Is Elon Beyond Reproach?

It appears that there are certain people who believe that humans should strive to be compassionate and understanding and not publicly humiliate other people - and that there are certain other people who believe that this is all worth nothing as long as you're a "successful founder".

pg should really ask himself whether he wants to defend a person who is as morally bankrupt as Elon Musk.

I don't feel like Elon is gonna be successful with his approach. But I worry even more about a world in which he is successful and this kind of asshole behaviour is normalised.

Somehow, a subset of tech culture has embraced the idea that as long as you're technically brilliant (and/or filthy rich), you get to play entirely by your own rules without any consideration for other people.

Paul G looks like he reads too much Ayn Rand

that he is great at doing stuff like thinking big and breaking down barriers but probably needs others with more stability to rein him in.

A lot of people won't want to work for him, but a minority will want to a lot mostly for political/cultural reasons. I suppose if it's sustainable for the tech world to bifurcate the way the media world has Elon could be the Rupert Murdoch of tech.

From my perspective right wing brands tend to have a .. how to put it .. second rate or imitation feel to them and working for them seems akin to playing professional basketball in Europe rather than the NBA.... That's off putting to me personally but probably feels first rate and awesome to the intended audience. So maybe his brands will remain mainstream but they are at risk of being ghettoized into the American flag with a flaming skull painted on the hood of your Dodge Challenger demographic.

We'll see how it works out for him! If it succeeds it's bound to make life worse for the kinds of people who don't share his ideological and cultural positions just because he'll prove that it's economically viable to alienate them. For that reason, yes, I think they are hoping for him to fail and the predictions that he definitely will have an air of wishful thinking to them.

It seems like he's putting the philosophy of the far right flank of the tech world into practice here. He's taking Curtis Yarvin's "companies are monarchies"** concept to heart when he e.g. provokes his employees and then fires them when they respond to the provocation. In other words he values loyalty over competence.

A strict command and control environment like he seems to be building has a proven track record of succeeding at some things for some stretches of time. I mean, it's how most governments operate during war times right? Is it going to help him make back his 44 billion here and now? We'll see. It's a grand experiment.

The only thing I can say for sure is that if his experiment succeeds the lives of normal employees at tech firms will suffer regardless of their personal beliefs or allegiances. The permissiveness and abundance we've all enjoyed due to the emphasis on teamwork and harmony by tech companies for the past few decades has been really pleasant compared to what will come if the harsher Elon model takes off in the context of an ad driven software first tech company as opposed to a hardware focused firm.

note **: I've read everything Yarvin has written from Unqualified Reservations to his interviews in dissident right outlets to his current substack. I remain convinced that he says monarchy when he means fascism because he's socially aware enough to avoid the baggage of that word and, from my perspective, his ultimate project is trying to build an ideological pipeline from wealthy libertarian to strong-man loving fascist. Interesting guy! I feel like everyone should read him so that they can understand the moves of people like Peter Thiel [a long time patron of Yarvin].

update: oh here we go, I Googled him to see what he's been up to lately and found this nice article. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarv...

I realize Vox will put off the conservatives here, but, y'know, you all are gonna like Yarvin anyway lmao. Just go read his stuff. He'll give you tons of smart sounding quips, hypothetical scenarios and anecdotes that will dazzle and impress right wing audiences.