module supplied by the ESA through a barter agreement in exchange for ESA’s responsibility for ISS common system operating costs, transportation costs to the ISS, and other ISS supporting services. In addition, we estimate the single-use SLS will cost $2.2 billion to produce, including two rocket stages, two solid rocket boosters, four RS-25 engines, and two stage adapters. Ground systems located at Kennedy where the launches will take place—the Vehicle Assembly Building, Crawler-Transporter, Mobile Launcher 1, Launch Pad, and Launch Control Center—are estimated to cost $568 million per year due to the large support structure that must be maintained. The $4.1 billion total cost represents production of the rocket and the operations needed to launch the SLS/Orion system including materials, labor, facilities, and overhead, but does not include any money spent either on prior development of the system or for next-generation technologies such as the SLS’s Exploration Upper Stage, Orion’s docking system, or Mobile Launcher 2.
> And we don't really yet know the cost of the EUS.
We have an idea of an initial cost estimate from this[2].
NASA agreed to buy 2 core stages and 2 EUSes for $3.2B. Since RS-25s are around $100M each and the SRBs are around $200M each, this pushes the cost of the rocket up to $2.4B, maybe a bit more.
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1. https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IG-22-003.pd...
2. https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/nasa-commits-to-future-...
Yeah but you see, they will miss that 'one mission per year' thing by quite a large margin. And it will be more expensive because of that alone.
There are other traps in these numbers. OIG numbers are far better then NASA but I bet in 20-30 years when somebody does the total cost it will be higher.
> prior development of the system or for next-generation technologies such as the SLS’s Exploration Upper Stage, Orion’s docking system, or Mobile Launcher 2.
And I don't think just excluding all 'prior development' as if it was irrelevant makes much sense. Development cost should be considered as part of a program.
So, that's fair. But it's also complicated. Part of that number (for EGS) is for the upkeep of buildings like the VAB. Which is fair - SLS is the only real user, so they get charged for it.
But it's also kind of not fair, since NASA's going to keep it around, even if SLS wasn't a thing. As evidenced by NASA doing just that in the interim period between Constellation and SLS.
> And I don't think just excluding all 'prior development' as if it was irrelevant makes much sense. Development cost should be considered as part of a program.
I completely agree with you in general.
But I think that it's easier to tally the development costs separately.
And it's important to know how much it costs to just build and launch the rocket. A number which NASA (outside of OIG) has been extremely reluctant to release to the public. As far as I know, NASA leadership has never made specific claims about how much SLS costs, just that the OIG numbers are wrong and/or misleading.
Once the program ends, we'll have a better idea of how to amortize the develop costs over the total number of launches.
Investing in commercial approaches as the step 1 doesn't seem to work in multi-billion R&D endeavors.
So yes, it's not fair, but turns out to be better for the country down the road.
"Jostle" you mean competition? That's the idea, right.
So -- awesome.
During peace time, the predominant motive is to maximize profit by dragging out the work.
As for Blue Origin and New Glenn, this is an object lesson that simply throwing money at the problem doesn't necessarily solve it. Did you know Blue Origin was founded ~18 months before SpaceX?
For the longest time (up until ~9 months ago), Bezos had the former Honeywell CEO in charge of Blue Origin, which to me was such an odd choice. You see, this guy seems to embody everything wrong with corporate America: he was completely focused on not failing rather than succeeding. So there were constant delays with New Glenn and the BE-4 engine, which is years behind schedule. You can't fail if you don't launch.
And the new CEO (David Limp) used to be in charge of Kindles.