I saw people debating on Elon's contribution in his company's success. On X, Reddit and Instagram—People debate a lot about it.
Can anyone clarify this to me?
Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
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Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#2You might not like the guy, but anyone thinking Elon Musk is "dumb" is out of his mind and just straight up narrow-minded, we are talking about one of the richest person on the PLANET,you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb. That takes brains, vision, and an INSANE amount of risk-taking that 99.9% of people on this earth could never even fathom (even if they pretend so).
Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#3When we talk about an artist being overrated, we're talking about whether their works are deserving of the reverence, praise, and patronage that they attract. Its largely subjective — built on interpretation, comparison, retrospection, etc.
Elon Musk is a truly proficient capitalist. Great at creating capital. So, in that sense, no he is not overrated. There is nothing really subjective about capital — you either have it or you don't. And despite all the warning signals, people still heavily invest in his ventures.
But is he overrated as a leader, as a visionary, as a genius — the subjective measures. I'd argue, yes. Doesn't take a genius to create capital. As he's done nothing artistic or altruistic for us to debate the merits of his life, I can't imagine what other criteria he can be evaluated upon.
Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#4Well, at least success of SpaceX that was achieved in the industry that was considered a basket case overall, and unapproachable by private entrants in particular, is beyond doubt. He brought US space launch industry from a heavily struggling laggard progressively more dependent on Russians and quickly losing competence and capacity, to a complete world domination, all while consuming very little capital or engineering resources.
Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#5Don't talk about Musk. Talk about the universal failure of skepticism that makes anyone like him possible.
Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#6Depends who you ask.
Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#7You might not like the guy, but anyone thinking Elon Musk is "dumb" is out of his mind and just straight up narrow-minded, we are talking about one of the richest person on the PLANET,you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb. That takes brains, vision, and an INSANE amount of risk-taking that 99.9% of people on this earth could never even fathom (even if they pretend so).
I don't get why are you being downvoted. People seem to forgot that he started out as an engineer and visionary, and built pioneer companies in at least two industries that were deemed impossible to enter from outside - cars and space launch - and succeeded in both.
Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#8Well, at least success of SpaceX that was achieved in the industry that was considered a basket case overall, and unapproachable by private entrants in particular, is beyond doubt. He brought US space launch industry from a heavily struggling laggard progressively more dependent on Russians and quickly losing competence and capacity, to a complete world domination, all while consuming very little capital or engineeri…
> all while consuming very little capital or engineering resources.
... If you ignore Starship. SpaceX is operating on a $20 billion bridge loan which, if the IPO struggles at all, adds to the risk. Starlink depends on becoming a telco scale mass market ISP, but it's operating in a shrinking TAM, squeezed by increasingly cheap terrestrial wireless infrastructure, and the fact that high income customers are a minority in areas rural enough for terrestrial wireless to be an uneconomical.
Tesla is spending more than the market cap of Rivian to become the Allbirds of the car industry. They're gonna blow their capex on robots and AI without refreshing the car line.
Another commenter remarked that Elon's fame is a failure of skepticism. I've been a skeptic for a few years now, starting with skepticism about agile rocket development, which sounded like bullshit to me.
Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#9Well, at least success of SpaceX that was achieved in the industry that was considered a basket case overall, and unapproachable by private entrants in particular, is beyond doubt. He brought US space launch industry from a heavily struggling laggard progressively more dependent on Russians and quickly losing competence and capacity, to a complete world domination, all while consuming very little capital or engineeri…
> all while consuming very little capital or engineering resources. ... If you ignore Starship. SpaceX is operating on a $20 billion bridge loan which, if the IPO struggles at all, adds to the risk. Starlink depends on becoming a telco scale mass market ISP, but it's operating in a shrinking TAM, squeezed by increasingly cheap terrestrial wireless infrastructure, and the fact that high income customers are a minority…
Well, Starship is going to add another order of magnitude to an already overwhelming domination (SpaceX launches 80+% of all payloads by weight, even corrected for orbital energy). This isn't cheap and it did a lot of things that seemed impossible or unlikely already.
There is no reason to say that its development is slow. Falcon 9 took 8 years from concept to first flight and another 8 years to high cadence, reliable reusable flights. Starship is now only 10 years in development and already went through several iterations.
Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> all while consuming very little capital or engineering resources. ... If you ignore Starship. SpaceX is operating on a $20 billion bridge loan which, if the IPO struggles at all, adds to the risk. Starlink depends on becoming a telco scale mass market ISP, but it's operating in a shrinking TAM, squeezed by increasingly cheap terrestrial wireless infrastructure, and the fact that high income customers are a minority…
Well, Starship is going to add another order of magnitude to an already overwhelming domination (SpaceX launches 80+% of all payloads by weight, even corrected for orbital energy). This isn't cheap and it did a lot of things that seemed impossible or unlikely already. There is no reason to say that its development is slow. Falcon 9 took 8 years from concept to first flight and another 8 years to high cadence, reliabl…
Rocket companies aren't high value. The vast majority of Falcon 9 lunches are for Starlink. They're not bringing in outside money. There are lots of financial shenanigans in the capitalization of satellites with short lifespans, and hiding the football on Falcon 9 refurbishment costs. "Dominating" the launch of your own payloads makes AI circular market participants blush.