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I don’t even understand these arguments. The motte for Elon Musks is he’s the most important person of the 21st century to date and the most important engineer since probably 1900. Electric cars didn’t exists before him. I believe he’s the only person to start a car company from scratch in a 100 years without state backing. Rockets had completely had no advance for 60 years before him. His satellite internet is an entirely new industry. He’s also the first backer of openAI which is like Microsoft’s entire bet the company bet.
Bill Gates invented a computer operating system and excel. Steve Jobs improved smart phone tech that already existed and created an animation company. Also competed in computers. Musks accomplishments seem above these two guys.
What is the Bailey for Elon Musks? He’s literally god or at a minimum a comic book super hero here to save mankind?
The motte for him is no reason to dump Musks as an ally. There is no human on earth I would prefer as an ally.
Electric cars existed for 120 years before Tesla. Why should I care that Musk made them popular? They’re not particularly better than ICE cars; there is no great improvement to the consumer.
He didn’t make them popular. He got them to the point of being economically competitive and profitable to sell which is a huge step forward.
We did nuclear fusion decades ago. We still can’t do it economically.
This seems to be the motte and Bailey. People say things like Jobs or Musk didn’t invent XYZ so they are no big deal.
But inventing things are easy! Scaling and explaining to people why they need or want XYZ is much more difficult.
We as a society praise investors way too much and discredit business builders.
Very few people invent things any more. I think someone can claim they invented mRNA. Everyone else builds on the backs of others. Products are too complex now for one person to invent a rocket. Which of course already existed by Musks rockets seem a big leap forward from what existed before. The process of creating a new tech today is having a lot of domain knowledge on what is now possible (Theranos not possible but reusable rockets were possible), hyping enough to finance (or being rich from last product), capability of hiring/inspiring enough of the .5% IQ to work with you on the project. Musks didn’t invent AI, but he had enough domain knowledge to make a play when certain techs were ready to create the product. It seems as though he has a much better ability to step in at the right time than others.
He seems a lot like Ken Griffin. Who has a good feel for building out organizations that win. He also shares a trait with Ken of firing a lot of people.
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Elon Musk didn't found Tesla. Electric cars existed long before him. Satellite internet has been around for a long time before him (though I will admit his has better performance). Him backing OpenAI is cool, but it could also be counted as a miss. I bet he wishes he were at the helm instead of sama.
On the contrary, I don't think anything Musk has really accomplished rises to the level of the iPhone, which is, so far, the defining innovation of the 21st century.
I very strongly disagree. There were smartphones before the iPhone, including with all sorts of applications and stylus interface over finger interface. The iPhone was the most popular smartphone and it will deserve a note on history for representing the moment that they spread, and represented an advance. But a small enough which was inevitable. As far as technological innovation goes, I am not that impressed. Still deserving praise for capturing the market though and some innovation on some features. But I wouldn't consider it sufficiently innovative to represent the definitive innovation of the 21st century. More representing the point of time that smartphones spread.
The OS was also preferable by many users over prior alternatives, and represented an inovvation, but I wouldn't call that a sufficiently impressive innovation for the praise you offered. Although definitely a great product at the right time.
ETA: Apparently a different smartphone was available in stores a month before the iPhone with a finger touchscreen interface. https://www.androidauthority.com/lg-prada-1080646/
You can't disagree without offering your own pick for the invention of the century (so far) :D
That being said, I agree with much of your characterization of the iPhone, though I still say that Jobs was the only one to put the pieces together correctly. Likewise, Musk has the opportunity to do the same thing as Jobs for any of his products, especially Tesla, and I think he's failing. Tesla doesn't have near the same prestige or mindshare as Apple did after they released the iPhone, not even close. And while I do say a fair bit of Teslas on the road, it's still rare enough for it to be remarkable for where I live (and I live in a place that is biased towards Tesla).
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The smartphone is probably the early 20th century innovation but it was going to occur with or without Steve Jobs.
Which I think is the big fundamental difference between Musks and Jobs. Rockets and electric cars did not have any meaningful innovation before Musks.
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Not founding Tesla is a technical difference without a real difference. The company was an idea before him with I believe no revenue but maybe they sold some hand build cars. And now does $100 billion in revenue. Warren Buffett didn’t found Berkshire Hathaway. It was a shell company with a cheap asset or two he completely build and revolutionized. In a meaningful use of the word he created Tesla.
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In magnitude, surely. In terms of positive outcome, that seems pretty questionable.
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Ok, well that, to me, is the Bailey. Upon interrogating the arguments, the Motte ends up being something like "Ok he's hyped up, but he still innovated a lot of stuff" or "But look at how much his companies are worth".
The hell they didn't. They were driving around golf courses for decades before that. People didn't drive them on roads before, because it might no economic sense, and here's the kicker: we still don't know if it makes any economic sense. They're being hyped and subsidized by tech enthusiasts, and clueless green activists, in a futile attempt to do something about global warming, and despite that they're not really enticing when compared to ICE cars.
A completely meaningless achievement, if it's based on promises he will never deliver on, and his company ends up crashing.
Reusability is not a fundamental advancement, it was always a question of whether it's worth the effort, and again, it's even less clear that it is, then in the case of electric cars, since we have no insight into the costs.
I hope you're right, and I end up looking like an idiot, but don't say I didn't warn you, if I don't.
Launch cost per kilogram to orbit became 10 times less because of Musk. That's a enormous achievement and already enough to hold utmost respect towards him. Even if everything Elon's critics say about him is true, it doesn't change this fact.
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I feel like this is maximally negative on huge accomplishments.
And you can do the same thing for Steve Jobs. He invented nothing. Animation and smart phones existed before him. The gap between electric cars and electric golf carts is far more than BlackBerry to Apple. You can always repeat that’s not a big accomplishment. But I think those are big accomplishments.
I'd be happy to! I hate Apple and all it's products! They did invent nothing, all their products are hype, and people willing to pay a premium to look high-status. If someone tried to paint Jobs as a once-in-a-century innovator I'd be on their ass too. But the difference between Jobs and Musk is that Jobs company is sustainable in a way that Musk's will prove not to be. I think he also tended to deliver the products he announced, but I can't say I followed him very closely.
I am curious why are you so driven to go after Musks? I get vibes that are the same as Holocaust Deniers. Where you might be right he’s overrated compared to popular opinion similarly like how a HC might be correct deaths were a good bit lower than reported but the whole obsession with it is backed by a deep hatred of Jews.
My impression is that he believes both that Musk is likely to fail, that his failures are going to be catastrophic for the interests of the people supporting him, and that the resulting risk profile is not properly appreciated by his supporters, who are backing him because they confuse memes for reality. This seems like an entirely reasonable thing to be concerned about, and comparing it to holocaust denial seems pretty inflammatory.
That’s the thing. I don’t think it’s a reasonable opinion at all. The guy has founded three different companies with huge market values. SpaceX trades hands at over $200 billion in private markets, Tesla has a public market value of over $200 billion, OpenAI has a weird market structure as a nonprofit but if was a normal corporate probably would have trades happening at over $200 billion market cap. Now I don’t necessarily need to agree with the valuations specifically, but I do believe in some form of the efficient market. Trying to say he’s a loser when there is fairly obvious signs that he’s very well accomplished. I can see the market being irrational short term but 2 of these firms have been trading >$100 billion for over 3 years.
That’s the only position that I see that feels similar to me.
I would add in he helped PayPal though obviously was pushed out.
But still a guy involved in that many massive companies isn’t luck alone.
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For the record @FCfromSSC is 100% right about my motivation. The difference between me and Holocaust deniers is that I hope I'm wrong. Like I said my pride is a small price to pay for getting to see Earth from orbit, before I die.
Since you brought it up, I'll also ping @Belisarius - this is why my arguments sounded like they're about financial analysis.
Look, my entire point is that the value of his companies is propped up by promises of crazy technologies he's not going to deliver on. When that becomes apparent to the public, it's over, they're crashing. OpenAI is probably exempted, but does he have any actual control over it? I thought it was all Sam Altman.
Elon was long ago pushed out of OpenAI. But this is not important for the exceptional influence he had on the course of multiple industries. That he funded/cofounded OpenAI in the first place is crazy. Most industry leaders have one career, a few gifted talents hit multiple homeruns (Jobs with Apple, NextStep and Pixar, then Apple again), but Musk makes it seem like he plays a videogame for which he has cheat codes.
For the same reason all his endeavors can now crash and burn and it wouldn’t matter:
Tesla kickstarted the electric car revolution, but it is not on their shoulders to finish it. That Elon memed other car companies kicking & screaming into a future where e-cars are not anymore a mere novelty, but instead seen as inevitable, and we now have the technology and infrastructure in place (superchargers and more and more battery factories) to transition away from fossil fuels, this is the real legacy.
Similar SpaceX could be run into the ground and Elon still would have changed with it the space industry forever. Here is a quote from a recent Washington Post article (which complains that SpaceX is too successful):
You tried to argue that Blue Origin (or others) could leapfrog SpaceX, but in the (unlikely) case this happens this would not discredit Musk, instead this would be a triumph as his competitors would either not exist or wouldn’t be as good as without him.
On a technological level SpaceX did absolutely bonker things: Landing rockets? Landing rockets on a drone ship far away in the ocean? Using Methan as propellant? Using cheap steel? Proofing that the failed Soviet N1 concept is viable with modern tech (many inexpensive small engines instead of few big expensive engines), eliminating landing legs and instead trying to catch Starship?
Other rocket companies, Europe and China will have to copy them.
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I’ve personally thought Tesla was overvalued for a while.
But even if you just use reasonable valuations like 2x sales or a 10 pe and give little value to breakthrough tech then Tesla is still a $150-200 billion company. He has $95 billion in trailing sales. That is still a huge accomplishment and something no one else has done in physical tech. This is why I feel like your arguments are like holocaust deniers. Maybe 6 million Jews didn’t die in the Holocaust but 1-2 million is still a lot. Same thing with SpaceX maybe he doesn’t put us on Mars, but as others have said it’s verifiable he’s lowered the price of putting a kg in space by 10x after essentially no improvement in decades. It just has the same feel of maybe this detail is a lie, but if you take away all the exaggerations the verifiable bottom in accomplishments is still extreme.
If the hype is all fake then it’s like he’s only Ken Griffin level accomplishment. Not a messiah but easily in the top 10 innovators of my lifetime. He wouldn’t be Tom Brady only Ben Roethlisberger.
For the record I’ve never owned a Musks investment. I have been short Musks before.
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Say what you will about Jobs on a technical level (not an iPhone or Mac user myself), but the real genius was positioning the company as a reliable luxury brand that produced reasonably friendly, polished products.
The iPhone was not the first capacitive multi touch phone to hit the market, but it was the first to really gain consumer mind share. I was around to witness "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." on Slashdot in response to the iPod, but despite owning a Nomad myself it's debatable technical superiority meant little in the market.
And I will give Apple credit that their engineers are still really good, and product management keeps a surprisingly small stable of unique parts for a company their size. Without Jobs they seem a bit listless in terms of focus on new product lines (maybe AR will work for them?) but continue to innovate more gradually, and drag the rest of the PC industry along with them: their homebrew processors are supposed to be pretty good although I haven't tried them.
I don't think Jobs was himself a great engineer, but solid product management is underrated and deserves credit.
They're 4-5 years ahead of their closest competitor, Qualcomm (even with the Nuvia acquisition). They're not actually any faster than normal PCs, but they're excellent when it comes to idle power consumption (which is what the computer is doing most of the time).
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