• @JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    as far as billionaires go he’s at least useful to humanity.

    There’s a good argument that this is still true (PS: in historical terms) despite everything. Without China the green-tech revolution would be decades behind schedule, and it took Tesla to make China move.

    • PonyOfWar
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      171 month ago

      it took Tesla to make China move.

      Maybe so, but I’m not sure whether Tesla really needed Elon Musk.

      • @JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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        -91 month ago

        Really? So where are all its peer competitors? This person has obviously gone off the rails but was once extremely good at making seemingly impossible things happen.

        • PonyOfWar
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          161 month ago

          The charismatic guy at the top may always get all the credit, but hundreds of other people played a role in Tesla’s success. He wasn’t even a founder of the company. All we can really say is that he bought in at the right time, but we don’t know how much of Tesla’s success was down to his personal decisions. If anything, it seems like Tesla’s decline really started when Musk started using the company more and more for his personal pet projects (Cybertruck, Teslabots etc) rather than the cars that people actually want.

        • @SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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          130 days ago

          Yeah, all those losers born in Soweto in 1971 who haven’t used their enormous wealth to fund a bunch of different business ventures. What are they even doing?

        • @Opinionhaver@feddit.uk
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          -11 month ago

          was once extremely good at making seemingly impossible things happen.

          Seeing them land the Starship booster on the chopsticks - I’d say that he still is.

    • @MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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      11 month ago

      I agree that Ellen was significant in the race to EVs, but that is definitely in the past. As far as present tense goes, nah.

      The tenses are a bit murky “I used to think ‘he’s useful…’” “this still true…” could kinda go either way, but it sounds like you’re saying it applies today, and nah.

      • @JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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        51 month ago

        Just read what I write, rather than what you think I might be trying to say.

        I can’t find it now but there was an analysis a few days ago by a reputable source, maybe in The Atlantic, which said basically what I just said. It’s not scandalous. The guy has an impressive record as a business leader. Perhaps not as a product specialist, or even an engineer, but as force for making things happen at the company level.

        Anyway, apparently there’s not much willingness to engage in nuanced debate here so that’s all I have to say.