Elon Musk. Twitter. Babylon Bee.

[Robert]

I don't understand the idolization of billionaires.

I don't idolize him or any human, but I sure respect his intellect and ability to do what he dreams. Few people can put dreams into reality. Musk has shown he can. I respect that as a doer myself.

[Szdfan]

Having an interest in, tolerance for, questions about, is not fawning. Even appreciation for a comical aspect is not fawning.
All those things have happened in this topic - regularly, if not immediately, met with accusations of negative motivations of all involved. Like clockwork.

i’d prefer that not continue. not expecting a shift.

Well, in that case, I would appreciate an end to the long tirades about how horrible and evil liberals are.

o. changed.
i thought this was about this topic, various members’ interest in E Musk being misconstrued as idol worship or fawning.
i’m not interested in a general bunny trail. maybe another day.

All I’m saying that if you don’t want people to assume you have “evil” intentions, maybe you could stop assuming that people who disagree with you have “evil” intentions as well.

[temporal1]

I don't idolize him or any human, but I sure respect his intellect and ability to do what he dreams. Few people can put dreams into reality. Musk has shown he can. I respect that as a doer myself.

he doesn’t fit any mold i’ve ever seen. a unique creation.

All I’m saying that if you don’t want people to assume you have “evil” intentions, maybe you could stop assuming that people who disagree with you have “evil” intentions as well.

if you want to take it to bunny trails or elsewhere, being general or specific ..

[temporal1]

Elon Musk is a doer, to use Robert’s word.
i don’t worship or fawn over him, i find him eccentric, he rattles me. he’s interesting, and scary.
i listen or read, and pray for God’s will. this is my personal response to EM. he’s freaky. and can be intriguing.

others in positions of gov power are even scarier. without ever “doing”/creating, producing, anything.
they debate for control. to stop others. to prevail.

“Why Elon Musk’s SpaceX Breakthrough Terrifies The Left” / 19min

Description:
Elon Musk just accomplished something that nobody in history ever has.
This achievement will advance human civilization immeasurably.
So, inaturally, left-wing bureaucrats are trying to sabotage him.

^^Sabotage based on unrelated ideology; examples, abortion, transgender policies.

The most awful thing is, all EM would have to do to become their darling, would be to sign off on their desired ideologies.
It has nothing to do with moral right or wrong, sound pollution, profits, SCIENCE, nothing.
Read/listen to THE FINE PRINT, - not just wrt EM, but EVERY gov involvement that exists, gov education to Ukraine.

There’s an underlying ideological current that has been allowed to become universally decisive.
It’s mercilous. “Our way or the highway.”

Whenever possible, by force of the sword.

[Bootstrap]

I don't idolize him or any human, but I sure respect his intellect and ability to do what he dreams. Few people can put dreams into reality. Musk has shown he can. I respect that as a doer myself.

I respect what he has done with Tesla and SpaceX.

Twitter is a shadow of its former self. According to Fidelity, which owns part of Twitter, the value of that company is now about 1/5th of what it had been. And it's not just the financial value, Twitter is no longer a public square in the way it had been. A lot fewer people are using Twitter. Advertisers are not spending on it like they used to.

And these days, his focus doesn't seem to be so much on Tesla and SpaceX and the things that made him a doer. Some of his shareholders seem concerned about that.

He's not only the world's richest man, he owns a social media firm, and he is now living full-time in Pennsylvania campaigning for Trump, being profiled at campaign rallies, etc. I do think billionaires have the right to engage in politics and spend money. I don't like the way Citizens United made it so easy to do that with dark money. In general, I am not a fan of political celebrity or things people do to fan division. And I think Musk lives in both these worlds. I also don't want my children to be like him, I don't like his values or his lifestyle. But it's his life.

Suppose Zuckerberg were doing the same with Harris. Would people judge it the same way?

[Robert]

Twitter is a shadow of its former self. According to Fidelity, which owns part of Twitter, the value of that company is now about 1/5th of what it had been. And it's not just the financial value, Twitter is no longer a public square in the way it had been. A lot fewer people are using Twitter. Advertisers are not spending on it like they used to.

X has been number one in the app store for news and they were setting new records for posts and time used just a few months ago. I have not kept up with it lately to know, but I suspect it is doing about the same. More people have been using it is what I hear.

Their ad buys are down, but they have only 20% of the staff to pay for now, so I think they are in the black.

[Szdfan]

I don't idolize him or any human, but I sure respect his intellect and ability to do what he dreams. Few people can put dreams into reality. Musk has shown he can. I respect that as a doer myself.

I respect what he has done with Tesla and SpaceX.

Twitter is a shadow of its former self. According to Fidelity, which owns part of Twitter, the value of that company is now about 1/5th of what it had been. And it's not just the financial value, Twitter is no longer a public square in the way it had been. A lot fewer people are using Twitter. Advertisers are not spending on it like they used to.

And these days, his focus doesn't seem to be so much on Tesla and SpaceX and the things that made him a doer. Some of his shareholders seem concerned about that.

He's not only the world's richest man, he owns a social media firm, and he is now living full-time in Pennsylvania campaigning for Trump, being profiled at campaign rallies, etc. I do think billionaires have the right to engage in politics and spend money. I don't like the way Citizens United made it so easy to do that with dark money. In general, I am not a fan of political celebrity or things people do to fan division. And I think Musk lives in both these worlds. I also don't want my children to be like him, I don't like his values or his lifestyle. But it's his life.

Suppose Zuckerberg were doing the same with Harris. Would people judge it the same way?

I think in some ways, Musk is analogous to Henry Ford. Ford was a brilliant businessman and innovator who fundamentally transformed the industry with the development of the assembly line, making automobiles cheaper and easier to produce.

However, Ford's personal views were problematic and he inserted himself in ways into other areas outside his expertise. Ford was a notorious anti-Semite/ For several years, Ford sponsored the newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, anti-Semitic newspaper distributed through Ford franchises throughout the country. He was influential on this topic. Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's Mein Kampf]/i].

I don't think that Musk is an ant-Semite per se, though he did get criticized last year for reposting anti-Semitic content. This criticism led to a rehabilitation tour to Auschwitz, after which he declared to Ben Shaprio that he was "aspirationally Jewish." (I think that's a weird and cringy thing to say).

I think that the work that Musk has done with Tesla and Space X is admirable. I think outside of his expertise, he's problematic. I think his purchase of Twitter was largely driven by ego and as Boot says, he's been busy destroying it by enabling it to be a space for misinformation, conspiracy theories and neo-Nazis. When advertisers first left, he told them to go "F" themselves, now he's trying to sue critics into oblivion.

Billionaires are not inherently wiser than the rest of us, but they do have lots of power and influence. Musk has a long history of doing "dumb things" -- like smoking pot on Joe Rogan's podcast. Now he's embraced the batty part of the internet, often reposting misinformation himself and empowering alt-Right extremists. He claims he's a free speech absolutionist, but censored X for the autocratic regime in Turkey.

He's using his power and influence to promote very questionable things.

[Robert]

This is my number one issue and he explains it well.

[Szdfan]

This is my number one issue and he explains it well.

If this is what you care about, then Musk is probably the last person who should be in that position.

I've "gift-shared" an article from this morning's New York Times about the many, many, many ways that Musk is already entangled with the government, from lucrative contracts and grants to fights with regulators. As the article points out, Musk's companies were "promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies." Putting Musk into the position of "efficiency commissioner" would give the richest man in the world power to regulate the regulators. It's an epic conflict of interest.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/20/us/p ... =url-share

So for example, if Musk kills funding for Boeing's Starliner contract with NASA, how do we know he didn't do it to benefit Space X and damage a competitor? This is a recipe for corruption and completely unacceptable to people who care about wasteful government spending.

[JohnH]

Boeing's Starliner so far has sent astronauts to space with no way to get them back.. the Starliner should be renamed the Jupiter 2... no need to worry about any "conflict of interest here", as Boeing and NASA had to go begging to Space-X to rescue their astronauts they stranded