On Elon Musk
Elon Musk has become a divisive figure. There’s now a good chance that when he comes up in conversation, the person you’re speaking with will have a strong negative perception of him.
I think it’s important to get some objective perspective on his accomplishments. Even if he doesn’t do anything else for the rest of his life, Musk will be remembered as a revolutionary and disruptive company builder. He started the company that led to PayPal, which spurred the online economy. He started Tesla, which sped up the transition to electric vehicles, significantly advanced self-driving cars, and innovated on electric batteries to store energy. He started SpaceX, the company that has singlehandedly brought back America’s space ambitions and is on a path to provide satellite internet to the world and establish a civilization on Mars. He founded Neuralink, which is still early on but aims to merge humans and AI to form a superhuman with increased capabilities. Lastly, he founded The Boring Company, which builds tunnels in various cities to reduce traffic and speed up transportation.
These kinds of impressive feats and knowing he will be remembered as a hugely historical figure make me wonder why there’s so much hate for him. So, after talking to people and thinking about why so many people hate him, I’ve bucketed it into three different types of people.
The anti-billionaire / anti-capitalism people
Elon musk is the ultimate capitalist. He’s spent his entire life building company after company. There is a growing portion of the population that is anti-capitalistic so seeing Musk pursue his capitalist interests bothers them greatly.
Musk is also hyper-ambitious, and because he has such ambitious goals, he pushes his employees to great lengths to try and reach those goals. Many people don’t appreciate this level of ambition, and they don’t like seeing employees work long hours, even if the goal is to solve deep societal issues like climate change.
Elon represents ambition, capitalism, and entrepreneurialism, which some people are deeply against them.
The folks who think he’s an asshole, childish, or deeply flawed.
While I don’t empathize much with the previous bucket of people, this criticism has validity for me. Based on inside stories, he can be an asshole and sometimes is very childish on social media.
While I understand the criticism, I also think that most geniuses and influential people have deep character flaws, and it’s clear that Musk does as well. Famously, Steve Jobs was also extremely tough on his employees and was perceived as an asshole. I think people like this are singularly focused on a mission that they have the tendency to lose sight of human emotions. I’m not excusing the behavior, but I do think it comes along with the people who push humanity forward. Also, when you reach the type of prestige and wealth that Musk has, it must be very hard for him to stick to his roots.
Pro-censorship folks
These people are new to the scene and have come about from Musk purchasing Twitter. Before the acquisition was completed and since owning Twitter, Musk has repeatedly mentioned that he believes in freedom of speech and plans to turn Twitter more into a free speech platform while still obeying each country’s laws.
A growing cohort of people is deeply against freedom of speech on social media platforms because they believe hate speech and misinformation will proliferate without censorship.
For me personally, Elon represents the best in humanity. If you strip away the memes, jokes on Twitter, and media coverage, he’s someone who is trying hard to advance the human race and push us forward. You see that so directly in his mission to establish a civilization on Mars — the idea being that if humans are multi-planetary, the odds of us going extinct due to some tragic event on earth goes down.
I think we need more people like Elon Musk, with his level of ambition, engineering skills, and passion for solving problems for humanity.