Elon Musk is terrible

GinAg (39)

GinAg (39)

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This is probably his mainstream breakthrough moment, but I love what he does generally. For me he's the anti-Trump/ Brexit (I have no idea of his politics) of the modern world - in terms of being progressive instead of regressive. The world needs a crazy millionaire inventor. This is amazing:

 
I do like Musk's ability to make geeky innovation so interesting. He is a bit culty but anyone who can fund sub city tunnels by selling caps is to be fair a bit of a genius.
 
I love everything he does and I hope everything comes true.

He's legit planning on colonising Mars.

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He seems to have the receipts too. His tube train I really want to happen, but it seems the least likely.
 
Elon Musk, and I've loved him for years, appears to want to make the world a better place. He could also just be a supervillian lulling us into a false sense of security. He says that he does things because he doesn't want to think about the future of our world and feel sad. It isn't just cars and space either, he's doing a hell of a lot to promote renewable energy and making sure people have electricity. It isn't the actual renewable energy that's the problem but that nobody's managed to invent a suitable storage system yet https://www.theguardian.com/austral...on-teslas-100mw-battery-history-in-the-making

Sure it's all good PR and he gets slated a lot for it but at least he's willing to do things and try things that may lose his companies money in the short-term and it doesn't all seeem to be about the shareholders. Can you imagine the impact on our electricity bills if he was running the companies instead of greedy shareholders trying to wring every penny out?
 
I think people who spend energy hating on Elon Musk are misguided and/or stupid. As Floppet said this is somebody who wants to do good things and actually has the means to attempt them. GOOD!
 
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One of my favourite Elon Musk moments was when he released the patents for his electric cars and superchargers in the hope that every manufacturer would be able to use a standardised EV component and charging system for their vehicles and effectively any vehicle would be able to charge at any charger rather than having to search for one for your particular make of car. This would hopefully make more manufacturers produce wholly-electric vehicles and make more people less averse to buying electric vehicles.

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you?redirect=no
 
Space exploration is good but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of it becoming privatised, especially by someone with a record of union-busting and being a cunt to his employees. There are also a hell of a lot of public subsidies involved in these grand projects, nothing which couldn't go to NASA.

Again, public transport should certainly be improved but the solution isn't building personal hyper-speed travel pods so you don't have to see any poors. It's the same with his involvement in Puerto Rico, using this modern-day obsession with private "innovation" to sneak into public assets by the backdoor and line his pockets.

At the end of the day, a Mars colony sounds cool on first glance but when it's run by a libertarian egomaniac then I'm not sure it would be a very nice place to live.
 
A lot of people ragging on him on Twitter this morning and I don't really get why - as has already been pointed out, he has the resources to do these things, they are of genuine value and yet people are worried about "corporate colonisation". It seems to me to be a prime example of social media culture, to rush to the worst possible "take" as quickly as possible for the clicks and the retweets. I think he is certainly a tiny bit unhinged but so what? Why does that have to be the preserve of "art"?
 
Mugatu said:
Space exploration is good but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of it becoming privatised, especially by someone with a record of union-busting and being a cunt to his employees. There are also a hell of a lot of public subsidies involved in these grand projects, nothing which couldn't go to NASA.

Again, public transport should certainly be improved but the solution isn't building personal hyper-speed travel pods so you don't have to see any poors. It's the same with his involvement in Puerto Rico, using this modern-day obsession with private "innovation" to sneak into public assets by the backdoor and line his pockets.

At the end of the day, a Mars colony sounds cool on first glance but when its run by a libertarian egomaniac then I'm not sure it would be a very nice place to live.
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Nah
 
Mugatu said:
Space exploration is good but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of it becoming privatised, especially by someone with a record of union-busting and being a cunt to his employees. There are also a hell of a lot of public subsidies involved in these grand projects, nothing which couldn't go to NASA.

Again, public transport should certainly be improved but the solution isn't building personal hyper-speed travel pods so you don't have to see any poors. It's the same with his involvement in Puerto Rico, using this modern-day obsession with private "innovation" to sneak into public assets by the backdoor and line his pockets.

At the end of the day, a Mars colony sounds cool on first glance but when its run by a libertarian egomaniac then I'm not sure it would be a very nice place to live. FALGSC all day.
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Well, that's an interesting piece of cross-posting. I see a few people with a pic of Carl Sagan holding his "no adverts in space" banner and I get why people see the cold creep of capitalism making its way into the dark beyond. But it still feels like taking a piece of blue sky thinking and turning the sky black. Who knows where this will go?
 
Commercialisation will bring the cost down. If air travel had been kept private then yeah, we'd still be eating carved jamon and quaffing champaign on flights but we'd be look at it costing £1000 for a trip to MAGA with the lads lads lads.

There is a fine line but I don't think its being crossed, I'm pretty sure the idea of flying a tesla into space came from people on twitter?
 
big ron said:
I'm pretty sure the idea of flying a tesla into space came from people on twitter?
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Well, that doesn't make it good. Twitter is a fucking bin fire.
But it does show a level of adventurous eccentricity which absolutely applies and I'm into THAT.
 
There's so much left to explore up there and turning it into a private-driven industry with its corporate secrecy and publicity stunts moves the priorities far from where I think it should be right now.

The whole appeal of space is that it's untouched and open. Commercialisation will always put profits first, particularly when its being led by a predatory venture capitalist. That's how we'll end up with Planet Musk.

It feels especially hypocritical given the $5bn or so he's had from the public to make his various projects possible.
 
Mugatu said:
The whole appeal of space is that it's untouched and open.
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I think that's why it holds such an appeal for so many people; the planet has clearly gone to fuck and there may be something better and more pure out there.
 
Mugatu said:
Space exploration is good but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of it becoming privatised, especially by someone with a record of union-busting and being a cunt to his employees. There are also a hell of a lot of public subsidies involved in these grand projects, nothing which couldn't go to NASA.
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One of the reasons the private companies had to take up this "privatisation of space" was because the US Government decided that it wasn't cost-effective to use NASA's current assets to ferry things up and down. Hence the decommisioning of their perfectly good space shuttles which were ideal for the job and, more importantly, reusable. NASA are currently working on their "Space Launch System" but the estimated cost of using this when it's eventually ready will be at least $1 billion per launch. Falcon Heavy, which is of comparable payload capabilities, is estimated to cost $90 million per basic launch. So why would any company use NASA? They shot themselves in the foot but that's Governments for you. NASA are already making a shitload of money from the private companies because they own all of the launch sites so the private companies have to pay to use them and they also issue the FAA licenses for launches.

It should be noted that a private company will try to keep costs to a minimum and safety to a maximum because it's them and their shareholders who'll lose out if they don't make a profit. When the money is coming from the Goverment everybody feels entitled to just wank it away and the costs spiral down a big hole of wastage.
 
octophone said:
I think that's why it holds such an appeal for so many people; the planet has clearly gone to fuck and there may be something better and more pure out there.
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Definitely. To me at least, Earth slowly turning into a fiery hellpit has been sped up by the worst excesses of consumerism and private profit. Letting these billionaires get their hands on it first will just lead us to repeat the same mistakes, only with someone else controlling the oxygen.
 
Floppet said:
One of the reasons the private companies had to take up this "privatisation of space" was because the US Government decided that it wasn't cost-effective to use NASA's current assets to ferry things up and down. Hence the decommisioning of their perfectly good space shuttles which were ideal for the job and, more importantly, reusable. NASA are currently working on their "Space Launch System" but the estimated cost of using this when it's eventually ready will be at least $1 billion per launch. Falcon Heavy, which is of comparable payload capabilities, is estimated to cost $90 million per basic launch. So why would any company use NASA? They shot themselves in the foot but that's Governments for you. NASA are already making a shitload of money from the private companies because they own all of the launch sites so the private companies have to pay to use them and they also issue the FAA licenses for launches.

It should be noted that a private company will try to keep costs to a minimum and safety to a maximum because it's them and their shareholders who'll lose out if they don't make a profit. When the money is coming from the Goverment everybody feels entitled to just wank it away and the costs spiral down a big hole of wastage.
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Cheers for the specifics :) I bow to your level of knowledge but I'll try to make my general case.

Government control is definitely imperfect as it stands. Corporate lobbying and crony capitalism have ravaged so many public industries and for sure, they've eroded the trust in government agencies. I just think it comes down to who runs the governments, not the institutions themselves.

Space exploration is unique because of the massive costs involved but at least there's the tiniest shred of accountability through the public method. Privatisation will always look for ways to maximise profits above all and that's how bad shit happens when the costs get cut.

Elon Musk making people work 90-hour weeks and denying their union rights doesn't exude the highest standards of safety and that's before he starts blasting them into space. Our public agencies should protect against those types of exploitative practices and reward people's labour properly.
 
I wear a tinfoil hat when it comes to Government and Public Agencies which is why I don't often get involved in current affairs topics, either on here or in real-life, because my views would definitely be classed as those of a conspiracy theorist at best and a raving loony at worst. There is a lot less accountability in the public sector than you think and things are a lot easier to gloss-over or cover up.

I wholly agree with you that his employment techniques might leave a lot to be desired and I hesitate to use the general cop-out of "well it's a job, if they don't like it they can leave" but I think we can both agree he isn't going to be randomly blasting unwilling staff into space. In fact there's a glut of people who would gleefully volunteer to go up for nothing, given half the chance (and being 25 years younger, not severely claustrophobic, 3 stones lighter and having 20-20 vision) I'd be shoving people off the ladder to be first up the steps to the rocket! Sadly they'll only be using trained astronauts though and all current astronauts come from public programs and generally started off in either their country's air force as test pilots or military.

It worries me that people will get bogged-down in the minutiae of how he works at ground level and not see the big picture of how these things could ultimately benefit mankind as a whole. Because at some point he could turn round and say fuckit to everything and just retire to an island and leave the world to continue on this path of self-destruction. It would be amazing to think that we could be rid of this reliance on fossil fuels within a generation. That heat, warmth, food and water generated by the advent of safe, cheap, clean electricity could be available to everybody, everywhere. I'm not deluded enough to believe it will ever happen/be allowed to happen but mine and previous generations have shagged the fuck out of this planet for profit and I don't want subsequent generations to suffer for that if somebody could do something, even the smallest something to help.
 
Mugatu said:
Space exploration is good but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of it becoming privatised, especially by someone with a record of union-busting and being a cunt to his employees. There are also a hell of a lot of public subsidies involved in these grand projects, nothing which couldn't go to NASA.

Again, public transport should certainly be improved but the solution isn't building personal hyper-speed travel pods so you don't have to see any poors. It's the same with his involvement in Puerto Rico, using this modern-day obsession with private "innovation" to sneak into public assets by the backdoor and line his pockets.

At the end of the day, a Mars colony sounds cool on first glance but when it's run by a libertarian egomaniac then I'm not sure it would be a very nice place to live.
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Yeah but no. No-one is else doing this shit though. Let's face it the Nazis got this shit going...
 
Floppet said:
It worries me that people will get bogged-down in the minutiae of how he works at ground level and not see the big picture of how these things could ultimately benefit mankind as a whole. Because at some point he could turn round and say fuckit to everything and just retire to an island and leave the world to continue on this path of self-destruction. It would be amazing to think that we could be rid of this reliance on fossil fuels within a generation. That heat, warmth, food and water generated by the advent of safe, cheap, clean electricity could be available to everybody, everywhere. I'm not deluded enough to believe it will ever happen/be allowed to happen but mine and previous generations have shagged the fuck out of this planet for profit and I don't want subsequent generations to suffer for that if somebody could do something, even the smallest something to help.
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I'm all for scientific innovation, but to me it should be driven primarily by the public good. I'll credit him with popularising cleaner cars but I definitely have a lot of suspicions about how Musk's ideas are implemented and his wider motives. It captures my issues with privatisation pretty well - they all seem to benefit his wealth or reputation first.

He builds energy projects in poorer Pacific countries, but the national grids are owned by Tesla, ran for-profit and rented out. His electric cars are flashy luxury vehicles, not normal everyday models. He wants to improve public transport, but only if he can travel alone at hyper-speed. I think the poor treatment of his employees is sort of symbolic of that attitude.
 
Ag said:
Yeah but no. No-one is else doing this shit though. Let's face it the Nazis got this shit going...
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They're trying, they're just blocked off by endless waves of corporate profiteers that have infiltrated politics and a wider social obsession with godawful Silicon Valley fuckheads that drink water out of rivers.
 
Mugatu said:
His electric cars are flashy luxury vehicles, not normal everyday models.
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(apologies for the post below which has become a bit Top Gear-esque)

Please allow me to introduce you to the Model 3, granted it won't be in production for a year or so, but the starting price for a basic model, which is also an incredibly goodlooking family car, with the emphasis on safety, is $35000. https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/model3

Tesla cars are currently a luxury vehicle, yes, but the pricing (£110k for the model I'd have, £116k for the most expensive one) is relative to prices for similar sized luxury models from Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar etc. But the Audis, BMWs, Jags and Mercs don't have Ludicrous mode which takes you from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds. There used to be an upgrade to 0-60 in 1.9 seconds but not on the Model S anymore. Just that feature alone would make it my car of choice if I had the money! Never mind that they have autopilot, HUDs and will take themselves home or come and pick you up (currently illegal in the UK but the day will come). They don't charge for the regular upgrades to the software either. Many petrolheads would happily convert to electric for the extras that you get with Tesla and I think that's the point. He's built up the company on the back of the pricey luxury vehicles and is now moving into the more affordable end of the market as well as electric HGVs. There's an old saying that the optional extras on a Merc C-Class will become standard on all vehicles in ten year's time and this continues to be the case to this day. R&D for new gadgetry on vehicles is very expensive so is only available on the most expensive models at first but then it gradually moves lower down the pricerange as time goes on. Tesla is a relatively new company in relation to the other big manufacturers, they're only 15 years old, and they started from scratch with electric vehicles wheras the internal combustion engine has been around in much the same as its current configuration for over 150 years. Yes, Teslas are made to make a profit for the company but they aren't using fossil fuels and spewing shite into the air that we breathe which can only be a good thing.

In summary, if there are any millionaires on Moopy who want to buy me a car it's the Model S P100D (Performance AWD version) with 21" alloys please, obviously in red.
 
Mugatu said:
They're trying, they're just blocked off by endless waves of corporate profiteers that have infiltrated politics and a wider social obsession with godawful Silicon Valley fuckheads that drink water out of rivers.
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Don't really understand this post.
 
Ag said:
Don't really understand this post.
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I was talking about the amount of corporate cash and private lobbying in the US government mainly, I think that's how they end up with such poorly-run national agencies.

The other point was basically me being bitchy about how these modern "innovators" are placed on such a high cultural platform when they repackage other people's ideas with slicker branding. The raw water thing was something I thought was a particularly blatant example of that.

(still the most esoteric poster in the game 2k18)
 
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I might not agree with the terminology but the people he's getting shot of aren't Tesla employees, they're contractors who aren't on a fixed price/fixed timescale arrangement which gives them the opportunity to string the job out longer and get paid more.

It's nothing like Hunger Games, you're coming across like you'll pick at the smallest thing to justify your seeming hatred of him @Mugatu. Even if it isn't pure seething hatred it shines through in your posts that even if he gave all of his money to orphans and free electricity to the third world he could never be a decent bloke in your eyes. Why does he grind your gears so much? There are probably a multitude of companies with high-profile bosses that treat their staff much worse and some even steal the pension money and get away with it.
 
And when there are threads about those high-profile bosses treating their workers poorly I'll say similar things, I'm sure! He's a billionaire celebrity businessman, I'm sure he'll cope with some criticism from a bonehead like me.

I just don't think forcing every single contractor to beg people to personally vouch for them and "put their reputations on the line" so they can keep their jobs is good management or a good way to treat people in general. Especially in a company with a well-documented unhealthy workplace culture.

There's no personal vendetta between me and Elon Musk. I'm not going out hunting for this stuff, I saw it on Twitter literally two days ago. What does grind my gears is the fawning media coverage of him and the way that the technological industry routinely paints over exploitative business practices in a shiny, Tesla-silver colour.
 
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GET MONEY, GRIMES.

(then redistribute it)
 
Totally over this cunt. For some unknown reason he called the guy who rescued the kids from a cave a pedo.
 
I know I'm a hater but the diver calling out his epic kid submarine as an utterly cynical PR stunt has increased my life expectancy by several years.

Meanwhile...

 
Utterly aghast at his behaviour. It looks as if it is starting to unravel for him.
 
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