I think you are simplifying a little. Musk had the courage to go against the big manufacturers and build the charger network which at the same a lot of smart people would never work. Same with SpaceX. They did something most people thought could never work.
I don't like Musk politically but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that he transformed 2 industries by sheer willpower and stubbornness.
> I don't like Musk politically but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that he transformed 2 industries by sheer willpower and stubbornness.
If you talk to anyone who worked there, they will tell you that he had little to do with the innovation at any of his companies. His lieutenants and the people that worked for them had all the innovative ideas, and for the most part tried to either avoid Elon's ideas or convince him that their ideas were his so he would push them.
But push them he did until the industry had to get on board. I think people underestimate the impact of a pro-change company culture, even if it does run on a cult of personality that is much less pleasant up close than in the occasional earnings call.
Yes, Original Musk was a good innovator. Alas, his brain has rotted - maybe not in IQ, but in execution and quality as he fossilized into a narcissist.
Just an observation from a non-MBA. I feel that the MBA management class likes to create two class society where there is management class and a worker class. The management class has high trust amongst each other but no trust for the workers. The workers need to be controlled tightly and can’t be trusted. They are extremely reluctant to take feedback from the people who do the work. Better to pay consultants a lot of money. I have seen that in almost every larger company where I was employee or contractor.
That’s ok for the big players with deep pockets. For the little guy this is a much bigger problem. As it should. It would just be nice if law breaking would be a bigger problem for the bigger companies too.
I've misfiled several times due to being young and stupid.
Each time I got a piece of mail asking my to call the IRS to clear it up, and every time the agent was nice and very helpful clearing it up, and not fined.
The IRS used to have a much worse reputation. Congress passed the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 and improved their customer service.
> No country is out here destroying productive businesses because they made a paperwork mistake.
New Zealand. The Accident Compensation Corporation, a compulsory insurance scheme, is absolutely feral. Will crush you "because rules" without a thought.
“ If you take a lot of chances, that adds up eventually and you'll have some big wins. Just do it safely, so that they don't add up to a lot of big losses, too.”
“Just” do it safely. If it’s safe, you are not really taking chances.
"safely" is shorthand here for "with an appropriate degree of safety net and recoverability". There is a whole spectrum of risk between "only carrying activities that are 100% certain to succeed" and "trying anything, absolutely anything, with no thought given to how I'll react/self-protect if things go wrong"
The Lion screenshot is just perfect. Everything you need to do is right there. And with every version from then on the usability goes downhill and stuff you need to do is more and more hidden and requires several clicks to access.
Pretty sad state of affairs. Software isn’t build for usability but purely for whatever designers find fashionable at the time.
A good economy is an economy that benefits most of the population and not just a few percent at the top. I would argue it should be a political goal to keep income distribution relatively stable.
A good economy is also relatively stable. Big booms with a crash following are very devastating to not-rich people. In a crash rich people lose a lot of paper money but not-rich people may have trouble affording shelter or food. Or middle class may lose their savings.
> it should be a political goal to keep income distribution relatively stable
This penalizes economic dynamism and moves economic decision making from risk taking to whoever defies the baseline distribution.
> A good economy is also relatively stable. Big booms with a crash following are very devastating to not-rich people
Not necessarily–plenty of social systems let the market boom and bust without causing social distress. And again, smoothing out the business cycle penalizes risk taking.
> Not necessarily–plenty of social systems let the market boom and bust without causing social distress. And again, smoothing out the business cycle penalizes risk taking.
The wealthy are shielded from most negative consequences of their degenerate gambling. The working class ends up bearing the full cost of their reckless actions, literally every time. What the modern world needs isn't insane risk-taking, it's robust chains of prductions that can accomodate a shifting climate, while redistributing the global production more fairly.
> wealthy are shielded from most negative consequences of their degenerate gambling
Huge difference between boom and bust and gambling. (As there is a difference between a business cycle and total boom and bust.)
Healthy ecologies have an overpopulate-underpopulate cycles. It turns out it's a good strategy for finding and efficiently filling niches in a dynamic environment.
> What the modern world needs isn't insane risk-taking, it's robust chains of prductions that can accomodate a shifting climate, while redistributing the global production more fairly
This is the myth of central planning. Like, yes, if you could predict the future this would be better. But you're always going to be constrained by your leadership's assumptions about what the world will look like. It works–sometimes fabulously–until the context changes. A new technology. A new climate. A new idea. Then the system, overoptimised for the past, reveals itself as the brittle thing it always was.
To me, there is little difference between the stock market, prediction markets and horse betting. I just don't believe speculation is necessary to a healthy economy, and often ends up hurting millions accross the world in the "burst" phases of the cycle.
Also, I don't think we should model our economies and societies after actual jungles. Let's strive for a system where everyone gets enough instead of chasing perfect efficiency and leaving a large part vulnerable to be crushed by any moderately strong wind.
> This is the myth of central planning. Like, yes, if you could predict the future this would be better. But you're always going to be constrained by your leadership's assumptions about what the world will look like. It works–sometimes fabulously–until the context changes. A new technology. A new climate. A new idea. Then the system, overoptimised for the past, reveals itself as the brittle thing it always was.
I am not advocating for central planning or any form of communism. I'm just noticing that nowadays, it takes remarkably little for things to go horribly wrong, and we ought to address that somehow.
> there is little difference between the stock market, prediction markets and horse betting. I just don't believe speculation is necessary to a healthy economy
The speculation I’m describing is entrepreneurship. That is the core risk taking that makes market systems competitive. To the extent stock markets support that, they’re socially useful. (In America, liquid stock markets support liquid private markets that support entrepreneurship pretty directly.)
> it takes remarkably little for things to go horribly wrong, and we ought to address that somehow
I’d argue the opposite. The economy is doing remarkably well given we’re at war (kinetic and trade) and just getting over Kristi Noem.
Risk taking should be penalized harshly when the risk is high, that’s the nature of risk. If it pays off good, it was a good move but if it was bad one let the risk taker suffer.
> Risk taking should be penalized harshly when the risk is high, that’s the nature of risk
If the odds (and pay-outs) are 10,000:1 and you cap pay-outs at 1,000:1, you've made a high-risk/high-reward risk unworkable in your economy. Systems that target a distribution tend to wind up in that mode, with the risk takers taking their risks (and producing their rewards) outside the system.
Keeping distributions stable means capping upsides. There are better ways to redistribute wealth.
> bailouts where risk should have wiped out at least some of these so-called risk takers
Sure. I’m not saying we have a great system right now. Just that swinging to the other end is also a bad idea. You want risk takers to enjoy their fruits when they win and suffer their losses when they lose.
Yeah, or 365 coffees (well for me it's energy drinks). I'm well aware which one of those brings me more total joy in my life and it isn't the flight. It isn't even close.
I was just objecting to the typical phrase "it costs just as much as a coffee" making it sound like nothing worth thinking about. This stuff adds up to real money over time. I have explained to several people that their Starbucks habit costs more than their car insurance (and also may give them diabetes depending on the drink). It's even worse with Doordash or Uber.
Yeah it's an interesting argument. Also, coffees (especially Starbucks coffees) rarely cost $3 anymore. Maybe if you just get a regular brewed coffee but when I think of Starbucks I don't think of their coffees on tap, I think of their $7+ lattes or frapps that are less coffee and more dessert. Anyway, I digress.
Point being, a small expense once is one small expense. A small expense daily can easily become a huge expense.
That being said, I'm not gonna be prescriptive and say that no one should get their daily coffee. But they need to be aware what it costs them. If they know the cost and are ok with it then by all means, order away! I hope your friends are at least now making a conscious choice to spend $1000+ a year on coffee :)
It's not only the time to change them, also wash, dry, fold, store. Each part adds like 1 or 2 minutes for all the diapers, in particular folding can't be done in bulk. Probably wash the diapers with shit twice once to remove most of it manually (+ 1 or 2 minute) and one in the washing machine. The 10 minutes go away too fast.
An I remember my mother talking about boiling or blenching the diapers, add like 15 or 20 minutes 2 or 3 times per week (that's like 5 minutes per day). And I may be missing other hidden time sinks.
YMMV but we usually fold diapers while watching TV or during Zoom meetings or whatever. It does take time, but it's not like we'd magically get more sleep if we used disposable diapers, since we usually sleep at a predefined time and wake whenever the little one wakes us. Maybe we get a few more minutes to watch TV or whatever. Not a huge deal IMO. But again, YMMV. If it doesn't work for your lifestyle, it doesn't work! Nothing wrong with it. My comment is merely for folks to not knock if before they try it. We certainly wouldn't have if someone didn't gift us a pack.
I have no doubt that they are great people. That wasn't in question. I asked if they are allies. Do you find that they support and integrate into your local culture, and support preserving that culture? Or do they bring Middle Eastern culture and expect Middle Eastern values to be expressed in your country?
I don't like Musk politically but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that he transformed 2 industries by sheer willpower and stubbornness.
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