In Defense of Elon

I get so defensive about Elon because the world is objectively a better place because of his existence, despite his shortcomings or personal life failings.?

Zip2. PayPal. Tesla. SpaceX. SolarCity. BoringCompany. Neurolink. Hyperloop. DeepMind. Starlink. OpenAI.?

I’m sure he has a handful more of unicorns yet to be delivered.?

His resume for contribution to human consciousness, “a flame that must not go out,” is matched by very few.?

He is a one in a many billion talent, one that does not come around more than a few times in a generation.?

If Einstein, Tesla, Newton, Edison, Bell, da Vinci, Gutenburg, and Archimedes lived in our modern capital environment, they would operate like Musk. They’d raise funding, set the mission, and curate an army of geniuses. They’d multiply themselves a million fold.?

Maybe he turns into an egomaniac villain. Maybe he already has.?

That’s usually what happens to geniuses.?

We turn them that way.

We crucify them.?

The world so often turns on those who create change.?

We murder the prophets in cruel and unusual ways and then worship them centuries later.?

Why do we do that??

Name 1 person who has made a larger impact on popularizing sustainable energies…

I’ll wait…?

…not Pelosi, not Bernie, not Greta, not Attenborough, not Goodall… I’d mention more environmentalists but you wouldn’t be able to recall any of their names. Go ahead, Google it. Your mind will draw blanks. Al Gore has not made such impact, even after inventing the internet…

Those names are less effective compared to Musk because their main weapon of choice was words. Musk’s weapons are capital raise, technology, and mass adoption.

He’s done more for the green movement than anyone else, yet they want his head on a pike? Why??

The greatest critics of Musk are names that will not be remembered in 100 years. Musk will be remembered and is in contention for greatest innovator of the 21st century, and he’s still got 20 years left in his career.?

He has measurably had the most effective influence on renewables in human history.??

They talk. They debate. They lobby. He takes action.?

Take a tangent on Bezos.?

He employs 10 million people, 1 out of every 153 American workers.?

He’s instituted a minimum wage of $18 with free college.

He’s done what politicians couldn’t for 10 million people, yet you never hear him praised for it.?

How??

Because people like he and Musk operate under realistic observations of human behavior, with a deep understanding of humanity, on the assumption that people will always act in their own self interest.?

Rather than shouting at people and trying to change legislation, he makes people want to do the right thing. He makes doing the right thing sexy and alluring, he gets the masses to voluntarily join in the mission like no one else has been able to.?

He is now one of the most powerful and influential people of this century, and history suggests he will inevitably, eventually, abuse his power.?

We can and should criticize him for that, but in a protective way, like in the way where you’re stranded on an island and the only doctor has a drinking problem.?

You want to keep that guy around, not throw rocks at him, because he has abilities to fix stuff.?

He’s just a person, but we criticize him like a God and I fear we the people might be the ones to turn him into a villain.?

The media, who says who you sleep with and what you do with your body is your own business, seems to have an extremely high moral standard for this guy’s personal life. It doesn’t make sense to me.?

They get upset about how much people work for him. Take a quick look at the workload of Hillary, Obama, Bernie’s staff. You’ll find them sleeping on the office floor. Why? Because they’re sacrificing for a mission.?

The hypocrisy is overwhelming.

You know who else was a dirtbag?

Martin Luther King.?

And so was Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Jefferson who all engaged in immoral activities. Einstein was married to his cousin and cheated on her all the time.?

But we still have their inventions. The world is still better off for them having existed.

They should be criticized, but we should also be able to separate contributions from the person.?

Like, we now have reusable rockets.?

Eventually, that technology will take us from Shanghai to New York in an hour. Everyone will benefit from this man.?

The 3rd world now has access to the internet, the list goes on and on.??

These scumbags gave us the civil rights movement, electricity usage, industrial verticalization, national independence, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

I don’t defend Elon the man, but I do defend Elon the innovator.?

He is an asset to mankind. We need him.?

He’s extremely effective at making contributions to society, the way he declares a mission and then builds a company behind it, the way he creates change faster and more efficiently than almost anyone in history.?

That’s his superpower, and that’s a thing to be admired and appreciated.