All of this, and yet the rockets land on the ground, the cars sell and drive themselves, and the world is fighting for Starlink terminals as soon as there is some event going on. I wish more would manage to consistently fail upwards in such a way.
SpaceX makes money in four ways[0], billion dollar contracts with NASA for rocket design and manufacture, cargo and supply services for NASA, contracts with the US Department of Defense, and the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Most of its income is taxpayer money. And StarLink, though we might wonder if StarLink would be around without the taxpayer, and what SpaceX valuation would be if it was just Starlink.
Fidelity estimates X (Twitter) is worth 80% less than when Musk bought it[1].
The Boring Company has raised ~$795M of investment valuing it at $5.6Bn and in 7 years it has delivered a 2.4 mile tunnel under Las Vegas which cost $48M and $4.5M/year. It was going to use self driving Teslas but actually they pay drivers to drive the cars, to move 1-3 people at ~40 miles per hour, and The Boring Company subsidises it by another couple of million per year. This money could have bought a lot of buses which would move more people more cheaply. Bus Rapid Transit, but worse.
Almost as if he didn’t actually cause that to happen. I can imagine a world where thousands of competent professionals, working in areas they were already passionate about did the work. They did it by working according to their training, not according to “first principles.”
Their jobs and approaches were protected by middle/upper management constructing stories for Musk about how it was revolutionary, and all he heard was agreement.
I wrote three paragraphs with 8 links showing multiple lies, manipulation, differences between how Musk presents himself and what he says he supports (Randian superman), vs. what actually happened (taxpayer funding) and they post a one-line dismissive "who cares, he's rich, the ends justify the means".
That's not a good comment, especially in the light of dang's callout at the top of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42992992 "don't post low-information / high-indignation comments that could just as easily appear in any related thread. Such generic comments make discussion less interesting and more activating.".
I can also now add to my list: and now an offshoot of X, xAI, released the most impressive thinking model people have seen in some time.
The issue is that one can write as many paragraphs as they want, if the goal of those paragraphs is to obscure some basic truths then they will gain:
- laudation from sycophants;
- mere rejection from "basic facts enjoyers".
Your dismissal of Musk's accomplishments and companies for political reasons is also a dismissal of all the people who have trusted him with their time and effort to build all those wonders. What they've accomplished is great, and it obviously would not have happened without him.
