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In Defense of Elon Musk
The Tesla and SpaceX maestro is under attack for bad tweets, production woes, and strange behavior. But we need people who take risks. We need people who try.
He is under attack.
For tweeting the wrong thing, for not making enough cars, for appearing unstable. Some of the criticisms have merit. Much of it is myopic and small-brained, from sideline observers gleefully salivating at the opportunity to take him down a peg. But what have these stock analysts and pontificators done for humanity?
Elon Musk is an engineer at heart, a tinkerer, a problem-solver—the kind of person Popular Mechanics has always championed—and the problems he’s trying to solve are hard. Really hard. He could find better ways to spend his money, that’s for sure. And yet there he is, trying to build gasless cars and build reusable rockets and build tunnels that make traffic go away. For all his faults and unpredictability, we need him out there doing that. We need people who have ideas. We need people who take risks.
We need people who try.
If the last ten years have convinced you of nothing else, you have to admit: Elon Musk is somewhere out there, thinking. Right now. I’m glad for it. He has ambitions, sure. That’s easy to assert. But his ambitions relate to something more than monetizing a good idea. They relate to the obligations of possibility, to our larger sense of self. Musk speaks these ideas to us, the people—straight past the analysts, the corporate boards, the stockholders narcoticized by profit statements—because he knows we will respond. Ambition is an element of our humanity.
My favorite Elon Musk idea is the one about going underground. The tunnels. The hyperloop. The creation of low-pressure tubes carrying trainloads of commuters at speeds approaching 760 mph. Tunnels running the length of the West Coast, from New York to Washington, beneath the 405 in central Los Angeles.
Yes, he’s annoying, and sometimes a bit ever-present. He seems brusque and impatient at times. He’s clumsy in his tweeting at times. But I’m glad Elon Musk is out there, wandering the earth. Like every other greedy schmuck who stumbles out of Silicon Valley, he seems to be a tissue of want at times. Truth is, I could care less who he lives with or what he drinks.
But some of that comes with the territory. Musk is a riverboat pilot in his own right, like Twain before him. And he wants what I want. Something larger than simple profit. Something Large. Profit is fine. Just take me someplace.
A cult of celebrity can be a powerful thing, and Musk’s companies have certainly benefited from his. But the viewing public doesn’t only want to see celebrities defeat the odds through their talent and charisma; once a celebrity has entered into the Kardashian cycle, we also, eventually, demand to see them fail—toppled by their own hubris, preferably. Neither of these plot points particularly has much to do with the undeniable successes of SpaceX, and I fear that when we talk about Elon Musk we tend to miss the point. A cult of personality doesn’t create a rocket that can land on a barge; SpaceX engineers did that. If our celebrity obsession keeps us from understanding and encouraging achievements like these, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
While others talk about what someone else might create, Musk goes out and does it. As a true entrepreneur he puts his own money on the line. He is always all-in.
When you invest in a company run by an entrepreneur like Elon, you are investing in the mindset and approach that an entrepreneur brings to the table as much as you are valuing the net present value of future cash flows. That is not typical for public companies that are overwhelmingly run by hired CEOs.
My advice for Elon is simple: Be yourself. Be true to your mission. Respect your investors. Ignore your critics.
In Defense of Elon Musk
The Tesla and SpaceX maestro is under attack for bad tweets, production woes, and strange behavior. But we need people who take risks. We need people who try.
He is under attack.
For tweeting the wrong thing, for not making enough cars, for appearing unstable. Some of the criticisms have merit. Much of it is myopic and small-brained, from sideline observers gleefully salivating at the opportunity to take him down a peg. But what have these stock analysts and pontificators done for humanity?
Elon Musk is an engineer at heart, a tinkerer, a problem-solver—the kind of person Popular Mechanics has always championed—and the problems he’s trying to solve are hard. Really hard. He could find better ways to spend his money, that’s for sure. And yet there he is, trying to build gasless cars and build reusable rockets and build tunnels that make traffic go away. For all his faults and unpredictability, we need him out there doing that. We need people who have ideas. We need people who take risks.
We need people who try.
If the last ten years have convinced you of nothing else, you have to admit: Elon Musk is somewhere out there, thinking. Right now. I’m glad for it. He has ambitions, sure. That’s easy to assert. But his ambitions relate to something more than monetizing a good idea. They relate to the obligations of possibility, to our larger sense of self. Musk speaks these ideas to us, the people—straight past the analysts, the corporate boards, the stockholders narcoticized by profit statements—because he knows we will respond. Ambition is an element of our humanity.
My favorite Elon Musk idea is the one about going underground. The tunnels. The hyperloop. The creation of low-pressure tubes carrying trainloads of commuters at speeds approaching 760 mph. Tunnels running the length of the West Coast, from New York to Washington, beneath the 405 in central Los Angeles.
Yes, he’s annoying, and sometimes a bit ever-present. He seems brusque and impatient at times. He’s clumsy in his tweeting at times. But I’m glad Elon Musk is out there, wandering the earth. Like every other greedy schmuck who stumbles out of Silicon Valley, he seems to be a tissue of want at times. Truth is, I could care less who he lives with or what he drinks.
But some of that comes with the territory. Musk is a riverboat pilot in his own right, like Twain before him. And he wants what I want. Something larger than simple profit. Something Large. Profit is fine. Just take me someplace.
A cult of celebrity can be a powerful thing, and Musk’s companies have certainly benefited from his. But the viewing public doesn’t only want to see celebrities defeat the odds through their talent and charisma; once a celebrity has entered into the Kardashian cycle, we also, eventually, demand to see them fail—toppled by their own hubris, preferably. Neither of these plot points particularly has much to do with the undeniable successes of SpaceX, and I fear that when we talk about Elon Musk we tend to miss the point. A cult of personality doesn’t create a rocket that can land on a barge; SpaceX engineers did that. If our celebrity obsession keeps us from understanding and encouraging achievements like these, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
While others talk about what someone else might create, Musk goes out and does it. As a true entrepreneur he puts his own money on the line. He is always all-in.
When you invest in a company run by an entrepreneur like Elon, you are investing in the mindset and approach that an entrepreneur brings to the table as much as you are valuing the net present value of future cash flows. That is not typical for public companies that are overwhelmingly run by hired CEOs.
My advice for Elon is simple: Be yourself. Be true to your mission. Respect your investors. Ignore your critics.
