Pro’s and Con’s of Elon Musk

[swansont]

1 hour ago, MSC said:

I need to double check but I think the number I gave, may have came from an Adam Conover Documentary about government in the USA, and the number I think includes the 13% of the workforce in state and local governments also, so I may (probably) have overestimated how bad it is for the potential layoffs by misunderstanding some of the data on this. 

 

Makes sense. State & local includes 3.8 million public school teachers

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/clr/public-school-teachers

[CharonY]

Going a bit back to OP, I think we should clearly establish that Musk is not a trained engineer or scientist. He just runs business that uses or intersects with them. This suggest that he should have decent abilities in running large business.

However, in cases where his leadership is more transparent (e.g. Twitter), it seems that his handling of the business is rather heavy-handed an inept. It might make sense, as one could argue that Twitter was a vanity/propaganda project from the get-go. However, the ineptness coming to light with how DOGE is determining efficiency and is handling firing folks does not inspire confidence that they know what they are doing. This could, of course, could merely suggest that the overall goal is really to benefit his companies and burn the rest. But what is clear that we do not even see an attempt of demonstrating expertise anymore.

[Sensei]

14 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Going a bit back to OP, I think we should clearly establish that Musk is not a trained engineer or scientist.

What does it take to be considered a scientist?

BoA and BoS is not enough?

"Musk graduated from the College and Wharton in 1997 with a dual degree in economics and physics. That same year, he started a Ph.D. program in materials sciences at Stanford University, dropping out just after two days later to begin his first start-up company"

https://www.thedp.com/article/2022/11/elon-musk-penn-grad-wharton-twitter-auction

 

 

The company the article is about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2

 

The Musk brothers got $37 million for it (a 12% stake, so they didn't have the final word on whether to sell it).

[CharonY]

Yes, a Bachelor degree is an introductory higher degree. It can lead to a science career (usually via grad school), but often, as in this case, it does not.

[dimreepr]

This is well worth anyone's time:

A beacon of hope, perhaps, but I have a new found respect for the preppers...

Edited yesterday at 12:04 PM by dimreepr

[MSC]

14 hours ago, CharonY said:

However, the ineptness coming to light with how DOGE is determining efficiency and is handling firing folks does not inspire confidence that they know what they are doing. This could, of course, could merely suggest that the overall goal is really to benefit his companies and burn the rest. But what is clear that we do not even see an attempt of demonstrating expertise anymore.

The ineptness and pace of this, are demonstrative of a man who fully buys his own propaganda about himself, and like Trump has no clue how to run a government. Musks wealth also has an impact on his outlook and strategy when it comes to business. Before he really struck it wealthy, he was a bit more careful and thoughtful in his investments. As we saw with Twitter though, the kind of personal safety net wealth gives him, allows him to throw money at whatever business he buys and chops up, to prop it up when it makes obviously stupid business mistakes like firing crucial members of staff. 

Except now, he's doing it to government and the people that will have to prop up the pieces he messes with and pay for the damages, are the American taxpayer and the consequences are going to be far more destructive than some social media platform struggling to monetize after inept new ownership. 

As it stands right now, in business Elon Musk is too big to fail, he can prop up whatever business he wants, run it poorly, eat the cost until he figures out a way of swindling and cheating people with his new acquisition. 

It's also quite easy to see that Musk is growing more and more power drunk by the day, I've heard he's a drug addict too and the more people he screws over, the more paranoia is going to start coming in to play. 

The dude also sometimes believes we are all in a simulation and actually thinks it's a 50/50 case of whether or not we are. Bayesian statistics be damned. This is how you can tell he's no scientist. Believes a bunch of woo.