I try to think about Elon Musk as little as possible.

@1 Totoman: +1 for the WIN!!! Agreed.

As someone in the utility industry, I have never liked or trusted Tesla. They overpromise and underdeliver, which makes the EV industry seem flaky, and I think they have all their eggs in the lithium-ion basket, which I believe will be obsolete in ten years.

Their foray into Solar was equally bad, only with bullying added. I once had some "regional manager" call me and try to sell me on some dingus that sits between the meter and the socket, which is absolutely forbidden in the industry (unless it's something the utility installs and can lock down of course. They're stinky about it because they don't want people stealing power). I told him no. He told me that there's a list of utlities that are allowing it. I asked for the list. He said it was proprietary. I told him our metering infrastructure is proprietary. He then got a really ugly edge to his voice and told me he was going to call the mayor and get me fired. I gave him the mayor's number and hung up.

I've been waiting for the whole EV house of cards to fall appart for a while, next up (I hope) is the electric lawn mower grift!

BTW, is everyone at ts payed by the word count? When I was younger I was taught to get my point across as quickly as possible or risk boring my audience. Times change. I guess...

When it comes to any subject my first source of information is Wikipedia. It is obvious that the vast majority of Americans don't bother. Anyway, like Trump the business history of Musk is simply not that impressive in my book.

He got rich from creating a software company called Zip2. So did his brother Kimball, who went into the restaurant business (he is a a multi-millionaire but not a billionaire). If Elon did something similar we would never know about the guy -- he would just be a rich dick that you never heard of (because he wouldn't be a rich enough dick).

Then Elon co-founded a financial company called X.com that eventually merged with the company now known as PayPal. They merged because both companies were doing the same thing and they wanted to avoid competition. But PayPal (created by the other company) was a more popular service (which is why they used that name). In a properly regulated free market it is likely that they would have been prevented from merging and X.com would not have made that much money.

Then he started SpaceX. This was the first time he was really a founder of a company. This was his baby. It struggled at first and if not for the federal government would have gone into bankruptcy. This is where things get really ironic. It is hard to imagine someone like Musk (as head of DOGE) saying we should spend a bunch of money on rockets to support SpaceX (headed up by Musk). But there was no DOGE then and the company was able to make a lot of money with the governments help.

Then Musk invested in Tesla. He did not create the company (it existed before him) but he sunk a lot of money into it. As this article points out he deserves credit for that (https://electrek.co/2025/01/22/elon-musk-is-a-tesla-founder-but-he-isnt-behind-its-main-innovation/). But mostly as an investor, not an inventor. He got plenty of money from Tesla and this added to his fame and prestige. So where did get the money to invest? That's right, the US government that paid him for the SpaceX rockets.

So yes, anti-government Musk owes most of his wealth to the US government for spending money on programs that they would likely brag about cutting.

@5 are you PAID by the letter?

Poor soy latte. He's still bitter over investing all of his savings in Betamax

Dear old Elon decried empathy as a weakness then cried when folks were happy that Tesla stock was losing value.

What a douche.

Call me crazy but I've always thought Elon was a positive force in this world. Still do.

Unionized state employees are a much bigger threat. Anything we can do to weaken public sector unions is a huge win for the working class.

@6 of course you forgot to mention the reason the US Government gave SpaceX their contracts - their rocket launches are far cheaper than those managed by the government.

The US's other primary Space contractor (Boeing) just had to be rescued by Musk when their spacecraft was determined unsafe to return to land.

It's such a bad thing that the Government is accomplishing more with fewer of our tax dollars. Damn you, Elon Musk!

Musk has always been a douche - now he’s just a ridiculously wealthy douche.

@10 Public sector unions are a threat? To what, exactly? You sound like an absolute cretin. Stop drinking your own urine; it's messing with your brain.