[edmundsauto]

It is also a simplification to highlight his achievements without also acknowledging that he doesn’t seem to be a very moral or stable person. Some of the criticism of his behavior is clearly sour grapes that he doesn’t act “properly” for a billionaire, but there are also many examples of him being a bad person a la Steve Jobs.

We tolerate the characteristics because of the perceived value, but it would also be nice to highlight genuinely good people with significant accomplishments for being successful as well as kind.

[panick21_]

How is he 'unstable' exactly? He has been leading successful companies for 30 years and pretty much every company he has been involved in has been highly successful. He has never been unstable, just opinionated. And people don't like that so they call him psychologically unstable instead.

What he has done that is bad and why people hate him:

- Called somebody something bad on twitter once.

- Twits dumb memes with dumb humor sometimes

- Twitted about cryptocurrencies. People claim this is market manipulation to enrich himself without any evidence.

- Twitter 'Funding secured'. People believe this is made up, however it was conclusively settled. And even if it was not fully secured, there is little question he could have found the money. So not sure why people are so angry about that.

That seems to be most of the criticism I read. If that is the worst thing, I don't know what people are so worked up about.

Some leftists are angry he doesn't support unions, but of course almost no rich person (and many non rich people don't either).

[mdoms]

> Called somebody something bad on twitter once

I assume you're talking about the time he called a diver (and actual hero) a pedophile. It went a bit further than that - he hired a private investigator who tried (and failed) to dig up dirt on the man.

[panick21_]

The diver was not a hero. He was an somebody that himself did little, and pushed himself into the media where he actually started insulting Musk and his team.

He created a false narrative about what Musk and his team of engineers (literal rocket engineers) were doing. Musk and his engineers had coordinated with the actual rescue team and the Mini-Sub they build was according to specification from the diving team who suggested they were not sure if the youngest and smallest child could be rescued with the conventional method they were planning.

The media of course presented this as Musk comes in and advocates for his own method of saving everybody and the 'hero' was a guy who pushed himself into the cheap sensationalist media by attacking Musk. The sensationalist media of course simply ran with that and were just to happy to publish anything negative about Musk.

That was of course during a time when Tesla was having challenges scaling and the 'Musk is a total idiot' storyline was getting lots of clicks.

In all, sure, Musk did something stupid but he didn't start it. He had never said anything bad about either this guy or the diving team. He had in fact done the opposite and expressed that it was good that their alternative solution in the end wasn't required.

But I guess anybody who pushes himself into the media who to insult Musk must be a hero.

[mdoms]

Both of you guys who have responded to my comment have been rampaging through this thread with aggressive defenses of Musk. This is not normal behaviour.

If you don't want to consider a man who was instrumental in saving the lives of 12 boys a hero that's fine, there are lots of other adjectives that I'm sure you can find and they're all far more flattering than the one Musk made of himself in that saga.

Take a step back and think about what you're defending here. It's not a good look.

[panick21_]

You call it aggressive, I just responding with happened rather then what the cheap clickbait media outlets who provided form this crisis wanted to claim happened.

> instrumental

There was a professional diving team that saved the children he was not himself doing it.

And even if he was pushing yourself into the media and making headlines by insulting somebody who tried to help is not really a good look. Specially because it was not constitutive (or respectful) critism. It was simply a guy who wanted attention and got it.

> Take a step back and think about what you're defending here. It's not a good look.

I'm not defending what Musk said. It was clearly a stupid thing to say.

But if the main critism of a guy who lead 2 important technology companies for decades is 'he got too angry at somebody who insulted him in the media' then that is a pretty lame reason to hate him so much.

[lozenge]

Calling somebody a pedo because they insulted your work on TV is unstable behaviour. So is repeating the claim to journalists and saying explicitly you really literally meant it, throwing more insults in, settling the libel case and then repeating the claims again. Actually, unstable is one of the nicest adjectives you could use about this abhorrent behaviour.

Your defences and explanations are all irrelevant and rely on minimising it as "saying something bad" and "on Twitter". That isn't adding anything to the conversation.

[raspberry1337]

>If you don't want to consider a man who was instrumental in saving the lives of 12 boys a hero that's fine,

It's his job as a diver, is it not?

[hef19898]

I coyld provide a long list of blockbuster movies about live saving heros. All of which just did their jobs, under dangerous conditions. Yes, you can be a hero if just do your job. And yes, we all accept that.

That being said, it was never Elons job to help, nor was it his job to develop a non-working submarine for the task. Or to be insulted when someone stated so. He did it for the PR and the fame, when he got neither was pissed and started insulting and harassing people.

[heavenlyblue]

> It's his job as a diver, is it not?

Divers dive, saving people is something a (probably very small) subset of divers do.

[heavenlyblue]

> He was an somebody that himself did little, and pushed himself into the media where he actually started insulting Musk and his team.

This is exactly what Musk himself had said, can you please provide any sources for many paragraphs of unsubstantiated claims you just made? :)

[mlindner]

The people calling the diver a "hero" are just as odd. Since when do we go around calling people "heroes" in this day and age? The only people who should be using that term are those who were personally saved by someone. Further the guy didn't actually take part in the rescue himself. He was a hobbyist diver who lived in the area who was an advisor. The "heroes", if there are any, are the actual rescuers who are almost forgotten to history now because everyone remembers the guy Musk called a name more than the people who did the actual rescuing.

[psyc]

He makes everyone playing at performative ‘seriuz buzniss’ look unserious by juxtaposition, especially since he got the highest $core in their main game.

[mlindner]

> Some of the criticism of his behavior is clearly sour grapes that he doesn’t act “properly” for a billionaire, but there are also many examples of him being a bad person a la Steve Jobs.

If we can get a massively successful revolutionary business like SpaceX without someone like Steve Jobs I'd love it. But so far the sample size is small and there aren't any countering examples. History has thus far shown that you need people with strong personality and drive with some amount of lack of empathy in order to create massive shifts in the course of humanity.

[hef19898]

SpaceX is impressive, no doubt about that. But all we got from it so far is, maybe, cheaper orbital launches. Even without SpaceX we would get stuff into space, we did before already so.

[mlindner]

It's also galvanized an entire industry that was basically completely stagnant before SpaceX. The number of space-related and space-adjacent startups is skyrocketing. People figured out, because of SpaceX, that you can actually make a profitable business out of space that isn't just government contracts.

Also, SpaceX isn't done.

[hef19898]

People figured out that, if you manage to pull of a Musk impression, investors are willing to part with shit tons of money for space start ups. Whether any of those will work out or not is still not answered. Nor is the question if there is enough actual demand for all those small payload launches, SpaceX is launching their own Starlink satellites (and may well dump that business on retail investors) and if the other businesses currently paying for those small payload launches are themselves profitable isn't sure neither.

[mlindner]

I'm not talking about launch companies. I'm talking about all the other space companies, many of which you probably haven't heard of. SpaceX has enabled an entire new generation of startups that are making use of cheaper launch costs.

[influx]

"We love immigrants, especially those who start innovative businesses"

"We love green businesses, wouldn't it be great if we had more electric cars and could kill oil?"

"We love science, especially rocket scientists!"

"Twitter can ban anyone they like, 1st amendment only applies to government, get your own Twitter if you don't like it!"

Waaaaait, not like thaaaaat!

Stop the hypocrisy.