[SwellJoe]

It also achieved Musk's actual goal: derailing and delaying mass transit initiatives, the California High-speed Rail project, in particular.

He knew it was bullshit. He's dumber than most people realize, but he's not dumb enough to actually believe all the bullshit he spouts.

[hparadiz]

He's sending the weirdest mixed signals. If we want to hit anywhere near 1 on the Kardashev scale we're gonna need a planet wide high speed rail system. They should just give the major tech companies naming rights to the stations for 35 years for like 2-3 billion a pop and scale up construction 5x.

I don't get the slow roll on this thing. The stations in LA and SF are gonna end up sort of like Tokyo station for the Shinkansen. A giant mall area with a huge amount of commerce. Why isn't this thing done yesterday?

[SwellJoe]

He doesn't actually want progress. He wants power and wealth for himself. Public transit is an equalizer, it serves normal people.

[hparadiz]

Relax man. He's a bipolar weirdo who isn't always likable but progress doesn't always come from likeable people. And the fact of the matter is he has actually delivered on a bunch of stuff I thought I'd never see in my lifetime.

[SwellJoe]

What kinds of things he's delivered do you have in mind?

[hparadiz]

Let's see. If Paypal was his only legacy he would have already done 99% more than most people but then he went on to build a car company that was the best selling electric car brand in the world for a decade and in the process standardized not just electric charging but the plug we're all using today. Then they released a home battery with a sub 10 ms ATS which is necessary for seamless in-house grid/off grid transition. Finally the push for a reusable rocket booster was entirely a management decision on his part. If the next words out of your mouth are "he didn't do that, his engineers did" please come up with something more original. This isn't reddit.

[ac29]

> in the process standardized not just electric charging but the plug we're all using today

Wat? Are you talking about NACS? If so, a minority of non-Tesla EVs currently on the road use it in the US, and AFAIK zero outside of North America.

And even in the US, the vast majority of EV charging stations are AC and use J1772, a SAE standard that predates Tesla's existence.

[queenkjuul]

His company was bought by PayPal and he was fired shortly thereafter. giving him credit for that is a stretch.

[nine_k]

> Why isn't this thing done yesterday?

Land rights. Environmental reviews. Various suits attempting to exert extra compensations for tangential (at best) issues. Basically the California around.

[ianburrell]

Planet wide high speed rail doesn't make much sense, it is better of medium sized trips. Flights are will always be better for intercontinental trips. Vacuum trains could be faster but would be so expensive to build. Issues would be big deal in evacuated tunnels.

CA HSR is slow partly because the state government has limited funds and giving out slowly. The federal government should have been contributing more. The other problem is it kept getting delayed from legal issues, mainly from acquiring land. Going forward is bad because they decided to do the easy part first and leave the hard tunnels for later.

[WalterBright]

> Vacuum trains could be faster but would be so expensive to build

Vacuum trains are what high altitude airliners are.

[cryptonector]

Nooo, not thaaat!! We want traiiiins!!

[hparadiz]

There should be a high speed rail for every minor leg along the way. Efficiency is relative. People should be able to ship their car by this system instead of renting if they chose. Or use it to go sight seeing in any direction along it's web. The whole point is freedom to move around.

The cost of the HSR is tiny and inconsequential. For the 40 million residents of California it amounts to about $20 a month over the 10 years the fund has been going. It hasn't even spent 50% of the total fund yet. If construction was even 2x the current rate we would already have the central valley done. So I know they are slow rolling it. That's my point. They can speed things up even just a little.

[NortySpock]

Orbital ring would kickstart the space economy like nothing else, and is technically achievable with existing materials.

[fc417fc802]

Would you trust the operators of an orbital ring with your life though? The modern world seems to mostly be able to do sky scrapers at this point but ... ehh. We still struggle a bit even with just airliners.

[hparadiz]

Both?!? Both.

[dilyevsky]

Pinning CAHSR jobs program as hyperloop's fault is pretty funny. Maybe he did intend to upset it but since both turned out to be massive boondoggles doesn't seem like it worked - they managed to delay it themselves just fine.

[SwellJoe]

Sure, California is a failed state on a lot of fronts, but Musk literally said he was pushing hyperloop for that reason. https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article26445107...

Whether he was the only reason for high speed rail being derailed and delayed isn't really the point. He intentionally worked against mass transit, and lied repeatedly about hyperloop as part of that.

[flomo]

Certainly not a Musk fan, but IMO the real point of hyperloop was more that it's on a route that could be constructed within our lifetimes. (Unlike CAHSR, check their website.) Of course, California knows this because that's where they built Interstate 5.

[hparadiz]

> California is a failed state on a lot of fronts

Some people really should just rm -rf their boot disk cause I feel dumber for having read their comment.

[SwellJoe]

The feeling is mutual.

[dilyevsky]

I think you've missed the point - that wasn't the reason at all. In a way he was right too - we'll have fully autonomous buses and private vehicles capable of making the full trip down the I-5 long before they complete even the middle of nowhere section they currently have planned.

[SwellJoe]

Autonomous buses and private vehicles don't solve any of the problems high speed rail solves.

[dilyevsky]

They're basically not building anything, and what they are building will be borderline unusable because of the route they chose so the car will be faster, cleaner and more convenient. If you want fast you can take the plane. So unless the problem is "how do we siphon as much tax dollars as possible banana republic-style?" I really can't agree here.

[NordStreamYacht]

I don't think he's dumb at all, if what you say is correct. He wanted to block something for his own benefit and he achieved it.

[bulbar]

I'm not convinced that's the case. I tend to think he just saw something he found cool and triggered his narcissism so he had to come up with something he thought was cooler. That something turned out to be BS and he just dropped the idea and moved on.

[hparadiz]

That's exactly what happened lol.

[bulbar]

The behavior of both Musk and Trump is easily (and sometimes obviously) explained in terms of narcissism.

Nobody talks about it, but my pet theory is that Trunk attacked Iran because he wanted to do it in his first terms but was stopped by his inner circle. THE Trump. Stopped. Of course he loved the idea of attacking Iran when presented to him earlier this year.

People tend to think that the powerful and rich are so much more clever than normal people so they come up with complex hidden agendas, but I didn't find it necessarily being the case.

[SwellJoe]

He is ruthlessly cunning. Not unusual in sociopaths and narcissists.

[themafia]

> the California High-speed Rail project

The state government of California was doing a bang up job of destroying this project on their own. He didn't really need to help them. Moreover given the rise of remote work I'm not sure it has as much value as it would have had it been constructed when it was designed.

> but he's not dumb enough to actually believe all the bullshit he spouts.

Yet he's not afraid of the consequences either. This seems more telling to me.

[SwellJoe]

The consequence of becoming the world's richest man? Oh, the horror. The very wealthy do not face consequences for their actions.

He lies every day about his companies, and no one ever does a thing about it.

DOGE killed a few hundred thousand children for no reason at all; it didn't even save money. He did it purely for the joy of killing black and brown children in the global south. No one with any power to deliver has ever suggested he should face consequences for it.

Why should he be afraid of consequences? There will never be any for him, as long as he is protected by unimaginable wealth and a power structure designed around serving those with wealth.

[sumeno]

He has never faced an actual meaningful consequence, of course he isn't afraid of them.