Comment by brightball
1 day ago
If he had delivered Neuralink alone, the hype would be valid. Doing that...plus SpaceX, Tesla, Boring, etc.
The biggest knock on him is that he says something will happen at a certain time and then it comes later. Even the sub-$30k EV. Cybercabs cost < $30k.
What "hype" has been delivered by the Boring Company?
No, the biggest knock against him is how he caused hundreds of thousands of people in the third world to die from sudden cutoff of food and medicine. This will never be forgiven or forgotten.
No seriously, this actually didn't happen. That one website is a "model" and simply doesn't account at all for the fact that most of the critical parts of USAID were picked up by other US aid programs.
It looked like it might happen for a bit! And it is quite bad of course that that could have happened! But it didn't.
Yes, it fucking happened. These people have names and reputable journalists on the ground talked to the grieving family members of the deceased: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2026/07/how-pulitzer-final..., https://www.propublica.org/series/the-end-of-aid
I have read multiple articles to the same effect from other publications. Aid got cut off instantly (to the extent that supply trucks were left without gasoline), people could not access medicine and food that they needed to survive, and then they died, horribly. That was just ground zero.
Get out of your bubble before you destroy yourself.
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That did not happen…
It did. Go ask your LLMs about it if you don't believe me.
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Trump did that, not Elon. The president is the only one with the power to cut that aid. Sure, he was the "face" of it but Trump signed the EOs
Elon proposed it and implemented it. Yes, Trump signed off on it but by that logic no one in the Trump administration is guilty of anything other than Trump himself, which we all know is not true.
Elon actually bragged about destroying USAID on Twitter.
"We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead."
This is the richest man in the world being GLEEFUL abut destroying an organization that helps the poorest people in the world. Musk is basically Ebenezer Scrooge.
In an interview when asked about it he insisted their was vast amounts of fraud in USAID.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886307316804263979?lang=en
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The man who fires the gun is just as culpable as the man who makes the plan. And boy, did Musk enjoy playing executioner! He acted with gleeful, reckless abandon and gloated about “taking a chainsaw” to USAID. And as I recall, they shoved Rubio in front of the cameras only after Musk's illegal rampage already happened, as a sort of fig leaf.
Most people don't even pay attention to what he announces, myself included. It happens if/when it happens. I got on a plane and had fast internet for the first time thanks to Starlink, that's great. But when someone at work is telling me about his "FSD" car, sure, show me it going around the block while we sit in the back.
All of those are debatable at best from a business perspective.
Neuralink is still in clinical trials. So it hasn’t actually been delivered yet, and there’s no actual guarantee that it will be.
From a certain perspective, SpaceX’s launch business was an effort to create an airline in space. And that’s exactly what they did, profit margins and all.
Starlink is looking good right now, but its profits seem to be heavily propped up by crony capitalism, a system that the US electorate arguably voted against in a big way earlier this week. Plus, their up-and-coming competition was recently handed a gift beyond their wildest dreams, courtesy of Elon Musk, in the form of a clear demonstration that dependence on SpaceX is a major strategic liability.
The AI bit, well… yeah.
Tesla has had some past greatness, but, as I mentioned above, all of their recent misfortune is wholly or partially the fault of its own CEO. Worse, many of the minds more directly behind past successes have left the company. Investment is about future prospects, not past glory.
Boring Company’s greatest commercial success thus far is the Las Vegas loop. That’s all that needs to be said about that.
Neuralink
Speech Restoration - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2100342084011978896
Controlling a Power Wheelchair - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2080405463649100114
Playing Games - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2057943187746849002
Using a computer & drawing a signature - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2057222230807830948
Painting with a Robotic Arm - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2055351348728668340
But again, from a business perspective this is all just PoCs, not products delivered to market. There’s a whole gauntlet, including a very difficult and expensive regulatory approval process, between all of it and a successfully delivered product that can start generating ROI.
Hah, and what, pray tell, has bunderbunder done to so casually dismiss the thousands of engineers pushing the boundaries of physics in almost every single one of those companies?
You have completely missed the point. I never said a single word about whether or not engineers have engineered. I’m talking partially about whether Musk’s companies merit the valuations they’re getting, and partially about whether the investor goodwill that Musk’s companies receive is merited.
Furthermore, what exactly are you getting at, anyway? If I just uncritically gave all my money to anyone who I think might have hired people who are better at mechanical engineering than I am, then I would have no money.
> and then it comes later
Ignoring dozens if not hundreds of promises that never came. You can't wait forever.
You can in fact wait forever if you're not investing money in the company
What did useful thing has Boring done?