I’m totally- totally impartial here. I’ve seen some people liking him, some people who don’t. just wanna get some insight.

  • @X51@lemmy.ml
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    163 years ago

    I think his intelligence is overrated. Tesla would have gone bankrupt if not for DARPA funding.

  • @tronk@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    He portrays himself as incredibly smart but also quirky and relatable. Given the monetary stakes, I don’t doubt for a second that he has a public relations team guiding him. He’s a living advertisement.

    So I guess I sorta like the persona he embodies in the sense of being smart and relatable. But I also really distrust that image and dislike the fact that it’s in the service of guiding consumer (and perhaps regulatory and worker) behavior to maximize profits.

    • poVoq
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      63 years ago

      Yeah the persona seems partially fake (like his hair-line ;) ).

      But regardless of that, he did a lot to push for some really interesting technological innovations instead of just playing it safe with the millions he got from selling his part of PayPal back in the day. In the end it seems to have (financially) worked out for him, but he could have very easily lost all on those risky innovations.

      So all in all I would say compared with the other internet billionaires we sadly have (that just shouldn’t be a thing in general), he is probably the best.

  • @Jeffrey@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    I see him as a hubristic chaotic neutral. He advocates technology as the solution to all the world’s problems and promotes himself as a suave yet quirky savior of humanity. He has helped rejuvenate space research, and further green-technology development, but he has also frequently manipulated markets. He has tremendous influence in American popular culture, and often wields it irresponsibly such as the numerous times he contradicted information from public health officials, and contributed to the politicization of COVID-19. Never mind that no one becomes a billionaire without directly and indirectly exploiting millions of people along the way. He is a “cool” billionaire who puts forth a persona that is generally relatable to the American public, but his actions do not seem to have much regard for the well-being of the public.

    Honestly, I think Wikipedia’s summary of the controversy surrounding him sums things up very well:

    Musk has been the subject of criticism due to unorthodox or unscientific stances and highly publicized controversies. In 2018, he was sued for defamation by a diver who advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue; a California jury ruled in favor of Musk. In the same year, he was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. He settled with the SEC, temporarily stepping down from his chairmanship and accepting limitations on his Twitter usage. Musk has spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and has received criticism from experts for his other views on such matters as artificial intelligence and public transport.

    • @kimjong_ill@lemmy.ml
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      103 years ago

      chaotic neutral

      exploiting people

      yeah, that’s not neutral.

      also you used said that he “indirectly” exploits people. this is untrue. he directly exploits people.

  • @kimjong_ill@lemmy.ml
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    113 years ago

    dude is a fucking clown. which wouldn’t be such a huge deal if he didn’t have so much power over people. as mentioned by others, he’s not even that smart. he’s just rich.

    all billionaires are bad. i’m not memeing or anything–it’s the truth. people don’t have billions of dollars by accident. they have billions of dollars by exploiting other humans (and the planet’s resources).

  • ghost_laptop
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    83 years ago

    He is a bastard that financed Bolivia’s coup just to get lithium for his cars’ batteries, among other terrible things, the only reason why he is so famous is because he must be the first capitalist to make an risky investment which is generally made by the State, which is the wet dream o anarchocapitalists and laisses fairez-ists.

    • poVoq
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      3 years ago

      You got a source for that claim? Other than a stupid twitter post by him there seems to be no actual evidence that he was involved at all. Sure, maybe Tesla would have bought Lithium from the coup government, but that never happened in the end…

      • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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        33 years ago

        The fact that he could say that, and also “some” people own the media in a tweet, should be enough to tell how far the tentacles are rooted into him. His tweet is enough to tell how much backing he has from USA terrorist state, to be unafraid of saying something like coup’ing a country as a private corporation CEO.

        • poVoq
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          63 years ago

          He says a lot of shit on Twitter… but that is no evidence that he actually financed a coup though.

          • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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            -43 years ago

            He himself is financed, he does not finance jackshit. He is simply a puppet poster boy, who got in at the right place at the right time.

  • @trokhymchuk@lemmy.ml
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    63 years ago

    I like some of his things (like innovations that he’s done) but I don’t like this cryptocurrency stuff that he made. I dislike when he says some shit about bitcoin and the exchange rate collapses.

  • @Squirrel@thelemmy.club
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    13 months ago

    He’s a man-child billionaire with a fragile ego. He takes credit for the accomplishments of others, while his contributions often do more harm than good. He’s like an inept comic book villain, only there for comic relief.

  • Empathy [he/him]
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    13 months ago

    Had bad vibes since the first time I heard of him, and I’m usually the biggest fan of new technology in the room. He’s always given me the impression that he’s driven purely by ego, anything else seems to me like a side effect.