this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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NonCredibleDefense
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I once thought he was a somewhat awkward nerd who fell upward from wealth into insane wealth.
Turns out, no, at one point he just had a functioning PR team.
I mean, you don't go from millionaire to billionaire in a decade without having some brains, you have to give him credit for that.
I just didn't realise what a terrible person he was.
Getting lucky (Paypal) and being a good grifter (Tesla) does not equal having brains. At most, if one wanted to be generous, you could say SpaceX was a venture made at an opportune time, but I would attribute that less to brains than luck, since the driving impetus for its founding was not "NASA is phasing out certain services which private companies will need to pick up" but "I just got rich and now I want to fund space exploration." Which, to be fair, is better than what most people do when they first get rich - but is hardly proof of intelligence.