Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

There are rational, non-envy-based reasons to object to all the hero-worship. For example, all the things "he" did above were actually done by big teams of people working together, but Elon gets all the credit. He deserves credit, but not all of it.

And let's not forget the millions of people who worked to generate wealth that could be transferred via, and taxed by, PayPal, accruing the fortune with which to start all these projects in the first place. If I didn't "know better" I'd be tempted to conclude that the luck of being in the right place at the right time with a good idea, is the main difference between Elon and the rest, or at least that any intrinsic differences are not as great as you might think. Heck I'm a "visionary" too, just add one billion dollars and tons of free time and see what I come up with! (Campaign coming soon to Kickstarter, LOL)

Man is at once animal and rational, and sometimes the rational side reacts against our own animalistic urge to designate an alpha ape and worship only that one ape. Many of us got into technology as a way of breaking down this same kind of bullshit hierarchy that you can find in so many other places & domains of human life. Technology was supposed to be the great equalizer. In some cases it has worked that way but in others it has only amplified the disequilibrium. It seems we can't escape our inner ape.

Therefore is it "technologists" to whom you should be appealing here for greater reverence? Maybe it's not your technological side, but your ape side, that wants to be more reverent.

> Heck I'm a "visionary" too, just add one billion dollars and tons of free time and see what I come up with!

Thread winner. There is little difference between a billionaire and anyone else except a billion dollars.

He didn't "do" those things, but he did put practically all his money where his mouth was to make them happen, with extremely uncertain payoff.

He could have invested his money, maybe funded some low-cost web startups, but instead he did what he thought was needed, financial risk being secondary. I think that's what makes him stand out.

But that's the nature of network effects. Jaron Lanier's spoken eloquently about that, and Elon Musk exemplifies it. Whether he likes it or not, he is the figurehead and the focal point. Because he's willing to be that, it builds on itself. Because he's in a valuation-driven growth-only economy on which his businesses depend, it's in his interest to serve as this focal point, and because 'visionary' is an appealing story, the feedback loop gets set up and whirls into motion.

I think he is so much of a nerd that it doesn't change him all that much. I like him better for that, but it's true he doesn't deserve the amount of credit he's given, simply because that's unrealistic.

But, if he CEASES to be 'that guy' and 'the visionary sole leader and innovator', it's less of an appealing story, and his businesses would suffer. He is surfing on a wave of attention which sustains the valuations of his companies, and using the valuation to invest in gigantic projects that may do a lot of good. Surf on, say I.

I agree, it's brilliant, and a great counter to the idea of how the "entrepreneur hero" is intrinsically better than the rest of us.

And when Jobs died, we needed a new icon to worship and show us the Future. Musk was in the right place at the right time.

According to your logic, Elon's been "in the right place at the right time" how many times? That you think that's due to luck, when it's clear he's a polymath with great design talent and work ethic, says more about him as a psychological Rorschach than anything else, I think.

He does trigger conservative-minded people pretty hard, which I imagine is partly due to how Tesla got politicized during Obama's first term.

I don't know how serious you are about the billion dollars thing (or what exactly your point may be), but I'd bet a billion dollars you wouldn't be anywhere as effective as Elon is with that money. The idea that any two people are going to be equivalently effective given $X is silly. There are just as many orders of difference in effectiveness with money as there are in any other endeavor.

Many billionaire doesn't give a damn about humanity or earth in general. In fact this precise trait had made them billionaire in the first place.

"...and taxed by, PayPal..."

PayPal (really X.com) was founded based on: "17% of the world's economy is lost to the financial industry. Wtf, they are just numbers in a database, can't we do better?"

I dunno what the percent is now, or whether PayPal decreased it significantly (or increased it even), but the difference is Elon's ability to look at problems, reduce them to fundamentals, decide if they can be improved upon or not, then working toward moving reality in that direction.

So, if the 'PayPal tax' is unacceptable to you, the "visionary" thing to do would be, figure out what the root causes of that tax are, figure out why they are unnecessary and how much correcting them will move the needle. Any significant progress in this area would be worth well more than a billion dollars, and you'd have no problem raising that capital. Make it happen!

Of course, but I don't see a problem with celebrating what Elon is doing. I think your comment would be more relevant for the libertarian argument that CEOs need to be paid bucketloads of money, or the idea that rich people deserve all their riches because they did it all by themselves. I don't really think Elon is a guy that thinks he built everything himself. I have more an issue with conservative politicians who will not acknowledge that great organizations and businesses are team efforts and that all member of society should be appreciated, not just those on the top.

Elon like many great leaders before him is accomplish great things because he recognizes talent and allow talented people to do what they are good at. Too many talented people are held down by their leaders.

Of course if Elon was placed in Somalia he would have accomplished nothing. The talents and infrastructure he needs to do great things would not have been there. It is American society which has given him the opportunities he has exploited.