Item — HN Reader

Take a close look at what you are complaining about:

- Tesla ain't that successful

- SpaceX isn't even profitable

- Hes tweeting stuff I don't like

- I was rooting for him when "was keeping it real", but "now that financial chicanery is rewarded I can't in good conscience" etc

People love the underdog and love the looser, they hate successful people because of what it tells them about themselves.

1 comments

That's some fantastic armchair psychiatry but I don't think you got where I'm coming from.

I specifically called out a bunch of compliments and things I liked prior to 2020, and I think we'd both agree that "spending all day on twitter" is not great regardless of tweet content.

What exactly happened in 2020 that changed your mind. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Thanks for the good faith question.

In my opinion, around that time he stopped being interested in tech and manufacturing of said tech as his top concerns (WHICH HE WAS GOOD AT), and started being more concerned with twitter culture war bullshit. This happened to a lot of people on both sides of the aisle around that time due to the lockdowns, but the lockdowns are well behind us and he's still not focused around "get to mars" or "redefine human energy usage" as his top goals IMO. He's buying twitter, doing what he did at DOGE and repackaging a failed AI company into an IPO on SpaceX's coattails. The stories out of the SpaceX launch business are all about how they effectively "manage up" to get him out of the way and on with their jobs.

So if I may rephrase, the issue is that he kind of lost his way as a pure-hearted engineer working for the progress of technology and the good of mankind and started to stray of path with his half-baked political exploits. He is no longer focused on the mission.

I understand the sentiment, and getting as involved into politics as he did was probably a mistake, simply because he is not good at it.

If I may offer a different perspective as to the on-mission part: he realised some years ago that leftism was a grave danger to his plan to make mankind multi-planetary, so he decided he had to get involved, if he wanted to or not. You will probably not agree with this point of view, but perhaps it will help soften the image of him in your own mind.

> that leftism was a grave danger to his plan to make mankind multi-planetary

Yeah, that's just saying "social media addiction" in more words. Also, Star Trek?

I think their statement is useful to contextualise what people consider leftism though. Looking at Musk's actual political actions, it seems like leftism (or at least the part that directly affects him and his companies) is when regulators are allowed to ask Musk to stop doing securities fraud with his social media addiction, and it's not entirely unreasonable for him to consider such enforcement a threat (though maybe not "a grave danger") in case it escalates beyond strongly worded letters. I am, by that metric, a leftist. Possibly a radical far-left communist, even.