What are your thoughts on Elon Musk, the richest man?

Politics is only one facet of this overall great great guy. So let us all celebrate his speed, power, richness and kindness.

I give you ladies and gentlemen, Grand Wizard Master, Mr. Elon Musk., Emperor of everything seen and unseen. And the Disunited States of America

I'm pretty sure we already have a stickied thread dedicated to the mighty leader of the United States. We probably don't need this second one.

Apartheid Elmo is a tech bro. The Lord High Emperor Shitlord of all tech bros, in fact. And like all tech bros, he's all hype and zero clue about anything he's doing. He's just good with money, and that's really how he - and all tech bros - sees any new and promising technology: dollar signs. They don't give a toss about what it actually can do; they only care about turning it into a get rich quick scheme - see how they turned blockchain into the Ponzi-rific deliciousness that is NFTs.

He's also, I believe, secretly lonely and miserable, but lacks the ability to relate to people to actually make friends. So he tries to compensate for it by seeking validation and notoriety, often with the wrong sorts of people. It's why he's so hopelessly addicted to social media; it gives him something vaguely resembling friendship and companionship he could never get on his own.

He's a tragicomic character; ridiculous and sad at the same time, and now he's forcing everyone to live his tragicomic existence.

Is he trying to become Ted Faro?

I predict a lot of crying.

I think he's extremely interesting, curious to see if all this "work" he is doing with DOGE will actually change anything for the middle class, i predict no lol but ya never know.

Fraud.

Con artist who relies on ripping off investors.

I think he's an idiot who inherited a shitload of money and bought stuff with it. I think he's a bit like a tick. Adds absolutely nothing good to the planet, and cares only about himself. Then he's trying to convince people that he's great. A pretty disgusting human being, in other words.

@Litchie: He only gave internet access to the entire planet 🙄. And he’s about to get those astronauts back. Just those two alone puts him above any other billionaire I can think of.

I thought pretty highly of him. Managed to make a lot of money runing companies with survival of the species as an overarching goal. Then he went and bought himslef a made up position in the White House fo $250 million. It's like, we're trading DEI for cronie capitalism".

Yay?

I'm so, so happy this realization is becoming mainstream.

He sucks. Everything he does is for himself and the sooner people realize that and stop worshiping him, the better off the world will be. I"m glad his Tesla's are tanking in Europe. Thumbs up to the France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway! Good job guys.

Very corrupt and doing a lot of illegal things.

The many ways Elon Musk’s DOGE is breaking the law, explained by a law professor | Vox

Funny how the people complaining about unelected officials are fine with all of this nonsense from a silverspoon trust fund baby like Musk.

Once Trump won I knew he would become public enemy #1 for the media

"media"....ehh also regular people and legal experts. What he's doing is nuts.

lol, no he didn't. He paid others to do that for him, and now he takes a very high price for said internet. Would I be as rich, I'd do something better for the world, or at least not take exorbitant prices for my services.

He did that himself.

the way telsa has been performing lately i'm not sure how much longer he'll be the world's richest man.

major dop off in sales, particularly in europe. increasing competition from domestic manufacturers in us, overall softening of the EV market, etc....

The world would be a better place without the likes of him in it.

Fascist.

You can take the man out of the apartheid, but you can't take the apartheid out of the man.

Seems like a very disgusting and thin skinned man child.

I was gonna say he's a complete piece of 💩 but that would be disrespectful to the piece of 💩

Human garbage, though unfortunately he’s got his loyalists on this website.

I started hating Elon before it was cool. I don’t plan to stop.

I think it's bonkers he's having racist children, one with ties to Russian criminal organizations, taking data off government servers, including those that have people's personal information like SSN, bank accounts, health information, information about our nuclear weapons and such.

Nazi. He's rich and powerful, I get it, but it's still mind-boggling how an unapologetic Nazi can hold such a direct influence on a government and society that have long preached freedom and justice.

About 7:10. Blink and you'll miss it.

Sorry but that's not natural.

What do I think? Cartoon villain. Shouts about America a lot but not really very American. Poster boy for pyramid schemes. Treats people like dirt. Bit of a fraud and massive racist apparently. Proved the whole economy's based on lies and nonsense. Dim people love him.

To be honest I don't feel like I understand him. One of the strangest public persons and that is in a world with Trump 🤣. I don't really understand why the companies he controls have made him as much money as they have. His personality is all over the place. Tons of kids, acting like a kid himself on twitter, building impressive companies with interesting technologies, cheating at video games and so on. It's all chaos.

Interesting to see what will happen to him and what impact he will have on the world. Clearly one of the most influential persons whatever you think of him. He is now also very much a part of the AI-race.

I could see anything from him taking over the world, to his entire empire coming crashing down 🤷‍♂️.

It's not that I don't get the whole argument of "He's just lonely and misunderstood"; maybe that's the case. But with all the lovers, drugs, money and power, it's hard to dredge up any sympathy. He DOES talk to people like they're shit on his shoe and TBH, I'm not seeing an ounce of philanthropy from the guy. I guess that's all passé in the circles he moves in or something, but then maybe so is humanising people who could be doing everything to help but instead outwardly treat people and nations around them like stress relief toys.

I dunno, man. Maybe.

Is that a good thing though?

I don't get the obsession with doing everything so antagonistically. It's an idiotic cycle.

A lot of MAGA does have the "FUCKITALL" attitude. I don't think they expect Trump to fix it, they want him to ruin it.

That's pretty much the whole GOP bent anyway: sabotage the federal government so it can't function.

@sancho_panzer: I completely agree. That's my point.

Regardless of which side of the fence one sits, it doesn't matter. I am in favor, and most around here aren't. Either way, pointless arguing isn't going to change the fact that he is doing a long past due job, and more and more people are coming to that realization.

If another disagrees with me, well, that's fine, we don't have to agree with everything, and that's what is lost upon the average person these days.

You can have civil discourse and stay cordial even if you ultimately disagree. No honest person agrees with every single point/view another person/orginization/party/team/etc. makes unless they are infatuated, brainwashed, or don't think for themselves. Differences in opinion are what makes the world turn and opinions are just that, so remembering to keep things in stride while working with your fellow man to reach a bargain that benefits all parties is of the utmost importance, while also bearing in mind that there is always a degree of necessary evil to benefit the many over that of the few.

Our goal should be working together for the benefit of all, and so that even those few don't get left behind.

Exposing the federal government, shrinking their interests, funding our own peoples interests, and having a readily available source that shows the people of our country the paper trail from their taxes that has the ability to make those changes a reality are things that everyone should agree on.

However, that's just my opinion, and I won't lose any sleep or cry if another person disagrees. It's ok to meet in the middle while understanding the differences in political affiliation under individual circumstances or to question the status quo.

So I implore everyone to do so, and I'll just sit back and watch the show. 😀

The more interesting part is this comment:

"Interesting how it went from an array of people of different origins in 1990, to 1 french guy and 14 americans (mostly in tech) in 2024."

The billionaires list had diverse nationalities from the '80s to the 2010s. But then in the 2020s, the list suddenly gets monopolized by a single nation.

Elon Musk is human trash which is not surprising since his father is human trash. I mean his dad married his own step daughter. Nothing says trailer trash...oh wait..rich trash.

I figure Elon's 12 children (11 living) with multiple different women, some while married, some not...including 3 with an employee...is probably a deep seated personality issue rooted in his terrible upbringing. He will bring them into the world and ensure they have great lives...while not being around. Genius at work.

I also figure his me, me, me, me personality and attention seeking is also related to his need for external validation.

He is a great self promoter who has good judgement in hiring talented engineers that create things for him. He then parrots everything they did for him using wording that implies he himself made x, y, or z. He's the equivalent of a venture capitalist that claims credit for the successful ideas that he merely funds.

Because of all of this coping he now deludes himself as an expert in everything. All designed to surpass daddy and overcome his insecurity issues. Yet when left alone...best represented by Twitter/X...we see the results of his genius. LOL.

His foray into govt operations is going to be an epic shit show, because it isn't his privately owned domain.

Got to admit, I'm a bit hypomanic myself.

The thing I don't understand about Musk, or more specifically the thing I don't understand about his supporters, is why they think this man is their savior.

I am probably butchering this quote, but it goes something along the lines of "capitalism is the belief that the people with the worst intentions will somehow do what's best for society" and that more or less summarizes Musk supporters.

The guy is making $8 million each day in tax-payer funds through his contracted work with DOGE while American taxpayers are receiving less. How is that saving us? Making things more efficient?

Can't believe I miss this but that would be Walter Londra (from Burning Shores Expansion of Forbidden West sequel) as he's based on Elon Musk. Ted Faro - I am Skynet.

I'll be honest, I was a fan of his when I first heard of Tesla and the ideas he envisioned when he first got the company. I knew he wasn't an actual inventor, but at least someone who had ideas for building a better future for humanity and the money to invest in research and finding the right people that would help reach those goals. Nowadays though, it's like he completely jumped off that path. Now he's kinda like any other self-centered corporate suit. Looks like time and too much money could definitely corrupt a person...

I forgot to add my thoughts on Elon Musk. I don't like him or dislike him, he's alight in my books and I'm not gonna discuss his political stuff here as we're only talking about just the man himself and what he does for a living. His own kids says he's a real ducebag. That right there should tell you something about him and when your own family tells you something about you, you need to fix your own reputation.

I was told some of the stuff he’s done, like starting up Tesla, because no one else was doing it. And sure, Electric Cars sound better than Gasoline Cars because of fossil fuel and whatnot, but I wonder how much of his motor stood for doing things like that is just because it’s an opportunity to profit from it, and how much of it is because he’s actually concerned for the well-being and improvement of humanity and our planet. I think he's a phony...especially him proclaiming to be a PC gamer at that. But at the same time, I think he seems like the lesser of 2 evils, which doesn’t make him good by any means mind you.

I know he fears China and their E-Vehicles. Another reason why he cried to the Government just to imposed Tariffs on China, so he doesn't go out of business which is stupid on his own ego thinking like that.

It's totally fine as we're only talking about Elon Musk himself. This isn't a political thread on Elon himself that is.

@davillain: Oh, I was making a fairly predictable joke about Musk being the real president, etc. etc. It was a pretty common sentiment a few weeks ago.

Anyway, I am a bit conflicted about the guy. His earlier ambitions were good, on paper at least. He narcissistically believed he could solve all of the world's biggest problems and that's fine with me - but he's fallen into the deep end politically, and the results of his labours aren't really up to snuff, and his carefully-constructed image is cracking.

Does that mean he was always like he is now? I don't know. Having infinite money probably hasn't helped his mental health.

I don't care about him. Obviously mentally ill, I don't follow him or try to keep up with wtv he's doing. A bunch of years ago I saw him talking about AI, hyping his own project, and he was both bsing and clueless on the subject so I switched him off right away.

People on both sides give him way too much attention.

Where did you hear that Elon is getting paid anything for his work with DOGE?

https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-doge-paid-donald-trump-white-house-2032709