but what if I told you it was ALL bullshit from the get go designed to gobble up subsidies, stall meaningful REAL mass transit options, and generate completely unrealistic and insane company valuations?
It’s a common refrain of reactionaries, exclaiming how he lives ‘rent-free’ in people’s heads, but Jesus Christ… how did such a monumental prick end up with his finger on so many triggers?
That’s the reason why people can’t stop talking about him. They’re scared of what he’ll ruin next.
Also, tech press did its part by praising Musk 24/7 for a few years. I admit I liked him back then too, if only because he didn't speak in public so much until Rogan interview.
He lost me with
- the Boring Company
- the flamethrowers
- full self driving “beta” without DoT input
- insisting that FSD could be done with optics only
Landing and reusing rockets is legitimately cool, tho.
What's the underlying good idea for Boring? As I understand it, the basic idea in most incarnations has been some variation of personal cars in smaller than normal tunnels. But what we know about transit is that personal vehicles never work well at scale.
the idea was supposed to be super efficient tunnel building to help subsidize space exploration, but apparently they're absolutely incompetent when it comes to super efficient tunnel building (in part because the company is run by an insane toddler), so here we are
I found that out because I was trying to find pictures from the religious ceremony before it was used properly for the first time, because I have never heard of one not happening for a new machine or at the start of a project
Well, the big advantage is you need a Tesla (or other electric car possibly) to do it based on the ventilation so it de facto becomes a rich person only road.
I tried to explaining to my mom how he was a fraud and not the genius he’s hyped up as, and she was so stuck on how he had to be a smart guy. I have to conclude there’s still a significant # of people like that who still can’t see thru the spell.
I've had more conversations like this than I can count over the last 5 years. Fortunately the tide is genuinely shifting now that he's gone full mask off with the authoritarianism and racism
Trump and Musk have a *lot* in common. Rich men whose fathers held them in contempt can cause an astonishing amount of damage. (Paging Dr. Freud on line 1...)
Was coming here to write the same. When Musk says “the traffic problem” he means “threat to automaker profits from mass transit” which is the problem Boring was created to address.
"Elon's idea" for the Boring Co, as he consistently expressed it, was idiotic! "Solve traffic congestion by building tunnels" - new roads/lanes have consistently failed to alleviate congestion, and has benn shown to make it worse! "Build tunnels" at the locus of congestion - *under cities*?!? Arg!
"what if we did something that does not fix traffic congestion, and in fact makes it worse, but did that thing in the most expensive, difficult way possible?"
"What if I told you that I'd use a magical tunnel digger that doesn't exist? How about then?"
Um... huh? Like, tunnels are one of the main ways you get past bodies of water. Like, there's really only three ways, and tunnels are one of them (alongside boats and bridges).
Schwebebahn In Wuppertal, Germany, world’s oldest suspension railway, opened 1901!
I live in London and we have the recently opened Northern Line tube extension, and even longer Elizabeth Line Crossrail which goes under central London but was £££££££
It’s truely unbelievable that a company that only did a single mini tunnel and half delivered on its basic promises, gets valued for 7 billions… without Musk’s cult, they would get bankrupt for sure
I know next to nothing about constructing tunnels, but reading his site for fifteen minutes makes it painfully obvious that his only innovation is removing every safety precaution associated with transportation tunnels.
I have often joked that the most humane thing he could do is provide a suicide pill with every trip, because if something goes wrong in the tunnel while you’re in there, you’re dying a slow miserable death.
You see, if you really want successful public transportation, you should *always* contract with a single-occupancy-vehicle manufacturer owned by a barely-functional billionaire who has every reason to make public transportation fail.
Seattle’s tunnel was considered a partial failure because of the delay caused hitting a giant boulder in the dig path. If not for that it would have been a huge success.
And never forget, Musk’s chief innovation is removing every safety precaution from normal transportation tunnels. The Seattle tunnel has multiple escape tunnels that run along the path incase anything happens. If there is a blockage in a boring tunnel I hope you brought your suicide pill.
And fraud is not even the most important reason to reject him, fight him, and boycott his companies. Using the world's greatest PR machine to promote conspiracy theories and foment Civil War is.
But still, selecting this quote and presenting it without critical context or analysis:
'One former employee summed up the company’s predicament in a nutshell: “Elon’s idea for the Boring Company was a good one. It just hasn’t been executed on.”'
And a proven solution to "the goddamn traffic problem" is, of course, public transit and urban design that moves away from cars. One guess as to why Musk is actively working against that.
honestly most coverage of musk companies still isn't great
you can go seventeen paragraphs into most stories before they mention that a guy with multiple security clearances has descended into conspiracy theory and overt racism, assuming they mention it at all
And none of them mention that this tunnel nonsense is a ridiculously expensive, potentially dangerous boondoggle for a traffic problem that public transit would be a much better solution to.
Some critics thought the reveal in The Glass Onion was too obvious, and yet society at large has fallen for Elon’s for bullshit for decades. The whole thing has always been a house of cards, and it was OBVIOUS that’s all it was, but people chose to treat it like a brilliant feat of engineering.
they built an entire ecosystem where hype matters MUCH more than an actual working product, and they can all get rich either doing nothing or being incompetent
It's because it's become increasingly clear that Wall Street only cares about immediate, never-ending "gains", not a stable, consistent product / company that will exist for 100 years.
AI (LLMs), unlike the last few hype cycles, actually has some useful implementations. Unfortunately the people making the most important decisions on its usage are inherently shitty and greedy.
More like, unfortunately, the best use-case for AI right now are for things that aren't entirely profit driven. Like the IRS using it to read tax returns, or biomedical research using it to parse incredibly complicated data sets.
they can promise boomers and gen-xers some type of immortality cryo-freeze consciousness transference bullshit that eats your life savings and never works
yeah we've just decided to learn absolutely nothing from history and supercharge all of our worst dysfunctions, because there's money to be made by a handful of influential folks at the top of the food chain
Generally the more involvement Elmo has with a company the worse it is for the company. SpaceX does the best job keeping him away from the fragile stuff so it's doing pretty well. Xitter is at the other end of the spectrum.
TBC existed because a spoilt little brat, with little to no knowledge of anything, thought "how hard can it be" about a project that was actually pretty fucking hard and required real genius, not just luck.
How in the world can the system not accommodate autonomous vehicles? I know we are still far away from deploying in typical driving scenarios, but current tech has to be able to handle a closed circuit, fixed track, weather protection and only networked participants, right?
but they've barely been able to get the underlying tunnels built because I think this was always about gobbling up subsidies, preventing the creation of real mass transit options, and boosting absurd company valuations
Because Apartheid Clyde doesn't think any further than "wouldn't it be cool if....?", and doesn't actually comprehend that there's a lot more to it than that.
The existing systems aren't, generally speaking, autonomous. They are part of an interlocking, at least loosely centrally controlled, whole system.
These cars are not part of such a system; they are islanded, making their own decisions, and thus need more of a buffer and more allowance for error.
yeah I think most of his companies succeed in spite of him, not because of him. But it sounds like his proxy manager at Boring is quite an incompetent knob too.
I mean that's his pretense, but I think it has more to do with bullshitting government to get subsidies he doesn't deserve, undermining existing mass transit efforts musk thinks are "too woke," hyping up unrealistic company valuations, and marketing tesla vehicles (badly)
It is very cool, in a dumb way. Entirely electric, uses the fourth state of matter as induced by a powerful electrical arc to create a tiny length of purple plasma to set a whick ablaze. Has limitations (like that it has to have a multi-prong design to arc the electricity), but is fun.
It's bad that the press haven't noticed that Musk is an incompetent huckster. But what scares me is that the capital markets haven't noticed it either, and keep handing him billions to play with.
and we're still only seeing like a portion of the overall bullshit and fraud his companies have been involved in. It will take another 5-10 years for the documentaries full of NDA-breaking employees to really expose it all with the critical eye it deserves
Comments
but what if I told you it was ALL bullshit from the get go designed to gobble up subsidies, stall meaningful REAL mass transit options, and generate completely unrealistic and insane company valuations?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Elon_Musk#Public_transport
That’s the reason why people can’t stop talking about him. They’re scared of what he’ll ruin next.
- the Boring Company
- the flamethrowers
- full self driving “beta” without DoT input
- insisting that FSD could be done with optics only
Landing and reusing rockets is legitimately cool, tho.
And he gave them bad luck names too
malevolent and full of himself.
big manipulator without scruples.
Did the narcissism cause the malevolence or vice versa?
I always thought "The Boring Company" was just another one of Elmo's Very Expensive Bad Jokes...
"What if I told you that I'd use a magical tunnel digger that doesn't exist? How about then?"
I live in London and we have the recently opened Northern Line tube extension, and even longer Elizabeth Line Crossrail which goes under central London but was £££££££
with occasional traffic jams
Considering his history with securities fraud, the SEC really should allocate more resources to gutting Musk with a melon baller.
they're not even developing the actual drilling tech or anything
https://gizmodo.com/rahm-emanuel-rumored-for-transportation-secretary-despi-1845773096
Then the embrace of fascism to protect it.
https://bsky.app/profile/karlbode.bsky.social/post/3kfdjhye7ak22
I'd also argue they succeed in spite of him, not because of him
'One former employee summed up the company’s predicament in a nutshell: “Elon’s idea for the Boring Company was a good one. It just hasn’t been executed on.”'
you can go seventeen paragraphs into most stories before they mention that a guy with multiple security clearances has descended into conspiracy theory and overt racism, assuming they mention it at all
I got sent to IG jail for calling some of the scams out.
he over-ruled actual engineers warning him that the platform needed well-designed flame and debris diverters
but they've barely been able to get the underlying tunnels built because I think this was always about gobbling up subsidies, preventing the creation of real mass transit options, and boosting absurd company valuations
Hmm, who else has been recently investigated for this?
These cars are not part of such a system; they are islanded, making their own decisions, and thus need more of a buffer and more allowance for error.
👇 👇
https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/investing/elon-musk-loses-his-cool
Instead, every journalist in America is starting at their finances because of thier big mouths.
These aren't smart people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
here's a direct link to the Fortune story:
Eat the rich.
Passengers aren’t separated from the roadway like many new systems
Compare with this one which is good fun to ride, I have taken kids on it, and it is free to use
Just look at this pic of the Heathrow pods
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/At_London_2023_032.jpg/1920px-At_London_2023_032.jpg