Why would I pretend? That makes no sense. I have nothing to gain from pretending.
At this point, more than 24 hours after the article submission, which is apparently now flagged, and 14 hours after my previous comment, nobody is reading this thread except for you and me.
You can call me stupid if you want, though you would be sorely mistaken, but don't call me a liar.
I don't think you're stupid or a liar, but there are two strong trends I'm noticing recently - playing the contrarian and a hate for the rich.
To me, it is just an axiom that working harder is correlated with more wealth. What you've done in previous replies is a typical reductionist approach, which is to pretend that a multivariate problem, with those variables on various continuums, can be presented as "Elon Musk doesn't work harder than someone stocking shelves with shampoos". I honestly do not understand how someone frequenting HN could genuinely think that this is a valuable argument.
In simpler terms, if you exclude all the obvious counter-examples like inheritance, crypto pump and dumps, lottery winners and so on, it is empirically true that richer people work harder than poor people. Before you give some example of how some billionaire simply got lucky, I did say about that this is a multivariate equation. There are many, many things that go into it, and luck is one, hard work another.
The simple logic is: you work harder -> your productivity is higher -> you make more money. You may find some exaggerated counter-example, but this is the truth.
If Elon had just been involved in the PayPal business, yeah, he would be some forgotten rich dude living his life on some island. It boggles my mind that anyone can think of Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI as unimpressive.
There is such a visceral hate for "rich people" that there is no room for any positives. This is looking to me more like a cult.
I don't "play" contrarian. If my views happen to be contrary to yours, or to the majority's, that's just how it is, how I am, and how I've always been from a very young age. Nonetheless, there are plenty of subjects on which I'm in agreement with the majority.
> hate for the rich
Well, my view is that our economic system tends to select for people who are unethical and ruthless, so if there's any hate, I would argue that it's a rational hate rather than an irrational hate. In general, though, my issue is with the system, and defenders of the system, rather than with the beneficiaries of the system.
> To me, it is just an axiom that working harder is correlated with more wealth.
To me, it's not an axiom. I don't consider it to be self-evident or even true. If you don't want to argue over your axiom and defend it from criticism, you're free to walk away, but you shouldn't be surprised when someone doesn't accept your beliefs as evidently true.
> It boggles my mind that anyone can think of Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI as unimpressive.
The word "impressive" means "evoking admiration through size, quality, or skill". The question is, why should I have admiration for something I don't care about, or even something I dislike? If a person that I vehemently oppose gets elected POTUS, am I supposed to "admire the accomplishment"? Only 45 people have ever been President, so in that sense it's an accomplishment, yet "admiration" is not really the appropriate attitude in these case; more like "horror". I understand that if you admire Tesla, SpaceX, and OpenAI, then you might admire Musk too, but I personally don't give a crap about any of them and even consider aspects of them to be a negative for society.
Just to evoke Godwin's law, are we supposed to be "impressed" by the "accomplishments" of Hitler? He did have a major impact, changing the world forever, doing some unprecedented things, and greatly affecting tens of millions of people. (I'm reminded of the sarcastic conversation that Paul had with Stilgar and Korba in Dune Messiah.)
Back to the more mundane subject of wealth accumulation, from my perspective, gluttony and insatiable greed are not an accomplishment, they're a personality flaw, a pathology.
> There is such a visceral hate for "rich people" that there is no room for any positives. This is looking to me more like a cult.
I was happy to ignore Musk as much as possible until recently, and to me his followers seemed very much like a cult. Unfortunately, Musk acquired Twitter, which was my social network of choice, and then proceeded to wreck it in many ways, which is mainly why I hate him in particular. Again, it's not some weird "irrational" hate but rather a direct reaction to his actions.
> In general, though, my issue is with the system, and defenders of the system, rather than with the beneficiaries of the system.
Finally, we agree on something. This is exactly it. The problem is the system, which I am happy to change. The people who get rich are simply playing by the rules the system allows.
Rich or poor, we all do the same thing, we all try to maximize our income, reduce our taxes, use any crack in the system we find.
> To me, it's not an axiom.
I struggle to understand why anyone would think this. So you think hard work is inversely correlated with making more money? That would be an incredible statement to defend.
> The question is, why should I have admiration for something I don't care about, or even something I dislike?
If you have subjectively decided that Tesla, SpaceX and OpenAI are not impressive, then I'm afraid we simply view the world differently. I cannot comprehend how someone would be unimpressed with companies at the forefront of technological progress.
The only way in which I can explain your view is that you are not able to separate Musk's personality from his ventures. I can.
> Just to evoke Godwin's law, are we supposed to be "impressed" by the "accomplishments" of Hitler?
Anther clue that we simply think very differently. Yes, I am impressed by what Hitler 'accomplished'. I am also impressed by what Bin Laden 'accomplished', for example. Imagine if this same amount of work, ingenuity, scrappiness was applied from 'good'. Then we might have had two rich entrepreneurs that you'd find just as despicable simply for being rich.
> Back to the more mundane subject of wealth accumulation, from my perspective, gluttony and insatiable greed are not an accomplishment, they're a personality flaw, a pathology.
Back to what the real problem is - the system. Don't hate the player, hate the game. Also, if Musk wanted to actually just make money, I'm sure there are better avenues than doing the hard work of creating disruptive technologies.
> The people who get rich are simply playing by the rules the system allows.
The rich also tend to have the power to write the rules themselves, for their own benefit.
> Rich or poor, we all do the same thing, we all try to maximize our income, reduce our taxes, use any crack in the system we find.
This is not true at all. Individual businesspeople vary vastly in their ethics. I don't actually try to maximize my income, by any means necessary. I have personal standards that can't be measured in dollars, and I try to avoid actions that could profit me if they would screw over other people or harm society.
> I struggle to understand why anyone would think this.
It's unfortunate that you appear to have such a limited imagination, an inability to comprehend the possibility of other people rationally disagreeing with your beliefs.
> So you think hard work is inversely correlated with making more money?
Why do you present a false dichotomy? There could be little or no correlation, as opposed to an inverse correlation. In any case, I still don't know what the heck you mean by "hard work". You've already rejected the notion that manual labor is hard work, yet you refuse to explain exactly what it does mean, apparently because you fear that explaining would be some kind of "gotcha".
> I cannot comprehend how someone would be unimpressed with companies at the forefront of technological progress. The only way in which I can explain your view is that you are not able to separate Musk's personality from his ventures.
Again, there's an unfortunate failure of imagination here. Have you considered, for example, that I don't necessarily view them as "progress"? The irony is that I've already given some indication, mentioned more than once: "I think there are too many rocket launches polluting the atmosphere and too many satellites being put in orbit."
Anyway, since you're having such trouble comprehending, have you considered, you know, asking me, instead of putting ideas in my head?
On the other hand, you seem to believe that I'm obligated to admire Hitler, so given that starting point, I'm not sure there's anything I could say to explain my views to you in a way you'd understand.
> Yes, I am impressed by what Hitler 'accomplished'. I am also impressed by what Bin Laden 'accomplished', for example.
You're welcome to your views, but I think you'll find, if you state them explicitly to many people, that I won't be the only one who feels differently, and you're not necessarily even in the majority.
> Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Why not both?
> Also, if Musk wanted to actually just make money, I'm sure there are better avenues than doing the hard work of creating disruptive technologies.
Musk is already the wealthiest person in the world. To say "I'm sure there are better avenues" to making money just seems ridiculous to me.
> The rich also tend to have the power to write the rules themselves, for their own benefit.
This is correct, and the 'poor' do the same, within the limits of their abilities.
> This is not true at all. Individual businesspeople vary vastly in their ethics. I don't actually try to maximize my income...
This is the Internet and saying this is free. Even so, I don't care about you specifically, I am talking about the average behaviour at the level of the society. There is no big distinction between the 'poor' and the 'rich' in terms of their behaviour to maximize their income while bending the rules as much as possible.
Typical employees (the 'poor') have way fewer levers to do this, as well as less financial education, due to the way the system is structured, but the desire to keep more of your earnings to the detriment of everyone else is the largely the same.
> It's unfortunate that you appear to have such a limited imagination, an inability to comprehend the possibility of other people rationally disagreeing with your beliefs.
> Why do you present a false dichotomy? There could be little or no correlation, as opposed to an inverse correlation.
In retrospect, it is true that I presented a false dichotomy since I never considered that your defense might be "there is virtually 0 correlation".
I maintain that you have no decent argument to make in defence of this opinion of yours. To claim that working harder is not correlated to financial reward is completely indefensible.
> you're not necessarily even in the majority.
I'm not sure why this would be imporant. Nuanced views are rarely 'in the majority'.
> Have you considered, for example, that I don't necessarily view them as "progress"?
Yes, I did, but then you are simply wrong.
> Musk is already the wealthiest person in the world. To say "I'm sure there are better avenues" to making money just seems ridiculous to me.
You described anyone looking to be rich as simply greedy and basically mentally ill (I forget the exact term). So Musk is greedy and vain. After he got his 100+ millions from the sale of PayPal, would an electric car company, followed by a rocket company, be the obvious way to increase that wealth? Probably not.
At this point, more than 24 hours after the article submission, which is apparently now flagged, and 14 hours after my previous comment, nobody is reading this thread except for you and me.
You can call me stupid if you want, though you would be sorely mistaken, but don't call me a liar.