Elon Musk Is A Free Speech Hero and His Achievements Are Legendary, But Tesla May Not Be Among Them
I have written many unkind things in the past regarding Elon Musk, who I viewed as no more than a particularly adept corporatist at the time. His Solar City project, in fact, was a fiasco and had to be absorbed into Tesla to hide the losses. Here's just a bit of what I said in 2018 about that:
A loyal reader who’s been following the SolarCity/Tesla debacle unfold over the last few years just sent me links to numerous stories on it. They document the long slow melting of Andrew Cuomo’s dream of transforming his state into a big friendly green monster. All that’s left at this point is a green puddle of water dirtied by the endemic corruption of the Cuomo administration, Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul being right there alongside Governor Corruptocrat.
Musk largely restored his reputation with me when he bought Twitter, fired almost all the politically correct staff, became a free speech hero and endorsed Trump. He has evolved into a warrior against the statism that so threatens us today. Starlink and SpaceX are also absolutely remarkable achievements, regardless of how much of our money may be going into them. Plus, who cannot love a guy who has managed to tick off the arrogant French and other EU types by not surrendering to their censorship demands. Finally, what's not to like about his takedown of a BBC 'journalist’ attacking Twitter?
Nevertheless, putting too much faith in any one man is always foolish. Tesla, as well some of Musk's other promises of brain implants, robots, self-driving cars and the like are ripe for criticism. John Cadogan, the king of criticism and coolest of cynics from down under, rises to the occasion with another curmudgeonly performance [Warning: Offensive Language Ahead]:
Your thoughts?
#Tesla #EVs #Tesla #Cadogan #ElonMusk
From what I understand and have seen, Musk also appears to be a believer in climate change. Whether he believes it’s “man-made” or not, that I’m not sure of. This can be watched during his interview with Trump.
I also agree that some of Musk’s ideas in the past have been a little “out there,” which, following the money like you have regarding Solar Cities, usually shows how good an idea is or isn’t; it was a loss in this case.
All that being said, Musk is a human being just like the rest of us. Tesla is just another company that is capable of good and bad ideas, which we’ll go ahead and add the Tesla Cyber Truck to the list of bad ideas.
If anything, I think Musk might also be seeing how important common sense approaches to energy are, which is what we desperately need. If he (or Tesla) were to create technology that makes natural gas and coal emission free, I could rally behind that, despite how scrubber technology already does a good job of that as is. Doing so would bankrupt the EPA and force the Al Gore’s and John Kerry’s out to pasture.
Great work, Mr. Shepstone! You’re the man.
Elon Musk is a “Free Speech” hypocrite.