Yeah, I really hate this revisionism of Elon as an extremely wealthy apartheid emerald mine heir who was a dumb guy who happened to get lucky at paypal and then stole all his money from the government while operating a car and rocket company. There is plenty to criticize about him, but SpaceX dramatically decreased cost to orbit which had reliance on Russian technology at the time.

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scotty79 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> extremely wealthy apartheid emerald mine heir who was a dumb guy who happened to get lucky at paypal and then stole all his money from the government while operating a car and rocket company.

> SpaceX dramatically decreased cost to orbit which had reliance on Russian technology at the time.

Both can be (and are) true at the same time. Elon hired/partnered the right people and didn't have capacity to mess all the companies he owned into oblivion. His main skill is bullshiting investors, the government and the public.

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contingencies 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Musk was raised affluent in apartheid-era South Africa, his father had some connection to Zambian emerald trading/mining, and Musk's companies have benefited enormously from public contracts and policy. He's not stupid.

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Tuna-Fish 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Musk has benefited enormously from public contracts and policy, but all the questionable ones are in Tesla (and especially originally solarcity, but that got folded into Tesla).

The government contracts that made SpaceX were all open bid, where SpaceX bid an better solution than anything that any of the established companies did, at literally half the price. Falcon 9 was a massive gift to the US government, in that it drove the entire industry to halve the prices they extracted from the government. Dragon was just as good.

That they also built a profitable launch company out of it just highlights how much of an outlier SpaceX is. They sold the US government a dollar for fifty cents, made a profit doing it, and ended up driving half the rockets already flying out of the business.

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Danox 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

He benefits enormously from the government but then acts like he doesn’t.

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hparadiz 5 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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culi 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not good to take info as a personal attack.[0]

The most subsidized companies in human history by how long they've been around. it's worse than the actual military industrial complex (though both his major companies are heavily tied to the MIC as well)

https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc

https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/space-explor...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cognition

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hparadiz 5 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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culi 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I didn't flag your original comment. You're clearly very deep into identity-protective cognition and unable to discuss logically. You are taking criticism of a company very personally and getting emotional about it.

	▲	hparadiz 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You are presenting statistics about government funding as "subsidies" when they aren't subsidies. They are just normal government contracts. That makes you a liar and a fool. You very clearly have an agenda to push but I will have none of it.

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wookmaster 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ironic to be acting like this and telling others to go back to bluesky. Please go for a walk.

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hparadiz 4 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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wookmaster 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Some value coherent educated responses to emotional name calling. Being proud of devolving into that is something I don't share.

	▲	hparadiz 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		When something has been proven false for the thousandth time I value not seeing the falsehoods repeatedly with no consequences in the supposed false virtue of "coherent educated responses". In real life these same people are denied attendance to universities. They aren't hired at top companies. And they aren't treated seriously by the adults in the room. Yet for some reason on an anonymous online forum I am supposed to sit through the bullshit. In reality these people are sucking up all the air in the room and narcissistic-ally going "me me me look at me and my pet political agenda". They know they are wasting everyone's time and cherry picking. You call it a "personal attack" like it's the worst thing in the world when in reality in real life rolling my eyes and going "you're dumb" to someone is barely an insult. If that's all it takes to make your entire argument collapse then you really didn't have a leg to stand on.