Too many people have given Elon a pass. Don't give him a pass.
He's a marketer, not a founder or an engineer. He didn't found PayPal or Tesla; he bought into them early. He's good at selling narratives and equity valuation for perpetually unprofitable companies.
Everything for him is a narrative. His green revolution was a narrative to sell more cars and get more subsidies. His bitcoin purchase was to gain appeal among bitcoin/crypto people in a bull market. And he shilled doge like a dumbass. His SpaceX narrative is to get money from the government.
His rooftop solar thing was an outright scam; the technology isn't ready and went nowhere because of that. His full-self-driving-in-an-intermediate-term timeline was a scam, and is going nowhere because of that. He makes scams to draw people and capital in, because for him it's all about narratives and equity valuation.
And then he dug unproductive holes, suggested unproductive hyper-tubes, built meme flamethrowers, for what? It's a narrative, not a business. None of this is real productive shit to make peoples' lives better.
His latest "we need free speech" narrative was a scam too. He tapped into something real, which is what marketers do and why it kind of worked. Yes, we need free speech. Yes, Twitter had censorship issues. He saw that and jumped on it maliciously rather than productively.
But what did he replace it with? He replaced it with arbitrary journalist censorship about his private jet, arbitrary censorship of Substack, selective Twitter Files release, won't talk seriously about any of his China connections because Xi Jinping fucking owns him economically there like Jack Ma, has his balls firmly in his grasp, etc.
Elon's playing the narrative, the anti-woke meme of the day. He's a master meme-momentum-player. Don't fall for it.
Well, my friend, while I appreciate your perspective, it's important to consider all sides of a situation before jumping to conclusions. In this case, I do believe that Elon Musk has made some valuable contributions to the technology and business world, including SpaceX, PayPal, and Tesla.
Of course, every person is bound to have their own opinions, successes, and failures, and it's important not to place any one individual on a pedestal, nor to vilify them without cause.
That being said, it is crucial that individuals and businesses alike prioritize ethics, integrity, and accountability in their actions and decisions. The success of any industry or endeavor is dependent on a community of individuals working together towards a common goal, and it is important that we all treat each other with respect, kindness, and understanding.
They have a market cap well north of $100b based on private investors who think they sound futuristic and innovative by declaring themselves SpaceX investors. They have come nowhere close to meeting their revenue projections over the years. Launch revenues about a billion and maybe another billion for Starlink. Look at Orbital ATK, ULA, Safran, Aerojet Rocketdyne and the telecom companies financials and market cap.
Entirely speculative market cap based on cult of personality, much like Tesla. Stocks are monetized and money needs no intrinsic value. Elon makes a relatively good local Schelling point for store of value to many people.
Their approach of reusable, large rockets is predicated on a surge in demand for launch far greater than anyone is expecting, and the proliferation of smallsats means way less mass/volume per satellite. Starship absurd excess capacity. They wanted to bootstrap with Starlink, but they are finding link budget means they cannot actually deliver great service (costs rising, and congestion reducing speeds).
Meanwhile 5g deployment is growing at such a tremendous pace, there will be wireless broadband in small towns that outperforms Starlink at a fraction of the price. Already the case in most places. I've been in various ~5k population towns where this works great, and the population in sub 1k towns ("true rural") is miniscule.
#[1] said they least about SpaceX because she is not an engineer, yet has enough data to surmise from Elon's character that something is likely awry, and I am happy to back her up.
You remember my ring, Peter? That's the sort of stuff that gets slowed down when people fixate on investing in things that are physically big/shiny, driven largely by reptilian instincts.
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