[stickfigure]

I'm convinced this is a schtick. Not that he doesn't genuinely want that, but it's not the root motivation. I suspect it's something more like wanting to be perceived as a real-world Tony Stark. The cave rescue capsule episode is illustrative. The guy likes attention.

[fragmede]

Armchair analysis would also mention that Jeff Bezos is going for the Moon with his space, and how do you beat that guy with that ambition? Get to Mars, first. From a scientific perspective, the Moon makes more sense, but if we frame it as billionaires trying to out do one another, what comes after who's got the bigger yacht? So a competition between billionaires on who's better also makes sense as his true motivation.

End of the day though, why does it matter his true motivation? If I was working at one of his companies, as long as the paycheck cashes and the stock options are legally mine, if his motivation is money-based or attention-based or he's a true believer, I'm getting money and I can feed my kids.

It's not like I'm going to get the chance to talk with him personally and get to know him and sus out what it is, either, so it's all just pointless theorizing. What we, the general public "know" is a result of various people with their own agenda pushing their owna viewpoints? Does the man know anything at all, is he a total charlatan, or is he smart and gets it? Hit refresh on a different subreddit and get a different answer.

[latexr]

> End of the day though, why does it matter his true motivation?

Are you asking why the motivations of one of the richest (and thus most influential) people on the planet matter? He’s actively influencing domestic and foreign elections to further his own goals. He gutted government aid programs, leading to millions of deaths. He shares propaganda to a massive audience. Of course his motivations matter.

> If I was working at one of his companies, as long as the paycheck cashes and the stock options are legally mine, if his motivation is money-based or attention-based or he's a true believer, I'm getting money and I can feed my kids.

Yeah, until the world he creates is one where you can’t. The reason the world is in its current fucked-up state is that too many people think like that. Until the leopard eats their face and they’re surprised, but by then it’s too late.

[philipallstar]

> The cave rescue capsule episode is illustrative

That seems an incredibly minor thing in the grand scheme of Elon Musk's life to judge him on it. I think it was stupid and unnecessary, and betrays a deficiency of character, but it's so tiny compared to dragging the world into car electrification, satellite internet, not just recreating the US rocket industry but making reusable rockets, online payments, and conservative opinions like "trans women aren't women" no longer being a bannable offence on the world's main discussion platform.

[akskjdj]

That's not just a conservative opinion, it's a view widely held across the political spectrum.

Janice Raymond, left-wing radical feminist, wrote a book making that point in the 1970s.

[paytonjjones]

> wanting to be perceived as a real-world Tony Stark

The thing is, he _had_ this. He had all of Reddit worshipping him. He had the press. He had the tech-internet.

Then he knowingly blew it all up overnight to ally with Trump.

I think the reasons why are pretty clear: a son-who-loves-me became a daughter-who-despises-me and his companies got repeatedly hamstrung by California Democrats.

But if his root motivation was truly just approval, he would have taken it on the chin and accepted slower growth of his other ambitions. So it's a little more complicated than that.

[otterley]

> Then he knowingly blew it all up overnight to ally with Trump.

He blew it up years before that with his "pedo guy" false accusation drama.

[philipallstar]

> Then he knowingly blew it all up overnight to ally with Trump.

It's true. Nothing the American left hates more than an ex-Democrat. If only they hadn't made being a centrist a Republican position.

[stickfigure]

> Then he knowingly blew it all up overnight to ally with Trump.

This is speculation, but I am guessing that he didn't do this knowingly. He's probably surrounded with yes-men who didn't challenge his fever dream of swooping in, fixing the government, and being lauded as a hero.