And he still would've been worth over 250 billion easily.
Instead he chose to buy the president and start "optimising" the government with AI.
Could he, though?
I mean, he might have the cash, but if you look at his history you don't see that much interest or respect for basic academic principles, or even any basic academic achievement whatsoever.
He conveys an image of someone who is mentally trapped in prepubescence, and who repeatedly does things that a prepubescent kid does to try to gather admiration. I meant who desperately tries to pass themselves off as elite gamers? How long will it take until he moves on to DJing? That's not someone who has any interest in founding education institutions.
The man does have an army of terminally online sycophants, which I now wonder whether they are astroturfed.
That statement is pointless. The critical factor is not money, it's willingness. You do not even need to be the world's richest man to put together a school. There are pro athletes with a fraction of the wealth that already do meaningful investments in education.
You should verify your claims
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/musk-physics-degree/
From the article:
> Musk's past statements about his educational background, however, have been, at best, imprecise. He has claimed on several occasions to have received a physics degree in 1995 — a claim that was never fully true but which may have aided Musk's early business career.
> The University of Pennsylvania considers Musk to be a graduate of both the economics department and the physics department.
And right above that, from the University of Pennsylvania:
> Elon Musk earned a B.A. in physics and a B.S. in economics (concentrations: finance and entrepreneurial management) from the University of Pennsylvania. The degrees were awarded on May 19, 1997.
The best thing he could do for Tesla would be to step aside.
> I called this Tesla stock crash months ago
TSLA is currently up 5% MoM despite really, really horrible earnings and outlook. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent sometimes.
>Rating: True
>Musk has on previous occasions claimed he received this degree in 1995, but the University of Pennsylvania says it was awarded in 1997.
What was the point of your comment?
I think people care more about their own convenience. There’s nothing else in our market that’s even comparable. People talk a lot of shit and it wasn’t great to start but FSD is on a different level now, especially on newer cars like the new Model Y. Having a car that mostly drives itself is the best purchase I’ve ever made.
It doesn’t seem to be slowing down sales in Seattle. New Model Ys are everywhere here.
It is definitely slowing demand. You can see it in the Q1 numbers and the discounts on vehicles.
You can ask anyone who buys used EVs in Seattle. There is a glut of Tesla sellers and not many buyers.
Like it or not, your car says a lot about you. People bought Teslas because they liked what they said and now they are avoiding them because they don’t like it.
67% of Americans would not consider buying a Tesla, new poll says - https://electrek.co/2025/03/28/most-americans-would-not-cons... - March 28th, 2025
Tesla sales fall by 49% in Europe even as the electric vehicle market grows - https://apnews.com/article/tesla-sales-recall-trump-byd-b6f5... - March 25, 2025
Tesla is done in Germany: 94% say they won’t buy a Tesla car - https://electrek.co/2025/03/14/tesla-is-done-in-germany-94-s... - March 14th, 2025
Australian Tesla sales plummet as owners rush to distance themselves from Elon Musk -https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/06/australia... - March 6th, 2025
(own several Teslas, won't buy another)
He's an ambitious person. And AI enables a degree of surveillance state that we find it difficult to even begin to imagine. All the logistical difficulties of something like Orwell's 1984, of the Stasi having 1/3 of Berlin on the books as informants against the other 2/3, go away completely. We have more cameras than ever. Every person gets to enjoy the kind of focus that went into tracking down Luigi. DOGE has exfiltrated all our sensitive databases to servers that they control; Every 'Chinese Wall' intended to ensure some kind of separation of concerns has been broken down, almost certainly including various formally classified intelligence-gathering campaigns. You can't necessarily stuff that genie back in the bottle. If somebody wanted to be... not president, but authoritarian leader of a post-democracy, Musk would be well positioned technologically.
It wouldn't be inconceivable to set up an AI to do all the same sort of fraud & identity theft attacks against an individual that for-profit blackhats do, or that a Kiwifarms harassment campaign can do, without much of any actual staffing. Only DOGE starts out with your social security number, your tax records, your drivers' license, license plate reader records, web history, everything. That individual could be a Wall Street Journal editor who wrote something Musk dislikes, or ten thousand Redditors who are making fun of Teslas.
of course, that was his very explicit goal. Thiel backed Curtis Yarvin, who came up for the plan for this and called it RAGE. google it, it's all written down. they hoped to put in Bezos or Zuckerberg and have a more efficiently-run dictatorship replacing our democracy. because they didn't understand politics, they got the ketamine addict instead, who renamed RAGE to DOGE so he could also use it to power a crypto pump-and-dump.
*edit: and because it was never a realistic plan. because they didn't understand politics
ok, you can get that with a Hyundai though.
higher-quality, too, yet the Tesla costs more.
Even the ADL released a statement saying that it was obviously not a Nazi salute. People are actually delusional. Extremely childish and idiotic.
No, you did not. You saw a collection of Democrat politicians whose arms at one point were sticking out in the same position that arms stick out at the end of a Nazi salute. This happens all the time. I do it 3 days a week when making breakfast.
What Musk did was start with his arm down, rapidly raise it to his heart, and then forcefully thrust it out to the position usually shows in photographs of Hitler doing the salute. There are videos of Hitler doing that full hand to heart and then thrust gesture that almost exactly match Musk's gesture from start to finish.
When you track down the videos that the purported Democrat examples are taken from you will see that none of them did that. They were doing things like pointing, or waving to a crowd, or gesticulating while they talked, and in the midst of that their arms ended up in that position.
This is what it looks like when you are waving to crowd or gesturing and your arm goes out without it being identical to a Nazi salute: https://x.com/ExposingNV/status/1881647306724049116?t=CGKtg0...
This is what it looks like when what you are doing is exactly like a Nazi salute: https://x.com/BartoSitek/status/1882081868423860315?t=8F0hL-...
If you think these are exactly the same, seek optometrist help.
Is your argument really so paper thin that you can't even attempt to defend it? You need to go straight to asserting that those who disagree are delusional? Makes me wonder if you even believe what you're saying or you're just taking comfort in repeating it, like an old yarn.
Funny you should ask but now's not the time to get into it.
Your comment breaches the guidelines.
Particularly this line:
> Get a grip on reality. Elon didn't cause any issues in EU policitcs.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Why wasn't it flagged? Thanks for confirming the bias and double standard selective enforcement on HN.
Be snarky against liberal views? Flagged for braking rules. Be snarky against unpopular views? Allowed and often upvoted.
As for bias: I've spent much of the past week and several hours today responding to allegations of bias in the opposite direction. I say to you what I've said to the others: we're not interested in ideology; we're interested in keeping HN a good place for curious conversations.
The term mentally deranged I used was at those committing acts of vandalism and terrorism against innocent people's private property, not against someone in the comments here. This is clear to anyone who can read at 8th grade level.
Am I wrong that such vandals are not mentally 100? Am I breaking HN rules with this assessment?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43476769
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43475596
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447800
These are just a sample from the past few weeks but there are plenty more that cross the line and have been correctly flagged by the community for breaking the guidelines.
Some particular guidelines for you to pay attention to are:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
But all the guidelines are important to follow and they apply equally to everyone, no matter their ideological position.
We need you take care to follow them in future if you want to keep commenting on Hacker News.