I don't think being rich is his end goal. His goal is to do great things, to advance humanity (in very specific ways), maybe having a great legacy. Being rich helps him achieve these goals, but so does building hype and being present in the media. Being rich and unknown isn't a great strategy to achieve his goals.
> Being rich helps him achieve these goals, but so does building hype and being present in the media.
Does it? I know literally nothing about the personality of the Wright brothers. Or Henry Ford. Or Thomas Edison. Their legacy is their inventions. Hype and media coverage are temporary at best. And unfortunately, Musk's hype and media presence tends to show him at his worst. I'm not sure whether Musk fans realize how many non-fans actually despise the guy. If anything, he's wrecking his legacy. Shut up and build stuff.
Alternative take, things like the space program; while there are some prominent names in there like Wernher von Braun and Louis Armstrong, the endeavour which changed human history was an endeavour by many people, not just a few individuals with Personalities. Same with other current endeavours like nuclear fusion and the LHC; I can't name any individual person behind those projects. They are a lot more selfless.
Meanwhile, there's great engineers working at both Tesla and SpaceX, but the only person you know is Elon.
I mean, Thomas Edison may as well be a 200 year old Elon Musk. Practically all he did was be a hype man.
Ford was pretty similar from my reading.
Both men had early career success and worked harder than most at achieving their goals. But their ongoing successes were very much political and public perception. Ford especially was incredibly politically active and noisy about it.
I imagine Elon's legacy (should he be remembered) will not be his twitter shitposting, but electric cars and rocketry.
> But their ongoing successes were very much political and public perception. Ford especially was incredibly politically active and noisy about it.
Nobody remembers Ford's political activism. Apparently he ran for US Senate once and lost. Is there any reason to think that Ford's political activism had anything to do with the success of the Ford Motor Company?
Ford hyping cars is fine and expected. Ford hyping politics doesn't really seem to add anything. In fact, it appears that there were some antisemitic writings associated with Ford, there was a lawsuit and a consumer boycott, and he was forced to apologize.
A common fallacy is to assume that everything a successful person does in life contributes to their success. OJ Simpson was one of the greatest football running backs ever, and he was also a murderer. You might say, "if he wasn't a violent person, then he wouldn't have been a great running back", but somehow Barry Sanders managed not to murder anyone.
Edison and Ford had the small detail that the product they sold became widespread among the population very quickly.
They represented the last effort after standing on the shoulders of giants, basically being the person who got to sign off the quality of life improvement and reap the financial reward. It happens, could have been somebody else but in the end it was them.
mr.Musk has been at the helm of Tesla for 20 years and his product is nor widespread (only 1% of total number of global vehicles sold in FY21) nor revolutionary from a quality of life standpoint (at the end of the day it's a car and you can hardly tell the difference between Tesla EVs and MercedesEQS, iBMW, Toyota EVs etc....if anything the Quality Of life gap is towards the other automakers)
That's like saying a 1930 Ford Model A is not that different from a 1930 Cadillac. That doesn't mean that Ford didn't change the automobile industry in a historic way before 1930.
Yes. Tesla changed the way people feel about Tesla.
Importantly, some of those people were in positions of influence at other auto manufacturers. So Tesla didn't have to capture 95% marketshare to change the industry.
I think that the blinding glamour of a Tesla has faded quite a bit. I think, 20 years on, we expect to see strong competition to them. The lane assist, the adaptive cruise control, the touch screen console... these are a bit boring now. Others have had them for a long time. Some probably had them before Tesla. Hopefully, several competitors will start offering 500 km range EVs. Tesla can still cult that advantage.
But the cult of Tesla scared established players. Everyone has scrambled to adapt since. And the public has been persuaded to keep the pressure on. Tesla represents an historic shift. I don't have to like them or buy them. But I recognize their place in history.
I have not enough karma to make the point above and not risking ending up underwater.
But the hell with it...I can always delete it.
I think people are taking crazy pills, they religiously follow this guy and his delusions about becoming a multiplanetary specie before the Sun becomes a red giant....5 billions years from now.
As they have such thoughts they have to walk through human feces and scenes from the Walking Dead...only with the homeless instead of zombies.
Stuff that would scare them to death if they saw it in a movie or compel them to pity if they happened in the background of a live news reportage from Ukraine.
Instead it's happening under their nose as they wonder if Mars is ambitious enough or we should aim directly for the Andromeda Galaxy.
I can't buy this. He very clearly seems to relish public attention for its own sake. Otherwise we'd have to accept that his hyping of random crypto tokens (e.g. DOGE) is somehow indirectly connected to saving the world or advancing humanity.
but he was the only black person I've ever met who hated Barack Obama. He was an extreme Republican, thought Democrats all worked for the anti-Christ, etc.
I figured there was no way he'd succeed at what he was trying to do because he'd need to make nice with the government no matter who the administration was. I haven't heard from him again.
I see Musk going down the same road. I can only imagine the last man is dying on Earth 1000 years from now and cursing: "If only Elon Musk didn't have to post that tweet we would have made it to Mars."
There’s absolutely no reason to believe he’s on the right track
No science says “yes rockets and spreading through the stars is definitely the future for humans.”
The odds he’s just exacerbating damaging industrial feedback loops and a worse mess for the future are much higher than successful Mars colonies and extrasolar expansion coming from his efforts
