Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

It always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd.

"Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!"

"Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!"

"Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?"

And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have thought that the technologists were above such petty envy. We're here to improve humanity's lot, aren't we?

To be fair though, Tesla cars are an expensive luxury brand and have no real revolutionary potential at the moment. The revolution is to make affordable electric cars and the infrastructure to build them, and there are serious doubts about how much Tesla can scale to that. It's similar to electric bicycles, in that there are some masterfully engineered, high tech ones out there...at the cost of a decent used motorcycle, and trying to scale it ends up being clunky, heavy, and still more expensive than the bike you put it on.

When he actually improves humanity's lot instead of producing boutique goods for rich people, then maybe we'll see more praise.