I don’t know, I think it’s interesting.
I love everything about this. Musk doing shit, without asking anyone, and showing that Shit Can Get Done, even in this ossified day and age. Fuck everyone that says No. Here it is, fuckers. I love the blind white rage of people who expect an Apple-level fit and finish to Musk's every seat-of-the-pants hare-brained project. The whining of entitled "thought-leaders" who get upset by a guy who lives to do nothing other than upset the accepted status quo. He's what happens when a marginal Chaotic Good/Chaotic Evil gets a lot of cash, and a head of steam. "Fuck it. Let's try this crazy idea out, and see how many people we can piss off." The vast majority of punk rock music was utterly unlistenable. But all of it needed to happen to show there was another way to do things. Musk is the most punk rock guy in business today. He doesn't even ask "why not?", he just does stuff. And in doing so, breaks down the perceived barriers that have prevented everyone else from trying. The Emperor has no clothes, and Musk is pointing the spotlight.
It was called the Gilded Age and led to feel-good stories such as the Haymarket Riots. You could have said the same about Cornelius Vanderbilt. These are not perceived barriers. These are checks and balances to make sure that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. When you sit there in your dudgeon fantasizing about the displaced California okies destined to camp on your lawn and shoot you in the coming Water Wars, know that shit like this is what will drive them from their homes. Musk is a garden-variety technolibertarian whose interests are not with the rank-and file.He's what happens when a marginal Chaotic Good/Chaotic Evil gets a lot of cash, and a head of steam.
Musk is the most punk rock guy in business today.
I hesitated to post it because it's like 6000 words of hatorade. I've known a few people who have worked for SpaceX. They're inspired but they're also fearful. I know one guy who worked directly for Elon Musk (in a professional capacity) and he basically noped the fuck out of the position because it was chaotic, unsupported and subject to massive structural change on whim. I don't know anybody that has been berated by him but there certainly are a lot of enemies out there talking to the press.
It’s awesome! Why? Because he’s trying something and god knows LA needs it. I think it’s interesting that they abandoned the skate idea for a Tesla on rails. Smart from a business perspective.
I disagree entirely. Los Angeles has no need for a secretive privateer using proprietary equipment to dig proprietary tunnels through a fault zone so that the anointed few can shave a few minutes off their commutes. This is some let-them-eat-cake bullshit. And it's only gonna fly in poor-ass Hawthorne where nobody can muster up opposition. Beverly Hills managed to shut down an MTA expansion that passed 300 feet under their high school because 'think of the children' and managed to scuttle a subway stop half a mile from their mall because 'think of the traffic'. He's gonna dig a single-wide car tunnel to Dodger Stadium? Really? You wouldn't buy that if Macaulay Culkin did it to thwart Joe Pesci.
If he doesn't do it, nobody will. LA traffic is atrocious. I know that you know this, even if you are mostly peddling through it. I love LA, I hate the traffic. It's the worst place to be in a car in the US. Period. I think if the Beverly Hills parents attended a talk given at their local PTA meeting given by Musk, they'd all fawn over him and let him do whatever the fuck he wanted under their schools. Will he be able to solve the hellish traffic of LA? I'm not sure. Will govt be able to solve this problem? Absolutely, zero chance. I'll take the non-zero chance, please.
Now you're just being insulting. You're arguing that rich white people unfettered by regulation are better for the community than everyone else who has to follow process. LA Metro 1990: LA Metro through 2025. I hate LA, I hate LA traffic, but I can go from Pasadena to Long Beach in an hour for $2.50. And millions of people do. Brown people, black people, rich people, poor people. My white friends usually say "LA has a subway?" and I say "yeah, that runs at capacity 24-7 standing room only in most places." They're not on it, of course. They're dreaming of buying a Tesla to replace their Prius which replaced their Audi when the wheels finally fell off from 30,000 single-occupancy miles a year. Listen to yourself - you're effectively saying if only those rich white people would listen to another rich white person, everything would be okay but on Musk's extraordinarily optimistic map, there's no line through Beverly Hills. Musk thinks he's going to tunnel from OC to fuckin' Panorama City but he sure as shit ain't crossing Wilshire. That's white privilege recognizing white privilege and winkwink nudgenudging its way around the problem, a keep-me-in-my-bubble approach to mole-peopleing your way through the neighborhoods you roll up your windows because it's "hot" you see. Elon Musk spent ten million dollars pretending to come up with a traffic solution for rich people. "We can upgrade your self-driving car for $2-300." 'k. What about the guys who already can't afford the fuckin' Fastrak tolls? You know what the LA riots were about? They were about this shit.If he doesn't do it, nobody will.
“White people?” When did I mention anything about race? Lame insertion. Having money is certainly needed if you’re going to do this. It will either be public money or private. If you’re going to do something in lieu of regulation, it has to be private. If you’re going to do something that can happen quickly and efficiently the. it has to be private. Fuck govt. I didn’t bring up Beverly Hills, you did. As for this only being accessible to rich people, that may be true. That said 1/5 cars I see are Tesla’s in LA. Getting 20% of traffic below ground would make the plebeian freeways above that much more efficient. I applaud the guy. He sees problems and comes up with solutions. Are they his? Are they unique to him? Perhaps not. Can he get them done? He has a track record of fruition. Trickle down car-enomics.
Dude, it's all about race. You've been to LA; you can't side-step the race issue when the entire subject is a privateer building private tunnels for his private cars that average over $80k per! LA is a barricaded hell of racial inequality; you've driven through it. You've eaten with me there. You drive past the shambling black homeless people and the Mexican immigrants selling fruit out of coolers through a marvelous fence where the clocks all say Audemars Piguet and the magazines are Elite Traveler and you can buy bone marrow hamburgers. My whole argument is a one-car-wide tunnel is not a traffic solution. Why would you do something "in lieu of regulation?" Regulation is what keeps the playing field level between assholes like Musk and assholes like me - a set of rules to ensure that neither one of us gets to blow up the commons because we hate the 405 in the mornings. Fuck government? Government I can vote for. Musk? Rich people throw money at Musk. And you're goddamn right I brought up Beverly Hills. It's the place white people live who stop tunnels. Brown people don't get to stop tunnels. Brown people don't even get elevated trains; Metro through the Central LA corridor through Long Beach is surface-level which means it stops at lights. There have been times I've been on that train as the only white guy in the car. This is about a rich white guy doing what he wants with a poor black neighborhood and it's not going to help his poor black neighbors one iota. "Getting 20% of traffic below ground?" Are you serious? Count those lanes: And just so we're clear - you invoked supply-side economics as if it were a winning argument. Did you mean to do that?
And just so we're clear - you invoked supply-side economics as if it were a winning argument. Did you mean to do that?
I did. I was definitely poking the bear with that one. You make some good points. I suppose my overarching argument would be this, in a vacuum of leadership where solutions are rare and take decades to come to fruition, motivated, smart people will fill the void. I’m okay with that.
That's because you're convinced this is a solution. I want you to read this book. It's the heartwarming tale of a rogue innovator who saw an industry ripe for disruption so she asked forgiveness rather than permission and revolutionized the testing industry for the betterment of all mankind. Except it's not. It's the story of a girl who grew up wanting to be rich who lived next door to a venture capitalist and when she realized college was hard she batted her eyes and said "I want a patent for a patch that both diagnoses and treats disease and the fact that I didn't finish three quarters of Chem 101 is inconsequential" and her neighbor got her millions and nobody ever stopped to ask anyone who knew fuckall about blood chemistry whether or not anything Theranos claimed to do was even physically possible because they were too busy clapping each other on the back for finding the next Black Turtleneck and she happened to be a girl. The narrative around Musk is that he can do no wrong and every idea is good. This is despite the fact that he's a horrible human being whose modus operandi is to beat the shit out of people until they quit and then be hailed as a genius. Pretend Mike Milken decided he was going to fix traffic by drilling 1-car-wide tunnels under LA. Would you give the first shit? Did you even know that Mike Milken has done nothing but philanthropy for the past 25 years? Anybody else who opens a side business selling flamethrowers would be considered a sociopath. Musk? He's a darling because he's Musk. But at the end of the day this is a single-occupancy tunnel.
You’re drawing equivalency between Musk and Holmes? Lol. One hiodwinked the VC world with a product that never worked. The other has built an electric car company, so far as I know the cars work. I’ve driven one. Lovely ride. He also built a rocket company, so far as I know he’s been able to launch and LAND a reusable rocket. Yep, works. There couldn’t be a more disparate comparison. Flame thrower company? Lol. He did a limited run of some flame throwers as a joke and a way to raise $10m for boring company. If mk did that for Hubski, we’d all think it was awesome. We wouldn’t think he was a sociopath (even though he is). People root for Musk because he has accomplishments where others said he would fail. He’s no Elizabeth Holmes. Also, please never mention Theranos to me again. Try raising a round of funding for a biotech company right after she is exposed. Not fun. Fuck her.
I am absolutely drawing equivalency between Musk and Holmes. At the end of the day, Holmes shoved an off-the-shelf assay device into a box and called it revolutionary. Musk: - moved payments networks on the Internet prior to regulatory permission and was forced out when regulations became an issue - Out-soviet the Soviets while looking for cheap launch capabilities and undercut the existing players through rock-bottom pricing enabled by tech lust and a lack of pension or healthcare overhead - Created a solar company driven out of Nevada for banking irregularities and illegal tax schemes - Operated a car company at tremendous loss for years through the largesse of the speculative market - Dug a hole in Hawthorne You know something about bloodwork. Thus, Elizabeth Holmes makes your blood boil. I know something about engineering. Thus, I can admire what Elon Musk has done: cut profits and expenses to the bone in the interests of disrupting markets. Slides 8 and 9: ULA comes in at around $9k per kilo for an Atlas V while SpaceX comes in at around $3k per kilo for a Falcon 9. This is an awful lot like, but not exactly like, the operating costs of legacy carriers vs. the new carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue: The argument with SpaceX is "he's doing it cheaper" which is accurate. The argument with Tesla, on the other hand, is "he's losing more money" which a great strategy that nobody but Musk is allowed to practice. Here we are talkin' tunnels, though, and somehow the Internet has decided that the ability to dig a one-car-wide tunnel under Hawthorne is revolutionary. Elizabeth Holmes took a standard Siemens blood analyzer, diluted its samples four to ten-fold and sold that shit to Safeway and Wallgreen's. Elon Musk loses money on electric cars and his market cap is higher than Ford's. You know a little bit about blood analysis. I know a little about cars. I've built cars. I've built electric cars. But I doubt anyone would let me lose $30k per car for five years, let alone celebrate my doing it.
Your comparison to Holmes and Musk falls flat, for the reasons I mentioned before. His products work. Hers didn't, but she falsified that they did. It's that simple. He delivers the product. She didn't. I never said he delivered them at a profit. You make good points about poor people being left out. I, like many others I suspect, just enjoy seeing someone doing things. The world needs dreamers, and doers.I doubt anyone would let me lose $30k per car for five years, let alone celebrate my doing it.
Depends on how many cars we are talking about. If it's millions of cars, then hell yeah... I would. If those cars come with future revenue streams, brand loyalty, etc. If over time you can show me that you will increase efficiency and be able to maintain price point. Sure, I would invest. Do it, KB. It's not a practice only Musk gets to practice btw. It's extremely common in SV. We can get to 1000x growth and then figure out how to make money later. Happens all the time. You know this. Shit... just keeping to the forum we are on, think reddit/twitter. Which comes first the users or the profit? Often it's the users.
Yeah doesn't work that way. Know who founded Tesla? This guy. And this guy. They took one of these And converted the batteries from lead-acid to lithium (making it crazy-expensive in the process). Then the guy with the lead-acid batteries told Elon Musk about the guys trying to make a lithium sports car, then Elon Musk invested, then Elon Musk forced those guys out, and then he put lithium batteries in a Lotus Elise. Tesla went to the 2007 LA auto show. I was there. They were relegated down to the annex with all the other SEMA rejects because they were showing a kit car. It was a Lotus Elise with batteries and an electric motor - there was less innovation there than GEM. But it was Elon Musk. Who swore to never go to the LA Auto Show ever again because they refused to treat him like a rock star. This is my broader point, which you keep dodging around: rich people get to play by different rules, all the time, primarily because we give them a bye for being rich. People love to talk about how Elon Musk came to the US with only $2000... they hate to hear it's because he was on the outs with his dad and avoiding the draft and that he was the first kid in South Africa to get a computer. We make these myths because they help us make sense of a senseless world where a guy putting liens on peoples' houses in exchange for solar panels is a visionary rather than a thief. We pillory GM for losing money on an electric car and cancelling it and celebrate a man who launches "autopilots" with no testing or oversight (while losing tens of thousands per car). I refuse to celebrate rich people breaking the rules because they can. Maybe that makes me a communist. But fuckin' hell Hawthorne needs the apartments Musk shut down more than it needs the tunnel he dug. Elizabeth Holmes was a dreamer, and a doer. And she dreamed and did whatever her heart desired because everyone around her refused to see her for what she was.
Because then it'll be only nine stops from fuckin' Union Station and Westfield Century City duh. First Tesla mall display in the USA, by the way.After a battle that’s stretched nearly a decade, it’s still not clear why Beverly Hills is so worked up over having a train line cross under a small section of its high school.
