“Naming Elon Musk person of the year is Time’s ‘worst choice ever’, say critics” (Guardian, today) ranks Elon Musk at least one notch below Adolf Hitler (Man of the Year in 1938). My hatred for Tesla isn’t quite that severe, and it is primarily based on the insufferable smugness of early adopters of the cars rather than the company or its founder per se, but this is still a tough week for someone who wakes up every morning to see whether Honda and Toyota (big press conference today, but no cars yet!) are ready to deliver what I just know will be a far superior vehicle to anything that Tesla could make at the same price. I dream of the day when Mindy the Crippler can relax in an all-electric Honda Odyssey set for “Canine in Car” (TM) and I will be reunited with her via a door that slides back rather than one that swings up to hit me in the forehead (Tesla X).
Who shares my outrage and pain? A Native American elder:
(Musk responded that he will pay $15 billion in personal income tax for 2021, then added “Don’t spend it all at once … oh wait you did already.”)
It is a little strange that a U.S. Senator hates Musk this much, considering that SpaceX saves the taxpayers a ton of money (wouldn’t the government missions done via SpaceX cost $billions more if done by NASA employees and the usual contractor suspects?). Also, since Tesla employees earn far above the median U.S. wage, even if Musk never paid a dime of tax himself, the company that he started would be an enormous indirect contributor to the U.S. Treasury (the employees will pay income tax, payroll tax, property tax, sales tax, etc.) in addition to the company’s own direct contributions (employer’s share of payroll tax at least).
Elon Musk does seem deserving in some ways. Tesla is the only car company that enables dogs to spend full days with their humans (“dog mode”).
“Elon Musk Calls Bill Gates a ‘Knucklehead’ After Vaccine Criticism As Billionaire Clash Continues” (Newsweek, October 1, 2020) was a moment of greatness. (Musk predicted failure to achieve salvation through vaccination and was agreeing with Harvard Medical School’s Martin Kulldorff’s April 2020 position:
Note that Bill Gates’s beliefs regarding SARS-CoV-2 that led to the “knucklehead” label proved insignificant compared to his unwise decision to get married (Melinda Gates sued Bill for tens of $billions just a few months after Musk called Bill a “knucklehead”).)
Elon Musk set an example to every American who loves liberty by moving from the slave state of California to the (mostly) free state of Texas. (The majority of Californians who recently voted themselves into slavery are no doubt cheered by the latest governor’s mask order.) A reader emailed me to help regarding a plan to move from the Seattle area to Florida. He was dithering because he wasn’t sure that a public school in Florida would provide everything that his kids could get in Washington State. From October 2021:
As one illustration of where we are going, the next week King County will go to requiring 72 hour old tests or proof of vaccination if you want to go to restaurant or gym etc etc
My response:
Think about what your kids are learning if you DON’T move to a freedom-oriented state (e.g., Florida or South Dakota). They’re learning that when the government orders the sheep to jump through a bunch of new hoops, the correct response is to ask “How high, sir?” We can tell our kids that when Massachusetts shut down their schools, sports, etc., and ordered them to wear masks all the time, we picked them up and moved them to a place where people value freedom and education for all children. I think that might be a more valuable lesson than whatever they might have learned in their old schools.
Musk showed Americans that, while moving is inconvenient, now that government is bigger than ever, the willingness and ability to move is critical. (The same would be true for a Floridian who loves lockdown, mask orders, vaccine papers checks, and essential marijuana. He/she/ze/they should pick up in Palm Beach and move to San Francisco or Boston.)
While Americans trip over each other in a frenzy to buy houses that they’ll have to spend 10-20 hours/week maintaining, burying themselves in debt in the process, Musk unloaded all of his residential property. A great example to young people that the best way to stay creative is not to burden oneself with the job of amateur property manager and handypersonx.
I think it might have been better to give the award to SARS-CoV-2, which is often personified as an enemy. SARS-CoV-2 has achieved more mindshare and influence over human lives than any other person or personified entity.
Readers: If not Musk, who should have been TIME’s Person of the Year?
Related:
In exchange for Greenspun being denied the award again, it was amusing to see the Time write “The man from the future where technology makes all things possible is a throwback to our glorious industrial past, before America stagnated and stopped producing anything but rules, restrictions, limits, obstacles and Facebook.”
I’m not much of a TeslaNazi Hater, the only things I question are the cult status of the brand and the reports I’ve heard about execrable build and paint quality, and their founder’s manic grip on repairs, in which they share next to nothing and seem to be hell-bent on putting dealerships and auto. repair shops (which employ lots of people) out of business as a matter of principle.
So today I found myself at a stoplight in my 2010 Ford Escape Hybrid (which is still running great) right behind what looked to be a new Tesla Model 3. I think the Model 3s are ugly cars: they look like an electric goose egg from the front, and the back is their best angle. I won’t go into why I think their interiors are horrible. But look at this panel gap on the trunk:
https://ibb.co/R4bKHbN
Unless that was done by the owner or is a complete ringer, I’ve seen panel gaps and fitments that look just about as good on a 1975 Chrysler Cordoba (cue Dan Ackroyd as Ricardo Montalban.) I would not have accepted that car as new. I would have told Tesla to take it back and figure out how to fit the trunk on it so it doesn’t rub and look like garbage. For all of Tesla’s technology and its vaunted robotic assembly lines, it seems to me that they can’t solve the Panel Gap problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Cordoba#/media/File:1975_Chrysler_Cordoba,_rear_right.jpg
[Aside: It seems to be impossible to find the SNL skit of Dan Ackroyd playing Ricardo Montalban selling “The Corrida” – with door panels made from “The Finest Valencia Cardboard.”
But Tesla interiors are close, in my judgmnent.]
Sorry, I deleted the first photo link because I didn’t realize that the license plate was still visible in the reflection off my FEH’s hood! 11 year old paint, I haven’t washed it in three weeks, and it’s still shiny!
Anyway, here’s the revised pic.
https://ibb.co/CnVMVz8
And sorry if I’m belaboring it, but Dan Ackroyd’s SNL parody of the (downsized) Cordoba ads came straight from the original advertising, featuring Ricardo Montalban and his famous enunciation of “Rich Corinthian Leather.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7ylbDGbR0Q
Now back to your regularly-scheduled programming. 🙂 The smaller Cordoba actually did not get terrible mileage for the time and it was a handsome car, at least when new.
Aren’t electric cars in general just much simpler and therefore less in need of repairs and maintenance, and, in turn, in less need of dealerships and repair shops? In that case, when Toyota and Honda vehicles all come fully electric, as they have declared, that will bring about the real decline in auto related work.
@ionebirk: That’s true, but they will still need repairs, and in my experience with a Hybrid, we’re going to need to educate the technicians to understand how the vehicles work on a theoretical and conceptual level so that they not only understand them, but can diagnose and repair them! My 2010 Escape Hybrid is a total mystery to most of the people I’ve brought it to for service in the past 18 months that I’ve owned it. They have absolutely no idea how it really works, and in fact have some very dangerous ideas. “Oh, you can just push start it to charge the battery” I heard one guy say. No. You can’t. You’ll destroy the transaxle if you do that.
There are some people who are trying. John Kelly at Weber State University in Utah runs a fantastic website and program training the next generation of service technicians. We need Tesla and other manufacturers to get on board, help these people train themselves, and preserve their jobs and livelihoods.
Kelly has some “deep dive” videos of the drivetrain on a Tesla Model S. He didn’t get that car from Tesla – he had to buy it after one of them burned to the ground. This is perverse in my view. Tesla should be partnering with people like him to properly train more service technicians.
You know, auto dealerships and service shops are not just places that Deplorables work: they’re also anchor stores and commercial hubs for a lot of towns. In my area, there are HUNDREDS of (mostly) men who earn their living fixing cars and trucks. What is their future in an all-proprietary EV world where the manufacturers won’t let anyone work on the cars except their own in-house people? Welfare? Back to school at 40 years old as an ASE certified technician? Nobody has thought this through except maybe in the most demeaning and cynical way I can imagine. “Those gearhead grease monkeys don’t matter in the clean world of the electric future.”
https://www.youtube.com/c/WeberAuto/videos
Hard to imagine how much Philip could have accomplished if he did not allocate his time to rugs like Time and NYT. Bill Gates would be borrowing $$$ from Philip.
There is a great story on this subject by W. Somerset Maugham: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/Maugham_The_Verger_0.pdf
Philip, great story. Have to confess this is just second writing of Somerset Maugham that I read, first being his novel “The Moon and Sixpence”. Do not see how it is strongly relates to the author of this blog. I would rather myself associate to the verger who can learn to read. Unless MIT Ph D is an analog of time not well spend on learning to read. I do not see how ability to read relates to paying attention and allocating mindshare to simplistic propaganda of Time or buffoonish pseudo-intellectual style of half-truths form the newspaper of “record” (convoluted opinion)
perplexed: The NYT is the church, to which the verger had foolishly allocated his time for many years?
Here’s the HOWTO for getting super rich (I’m getting nostalgic when reading the professor’s heresy in lesson 8):
https://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
NYT and TIME are windows into American psychology (in the case of the NYT, the educated elite psychology!). There is no way to understand how our brothers, sisters, and binary resisters are thinking without reading these. It is probably a waste of time, in the same sense that watching TV is a waste of time, but it is also entertaining in the same sense that watching TV is entertaining!
There is also some practical value. Suppose that you’d read the NYT carefully from 2010 through 2019. You’d have seen that the elites were preparing to embark on a massive expansion of government spending, that they considered debt irrelevant, and that they considered inflation impossible, no matter how much spending, borrowing, or “quantitative easing” was done. You’d also have seen that the elites dreamed of confiscating wealth from the successful, e.g., via a wealth tax. Let’s say that it took you five years to figure this out. So in 2015 you’d have looked for assets that would be hedges against inflation and tough for the U.S. government to grab. In other words, you’d have bought Bitcoin at $300! (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2015/10/30/bitcoin-price-hits-new-high-for-2015/ ; compare to $47,000 right now and either $200,000 or $0 tomorrow?)
Philip, regarding “There is also some practical value.” The same could derived way more efficiently listening to financial journalist of entities like “Bloomberg News” during 2008 – 2010 financial crisis, back when they (financial journalists) have not yet succumb to innumeracy, and just were the voice of the elite. “Communism [Socialism] is just a word”, “People (Too Big to Fail investors?) are fed-up with political adjectives” And some prominent financial shows, seemingly exempt from market manipulation prosecution, proudly displayed red flag and Lenin’s profile. All to help cover speculative/ government syndicate losses from US treasury. That all was there to know to become new rich if your stomach could held it. Takes no longer then an hour or two of educating oneself. No need to suffer NYT for half a generation.
@philg
I thought most of those things and almost bought a chunk of bitcoin back in 2015, but based on past history, including the governmental gold grab, I had a heretofore unfounded belief that the government would regulate bitcoin out of relevance if it grew valuable. One of my less doubtful coworkers doesn’t have to work anymore.
Sam: I wonder if this decade (“the 20s” or “the 2020s”?) will be the greatest age of human envy in history. A huge number of people made spectacular fortunes, far beyond what those who discovered gold in the California or Klondike gold rushes acquired, without any physical effort, without risking significant amounts of money, and without funding any productive activity. Some of them are still in their 20s. They’re occupying the oceanfront houses that we dream of, buying the Phenom 300 jets that we want, and laughing at the inflation that is reducing the standard of living for the crypto-ignorant and the crypto-deniers (those are the dumbest and I’m, sadly, one of them; I knew about crypto and refused to believe).
philg: Yes, there is a lot of value in critically reading and analyzing mainstream media! The “foolishly allocated” was ironic in the context of analyzing the literary reference. Of course it is more gratifying to follow intellectual pursuits than mindlessly trying to get 12 figures in one’s bank account (which will be reduced to 11 figures in divorce proceedings anyway).
philg: Everyone I know was a crypto-denier. Everyone believed that Bitcoin was a government honeypot, Satoshi was an NSA codename, and that Bitcoin would irreversibly crash at $1,000.
Speaking of Satoshi, how big a quantum computer would one need to get his/her/zir/their private key and thereby become the richest person on Planet Earth?
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/can-governments-shut-down-bitcoin-with-quantum-computers-2021-09-15
says 5,000 qubits and we are safe for 100 years (why is the stock exchange promoting an article from some guy on Motley Fool?).
https://decrypt.co/28560/quantum-computers-could-crack-bitcoins-encryption-by-2022
says by 2022.
IBM is at 127 qubits right now. https://interestingengineering.com/ibms-new-quantum-computer-is-double-the-size-of-chinas-jiuzhang-2
Getting rich in someone’s 20th is not as much fun as in someone’s old age, let’s say in 50th-60th. Working out in the gym and living high octane lifestyle is more important for 20 years old.
And children of those who got rich young will lie to them to ensure their portion of inheritance.
Those who got rich later on have money at the time when living active lifestyle becomes problematic and they can judge those who want their money better on their essence, not interface.
Quantum is already here, I am sure. Popular article that it is 100 years away is just another proof of that. Google had large several thousands cubits calculation already (they claim without error correction) and it is just matter of time before China gets it. Maybe those who get it will want to protect bitcoin to siphon money themselves, but it is risky.
Do people have the option to refuse being “Person of the Year?” Because if it means that professional grifters and carpetbaggers like Elizabeth Warren start leaning on you, I’d tell TIME magazine to pick someone else, thank you very much.
Alex: She very reasonably wants Musk to pay his fair share. In my view, a 100% income tax should be applied to incomes larger than my own and a 100% wealth tax to savings that are larger than my own. Thus, Mr. Musk owes the U.S. Treasury approximately $297 billion for 2021.
I sold my Bay Area home and bought one in Austin last year specifically to say FY to the communists. Never expected to do that again after leaving the USSR in 91…
averros: SE Florida seems to be packed with Eastern Europeans and Russians who fled the Northeast in the first 2 years of 14 days to flatten the curve. We are always hearing Slavic languages being spoken in stores, parks, restaurants, etc. When we chat these folks up, they usually offer some variation of “We already saw the [New York|Connecticut|Maskachusetts] movie back in the Soviet Union and don’t want to see it again.” Certainly, they did not want to pay taxes to fund what they perceived as tyranny, so they’re a lot happier here in Florida where their taxes are not used to enforce lockdowns, mask orders, school closures, etc.
(Separately, in the Age of BLM, is it still okay to talk about “Slavic languages”?)
I don’t see what is wrong with “Slavic languages” phrase… BLM did it’s job it it makes you even thing about structuring your speeech to make expressing what your mind is telling you in a convolute ways in order not to offend anyone. I’m waiting for when this insanity will reach the math, so that 1+1 will be considered impolite and one has to use something like sin^2+cos^2+sin^2+cos^2….
On a separate note some of business started to move to FL as well so I may just find good VFR day to escape Northeast insanity as well 🙂
These days it’s not “how high” it’s “off what?”
@philg, Elon Musk answered Warren quickly:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1470898920146542592
“And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year”
He’s scheduled to pay 15B USD in taxes for exercised stock options, apparently. That should run the Federal gov for … checks notes … less that a day ?!? Come on
Regarding the $15 billion, Musk followed up with a tweet: “Don’t spend it all at once … oh wait you did already.”
Musk’s success is impressive when you consider that he didn’t have the advantages of Bill Gates (desktop OS is a natural monopoly) or Jeff Bezos (government actually made it illegal for Amazon’s competitors to open their doors starting in March 2020). But maybe Bezos would actually be richer than Musk if he hadn’t unwisely married the secretary-turned-plaintiff (MacKenzie)?
A friend sent me
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/opinions/elon-musk-time-person-of-the-year-alaimo/index.html
by “Kara Alaimo, an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, writes about women and social media. She was spokeswoman for international affairs in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. ”
Prof. Alaimo says “It’s particularly unfortunate that Musk — like other leading billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson — is spending so much effort and money trying to get people to outer space while there’s so much need right here on Earth. For instance, millions of Afghanis are facing starvation right now. … What’s even worse, Musk has discouraged other people with resources from helping their fellow human beings in need. He has recently engaged in what one researcher describes as “troll philanthropy” by questioning the value of important contributions he and others could make to the well-being of humankind. For example, Musk recently cast aspersions on the World Food Programme by challenging it to explain how it would end hunger, and even offered to sell his stock to pay for it. … We can all be interested in futuristic advances without venerating boy-men like Musk whose personal behavior is anything but exemplary. While his business ventures are certainly worthy of discussion, there’s no need to create a personality cult around a man whose personal choices aren’t a worthy model for others to follow.”
[On Afghanistan: the U.S. waded in with infinite cash and food and the population of the country doubled during the American sojourn. Now that the U.S. is gone, it seems that the efforts of the Afghans themselves are sufficient to provide enough food for only a population that is the same size as it was in 2000.]
I’ve made a nice chunk of money..and continue to make it…from Tesla stock. So…thank you Elon, You’re alright in my book.
It looks like Toyota and Nissan are making some big, bold moves, and that must mean it’s time for Elizabeth Warren to start threatening Elon Musk. The Party Made Him, the Party Can Take Him Away!
https://electricvehicleforums.com/articles/nissan-evs-will-soon-receive-all-solid-state-batteries/
https://electricvehicleforums.com/articles/toyota-announces-major-battery-electric-commitment/
No wonder he’s thinking of quitting. There’s no loyalty in this country. For all the good things (from the POV of environmentalists) that Elon Musk accomplished, Pocahantas apparently wants his scalp now.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/teslas-musk-says-he-is-thinking-of-quitting-his-jobs
He is interesting, that puts him far ahead of Gates and Bezos. Who was the competition, Ted Cruz?
I think that all the rational or functional explanations for EW’s hatred for Musk, while reasonable, are not the core. The core reason is leftist hatred of anybody who is successful in the classic, liberal meaning of the word, and free of subordination to big government.
When I hear a high level politician (and especially an oxygen waster like EW) use the word “freeloader” for someone like *Elon Musk* it gives me the shakes and my head feels like it’s coming off.
For law professors, Chief Warren and her husband seem to have a reasonable amount of wampum themselves:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2019/08/20/how-elizabeth-warren-built-a-12-million-fortune/?sh=781c64d9ab57
In addition to being able to spend money earned by her current husband, she sued the first husband and obtained a revenue stream based on his income. Thus, she was able to spend money earned by two different sex partners at the same time. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/15/elizabeth-warren-faced-down-sexism-split-with-husband-found-her-voice-teaching-law-houston/
(this was prior to 1988 and our modern world of marriage-indifferent child support formulae and therefore it wasn’t possible to get a guaranteed stream of profit simply by having sex with a high-income defendant; Warren thus couldn’t have pursued what would today be a financially optimum strategy; see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/History and http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ChildSupportLitigationWithoutMarriage)
In lieu of last @philg comment, does EW hatred for EM have Freudian overtones?
This Washington Post propaganda piece is amazing, right down to the pictures (in the victory celebration in Boston (2018) the only white male on the catwalk is being passively dragged behind the power woman towards a group of “diverse” people, presumably LGBTQIA+ and/or BIPOC).
I watched Lex Fridman the MIT AI guy interview Musk a couple of times, one a couple of years ago and the other recently, and I thought Musk came across as an impressively intelligent person with a persona quite unlike his public persona, thoughtful and reflective. AI engineering is not my thing but I found him fascinating. Available on YouTube.
I think the american taxpayer should just fork over the annual billion to Musk and revel in his genius
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html
Just like Nionbirks says. Give the taxpayers billions to someone who is successful in the classic, liberal meaning of the word, and free of subordination to big government!
As for the native american elder, she’s _is_ rather more miffed than The Bronx Viking
https://theweek.com/speedreads/739921/trump-incorrectly-claimed-swedish-decades
ever was. Yet she’s apparently not doing anything to halt the taxpayer billions going to to companies owned by Mr. Musk.
Having moved to the sunshine state an electric vehicle must be a perfect fit. Especially if you can manage to feed it with power generated from your own rooftop installation
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/20/revealed-a-florida-power-company-wrote-its-own-bill-to-slow-rooftop-solar
(should you ever wish to become a home owner again)
If you can’t stand Tesla, you could get a dog friendly Fisker Ocean.
https://twitter.com/henrikfisker/status/1464643508573065220
It’s even supposed to be better value for money. But time will tell if the hype is the same as the truth.