• PugJesus@kbin.social
    57·
    1 year ago

    I once thought he was a somewhat awkward nerd who fell upward from wealth into insane wealth.

    Turns out, no, at one point he just had a functioning PR team.

    • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1032·
      1 year ago

      I mean, you don’t go from millionaire to billionaire in a decade without having some brains, you have to give him credit for that.

      I just didn’t realise what a terrible person he was.

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
        41·
        1 year ago

        Getting lucky (Paypal) and being a good grifter (Tesla) does not equal having brains. At most, if one wanted to be generous, you could say SpaceX was a venture made at an opportune time, but I would attribute that less to brains than luck, since the driving impetus for its founding was not “NASA is phasing out certain services which private companies will need to pick up” but “I just got rich and now I want to fund space exploration.” Which, to be fair, is better than what most people do when they first get rich - but is hardly proof of intelligence.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          1 year ago

          SpaceX should have been a failure.

          • The US lost its primary source of engines and one of its main launch providers
          • the US was between rockets
          • Obama space advisors groked that the more people involved with space the higher the chance programs don’t get cut. Hence private launch contracts.
          • every other country that can do something in space lost interest for decades but still had needs.
          • Wall Street scumbags took over Boeing.
          • they hired obsessed talent in the beginning.

          Any of those things hadn’t happened when they did and it would have been failure. Only one of them is because of something they did.

      • Chainweasel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        1 year ago

        I mean, you don’t go from millionaire to billionaire in a decade without having some brains.

        It’s not uncommon for the lottery to get up over a billion anymore and it doesn’t take a whole lot of brains to gamble

      • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Unlike many I do agree. Elon is extremely good at some things, like self-promotion. With some starting capital and understanding of venture capitalism it can get you a looong way.

        Scamming people at that level requires serious skill. And makes you a terrible person.