[Domenic_S]

I hear that and struggle with it too.

OTOH, people (at least online) like to talk out both sides of their mouth re" Tesla, saying on one hand "Musk isn't an engineer, didn't found the company, doesn't add anything to Tesla, etc etc" and then also "i'll never buy a tesla because of Musk".. like, if those are both the case then what about every other company and CEO? eBay's CEO collaborated to harass a random couple who posted critical articles, do they not use eBay? Adidas made untold billions from collabs with Kanye, do they boycott Adidas? CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart agreed to pay $13bn in a settlement over the opioid epidemic -- literally killing people! -- do they shop at CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, or buy prescriptions from the companies that supply the opioids? Unethical Apple manufacturing practices... etc etc etc.

The point here, which is not 'whataboutism', is that there is seemingly no generalizable principle at play here, that for some reason Musk is a bridge too far in comparison with other companies that arguably do much, much more harm.

[epistasis]

As somebody that doesn't use EBay and Adidas, sure, easy enough for me to avoid, but even for those I'm not sure I care as much, as the company isn't as much about the CEO. The opioid thing is a bit more tangential to the actual companies.

Whereas Musk is actually serving as a front man, greedily taking credit in a way that I never even saw Steve Jobs take credit for the work of others.

Musk's actions are also a very personal attack against my loved ones, in a way far more personal than drug stores selling opioids is. It's personal insults, and actions that are supporting the displacement of millions of family members's countrymen, deaths of more than a hundred thousand, and so many children's lives scarred. Pretty hard to compare Musk's actions to what Walgreens management did for the opiod crisis. Personal insults also go a really long ways towards negative polarization, whereas merely distributing prescribed drugs makes it a lot harder to fault drug stores.

[Domenic_S]

Bill Burr has a funny bit about Steve being a marketer, not an inventor or engineer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6fv9UUlQ8). I can't say I've seen Musk take credit for Tesla work any more than Steve did for Apple's, let alone greedily.

Don't discount the impact of the opioid crisis with more than a million dead (https://www.npr.org/2021/12/30/1069062738/more-than-a-millio...) -- those pharmacies did the math and decided double-digit billions was cheaper than a trial -- but I do see what you mean about the personal connection. What I'm wrapping my head around is I don't see anyone (not that that means they don't exist) saying their cousin died from opioid overdose so they're never shopping at CVS again, you know? The venn diagram of people who own an iphone and people who think sweatshops are evil is basically a circle, but Musk tweets something moronic about Fauci and everyone loses their shit.