People found the 19th century entrepreneur-engineers really difficult to think about - were they geniuses like Napoleon or gross nouveau-riches flashing cash or a new kind of god or freakish half-people? anyway, they wrote a ton of novels and plays and journalism and god knows what else trying to, looking back, process the changes of the Industrial Revolution.
Musk is weird because he’s an individual entrepreneur and he’s in a sector - manufacturing - where everyone got used to what came after the 19th century tycoons. That’s the Organization Man in his grey flannel suit. Firms got bigger and more institutional, and what Marxists call the divorce of ownership and control set in - rather than the Boss owning the company, the shareholders own the company and managers run it. Around the same time, companies began to organize themselves with subsidiaries with their own boards, importing management practice invented by the military when armies got big enough to need mission-command, and created internal R&D centres.
This really threw the Marxists, who had built a whole ideology on the basis that the boss is the owner, although it set them off thinking hard about it. It also fucked up the libertarians and classical economists who still haven’t got to grips with how much of the private sector is controlled by management planning rather than the market. Everyone else, though, was kind of reassured. Social Democrats around the world pretty much loved it because it was possible to have a stable bargaining process and managers like stability. The railroad tycoons have gone and now there are executives and HR departments and what not. There are a few places where this didn’t happen, like software, but that was manageable because nobody imagines the world that way.
Now your man is a proper old school captain of industry, doing industrial stuff like cars and rockets, and it’s just as unsettling as it used to be.
Also, AT&T or Intel or some Chinese steelworks are outwardly these nonhuman entities, which is right. they’re organizations, not people. they pay the #SocialMediaGirl to fake it but everyone understands this is fake. Musk…engages with people over the twitter, and this is not something anyone expects from an industrial organization.
As a result he has a different relationship with the public - more like a movie star than a CEO. people kid themselves they have a real connection to him (a parasocial relationship) like someone in 1949 sending fan mail to Rita Hayworth. now of course this can be either positive or negative. stars get death threats and stalkers as well as gushy Number One Fans.
oh, it’s a big night over there. as I say, because he talks back on it, people have developed the kind of relationships obsessed fans have with movie stars or the Queen.
I’m British and we have both kinds - the ones who go to royal events and buy merch, and the ones who tell you out of the gate how much they hate the queen because it’s edgy. Then there’s the vast majority who aren’t basic enough to either stick flagwaving porcelain wedding crap all over the place or to think telling you “I HATE THE QUEEn” is exciting like they’re some kind of hero.
on this one you’ve got the creepy obsessives who try to get away with driving asleep, and on the other hand, the anti-fans who try to tell you the cars don’t actually exist and he’s going to tweet the 14 words real soon now, like they’ve been saying since 2013. You’ll get no sense from either lot because it’s a weird obsessive fan relationship.
Ultra-ironic twist: both groups exist in part because there used to be a material interest behind them, back when it was seriously in doubt if anyone was going to get a Tesla and there was a big short interest in the stock. Now that’s over - the company managed to produce the cars in scale, the longs broke out the champagne, and the shorts ate their losses and the humble pie and went off to look for another trade. The crowds rooting for the two sides, though, didn’t have to change and so they just kept going.
And the left says nothing of George Soros funding defund the police, antifa and controlling the Biden Presidency thru the Government For Impact organization
Go Elon! I don’t know whether or not he will be a good steward of twitter or not and I am not joining it regardless, but he melted every leftist brain in the country with this move and I think it’s hilarious.
“I am leaving twitter!, HMPF!” Don’t let the door hit you in the ass. Literally no one cares.
MSNBC saying “[Elon] could actually control what people think… that is our job.” at 03:50 is gold.
Of the billionaires spending their money on random shit, I approve of the way Musk has been spending his. Not saying he’s a great person, just saying his money seems to actually be going towards shit that can help.
Like jumpstarting a company that made electric vehicles cool, or inserting private competition into the space race, or trying to turn Twitter into effectively a town hall to reduce political polarization.
If you have an argument for another super rich person doing more good in the than musk, id like to hear it.
Im actively against polarization. Far left and far right are both fucking insane. I want a small government and to be left alone. If you work hard, you should surpass those who do not - and i don’t feel that is too much to ask. Polarization disregards all of this for the sake of tribalism and it only leads to tension, hatred and eventually war.
Most people on both sides of the aisle have more in common than they realize, but polarizing just makes you see the worst in the other side… It overall leads to an uneducated populace that habitually votes for toxic leaders, as exemplified by past and current administration.
Are you aware that much of the population and likely all of the government and those who wield power today, including “centrists”, don’t want to leave you alone?
Yes, because none of them are for small government. Whether left or right, they are all about job security via fattening up the bloated pig that is Uncle Sam.
Agreed, but we aren’t forced together and in fact have much more in common than anyone seems to realize.
I believe you’re not understanding what it is I’m hoping for. The only reason why the left and right would hate each other is a lack of understanding for the other side… which is literally polarization. I hope to reduce polarization which would also reduce hatred for people who are different, and hopefully that would prevent a civil war…
At least if We the Idiots decide for civil war, I know which side will win, and they are mostly in line with my views.
