The Unbelievable Lightness Of Being Musk

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The concept for this story has been kicked round within the govt eating room at CleanTechnica headquarters for some time now, as Elon Musk seems to be going additional off the rails with every passing day. Let’s be sincere. Musk and Tesla pay lots of payments round right here. The time period “clickbait” is used pejoratively each time anybody doesn’t like one among our articles, as a result of we are within the click on enterprise, as is each different digital media website. The gods of Google rely each click on, each key stroke, and each “like.” Clicks are the forex of the digital world. There isn’t any monetary incentive for CleanTechnica writers to get extra clicks nowadays, although, so we’re not individually pushed to chase tales for clicks. It’s maybe a pure tendency, however we now have actually pushed away many, many readers by not praising all the things Musk does, so the conclusion that we write tales like this to make more cash is essentially flawed.

“Don’t chunk the hand that feeds you,” is an previous expression nevertheless it’s good recommendation. However, the latest actions by Elon Musk have soured most of us on him, to the purpose the place some are contemplating promoting their Tesla cars as a result of they not want to be seen as supporting his cockamamie worldview. Ever since he purchased Twitter and rebranded it as X, he has promoted the notion that each one speech must be free, nevertheless it ought to solely be amplified if he personally approves of it, and he’s very happy to sue others for what they are saying with a view to attempt to shut them up (a elementary assault on free speech, as one choose concluded). He has set himself up because the one and solely true giver of reality for all the world. When you put up stuff he likes, it will get handed on to his legions of followers. When you put up stuff that he doesn’t like, it’s generally deleted and your account is deactivated. It must be apparent this isn’t free speech in any respect. It’s megalomania writ massive.

About That Musk Put up On X

The newest instance occurred final week when the Secret Service arrested a person with a rifle close to a golf course the place Donald Trump was enjoying. Quickly afterwards, Musk posted this disgusting piece of rubbish on X:

That put up sparked a backlash so fierce that the good and highly effective Musk was pressured to delete it — after it had been considered tens of thousands and thousands of instances. In response to Wired, after deleting the put up, Musk mentioned it was merely a joke that fell flat given the context. “Nicely, one lesson I’ve discovered is that simply because I say one thing to a gaggle and so they chuckle doesn’t imply it’s going to be all that hilarious as a put up on 𝕏. Seems that jokes are WAY much less humorous if individuals don’t know the context and the supply is obvious textual content.”

Nicely, duh. How is it doable that the person who considers himself to be the neatest one that ever lived doesn’t know this? He’s the grasp of the world’s strongest social megaphone and but doesn’t perceive probably the most rudimentary ideas about the way it operates? That has raised issues that Musk, who’s the beneficiary of billions of {dollars} value of contracts with the US Division of Protection and NASA, could himself be a risk to nationwide safety if he makes use of his energy at X to encourage political violence.

“In my expertise, the Secret Service would take such a remark very severely,” Michael German, a former FBI particular agent and a liberty and nationwide safety fellow at NYU College of Regulation’s Brennan Heart for Justice, informed Wired. “Sometimes, brokers would exit and interview the topic to make sure that there wasn’t an current risk, and to make the topic conscious that the company takes such statements severely.”

Musk Is A Social Media Addict

The US authorities’s heavy reliance on corporations managed by Musk has repeatedly raised issues by nationwide safety consultants, particularly a yr in the past when he denied a request by Ukraine to allow Starlink in Crimea so it might launch an assault on Russian troops. There are issues about Musk’s enterprise relationship with China and his reliance on financing from Saudi Arabia to partially finance the acquisition of X. Critics are fast to level out that whereas he’s fast to lash out on the Biden administration for what he considers violations of his model of free speech, he by no means, ever has something unfavourable to say in regards to the rulers of China or Saudi Arabia, two international locations through which free speech is taken into account a criminal offense punishable by loss of life or lengthy intervals of incarceration.

Simply how concerned Musk is with X was revealed in a latest article by The Guardian that reviewed his exercise on the platform throughout one 24 hour interval in August of this yr. The sub-headline for that story mentioned, “A controversial tweet could make it to the information, however studying each put up from the world’s richest man reveals how frenzied and excessive he actually is.” It then went on to element 145 tweets Musk made the day after his on-line interview with Donald Trump. The report reveals him energetic on the platform throughout most of that point except for a couple of 2-hour intervals once we was away from the location.

Through the day, The Guardian says Musk shared anti-immigrant content material (he himself is an immigrant, in fact), election conspiracies, and assaults in opposition to the media. He exchanged tweets with far-right politicians, conservative media influencers, and sycophantic admirers. Although Musk has claimed that X is a spot for all politics and viewpoints, he has little to no interplay with left-wing activists or crucial journalists. His replies and reposts mirror each his personal private echo chamber on the platform, in addition to the broader right-wing ecosystem that he has cultivated as proprietor of X.

Since Musk took over the corporate in late 2022, far-right and conservative voices have grown on the platform whereas advertisers and extra mainstream A-list customers have fled. Republicans are actually way more prone to consider that their views are welcomed on the platform and that it has a optimistic influence on democracy than Democrats, in line with a Pew Analysis Heart research from earlier this yr, whereas Democratic voters report far larger ranges of harassment.

A Rising Paranoia

One of many indications of utmost wealth and energy is a rising sense of paranoia. In response to the New York Occasions, Musk has more and more barricaded himself behind a phalanx of armed bodyguards as he has change into extra rich, extra well-known, and extra outspoken. Whereas many excessive profile individuals face threats, Musk has expanded his private safety past that of different billionaires.

His safety workforce now operates like a mini Secret Service and he’s guarded extra like a head of state than a enterprise govt, safety consultants mentioned. He now travels with as many as 20 safety professionals who analysis escape routes or clear a gathering room earlier than he enters. The threats to his security have induced Musk to change into extra fearful, three individuals near him informed the New York Occasions. He’s hardly ever with out bodyguards even when utilizing the lavatory.

On the annual Tesla shareholder assembly in June, Musk mentioned he thought the threats in opposition to him have been getting crazier. “The chance {that a} homicidal maniac will attempt to kill you is proportionate to what number of homicidal maniacs hear your identify. In order that they hear my identify loads — I’m like, ‘OK, I’m on the record,’ you understand.” He added this had pressured him to be extra standoffish with the general public.

The Takeaway

So, what are we to make of Elon Musk? Is he the best engineer who ever lived or a charlatan who leverages the abilities of others to burnish his personal halo? In all probability the truth is someplace within the center. There are a couple of doable takeaways right here.

One is that Musk used Tesla to propel himself to huge wealth and fame after which did what different rich and well-known individuals do — flip inward to bask within the glow of different rich and well-known individuals who feed one another’s inflated egos and plot the right way to hold the hoi polloi from absconding with their wealth and fame. Douglas Rushkof did a superb job of explaining this dynamic in his guide Survival of the Richest. When you haven’t learn it, you actually can’t be totally conscious of what’s occurring within the rarefied stratosphere the place Musk and his friends (if there are any) function.

Two, Tesla exploded like a supernova greater than a decade in the past however has slipped into complacently currently as Musk’s mania for robotaxis has outmoded the corporate’s concentrate on bringing reasonably priced electrical automobiles to market. The world doesn’t want $100,000 vehicles or $200,000 Roadsters. It doesn’t want automobiles that may make the Kessel run in underneath 12 parsecs. It wants reasonably priced automobiles that do what individuals want them to do reliably for years and years. They should take the children to soccer apply and the dentist, and get individuals to work on time in consolation and with a specific amount of favor.

Musk’s concentrate on the offbeat to the exclusion of selling analysis is intriguing however presumably opposite to the purpose of long run profitability for Tesla. He pooh-poohed criticism of the Cybertruck, saying he personally didn’t care if it was a business success. That’s straightforward for somebody with a couple of hundred billion within the financial institution, however hardly a foundation for constructing an organization with a historical past of sustained development.

Third, some readers may have famous the reference to a 1984 novel by Czech author Milan Kundera with an analogous title. In that guide, the protagonist, Tomáš, is a extremely regarded surgeon and mental. He’s additionally a womanizer. Musk, for all his achievements and wealth, has a simplistic relationship with ladies which appears to contain impregnating as many females as doable. One virtually will get the impression that he intends to populate his proposed colony on Mars completely along with his personal progeny. The newest instance was a put up on X that he made shortly after Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

As soon as once more, Musk noticed this as a humorous joke, however others discovered it crude and creepy. Hillary Clinton informed the San Francisco Chronicle the put up was “one other manner of claiming rape.” At a time when ladies’s reproductive well being is such a major half of the present political local weather in the USA, Musk’s put up was silly, ignorant, tone deaf, and offensive. His apologists all the time make excuses for him as a result of he’s on the autism spectrum, however that’s no excuse for being an smug ass and it actually doesn’t make him an excellent candidate for the gatekeeper of free speech for all the digital world.

We might like to see Elon make Tesla probably the most profitable automobile firm on the earth, however he’s so distracted by his X escapades that it appears he doesn’t have time for Tesla anymore. He was as soon as the pinnacle cheerleader for Tesla and the first purpose why its inventory was valued far larger than different automakers’. Tesla was completely different and the distinction was Musk and his indefatigable promotion of the Tesla model. However he has abdicated that position so he can put up a thousand instances per week on X.

A part of the blame should fall on the corporate’s board of administrators, who appear unwilling to rein Musk in, or incapable of it. Maybe sometime some good securities lawyer will maintain them to account for breaching their fiduciary obligation to stockholders. The sense we now have right here at CleanTechnica is that Musk is a unfastened cannon, and due to that, the promise that Tesla as soon as had is being squandered.

We might moderately he stick with his authentic function of creating Tesla the preeminent electrical automobile firm on the earth. As a substitute, BYD is properly on its manner to doing exactly that and Musk has no reply for it. What Tesla desperately wants is knowledgeable supervisor operating the corporate who is just not micro-dosing medicine and who is just not tilting at windmills on social media 24/7. Elon, we hardly know you anymore.