ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
I don't know why you're so skeptical of Starship? They've clearly been making tons of progress on it. Hell, they even launched a failed test.
Why am I supposed to get so excited about a failed test? Give me a fraction of the money Musk got, and I'll do a failed test too. As a bonus, I'll do none of the damage to the infrastructure, and environment that Musk did!
Electric cars? Yep
I'll stick to my Volkswagen, thanks.
Electric trucks? Yeah
Complete garbage that will never operate on anything close to the economy of a normal diesel truck.
Charging network? Yeah
Tons of battery manufacturing? Yeah
What's supposed to be so fancy about either of those, and where does Solar City fit into these?
Orbital Rocket? Yeah
Like I said, it's a decent rocket, but hardly mindblowing.
Reusable Orbital Rocket? Yeah
Reusable Heavy Orbital Rocket? Yeah
Reusability is way overblown, and I haven't seen much evidence it brings all that much (any?) savings.
LEO satellite internet? Yeah.
That's the thing he was crying about in the leaked email that is unprofitable, and why he needs Starship to make money.
Tunnels under every city? No.
Tunnels are an ancient technology, and his aren't any better. Also while we're here, let us meditate on how insane the idea of "hyperloop" is, and how it didn't go anywhere despite all the hype.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
9mo ago
It's pretty funny how badly Meghan Murphy got stuck in your had. That debate was months ago, time to move on man.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
I'd be careful picking SpaceX or anything Elon does as a positive example of 'move fast and break things', the whole thing might very well end up like OceanGate.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Is it because so many people have lost faith in both liberalism and liberal Christianity that they no longer care.
Speaking only for myself: yes. I'll take the Taliban over the current batch of western elites.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
8mo ago
I totally disagree with the conclusion. First of all, we are literally living in the time where one man's vision is about to revolutionize space travel by making a rocket that can lift 100 tons of payload to LEO.
No we're not. It's not going to happen.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
I was saying that there's way more hype than substance in them.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6mo ago
Thing is I think you’ve already lost by your metrics.
Come on, my metrics was Starship making it to orbit, and Tesla not bankrupting / needing a bailout in the future.
Tsla created an entirely new car category
I don't think this is accurate. People have been playing around with electric cars for decades. You might say they're the first "commercially viable" electric cars, but this is exactly what I'm questioning. IMO he generated enough hype to produce these cars, but the investment does not make financial sense.
Starlink
There was a leaked email where he was screaming at his coworkers to get Starhip done or Starlink won't make any real money for the company. Maybe the leak was fake (though never heard of it getting deboonked), or maybe it was just Elon cracking the whip, and they'll be fine even without Starhip, but it's something to consider.
SpaceX itself has shown huge price cuts versus incumbents
Again, as far as accusations of fraud goes, this is where I'd paint the target. I think there's some financial juggling going on that allows him to pretend the launch price is cheaper than it is in reality. If 5 years from now he'll upload a video to X where he's driving a remote-controlled Tesla on the moon to the applause of his investors, I'll eat crow.
No idea if his rockets make it to orbit.
Well, that's lame. Starship is supposed to be the big cost-cutting thing. It's supposed to take us to the moon, and Mars. If it never makes it to orbit, surely that will be a big disappointment?
But his underlying what he actually accomplished dwarfs any “hard tech” accomplishments I’ve seen from any other human in my lifetime.
What tech of his impressed you so much?
Personally, I get some of the Musks hate. I do think he’s committed security regulation violations that would put anyone else in jail.
Counterpoint: The SEC is stark raving mad. But I actually agree, I don't think he's doing anything jailworthy.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
I can't see how SpaceX is anything but an unqualified success in every single way.
If it's a hype bubble, you're not going to see how it's a failure until it crashes.
As soon as Starship is flying
Yeah... that's a big if. Care to take a guess when we might see it in orbit? I'll be happy to take the "no it won't" side of that prediction.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5mo ago
This is 2018, pretty sure the "SSRIs are a placebo" thing came out after that.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5mo ago
Building them from zero is hard, yes. Buying them and acting as the frontman might require some talent, but nothing that would put him anywhere near "the most accomplished person in human history in pursuits that clearly require a lot of intelligence". I'd also have to check the accomplishments of various titans of industry, but I honestly doubt he stands out.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6mo ago
Which is one of the reasons I think we might see him, and his companies, faceplant soon-ish. There's no way someone in his position doesn't know these aren't the people you're supposed to court if you want to stay on the good side of the establishment. It's either "I gotta found someone to rally around me when the chickens come home to roost" or it (and here I mean everything he's doing with Twitter rather than just signal boosting the right) is a parting FU on his way down.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6mo ago
Everyone who worked with him at early-stage Tesla or SpaceX said he was scary because he understood the technical aspects of your job better than you did.
There is no damn way he had more than a surface level understanding of any of it.
Your rhetoric and your standard for “Musks isn’t a fraud” do not seem to align.
You make accusations of huge accounting fraud. Bigger than Enron to be perfectly honest and then fall back on he has to go the moon to be proven wrong. I feel like this is the definition of motte-and-baily.
I think they align pretty well. For one making it back to the moon is what Musk was contracted to do. He's literally giving away tickets to the moon to youtubers, surely, if nothing else, giving away tickets for what is, charitably, a fake-it-till-you-make-it venture can be described as fraudulent?
Secondly, you're misrepresenting what I'm saying re: accounting. While I think SpaceX is not running at a profit, I believe the investors have an accurate financial picture of what is going on. I think the company is going to crash because the massive profits they are expecting in the future are not going to show up, not because there's a giant gaping hole where the profits are supposed to be right now. The accounting fraud I'm expecting to come out is it turning out that the government paid a lot more per launch than the headline numbers are saying, but it's hidden under "miscellaneous" expenditures, or something.
And the thing on electronic cars it’s a gigantically huge accomplishment to go from some hobbyist thing to a $200 billion a year auto manufacturer and the first privately funded auto manufacturer since basically Ford
As far as investment in Tesla being justified - if you look at his actual fundraising for it then $4 billion in yearly fcf is a good investment. It’s current 200x fcf multiple seems expensive to me.
Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.
It would be impressive to set up a brand new auto manufacturer, if it wasn't at risk of falling apart when it runs out of hype. The reason there were no privately funded auto manfucaturers since basically Ford wasn't because there's some uncrackable mystery about building cars, it's because the established automakers have such a massive infrastructure, that they'd eat you for breakfast if you tried to compete with them. Musk managed to generate enough hype, to get enough money, to set up competing factories, but that doesn't mean the hype was justified. If the company can't stand on it's own two feet, and will end up needing a bailout, or getting sold at a garage sale to it's competitors, then I feel my statement about it crashing and burning is entirely justified.
Is this chart all fake numbers
Very likely manipulated to an extent that makes them effectively useless. For example the Shuttle number is derived by taking the cost of the entire program, and dividing it by the amount of launches. The SpaceX numbers, I believe, is what they charge other private companies. We have no insight into their accounting, and we don't know how much it actually costs to put a kilogram of payload to orbit with a SpaceX rocket, that would make it apples to apples with the Shuttle.
If you want to not be in Motte-Bailey land you need to establish that these numbers are fake.
On one hand that's fair, on the other hand you know that I have no way of doing that unless I can look at their accounting. As a compromise I offer to plant my flag here, if I'm right it's bound to come up sooner or later.
But he’s politically protected because he’s too important because his engineering accomplishments are the greatest thing since atleast WW2.
I have to once again ask what is the marvel of engineering he created that has you so impressed? If his companies end up successful, I'll agree he's a brilliant executive, but from a tech point of view nothing he did seems all that impressive?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
9mo ago
We actually kind of did that already by making Plan B over the counter along with a strong anti-natalist campaign aimed at youth. The results have been stunning. Relative to Gen X, teen pregnancy has been all but wiped out.
Isn't that a result of falling testosterone levels / dropping sperm counts / chemicals in the water that are turning the freaking frogs gay? I was under the impression Zoomers aren't even having sex that much to begin with.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
Well, I'll let the two of you fight it out. But if you have so much knowledge about hunting, it's weird how you're talking about it like it's about siccing your dog to rip out the throat of the game.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
Yeah, that will really show them you're not a one trick pony.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
Well, what I'm saying is Elon's companies are part-bubble, and part promises he'll never fulfill. Something being a bubble doesn't mean stuff isn't getting done, failure is more a question of sustainability. For unfulfillable promises it's more obvious - success is when he actually fulfills them.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
I don't follow. Ponzi and Madoff had a clear plan: take a bunch of peoples' money, then don't deliver what you promised, and keep the money.
Well, why didn't they take it, and fly to a country with no extradition treaty then?
You can take Elizabeth Holmes as another example, though I don't think the comparison is fair, since Musk delivers something tangible, but this would be my guess to what's happening with investor money. Generate hype, get money, use it to make something to generate more hype, repeat.
You might be recalling this story:
Nah, it was something else. I'll have to look for it.
It's a market, so "overcharging" is charging more than agreed upon, or using unfair leverage to charge higher than the market clearing price.
Ok, hold up. I don't care whether formally that fits the definition of overcharging, I'm saying that if he's getting the governments to pay him 3x the price tag that he's advertising to everyone else, then that cheaper price tag is arguably fake, and governments are subsidizing it.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10mo ago
That one in particular was blessed with a non-HOA property. If you ended up in one, you're out of luck.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11mo ago
McDonalds had third degree burns on her face... apparently McDonald's standard coffee machine at the time kept the coffee signifigantly hotter than any other institution would ever serve you... and what in any other restaurant would be like 86-87 degrees, was 98-99 degree when handed to you
That's not how I remember it. My recollection is that they were serving bog standard coffee, and the lawsuit resulted in everyone else dropping the temperatures to avoid being sued as well.
And as far ask I'm concerned her third degree burns are irrelevant. If you don't know how to handle boiling water, you should not be recognized as a legal adult.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
25d ago
In case it isn't obvious, I did literally just say that both men and women should have obligations to the larger group they belong to, and only imposing obligations on one side is, indeed, a raw deal. I'm not seeing how that implies men's ownership of women, though.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I have always and forever been in favor of just dropping the voting system. Once, because I also find the kind of behavior you're describing lame, I even proposed an auto-banning system for voting the wrong way.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5mo ago
and there isn't a single nuclear power plant generating power at a profit without substantial government assistance anywhere in the world.
Aside from the question of how long that state would persist if we run out of alternatives, there's also the question of "so what?". Let's imagine that the government will have to subsidize energy production until the end of time, how is that not sustainable?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6mo ago
EDIT: Apparently the new speaker believes both, so, heh, touché.
Strong evidence for "Republicans are deliberately throwing the election" theory, isn't it?
I really think we should just nuke votes. I think they can serve as a sink for low quality comments ("I agree!", "I disagree!"), but it's better to just hand out tempbans for low quality.
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