Walter Isaacson, whose biography on Elon Musk is set to come out this fall, repeated his narrative about the Tesla CEO as a kind of flawed genius.

159 points

You don’t become a billionaire by caring about people.

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63 points

And I believe he was raised wealthy too. Extreme wealth fundamentally disconnects you from most people.

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48 points

He was a pampered prince among priviliged white children. In white supremacist Pretoria south africa. So he’s doubly detached and dysfunctional.

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20 points

Emerald mine with heavy labor exploitation was involved, too, IIRC

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5 points

And yet millions of naive people around the world still love that psychopath.

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5 points
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5 points

They’re basically money junkies. They never got past puberty because their only drive is to secure more for themselves, which is like pre-proto-primate logic.

It’s nothing different than the fent addicts I see on the daily.

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4 points

If Elon is on steroids, he’s using them wrong.

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8 points
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2 points
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Okay that’s a little hyperbolic. There are penty of juicing bodybuilders that are the nicest people on the planet. Unless musk is blasting trenbalone of course then sure.

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2 points

I agree, but I want to imagine a world where you could.

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18 points

One really contradicts the other.

A person can only generate so much money by not caring about other people. If they cared about other people, they would spend their money to improve something instead of hoarding it for themselves or distribute it evenly between themselves and those they exploit.

An empathetic person would know that they have no right to have that much money.

They would be able to see that they were lucky in an exploitive system and they would understand that their work is not worth more than the work of other people.

You can’t be rich and be a good person at the same time, because money is generated by exploiting labor and you can only generate more money by exploiting more work.

In the very end this money belongs to the people who carried Elon Musk through his life. He did not invent those rockets. He did not program those cars. He did not dig the lithium for the batteries under extremely dangerous conditions out of the ground while being paid peanuts. What he contributed to his wealth is the willingness to exploit other people.

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If only meritocracies were real

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88 points

So, a psychopath.

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25 points

Could also just be quite a bit further along the autism spectrum.

Hard to say for sure, but he’s never struck me as sincerely psychopathic. Narcissistic sure, but not really psychopathic.

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52 points

Autistic people feel empathy.

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19 points

I mean he profits from the suffering of others. I don’t see how that’s not psychopathic

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14 points

Because that’s not the definition of psychopath.

Most of us profit from the suffering of others. Does that make us all psychopaths?

In any case, I would probably classify him as evil, regardless of whether he’s a psychopath.

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16 points

The dude fired a bunch of people, never paid their severance and refuses to communicate with them. The dude is a fucking complete sociopath. He lies to investors about deadlines, he lies about the potential of his technology to consumers, and he lies to his own staff.

You can stop simping for him, he doesn’t want to ride your dick, mate.

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2 points

What was this firing people?

Hmm yeah I’ve never been able to decide if his lying is because he’s actually delusional or if he is a sociopath.

I mean either way I think he’s an idiot. But I’m not sure of the root cause.

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14 points

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem

Autistic people feel empathy. Source - am autistic, feel (pretty strong and sometimes unpleasant) empathy.

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1 point

Oh for sure. But an autistic psychopath may not.

Definitely not equating the two. I’m well aware that autistic people are often more empathetic, not less.

But some of his mannerisms just strike me as somewhat autistic. He doesn’t strike me as a straight psychopath.

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8 points

People on the spectrum generally do feel empathy it is of a different sort than people who are NT.

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5 points

Sociopath, big difference

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83 points

Flawed genius. The flaw being he isn’t a genius but is rather a fucking idiot with a silver spoon.

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39 points

Yeah he’s the modern day version of Edison

They Both stole inventions the employees invented and claimed to have invented stuff that had already been invented

americans say it with me “Edison did not invent the light bulb”

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8 points
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Ever see the actual founders of Tesla talk? They laid out the whole Tesla plan. Elon takes those talking points and everyone thinks he made it.

https://youtu.be/JW95LCkxlb4

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4 points

The irony of him buying a company called Tesla and taking credit for their work would be seen as too on the nose if it was a plot point in a movie.

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-9 points

As much as I hate him he is kind of a marketing genius. Tesla is such a big company, not because they are superior cars, but because Elon marketed himself as a visionary of the future, got a large fan base of techbros then marketed Tesla stock to those tech bros and finance bros as a great investment because his super genius future cars are going to change the entire world.

And the investors don’t care its all hyperbole, false promises and market buzzwords, as long as the line goes up they continue to invest, thus making Musk richer.

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12 points

its easy when you can dump money into not just ad companies but entire news agencies.

not smart, rich

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2 points

Marketing geniuses are people who take real assets of a brand and find just the right angle to connect with the masses. They create sustainable growth and generate almost endless demand for their products and services.

Elon Musk is a grifter and a charlatan who fed mediocre journalists with empty promises to regurgitate to investors. Even Elizabeth Holmes was able to pull that off.

When journalists saw through him, he switched to lying to cryptobros on social media. Then that well dried up as well, and now he’s pandering to insane alt-righters.

Every audience is less wealthy and less relevant than the previous one.

Just like all charlatans, he’s getting cornered by his own lies and unrealistic expectations. And he’s running out of options.

tl;dr Con men are not marketing geniuses, they are con men.

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0 points

All marketing is just a grift, whose point is to make more money off a product. And Elon becoming one of the richest people on earth defacto proves that his lying, empty promises crypto pump and dump and buzzword meme/shitpost marketing worked. And Musk drones are still clamouring for his poorly made death machines he called cars, and space x flights are booked out years in advance (due mostly due Shotwell and the engineers incredible success way more than anything Musk has done, but still) so by any measure of capitalist success he’s doing well, he’s just not ethical in any way.

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33 points

We need a “No Shit Sherlock” tag

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28 points

I knew this when he laughed at a deer that drowned in a backyard pool when he was in a pewdiepie youtube video.

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Enough Musk Spam

!enoughmuskspam@lemmy.world

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