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Elon Musk, an Industrialist For the 21st Century
pacopico writes "Elon Musk has just come off a pretty amazing run. SpaceX docked with the ISS. Tesla has started selling its all-electric luxury sedan, and SolarCity just filed to go public. Bloomberg Businessweek spent a few days with Musk and got a look inside his insane factories in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. It's like Willy Wonka time for geeks. Among the other proclamations in the story is Musk saying that he intends to die on Mars. 'Just not on impact.' Musk then goes on to describe a fifth mode of transportation he's calling the Hyperloop."
Bloomberg Businessweek spent a few days with Musk and got a look inside his insane factories in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.
They're manufacturing insanity in America now? That explains a lot.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Fair play to him for building the factories in the USA and not the People's Republic of Communist China.
Paypal made a lot of money, which he has spent in interesting ways.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Insanity is cheaper than consent.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
PayPal is highly profitable. Even though Musk is no longer involved in the company, it helped to bankroll his future endeavors. SpaceX has the potential to be highly profitable, although its fortunes (at least initially) will be tied closely to the whims and political meanderings of NASA's budget.
Cool but I don't think it's fair to call him an industrialist.
So far, none of his ventures have made money.
I'll accept that critisism as soon as you can explain to me what is so worthwhile about gaining increasingly more value and wealth? He's already rich. Does it matter if he is turning a profit if he is able to continue doing many great things?
you have to wait until 2:15 but here is an interview with Elon Musk/walk-thru of the Tesla factory
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
Well I'd rather have my stolen money be made into rockets than car elevators for his home.
No, it is 100% correct to call him an industrialist. he IS building industries.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If he's making money he's an industrialist.
If he's not then he's a philanthropist.
I think GP is merely arguing the word choice that's all.
These two aren't antonyms, nor even mutually exclusive. I would agree that profit-seeking is a nearly ubiquitous goal of industrialists, but that is not the defining characteristic. Being involved in industry is.
Being an "industrialist" doesn't require seeking a profit anymore than a "business" requires profit. There are certainly "non-profit businesses", and the phrase "non-profit industry" should be familiar to most here.
Industrialists don't have to be robber barons in order to be industrialists.
Has it always been? I quite liked it when it first started up. It was a decent way to pay for things online, knowing fairly well you wouldn't get completely screwed either way. The issue with them is really their more recent actions.
Paypal is a company that wants to act like a bank (handling deposits, exchanges, etc) but doesn't want to be regulated like a bank (in all the bad ways). This has been controversial from pretty much the start, but yes things have been escalating since Ebay bought the company from Musk and Thiel. One particularly contentious issue has always been their somewhat capricious handling of fraud (or what they constitute as fraud) and their refusal to allow appeals or arbitration, effectively setting their own rules on when they can decide to perpetually keep money that has been deposited to them.
... despite the "let's interview a billionaire" theme. The guy has clearly helped a long a lot of interesting stuff, and he's not done yet.
If they can ramp up production of the Tesla S without burning through all their cash, it would be an instant winner here in Denmark, if nothing else then because of our special tax rules for cars.
Considering the only evidence of that is a google street view picture of a hummer parked on the street next to his place, but not parked behind the gate on the actual property, you may be reading too much into things.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Such high innovation high risk activities used to be way more common till the 1980s. Look around you, Home Computers were made long before anybody believed there was a market for them, yet in the 1970s many companies just made and sold them. They did sell and a new industry was born.
Unfortunately that is a lot rarer now. Company only develop and build devices which are already proven to have a market. That's why there are virtually no new devices out there. The mobile device market, for example, is now more boring than it ever was. Virtually all the devices are precisely the same.