this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I think he used to be at least business smart earlier in his life. I keep parroting it, but he might have covid fog, or destroyed his brain with drugs or something..
The most convincing argument that elon does a lot of cocaine is just listening to him speak in a less formal interview.
BUT! I don't think he used to be actually smart, just lucky. Too many people assume "succesful" people had to have done something exceptional to earn it, but 99% of extremely wealthy people acquired that extreme wealth through a simple combination of luck and startup capital (which of course they have because they are lucky).
Over half of his enterprises have folded. Including companies that he bought up.
He's an idea guy and that's it. And even that is more credit than what's due - he's got superficial ideas at best.
The one thing that sets him apart from the average Joe with a failed business is that he's got the capital to try over and over again.
Exactly! He was great at getting press and selling big ideas. He never made his ideas happen, other people did that.
Now with Twitter he's trying to sell an idea no one cares about. No one was clamouring for the next social media platform.
And no one is looking for an 'everything app' either.
He purchased his companies from other people who had already developed the ideas. The only patent with Musks name on it for Tesla is the charging port that is proprietary so other electric vehicles couldn't use tesla charging stations.
There are so many ways to dunk on him lately that I don't think there's a need to misrepresent this stuff. I think we can give him some flowers for being neck deep in the Tesla Roadster and SpaceX Falcon 1 design and release processes almost 20 years ago. But, then he did a Pokemon evolution from that baseline crazy to whatever we're seeing now.
I’m also just not a fan of distorting facts to make someone look bad. If you call someone bad it should only because of things they’ve factually done (and Musk is bad) and not because of some fantasies someone else dreamed up to dunk on them. Also, most people aren’t going to fact-check this somewhere, so it’s easy to spread a falsehood as truth.
The charging port is now an open standard, and pretty much every EV in North America will be using it in a few years.