[fieldcny]

Your comment leaves me scratching my head as it is all over the place.

We all need to just stop paying attention to Musk, he’s nothing more that a gussied up Musk supremcist dork with skin so thin he’s more translucent than he is white.

He’s made a career out of taking big risks with other people’s money and being saved by absurd fed policies while also milking the government for every last nickel he can squeeze out of it

[funnybookbinder]

I don’t come to hacker news for this.

[asadotzler]

reply to the parent then.

[panick21_]

> He’s made a career out of taking big risks with other people’s money

Quite a big statement about somebody that spent all his personal wealth to invest in Tesla and create SpaceX. Both companies in industries known to be startup unfriendly and places where he couldn't get much outside investment.

And before that, his first small startup, he reinvested that money into his second startup that then gave him the money to invest in Tesla/SpaceX.

By the time these companies got lots of outside investment they had proven their basic ability to operate. In case of SpaceX the flew Falcon 1 and had a contract for ISS resupply. In case of Tesla they had the Roadster working and had solid plans for Tesla Model S. And I think the investors in both companies were happy. Isn't this the whole point of startups?

You act like its easy to 'just get other peoples money and take big risks', and if that's all he did then maybe you would have an argument. But the whole point of why he is famous is that those investments turned into to major US companies.

> saved by absurd fed policies while also milking the government for every last nickel he can squeeze out of it

That's just factually incorrect.

In case of SpaceX they go ISS resupply contract, something that most people do not think is stupid. And they got it because they proved to be decent engineers and offered it at a low price, and the were successful. It was objectively one of the best contract NASA ever signed and you will find anybody on NASA who disagrees. Since then they have received many government contracts in addition to many private ones, non of those are stupid. Of all space companies in US history, SpaceX depends the least on the US government.

The first big federal help Tesla got was the investment in Model S production. All US automakers got money for 'next generation vehicle', Ford got way more then Tesla. GM was fully bailed out by the government at that time. And just FYI, when I last checked Ford had not paid back that money to the government. Tesla on the other hand paid that money back with interest ahead of schedule.

Beyond that the Fed did a bunch of stuff to encourage EV. Those policies helped all automakers, and often even foreign ones. One can argue that this actually hurts Tesla because it resulted in other automakers investing in EV not leaving the market open for Tesla to capture for longer.

Tesla received tax cuts and so on, but there Tesla is no different then any other company that does large manufacturing investments.

Encouraging EV is also not stupid. One can argue if its the best transportation policy (I don't think it is) but it isn't exactly stupid either.

And then who are you comparing them to? Against some idea perfect libertarian dream cooperation? If you compare them with actual real competitors, then making the argument that his companies are some government depended bloodsucker just doesn't hold up in the slightest.