Yourdailyyoutube Advent Calendar
“Person of the Year“
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Musk ist kein gut, mehr gut als nicht, oder noch etwas anderes?
Wie waere is wenn Musk alle seine Unternehmen aufloesen und alle seine Mitarbeiter entlassen wuerde? Richtige Entschaedigung vielleicht?
Er beschaeftigt nur 110,000 Mitarbeiter. Eine Kleinigkeit.
Wenn er aufhört, dann macht es jemand anders. Der Markt ist da.
Und es gibt 11 Millionen offene Stellen in den USA alleine. Also genug Arbeit.
Der Fakt, das man Arbeitsplätze schafft, ist kein “universal waiver”.
Keine Entschuldigung für grifting, fraud und Beleidigungen auf Twitter.
How could Elon Musk implement better practices in his factory? (I know nothing about that. Und, nicht genug Deutsch, aber ich versuche beide. hihi)
They have worker safety issues. It’s debated, of course, but allegations like this don’t come out of nowhere.
Lots of injuries and someone had to pay their own taxi to the hospital after breaking a finger or something.
Also, his comments about Covid on NPR.
And his fighting against unions (same shit as Amazon). Yes, unions are uncomfortable and can be a pain in the butt, but it was an ACHIEVEMENT after the robber baron capitalists of the late 19th century.
Disclaimer: what follows is about three levels above my pay grade auf Deutsch, and it’s going to show! It’s a brutal mix of my gropes in the dark, iterations of segments in and out of DeepL, and sheer guesswork. All good practice, I guess!
= = = =
Meines Erachtens gibt es eine Art von hyperproduktiv sozialer Autismus in der Persönlichkeit Elon Musks. Er fühlt sich nicht an die üblichen Zwänge gebunden und Neinsager (“Hey! Ich bin ein Visionär!”), und das führt manchmal zu offene Arroganz und ein starker Eindruck, dass er die Leute, mit denen er zu tun hat, um dorthin zu gelangen, wo er sein möchte, aktiv beleidigt. ((Mein Gott, was für ein Satz!)) Ein Beispiel dafür ist der hässliche Vorfall mit den in einer Höhle in Thailand eingeschlossenen Jungen.
Allerdings ist es schwierig, diese skrupellose Zielstrebigkeit (ähm, Tunnelblick!) von dem riesigen Erfolg einige der Unternehmen, die er geleitet hat. Einige Leute werden zu Recht über die Konzentration auf die Raumfahrt beschweren, aber es scheint, dass SpaceX der NASA auch die Durchführung von Missionen ermöglichen wird, von denen sie sonst nicht einmal träumen könnte (ohne völlig neue Programme, die das Angebot von SpaceX nachahmen, und eine entsprechend massive Erhöhung des Budgets). Wie in viele Industrien, ein Unternehmen, das große Fortschritte macht, ist auch für alle anderen, die in demselben Bereich arbeiten, ein Tritt in den Hintern sein.
pmccann: This is three levels above my paygrade in German.
all beginners: you have a paygrade in German?!?!?!
Im Ernst, dein Text ist nicht fehlerfrei und ab und zu hast du das Verb vergessen, aber insgesamt hast du deine Gedanken rübergebracht, und das ist, was zählt. Sehr gut!!
Ja, ich glaube, er ist sogar “geouted” als Autist.
Mein Hauptproblem mit ihm ist, dass er zu viele Versprechen macht, die er nicht halten kann.
Er ist wie Trump… nur er sagt nicht “It’s gonna be the biggest” sondern “It’s gonna be 10 times cheaper/faster/more efficient”.
Die Medien und die Leute lieben Menschen mit Visionen und Ideen. Da wird dann nicht zweimal nachgefragt.
Aber wenn man Theranos kennt, dann sollte man gewarnt sein.
Hier ist ein interessanter Kanal zu Elon’s Techno-Versprechen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8
Das ist ein Video über ihn, aber es gibt auch was zu Starlink, und ganz viel zu Starship, und warum es in den nächsten 20 Jahren KEINE Kolonie auf dem Mars geben wird.
Thanks for the kind words regarding my attempt above; it was quite a strange and horribly humbling and time-consuming experience to try and render relatively complex English sentences into similar structures/dependencies in German, mainly as a result of realisation of how convoluted some of my English needed to be to communicate the right notion, but also because of the feeling of “when’s that verb coming?” as the German sentence length started to build. And obviously a couple of verbs got lost along the way! ;-)
I just finished watching the video you linked, and it’s a lot worse than I’d realised, even if that form of video is the sort of thing that drives me crazy: the relentless search for the most negative take on every single aspect always starts to ring the old alarm bells, albeit softly and slowly(*). Talk of a “hard upbringing in South Africa” is creatively/tendentiously reinterpreted as claiming to have been poor/a $28,000 parental investment-cum-handout in the late 90’s is why he’s not a “self-made billionaire”, und so weiter und so fort. Hmm… There’s literally so much horrible to focus on with Musk, why try and view every single thing through the same lens and with the same focus? Such an approach always produces a kind of continuity problem with me: given what’s happened, how prepared am I to believe that the next step along the way is (once again) just another ugly admixture of blind luck and hubris? (Maybe there’s a kind of corollary to what Nietzsche writes in “Jenseits von Gut und Böse” at play here: “Wer das Hohe eines Menschen nicht sehen will, blickt um so schärfer nach dem, was niedrig und Vordergrund an ihm ist – und verräth sich selbst damit.”)
Funny you should mention Trump, as there are certainly strong parallels: the stunted vocabulary, the verbal misfirings, the outright, shameless lying, the exaggerating, the promising the unpromiseable, the seeming inability to entertain nuance. Someone could doubtless produce a similar list of traits he shares with Steve Jobs, starting with the “he didn’t really do any that himself, he’s a *fraud* hiding behind the real coders/designers/engineers”, and the tales of mistreatment of those who got in the way.
(*) Sadly (SHOCKINGLY!), the comment section didn’t produce any decent discussion of the points raised, but just degenerated into a battle between those piling on, and the –surprisingly few– true believers.
The video is definitely very “anti” in its language, but I think that is a necessary balance to all the fans and the media who keep heaping praise on him.
You can’t find these kinds of videos about Bezos or the Koch brothers simply because they’re not as fawned over.
As for fraud… the reason he’s a fraud (in my eyes) is not that he didn’t do everything himself. No one does that. But Steve Jobs for instance didn’t continuously make crazy promises that never came to be. For Musk, that’s his main modus operandi.
Have you seen his presentation of his AI bot? I mean, he stands there saying that the bot will be built… erm next year or so.
He just throws out deadlines and projections on a whim. He can’t help himself. That’s exactly what Trump does, too.
From the same channel, I also found the video about Starlink really enlightening. And they dissect the transcripts of the trial about solar city. That’s as crony and insider trading as it gets.
The problem with talking about Musk these days is that he has basically become a proxy for the discussion about “liberty, freedom, free market” vs “libtards and communism” (either side not really having a deep understanding of any of it).
And that discussion is in part a proxy for whether you want to wear a mask or not. It gets heated super quick, as you can see in the comments on the Easy German video. And neither side is really willing to hear what the other side has to say.
80s conservative think tanks did a great job, indeed.
I think what you say here (at the end) about the polarization around Musk is part of the reason that I find such videos less convincing than they’d otherwise be: the sort of totalizing, snarky negativity they use just raises my hackles, even when the vast majority of the evidence presented is incredibly damning. Far more effective, at least in my view, are productions based on a kind of *principle of charity* (cue laughter about charity in the context of Musk…): grant *everything* you’re not 100% sure about to your opponent, and focus on the bucket-loads of really ugly stuff that you’ve got great material on. Don’t embellish or –as mentioned above– rely on tendentious interpretations in order to overcook your case.
(And yeah: Musk’s offhanded promises/lies are definitely on a Trumpian level, even if they fail to have Trumpian impacts.Even in the relatively Earth-bound realm of Tesla, how many times has he definitively stated that the date for the rollout of the software update that will enable “full self-driving”? It feels like *dozens*. One final triviality, with a Germanic twist: I love that the (American) designer of the Tesla Roadster –who used to work for VW– is called Franz von Holzhausen, and his wife has a fashion label called “von Holzhausen” that makes items from “vegan leather”. It’s all too perfect ;-)
Als immer, bin ich beeindruckt von den nuancenreichen Antworten. Die Deutsche scheinen beide Seiten eine Frage zu betrachten. Oder…. du wählst nur die Besten ;) Amerikaneren (ich bin eins) würde nur “Er ist fantastisch” oder “Er ist der Teufel” sagen, mit keine Erklärung. sigh.
Nee, das sind alle, die ich interviewt habe. Aber die Straße ist ein bisschen speziell.
Guck mal das Eay German Video zu “Capitalism”. Das ist auch sehr nuanciert.
Manchmal, Emanuel, fällt dir etwas ein, das einfach genial ist!
Ich meine, brillanter als das allgemein brillante Zeug, das Sie tun!
Ich fande es schwierig zu verstehen. Sicher brauchte ich die Untertiteln!
Ich meine so wie du zu Elon Musk. Überschätzend, so wie der Typ im Video gesagt hat.
Seine Leistungen scheinen normalen Menschen so krass und unglaublich, aber wenn wir Milliarden Dollar haben würde, könnten wir auch so für Leistungen einfach schaffen.
Tatsächlich würde ich sagen… Mit so vieles Geld, würde ich noch mehr als Elon Musk schaffen. Er spuckt große Töne über Umweltschutz, aber er macht absolut nichts um die richtigen Probleme zu lösen. Grünere Autos usw sind toll, aber die meisten Ausstöße sind wegen großen Industrien und Gesellschaften. Mit anderen Worten, die Reichen wie er.
Just a quick look at the statistics, what happens to people who win lotteries in their life, would show you that having money does not mean anything. On top of that Elon is also a crazy workaholic with just 6 hrs of rest per day.
If you have some great idea, you can always always ask for government funding to help for starting your company or can convince a private investor by selling your ideas.
I would keep my fingers crossed for your success.
He definitely is hard working and he used to be a visionary. My absolute honest opinion (and that is pure speculation) is that reality of markets, drugs and midlife crisis really messed him up.
If you’re open to hearing the arguments of a contra Musk stance, I recommend watching this two part series here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8
He has more money than he could ever spend. I cannot ever get that from any government.
He doesnt have to make a funding application, he just swipes a card and done.
I got this far in typing my response to you then I realised I dont even have the energy to explain why what you’re saying is nonsense so ok… Go ahead and think whatever you like. Life’s too short for this
I have met many people in my life like “if only I were to have power” or “if I only were to be a billionaire”, I would do a much better job, while throwing stones at those who actually do something. It is much easier to criticize than do the actual work.
Continue thinking the way you think, I am sure world would certainly become better with or without you.
Wow… You never met me. You know nothing about me. But you already decided that defending a super rich guy who doesn’t know you exist (and probably doesn’t care) is more important than how it might make me feel for you to basically say that my existence is a waste of time and my life is worthless.
I will never understand the logic of that.
Möglicherweise hat er mehr als jeder andere gemacht, um E-Autos eine Wirklichkeit zu machen. Er hat nicht Tesla gegründet, sondern gekauft und übernommen, jedoch finde ich trotzdem, das er Riesenlob verdient. Die Autobranche Deutschlands investiert jetzt jede Menge Geld, um Tesla einzuholen; ohne Elon Musk wäre das nicht passiert und die Entwicklung von E-Autos wären viel langsamer vorangekommen.
Er ist trotzdem “ein komischer Typ”, wie die Frau im Video gesagt hat.
Man muss aber auch sagen, dass Tesla es ohne “Subsidies” für EV nicht geschafft hätte.
Wenn du mal guckst, wie krass E-Autos in Norwegen und Dänemark gefördert wurden… kein Wunder, dass da so viele Teslas rumfahren (es sind wirklich viele).
Die Regierungen haben in Richtung E-Mobilität gesteuert, und dafür verdienen sie auch ein Teil des Lobes.
Aus meiner Sicht stimmt zwar die Bezeichnung Visionär für ihn, aber seine Prioritäten sind ganz falsch gesetzt. Erstens gehört die Klima-Krise beseitigt, bevor man versucht, Science-Fiction Fantasien auf Mars zu verwirklichen. Zweitens sind E-Autos bestenfalls eine Überbrückungstechnologie, weil der Lithiumbergbau die Umwelt drastisch beschädigt und die Entsorgung von den Akkus überhaupt nicht nachhaltig ist.
Man darf nicht vergessen, dass der Erfolg seiner geschäftlichen Aktivitäten weiterhin stark auf verschiedene Subventionsarten angewiesen sind. Der Kerl ist kein “self-made man.”
Ferner hat er mehrmals bewiesen, dass er die Klappe einfach nicht halten kann.
Ja, ich stimme dir total zu!!
Hello,
One typo only:
“a video with me an Easy German” (a video with me on Easy German)
Was soll ich über Elon Musk sagen?
Als ich angefangen habe, das Artikel zu lesen, habe ich mir gedacht “Oh, nein, bittle nicht noch ein Streit am Blog”…
Aber dieses Thema ist für mich weder zu umstritten noch unangenehm und es gibt sogar einige lustigen Aspekten, z.B. der Name seines Sohnes (X Æ A-Xii Musk) und sein Verlangen, die Menschheit zu Mars zu bringen…
Meine Meinung nach ist er ein Visionär, aber auch ein bisschen verrückt (und ja, ein Kapitalist).
Er hat uns trotzdem daran gebracht, an Umweltschutz zu denken, was ich immer Positiv finde :)
Bis Morgen!
Leider ist mein Deutsch gar nicht so gut als Elsa und Mark. Ich fand die Antworten von den verschieden Leute in Berlin normal. Ich kenne auch sehr wenig von Musk, außerdem Tesla Autos, und er macht die Batterien für Solar Energie. Heißt Invertors. Musk ist außerordentlich und es gibt ein Platz für solche Leute in der Welt.
As long as he is a good and fair employer, pays his taxes and respects women then he has a right to forge ahead with his inventions. I could have asked Google Translate to put this into German, but I have to do my exercises on Seedlang now.
We like Carri on Easy German very much in our U3A German group and it was seeing your interviews that I became aware of your blog. Thanks
“und es gibt ein Platz für solche Leute in der Welt.”
Ja, das stimmt definitiv! Ohne Visionäre geht es nicht, selbst wenn viele seiner Visionen (Boring Company, AI Bot, Starlink) wirklich Quatsch sind.
Glad to hear you actually made the way over from the video to the blog :). I hope you check out a few of the calendar posts and see if you like it.
I think you are being unnecessarily harsh on Elon. Visionaries like him can dream of something bigger and better. Even if one of those dreams comes true, it is one step in the right direction. Already he is doing a lot for climate change by single handedly making EV vehicles popular, when car companies around the world were stuck in the past. He is paying this year $11 billion as tax, and accused by people who actually live on others money (politicians) for not doing enough. I would ask how many of those who complain about him, have made world better?
Well, I agree that he’s not all bad and he does have visions. But Starlink for instance is one such vision I HEAVILY disagree with. I want this to stop as soon as possible, as it is a pure waste of resources. No one needs this.
Also he didn’t “single handedly” make EVs popular. He did it with the help of billions of tax payer money around the world, that he now acts like he doesn’t want.
He is paying 11 Billion in taxes basically because he has a bunch of stock options maturing next year which would net him like 30 billion or what have you. Yes, it’s a lot of taxes, but it’s even more money that he makes.
I have nothing against rich people. What I have a problem with is grifters and liars and unfortunately, I think he is one.
I genuinely used to like the guy. But too many promises, too little done.
You have the EV subsidy the other way round. You should consider the subsidies as an investment, the returns of that investments are many times over. Subsidies are not something government gives you from tax payers, it is the tax which is written off from your account, which one would have otherwise paid. So I think it is a wrong notion of tax payers money being used when those were basically subsidies, which is generally given to any promising startup (Google used to be one of them).
If the company starts makes profit, the corporate tax is paid many times over the tax which was not paid in form of subsidy. It was his vision which was so solid, that many continued investing even if for many years Tesla was making losses.
That corporate tax would not have ever gone into government account, had it not provided subsidy in first place, forget about popularity of EV.
Over personal tax, I think you must know he does not “make money” as you said. His net worth increases as the Tesla share price increases, which again is not liquid. That does not mean he earns anything as long as he does not sell anything. But if he sells Tesla stocks as he did now, due to increase in volume of shares, the net share price along with net worth falls due to increase in shares supply. He used that proceed to pay tax, unlike living in mansion unlike some politicians do after getting overnight rich on tax payer money.
I would like to know some grifting and lying which you accused him of. I have not heard so far, unless giving opinions also fall under factual claims. Then I would consider many of the politicians as liars and grifters, who flip flop depending on the direction of wind.
I am not talking about subsidies paid directly to the company so much as subsidies on the consumer side. Denmark waived the registration tax for evs (which is close to 80% of the vehicle purchase price), and there were similar incentives in Norway for example. They steered the public toward buying EVs, so they deserve credit for that, just like Elon deserves credit for making EVs popular.
You said “to pay tax”… what tax is he paying then, if he doesn’t have to pay any, as you also said.
The fact of the matter is that he has stock options that he will exercise next year (if he hasn’t already). These options had a strike price of $6.20 per share. The share now stands at $900 and used to be at $1200.
Musk will have had to pay taxes on the net gain he got through these options.
That’s why he sold shares. The shares he sold were not warrants, so there was no dilution of the overall shares outstanding, as you suggested. The option he had (and I didn’t check that bit) were also NOT warrants, so again, that would mean no dilution.
I recommend the video I linked to in the other comment.
Also, if you want to know what I mean by lying and grifting, watch his semi truck presentation and the presentation about robo taxies which are both full of claims that were clearly untrue.
Also, his solar roof presentation from back in the day was staged, as was his FSD presentation from 2018.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with Theranos or Nikola, but part of what Musk is doing is in that ball park.
As for the politicians… well yeah… there are a lot of grifters and liars, there, as well. Nancy Pelosi, stock trader of the decade, for example.
If you’re really interested in arguments, please watch the video I linked to and the ones I recommended and compare what he claims to what he does.
Good that you clarified about consumer side subsidies. But again it is a mixup between cause and effect.
The political environment for some time has been to reduce carbon emissions. Old companies like VW/Merc stuck with fossil fuel engines have been playing dirty tricks with BOSCH made software to get that emissions under limit. But they never came up with a new concept EV. Let us say EV was not a concept, what would be the current scenario? More stricter Euro standards, until we go back in time and ride horses? Because there is something called Physics, and no matter how much they tweaked the software the emissions would not have become 0. Yeah it took someone like Elon to come up with the concept and eat up losses year after year to be at the point where he is. If the governments were not so politically inclined to no carbon (a trick to heavily tax carbon fuels and fill up coffers), they would be at a loss to explain why they are not promoting EV. When Tesla came into Germany for quite a long time German government tried hard to put roadblocks to save its car companies. Only when there were more alternatives, that the EV subsidy came into play here.
Same for subsidies for Solar/Wind. Why are they been given? Germans would be paying roughly 20%-50% more for heating this winter, thanks to questionable priorities. Anyway I am digressing.
About options, what is the issue here? Tesla stock used to be quite low priced not very long ago, with the company burning cash like crazy, and only in last 2 years its price has increased and the company has breakeven, why is it a problem that he makes money now, when he was willing to bear the losses earlier? He deserved every bit of it, and I am sure he would use it to fund something else, rather than a certain ex-Health minister buying mansion on masks business.
Why do you say it is not his money? What I said is, he does not own liquid money or large cash amount sitting in a vault with which he can buy something when needed. Most of his net worth is in stocks and assets. So when he paid tax, he had to sell some of his assets to do so. Even if he pays then or pays now, that is his money. With that money he could do something better than giving to the government which wastes money.
About presentations, have you ever given a software demo? Because if you have, you give a demo on a prototype and try to show what is expected as end result. It is not the final product in any shape or form. Hardware protoypes are even more difficult to setup, and so Microsoft blue screen error, Apple’s Iphone crash, Samsung Galaxy’s issue on launch days have been common. After you give demo, you attract funds to complete the design. As far as I remember the semi truck was a prototype and not the real deal which was about to be released.
I know about Theranos and there is no way Musk is comparable. Theranos was about to kill thousands if not millions with a dubious medical instrument. Musk on the other hand not only started Paypal, Tesla but also SpaceX which has reduced the cost of space travel, which NASA and its likes, were not able to do. Instead these bloated organizations have been giant financial black holes. Another achievement of Tesla is that it now started the race for AI development at another level, just not improvement of batteries or EV design as such. Each of these individual items are as drastic of ideas like invention of transistors, and people complain about him for not doing enough.
I personally am not a fan nor hater of Musk, but I am very much against throwing eggs on guys like him, when even his 1 out of many dreams are better in improving the world as a whole than ordinary guys who cannot contribute at his level. Back in the old, he would have been revered as a genius like Edison, who was a pioneering in marketing ideas. Now he is being targeted for not doing everything he says, instead of feeling glad with what he has already achieved.
Anyway I will watch the video you linked, obviously I might not know all there to him, but what I know is he is more of a blessing than curse to humanity’s progress.
Everyone can say that.
I do respect that he indeed has staked his net worth on Tesla and SpaceX. His money is where his mouth is and that’s different to many other people.
I don’t have a problem with his wealth, and I also hate when the media says “Billionaires got XYZ richer” because they really didn’t. Just their stock went up but they can’t realize that gain because then then stock would go back down.
Also, media rarely reports “billionaires got 100 billion dollars poorer” when NASDAQ goes down one and a couple percent.
So yeah, I think I just mentioned the option stuff because I want to make sure people reading this do not think he sold stock because he’s so benevolent and wants to pay taxes.
No, I have not, and I do understand prototypes and projections and all that.
But he says things like “We can do this NOW.”, “It works NOW”, “Deliveries start NEXT YEAR”.
Those are definite statements and if they’re not true, you shouldn’t make them.
For their FSD demo in 2018, they 3d mapped the entire track and edited the video. That is LYING. They made people think the car can do something it cannot do.
He started neither Tesla nor Paypal, nor did he contribute much to the tech. He is not an engineer, as he likes to claim. He’s sales man.
For SpaceX, yes, he did start that one as far as I know. Rumor has it, it’s on the verge of bankcuptcy at the moment. NASA will bail them out, no doubt, because no one wants to pay Russia for launches.
You mean openAI and GPT3 and the likes. The thing is, it’s just BIG. No new developments there. The science they’re using is 10 years old and not their breakthrough. They just make it big because they have the funds.
Google, Facebook and others are also working in that field, and we do not know what they’re doing because they keep their mouth shut.
GPT3, while impressive, may very likely not do what Elon claims it does. I can point you to a very detailed analysis of its strengths and weaknesses if you’re interested.
I don’t complain about him not doing enough or him not paying enough taxes. I solely complain about him making false promises all the time.
With that, I agree!
Basically what you’re saying is “other rich people are also doing terrible things therefore he is not so bad in comparison”.
That’s like me offering you a turd sandwich and telling you you should be grateful because the bread is good quality.
No body stops you from being rich yourself and doing what you want to do. Like I said propose your ideas to some willing investor and stop making excuses. I would like to see what kind of example you set as a “rich person”. I only see envy when you derive the conclusion you did, from Emmanuel’s and my discussions.
Well, you have to be fair that the challenge is to FIND the willing investor. Elon got to benefit from his dad’s connections there.
You can’t compare that to trying to get seed funding in Berlin. It depends on your efforts, of course, but also on circumstances and luck.
“no body stops you from being rich”
Debating politics with a person who has this poor an understanding of capitalism is like trying to play chess with a pigeon. They just kick all the pieces over and strut across the board like they won.
In other words… It’s a completely pointless exercise.
Helen
Ich bin Helen und nicht anonymous. Verzeihung als Anfänger !
hey it was wonderful !