2 hours ago, Luke said:

You realize that Bill Gates has not had a role in Microsoft management since 2008?

Yes, I realize that.  But you were the one who linked Gates and Musk.

2 hours ago, Luke said:

the most successful people from a compensation perspective are those who move around every few years unless their employer is aggressively promoting them. Up or out.

Well, that's what I did.  Even within military service I changed career fields several times.  In fact that's what I liked about the Air Force.  When I got tired of doing one job I cross-trained into a different field.  I never had a lifelong career doing the same thing.

Noel

On 12/11/2021 at 5:37 AM, birdguy said:

Another measure of very successful people is their philanthropy.  How much do the very wealthy give back to the community.  Elon Musk can't even shine Bill Gate's shoes.

 

As Luke said, entrepreneurs are usually responsible for such generosity later in their careers. 

Musk has signed the giving pledge and agreed to give away at least half his wealth in his lifetime. He's obviously not going to do that yet while he's dumping all the finance he can into getting the most advanced space craft ever created in the air and trying to ensure the long term survival of Tesla.

In fact Musk has no sold all the houses he owns and put the money into those endeavors. Last June he was living in a temprary home worth fifty thousand dollars he was renting on the SpaceX grounds.

He has said that when Tesla's future is assured he will honour the giving pledge. Meanwhile, he is donating many millions to charities and has set up an XPrize for innovation in carbon capture.

Well, good for Musk.  He gives .05% of his net worth to charity.  Looks really big in round numbers.

I give 2.8% of my monthly retirement income to charity every month.  Probably looks pitifully small in round numbers.

I know space enthusiasts love Musk and his big rickets.  Perhaps if I were a space enthusiast I'd be fan too.  But I'm not and still don't think much of Musk the way he skimps on his employees.  Neither Tesla not SpaceX can make it into the top 100 list of the best places to work for.

Noel

 

Edited December 12, 20214 yr by birdguy

17 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Well, good for Musk.  He gives .05% of his net worth to charity.  Looks really big in round numbers. I give 2.8% of my monthly retirement income to charity every month.  Probably looks pitifully small in round numbers.

But I'm quite sure it's more than Andrew Carnegie donated to charity last year. Does that mean you're a larger philanthropist than him?

All we're pointing out is that if you want to compare people of different ages, then you need to normalize for age and inflation if you want to make a meaningful comparison. The world's richest person in 2060 hasn't donated very much to charity either, if at all. So greedy!

Cheers!

Some of you folks are vilifying a man based on one article.  Any large operation is going to have some malcontents who constantly complain that they aren't being treated fairly.  

Unions destroy businesses, especially manufacturing.  A large truck manufacturing plant near where I grew up finally closed after years of dealing with greedy workers who were constantly striking and suing the company.  My uncle was one of those workers, and he ultimately lost his job due to the closure.  He was making $25 an hour 15 years ago, but that wasn't good enough for him and hundreds of others who worked there.  Yes, we need govt. agencies to ensure that working conditions are safe and that employees aren't being mistreated or exploited, which we have.  We don't need more unions.  My view on labor issues has always been pretty simple: if you don't like your job, then quit!

Calling people who work for Musk "serfs" is just silly.  I haven't checked lately, but as far as I know there are still thousands of people who continue to work for him.  If things were so bad then that would not be the case.

It is men and women like Elon Musk who promote surges of progress.  They are visionaries and "men of action" who accomplish great things.  Are they perfect?  Of course not.  Are they angels?  No.  Please tell me then, who is?  Do we expect everyone to be Mother Teresa?

Dave

 

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

Well, good for Musk.  He gives .05% of his net worth to charity.  Looks really big in round numbers.

 

As explained, we can hardly expect him to give big chunks of his wealth away when he trying desperately to make Tesla a success and put the most advanced reusable spaceship ever devised into orbit to get us back to the Moon and to Mars and combat various existential threats. These are very profound endeavours that aren't accomplished with peanuts or by giving chunks of your wealth away. 

 And as said, he has agreed to give away half of his wealth within his lifetime. 

 

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Perhaps if I were a space enthusiast I'd be fan too.  But I'm not 

 

Forget whether you are a space enthusiast or not and think about what he is trying to do for mankind. 

Edited December 12, 20214 yr by martin-w

 

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Some of you folks are vilifying a man based on one article.  Any large operation is going to have some malcontents who constantly complain that they aren't being treated fairly.  

 

This is true. You will find just as many articles praising Musk and criticising him. The truth is that he is both good and bad, like all of us. Looking at the bigger picture helps and not being biased because of the way media portray people.  

 

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I haven't checked lately, but as far as I know there are still thousands of people who continue to work for him.  If things were so bad then that would not be the case.

 

My thoughts too. There are greater than 70,000 working for Tesla and there are 10,000 at SpaceX, and there are a few hundred at the Boring Company, and there are  Solar City employees too. Then of course NeuroLink and OpenAi. They aren't dropping like flies. 

What the media does is latch onto various issues and use them to sell their wares. 

 

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It is men and women like Elon Musk who promote surges of progress.

 

Precisely! We would still be living in caves without them. 

 

Edited December 12, 20214 yr by martin-w

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Does that mean you're a larger philanthropist than him?

Of course I'm not a larger philanthropist than he is in raw numbers.  But as a percentage of my meager wealth compared to his then yes I am.

Noel

I don't trust any articles in the media about Elon Musk. Tesla doesn't advertise and that angers media outlets and causes them to direct its writers to author a constant stream of  clickbait hatchet jobs about Musk, Tesla and/or SpaceX. The worst offender surprisingly is the eco-green NY Times which regularily runs anti-Tesla articles. The most recent was a piece by Cade Metz, a well known Musk hater. The article was so fraught with errors that I was surprised that it passed editorial review. There is also is large bunch of people that shorted Tesla stock and now are wearing nothing but a barrel. These low lifes also author anti-Musk articles out of spite for losing billions.

1 hour ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I don't trust any articles in the media about Elon Musk.

Not even the good ones that put him in a positive light?  If you don't trust any articles in the media about Elon Musk then where did you get the information that makes you a Musk fan?  Do you personally know him?

Noel

 

Even his ex-girlfriend says he's pathetic.....🤣

https://goodgamesnews.com/song-about-elon-musk-the-greatest-gamer-but-a-pathetic-lover/

Well, Doug he is a weird guy.  Most of us think overpopulation is a problem.  He things women should have MORE babies.  And he wants people who don't change their minds to die.

From what I've read this evening he is an innovated guy.  But that doesn't mean I have to like him.  He's got a lot of money and he spends it on his hobby, big rockets.

He reminds of another super rich guy who was weird.  Howard Huges.  Huges was into big airplanes.  Musk is into big rockets.  But Huges also founded the Huges Medical Institute which today is the second largest philanthropy in the country, just after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Maybe Musk will do something for humanity besides wanting to send a few to Mars.  I'm waiting.

Noel

 

8 hours ago, birdguy said:

He's got a lot of money and he spends it on his hobby, big rockets.

 

Yeah that's kind of ridiculous. SpaceX isn't a "hobby" its a company that makes products it sells to customers, including NASA. Its the leading global launch provider. That "hobby" as you put it also employs thousands of people and a multitude more that are employed by companies that provide materials and products to SpaceX. And that "hobby" as you put is leading us in the direction of much cheaper space flight and ultimately the capability to ensure human consciousness survives in the Solal System rather than being snuffed out by a big rock or some other disaster. 

 

8 hours ago, birdguy said:

He reminds of another super rich guy who was weird.  Howard Huges. 

 

Howard Hughes was "weird" as you put it because he suffered from extreme Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I too suffer form OCD and at various times in my life its been very extreme, hence why I did many years of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, not to mention took SSRI's. This very morning I had issues to deal with. People kill themselves due to OCD, and yes, you may regard the way OCD sufferers behave as "weird" but to be honest I'd prefer you to have sympathy for the condition rather than just labelling us "weird". 

 

8 hours ago, birdguy said:

Maybe Musk will do something for humanity besides wanting to send a few to Mars.  I'm waiting.

 

I'm getting a bit frustrated now. Sending us to Mars could ensure the survival of the human race. If that's not "doing something for humanity" I'm not sure what is and ultimately its not "a few". You also been told of the impact Tesla products have had on taking gas cars of the road, providing back-up batteries for renewable energy, grid scale batteries solar roof tiles, solar panels etc. And you have already been told a number of times why he can't as yet give away chunks of his income. However he is currently in a dialogue with the UN regarding donating $6 billion to world hunger.

Quite frankly... I give up. 

Edited December 13, 20214 yr by martin-w

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

Sending us to Mars could ensure the survival of the human race.

What's he going to do?  Build a thousand big rockets to transport all of us to Mars?  Or just the lite?  And why shouldn't the human race eventually die out like everything else in the universe?  Lord knows with wars and genocide and global warming due to our misuse of resources and deforestation and habitat destruction and over population and inequitable sharing of wealth and a politican class that exists not for us but seeing how many crumbs they can scrape off the billionaires table and now a pandemic which so many of us deny we're trying very hard to do it to ourselves.

Rant over and I do have sympathy for your OCD.  But Howard Huges was a weird person despite that.

If you're going to give up I suppose I'll give up too.  We are poles apart on this subject.  

Noel

52 minutes ago, birdguy said:

What's he going to do?  Build a thousand big rockets to transport all of us to Mars?  Or just the lite? 

 

We've discussed this before but apparently you still doing get it. It's not about developing thousands of space ships and numerous huge domes on Mars to send all of us next week, that would be pretty dumb because a planet killing event could impact Mars too and such an endeavour is not possible, obviously.

 Its about developing the technology that will lead to our multiplanetary existence. Its about a few scientists and engineers first. Eventually we end up with a colony, followed by a self sustaining colony, and then colonies across the solar system. At that point, any big rock that hits this planet, or other species threatening event, won't result in human consciousness no longer existing. And its not just about Mars and its not just about Earth. Any one of the bodies we inhabit across the solar system could be hit with one of the many existential threats that exists. Its about the logic of not having all your eggs in one basket.

 

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And why shouldn't the human race eventually die out like everything else in the universe?

 

It obviously will. But it doesn't have to sooner than it needs to. And it would be pretty dumb not to prevent a premature demise if we could do something about it

 

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we're trying very hard to do it to ourselves.

 

We are a young species. The universe is 13.8 billion years old. There are prebaby species out there much more ancient that have overcome the tendencies you describe. Rather than giving up on the human race, much better to continue to progress.

 

Quote

Rant over and I do have sympathy for your OCD.  But Howard Huges was a weird person despite that.

 

The only "weirdness" I know about relating to Howard Hughes are characteristics associated with OCD. 

 

Hopefully you can now see that its not just about Musk having fun with rockets. 🙄 Its an extremely stressful endeavour for him, not a fun pastime for a laugh. And he, as he recently revealed, is autistic, perhaps why some not familiar with the disorder would regard him as "weird". 

Edited December 13, 20214 yr by martin-w