[pixel_popping]

You might not like the guy, but anyone thinking Elon Musk is "dumb" is out of his mind and just straight up narrow-minded, we are talking about one of the richest person on the PLANET,you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb. That takes brains, vision, and an INSANE amount of risk-taking that 99.9% of people on this earth could never even fathom (even if they pretend so).

[phatskat]

> you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb

The accident of the whom and where he was born did play into it, but I will echo another commenter that he is an amazing capitalist - and I do mean that as an insult to Elon. He has done an amazing job of playing the game in a system that rewards shrewdness, cutthroat action, and manipulation. He managed to get enough clout to be able to lie about just about anything and pay for the echo chamber that makes it real enough.

Overrated? In most aspects yes. In being everything that is wrong with capitalism he’s right on point.

[pixel_popping]

hmm, you call him "overrated" in the same breath as acknowledging he's one of the most effective capitalists alive, isn't this a direct contradiction? It's like saying Escobar was overrated in his field of work, that makes no sense, if you are at the top like few on earth, the man built the largest drug empire on Earth. You can find that repugnant but you can't call it overrated.

[anovikov]

I don't get why are you being downvoted. People seem to forgot that he started out as an engineer and visionary, and built pioneer companies in at least two industries that were deemed impossible to enter from outside - cars and space launch - and succeeded in both.

[pixel_popping]

HN is turning into a politic cesspool mixing things that are independent, that's why.

[bigyabai]

Oh, you're one of those people that bought into the "businesses can't be political" lie, huh?

[pixel_popping]

I understand that powerful people build projects for political and control purposes, but I just don't care who manages a platform, do you care about who runs your OVH servers? Same way I don't care about the background of an artist behind a song. Could be a total dirtbag, I still don't care.

I can despise someone while appreciating what they built or their prowess in a given field. Pretty sure you can find plenty of people throughout history whose accomplishments genuinely impressed you (and useful for humanity) while simultaneously thinking that same person belongs in prison.

Projects are composed of many people. This idea that it's all "1 person" is nonsense. Companies that big are mostly ran by employees and leaders,not just the CEO sitting on top supervising and giving directives

[bigyabai]

> do you care about who runs your OVH servers?

Yes? If they're from a sanctioned country then I could be held criminally liable or have my service interrupted without warning. I would not evaluate professional infrastructure if the owner refused to tell me where they were located.

> This idea that it's all "1 person" is nonsense.

It's the basis of how all C-suite operations work, do you need to see an org chart for a reminder? The idea that it's "all 1 person" is baked into the concept of private capital. Arrangements that give the employees or leadership executive priority is far, far in the minority of how businesses are ran today.

[anovikov]

I probably don't understand you in full but the idea of private capital is based on the opposite - that there is no dependency on a single person.

This was seen as a major risk of Apple ("what's going to happen if Steve dies, last time they got rid of him it almost went under"), and held its stock back for a considerable time before market accepted that dependence on that 1 person wasn't as big as feared.

This is seen as a major risk of SpaceX now, too. Companies are not people. A company that's worth something - not just makes a profit - shouldn't be dependent on one person, because you can't sell a person due to 13th Amendment, but being worth something means that one can buy and sell.