Literally had someone saying that earlier today. Something along the lines of “you don’t become the richest person in the world without some competency.” Just ignore the fact he started on third base…
Comment on Bait or r*ta*d*ti*n. Call it.
ceenote@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Nobody has done more to disprove the “Rich people are smarter than everyone else” idea.
GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Not even. He started on home, he just claimed he ran there and for some reason people believed him even though he still had a bat in his hand.
Elon has had “Penisdick” written all over him since day one
jacksilver@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I mean, yeah he had a lot of advantage, but he did have to do something right to become the richest man. But making some good gambles doesn’t make you a good person nor does it mean you’re great at everything.
Maybe he was good at finding companies at the right time to invest, but that means jack about any economic or political acumen. Same reason why we don’t want businessmen in politics, being good at one thing does not mean you’re good at everything.
467265654C75696769@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
He’s a modern day John Ellerman, with some edits on background and rich-parent launchpad thrown in.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I don’t know exactly how much his parents were worth, but his net worth has increased by many thousands of times. That’s not “third base”, saying he got where he is by luck and nepotism is just wilfully ignorant.
Trump, on the other hand, would have done better if he just left his money in a savings account.
conditional_soup@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I dunno, man, we could probably get into an entire dissertation about this, but I’m not totally convinced that most of these fabulously wealthy people didn’t just fail upwards by throwing the spaghetti plate at the wall; the only difference between them and us is that, often, they start with a lot more spaghetti to throw
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Pretty much all of the three digit billions crowd are in tech of some description. There’s definitely an element of being in the right place at the right time, but there’s also a lot of business skills as well.
A lot of their success seems to be recognising an opportunity before anyone else, whether that’s luck or skill is difficult to know.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I genuinely think he’s had some sort of cognitive decline.
He went from being merely wealthy to the richest man in the world, and nearly everyone thinking he’s a genius, to being hated by nearly everyone and losing money fast.
naeap@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Think is, he never was a genius - actually quite far off from it
He is just a spoiled boy having luck with gambling the money he got
HackerJoe@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Looks more like too much Ketamine to me.
kautau@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Generally the truly smartest people (the ones who actually figure out spaceflight, electric vehicles, satellite internet) aren’t the wealthiest. Sure many of them end up pretty wealthy due to stock options, high salaries, companies competing for them and the like. But often at the end of the day they just retire into their wealth and spend their days traveling or living in their huge houses or whatever.
But the CEOs, the politicians, the investors, the self-labelled “Founders,” those approaching or in the 1%; For those it’s not about making something, doing their jobs, changing the world, etc. It’s about winning. They need to feel better than others. And for most of them that feeling never goes away. They rarely retire, and often even when they do they still pull strings from the background (see Bill Gates). Some psychopathic part of their brain makes it so their most important and purest drive is to constantly get to that next target, that next exponential stock valuation, that next acquisition, that next news broadcast they can jerk off to about how they beat someone else in a campaign or about how line go up or whatever.
So when these people are in the middle of their career, their relatively unnoticeable by most. They’re “founding” companies by employing those smarter than them with money they have. They’re selling said companies, moving on. They’re making shady deals, laundering money, because they are smart enough to beat the system and the system is against them because they’re so smart.
But for those that amass enough wealth like Elon, the drive never goes away. But what do you do after you’re the richest person in the world? Well, try to become the most powerful person in the world. But you can’t just run for office, the ketamine has told you that it’s faster to latch onto the recent rapid rise in fascism so you join up with Trump. Who gives a shit what kind of person he is, especially because eventually you’ll beat him. He’s a stepping stone for now, a boost pad to get you speaking with those who can get you real power, and more money because it’s never enough.
But thinking that everything in the world works like a startup, and if you just hire more college grads, crack the whip, take stimulants to stay up to ship the product in a completely inconceivable world (government and social policy) to what you’re used to (technology and product development), it all falls apart. And then when you’ve always had success with the investors siding with you because “line go up,” you suddenly don’t have success because “line don’t go up” in the white house and Trump is getting pressure to find something to cover up giving 2 trillion dollars to the rich and there’s no quick fix.
So you do more ketamine, lash out. You always knew trump was a pedo, a garbage human, but it didn’t matter because he was a stepping stone, so now, probably earlier than you’d like, you pull out your cards of putting him down in the hopes that you can get that power that you need because the money doesn’t matter now, feeling that you beat him is what’s most important.
Valmond@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And lots of drugs & yes-men.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
The drugs are definitely part of what happened.
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
yeah that much power and money certainly does something to your brain, the guy can’t think straight anymore
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Also the dude apparently does a lot of drugs.
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
So he’s a hero after all?
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
the one we didn’t need but deserve
thepenismightier@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Luigi?
k0e3@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Seriously? I thought Edison at best, but Einstein? What did this shithead discover, exactly?
9point6@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Remember a decade ago when he was being lauded as our time’s Einstein?
… Hahahahahahaha
alekwithak@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah by his own PR team, mostly, but it was a pretty easy fascade to see through when you actually listened to the man speak. Still don’t forgive Dan Harmon for letting him shit on R&M with the eLoN tUsK bullshit. Or Star Trek Discovery for that matter, which happened much later after he had already shown his true face to the world. I know Harmon got paid because he’s talked about it, but I would really like to know how much he spent on getting a passing reference in the least popular ST show of all time.
ch00f@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
See also: Iron Man 2
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The one where Tony blew him off and made him look a fool?
SatyrSack@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
From what I have heard, that line was not even scripted. The actor ad libbed it, hoping that might lead to him being gifted a fee Tesla vehicle.
alekwithak@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Damn, that’s somehow so much worse!
Forgot about the Musk jr high 🤦🤦🤦
Cruxifux@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Yeah I realized it as soon as I heard him on Joe Rogan. I was like “oh, this guy is actually not a super genius at all.”
Now I think he’s kind of a moron actually.
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I knew it was a grift from the start because people who are kind and wise don’t spend millions purely to make sure I know how kind and wise they are.
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
A friend of mine has head canoned that the guy from Star Trek was joking about being from Elon Musk University and that it’s the old “Adolf Hitler School for Friendship and Tolerance” gag but in space.
I’m just gonna go with that because fuck it’s the equivalent of listing Deepak Chopra as one of the greatest philosophers of the 21st century in your hard sci-fi setting.
dohpaz42@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There was also an episode of Young Sheldon where Sheldon had sent equations for reusable rockets to NASA, and at the end of the episode it showed Elon buying the equations from NASA.
ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
He was also in South Park, and Rick & Morty. He had a great PR team considering what they were working with behind the scenes. They dressed him up real nice.
Then he fired them, because he didn’t like having to wear anything in public. Metaphorically-speaking.
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
And I am proud to have called bullshit on it from day one.
Whoever leads us to the promised land isn’t going to have a for profit LLC
skisnow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Well done. I’m like most people in that I didn’t spot it until he started talking about a subject I knew about. The first Tesla Roadster looked amazing^1^, and then the hyperloop sounded like a cool idea^2^, and then oh wait what’s he saying about software development now?
^1^ because its body was made by Lotus
^2^ except it doesn’t work
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
It wasn’t anything specific, it’s just… the idea of this guy being the real life Tony Stark didn’t pass the smell test. Not because he didn’t seem bright, but because I couldn’t believe ANYONE lived up to the hype that Elon had.
That and… well… the idea of the Private Corporation coming to save the day and guide us into a Utopia sounded way too much like a Libertarian Fantasy.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Yeah, he’s like LLMs in that regard. Sounds plausible until it’s a subject you don’t have much knowledge of, then suddenly turns into a dribbling twat when it’s one you do understand.
Then you realise he was an idiot all along.
Takios@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I still cringe at him being mentioned in Star Trek Discovery…
SmokedBillionaire@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Luckily that was evil mirror universe Lorca that said it, so it fits.
Sequence5666@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Which episode was this
Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 2 weeks ago
Disco was the worst Trek
mothersprotege@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Common Disco L.
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I’ve heard Tony Stark but not Einstein. I’d be insulted for Einstein.