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Half-Baked Product

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Re: Half-Baked Product

#431

Post by overgard »

mlacks wrote: post #417
overgard wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I focus on the negatives because they're so massive. Elon didn't even start Tesla, he was an investor that forced the founder out. I'll concede that SpaceX is a little better, but even then a lot of his ideas are profoundly stupid (while I think colonizing the solar system is worthwhile, doing it on Mars is very dumb. You'd need to build underground bunkers so people don't die of cancer from radiation, and there aren…

Hey thanks for the throrough response. I see your point, but I think anyone with their whole life on display would have plenty of failures to go with the successes. For FSD, I believe its done - see the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwMlAj1tpQg

It is true that most of us wouldn't look great under a microscope, but the way I see it Elon very obviously wants attention, and he very obviously wants to change the world in dramatic ways that he should be accountable for (whether positive or negative), so scrutiny is entirely fair.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#432

Post by philipallstar »

paytonjjones wrote: post #279
stickfigure wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced this is a schtick. Not that he doesn't genuinely want that, but it's not the root motivation. I suspect it's something more like wanting to be perceived as a real-world Tony Stark. The cave rescue capsule episode is illustrative. The guy likes attention.

> wanting to be perceived as a real-world Tony Stark The thing is, he _had_ this. He had all of Reddit worshipping him. He had the press. He had the tech-internet. Then he knowingly blew it all up overnight to ally with Trump. I think the reasons why are pretty clear: a son-who-loves-me became a daughter-who-despises-me and his companies got repeatedly hamstrung by California Democrats. But if his root motivation was…

> Then he knowingly blew it all up overnight to ally with Trump.

It's true. Nothing the American left hates more than an ex-Democrat. If only they hadn't made being a centrist a Republican position.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#433

Post by fragmede »

Muhammad523 wrote: post #386
mlacks wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that people focus on the negatives. I'm not going to pick apart the whole comment but World's first self-landing rocket ship and best selling electric car in the world are not figments of a "system is rigged that getting wealthy off one good bet can sustain you forever".

> World's first self-landing rocket The Buran, a soviet spaceplane very similar to the space shuttle, landed autonomously

Suspiciously similar. Also, it didn't land like a rocket.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#434

Post by fragmede »

overgard wrote: post #385
mlacks wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that people focus on the negatives. I'm not going to pick apart the whole comment but World's first self-landing rocket ship and best selling electric car in the world are not figments of a "system is rigged that getting wealthy off one good bet can sustain you forever".

I focus on the negatives because they're so massive. Elon didn't even start Tesla, he was an investor that forced the founder out. I'll concede that SpaceX is a little better, but even then a lot of his ideas are profoundly stupid (while I think colonizing the solar system is worthwhile, doing it on Mars is very dumb. You'd need to build underground bunkers so people don't die of cancer from radiation, and there aren…

The man's had failures and he's had successes. What did he do to you that you'd spend this much time and effort focusing on his failures instead of going out and building your own thing?

Re: Half-Baked Product

#435

Post by whstl »

mpyne wrote: post #369
whstl wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Concentration of wealth is definitely stopping them. Most people can’t just stop working and start working for no cash. I might be missing some obvious sarcasm, though!

The worker-owned businesses that are more effective will do a better job of concentrating wealth though, as they don't have to pay investors back dividends or participate in stock buybacks. Software in general is a field quite compatible with initial self-funding, in ways you can't say for other industries. But even still, investors threw away gobs of money on clearly unsustainable businesses like NFTs, and capitalis…

> The worker-owned businesses that are more effective will do a better job of concentrating wealth though, as they don't have to pay investors back dividends or participate in stock buybacks.

That’s only close to possible if we start with the assumption that all businesses are billion dollar businesses.

This is also unrelated with the possibility to bootstrap a business without money.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#436

Post by actionfromafar »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #308
trinari wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What drives him then? Power?

Some people are just driven. A friend of mine who failed at a first startup (in a domain in which he had lots of expertise) then succeeded with his second startup: very nice exit but that's not why he was doing it. He's an action junkie. In both cases he saw inefficiencies and just wanted to spend the energy he's always been overflowing with to improve things. I don't know about Musk but my friend hates mediocrity an…

It's the same in the "through taxes" camp. You have the action junkies there too, they were just airdropped into some political context for some circumstantial reason.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#437

Post by actionfromafar »

AlexeyBelov wrote: post #428
TacticalCoder wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are just driven. A friend of mine who failed at a first startup (in a domain in which he had lots of expertise) then succeeded with his second startup: very nice exit but that's not why he was doing it. He's an action junkie. In both cases he saw inefficiencies and just wanted to spend the energy he's always been overflowing with to improve things. I don't know about Musk but my friend hates mediocrity an…

> Thinking it's only about money is a mindset that often comes from those who want the money of others (through taxes). Thanks for your agenda, was really looking forward to it.

You made me lol

Re: Half-Baked Product

#438

Post by ryanbrunner »

red_admiral wrote: post #187
brap wrote: post #159

We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be? I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas. The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows…

To me, the fundamental problem is what Paul Graham pointed out here: https://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few goo…

I've worked for startups that worked on genuine problems that had high customer demand, and there was still the problem of selling what the product could be instead of what it is. At least in my experience, it's omnipresent in B2B and has to be specifically handled regardless of how well your solution addresses a problem.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#439

Post by ryanbrunner »

mpyne wrote: post #369
whstl wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Concentration of wealth is definitely stopping them. Most people can’t just stop working and start working for no cash. I might be missing some obvious sarcasm, though!

The worker-owned businesses that are more effective will do a better job of concentrating wealth though, as they don't have to pay investors back dividends or participate in stock buybacks. Software in general is a field quite compatible with initial self-funding, in ways you can't say for other industries. But even still, investors threw away gobs of money on clearly unsustainable businesses like NFTs, and capitalis…

There's some natural experiments that show that this happens, and is successful, when funding dries up a little. The early to mid 2000s were marked by a huge amount of bootstrapped companies that were quite successful. But VCs can distort a market to a huge degree and have huge effects on the labour market and even things like sales by preferring insider deals and introductions that it can crowd out smaller companies who can't outspend the VC-led companies.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#440

Post by stickfigure »

paytonjjones wrote: post #279
stickfigure wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced this is a schtick. Not that he doesn't genuinely want that, but it's not the root motivation. I suspect it's something more like wanting to be perceived as a real-world Tony Stark. The cave rescue capsule episode is illustrative. The guy likes attention.

> wanting to be perceived as a real-world Tony Stark The thing is, he _had_ this. He had all of Reddit worshipping him. He had the press. He had the tech-internet. Then he knowingly blew it all up overnight to ally with Trump. I think the reasons why are pretty clear: a son-who-loves-me became a daughter-who-despises-me and his companies got repeatedly hamstrung by California Democrats. But if his root motivation was…

> Then he knowingly blew it all up overnight to ally with Trump.

This is speculation, but I am guessing that he didn't do this knowingly. He's probably surrounded with yes-men who didn't challenge his fever dream of swooping in, fixing the government, and being lauded as a hero.

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