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None of them are geniuses, it’s just really hard to lose at capitalism when you have capital.
Its a human blind spot. A lot of people confuse wealth for intelligence. In lower socio-economic levels, succeeding involves a lot of intelligence. Its a fucking struggle. Lots of fish trying to eat each other and take what little resources we have. One fuck up and it’s all over. So anyone that is succeeding is also someone that with enough intelligence to foresee pitfalls and avoid them or escape with their wealth.
Those values are used to evaluate the people at the top which are swimming in a whole different pond. The neopotism and safety nets built into the upper crust of society is not part of the calculation that a lot of people use to factor into how they see these people. They still apply the same dog eat dog mentality to the upper crust of society.
But Musk wants to be a trailblazer and prove that you can lose at anything.
I like the way you put it
The thing is, this turd burgler could lose millions a day for the rest of his life and still retire more well-off than just about anybody. When’s the last time a truly filthy rich person ended up in the gutter?
5d chess or not, hear me out.
He may be autistic enough to burn it all down from the inside.
why are we still using autistic as an insult in 2025?
he may be moronic enough to burn it all down from the inside, but autism doesn’t have shit to do with it. I’m tired of people trying to use autism as an get out of jail free card for utter stupidity. autism has very little to do with intelligence levels, and even if it does, it’s the other way around according to most studies.
Are people that stupid to overvalue Tesla that much for years or is somebody stabilizing the market rate? Somebody is playing 5D chess but it is not Musk.
It’s because so many institutional investors own Tesla stock. Most of the big hedge funds and that kind of thing. At least that’s what I’ve heard, but it makes sense to me.
He is secretly a shareholder in BYD and shorting Tesla. Nothing else makes sense.
He’s not stupid, only suffers from drug induced dementia
but also he’s stupid
I always assumed he was a moderately intelligent tech CEO until I saw a clip a few years ago where he was showing off the evolution of Starlink rockets and he referred to the piping and whatnot on the outside of the rockets as “the fiddly bits”.
Unrelated, but he was also wearing a t-shirt that highlighted his noodle arms and his man boobs. You would think that somebody vain enough to get hair implants and plastic surgery would have enough sense to at least dress in a flattering manner.
if you’ve seen his body you know there’s no fabric on this here earth that can flatter his troglodyte figure.
he was always assumed to be somewhat smart by people who don’t know what he’s talking about. the moment he talks about anything you know you realize he’s full of shit. that’s why astronauts he idolized for example never bought his shit, even when he was at his peak of popularity.
he’s the embodiment of “it’s better to stay silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt”. he’s also the best counterargument to any idiot who thinks we live in a meritocratic system.
He used to be stupid. He still is, but he used to be, too.
i don’t understand these figures
Lost $300,000,000 with Trump Losing billions more by the day
$300mil was about how much he paid to buy the election, he’s lost about $33bil in stock value of Tesla in the last few days due to the public sniping with Agent Krasnov
I had to look it up. Pajeet is a racial slur in SE Asia, apparently.
You mean S Asia? India isn’t exactly east…
Leave it to 4chan to import all the slurs from around the world
Is it actually a slur, or just a stereotypical sounding name? Because if its the second isn’t it just like Barry eating his 3rd pie and chips of the afternoon with a pint of wife beater?
Perhaps even less surprising, this particular racial slur apparently came from 4chan.
I am seeing the slur in Instagram as well.
By came from I mean it originated from there.
Somehow nobody has mentioned the drugs? And obvious signs of mental illness? Obviously high functioning, but that does not make the decisions less nuts.
Has anybody seen the Johnny Harris video on musk? It was all fun and games until the drugs came out to play.
Peter Thiel also does a shit ton of drugs and you don’t see him spiralling this hard
Musk learned the hard way why other billionaires don’t get directly involved in politics, and buy politicians instead. That way they get what they want, but let the politicians take the heat for pushing through the billionaires agendas.
The problem for Musk is that his ego wouldn’t allow him to sit quietly on the sidelines calling the shots. He had to prove how smart he was, and how he was the only one who could fix the government. Now, he’s pissed off almost everyone, has lost various large foreign contracts for his companies, drove sales of Tesla into the ground, and is watching Trump undo the “brilliant” governmental cost cutting that he did.
And, his ego still won’t let it go, as now he’s suggested he’ll start his own political party. You just know the other billionaires are looking at him and going “What a dumbass!”
And still some dumb Americans will think:
“Billionnaires got a lot of wealth, so they must know what they’re doing. Let them fix it.”
When the actual answer is:
“Billionnaires never once worked as much as we did. They got born with a fuckton of money. Let them eat cake.”
It’s 5D Narcissism :D
Yes, this. It may be drugs, it may be mental disorder, but what it CERTAINLY is is narcissism and megalomania.
Just like every Trump voter who never thought it would happen to THEM when tornado relief was denied or they were deported or their farm was on the brink of financial collapse thanks to tariffs, Musk seems to have thought he was safe? That HE could control Trump? I knew getting these two megalomaniacs together like this would go badly, I’m just impressed it lasted so long honestly.
Even if he loses hundreds of billions of dollars he’s still richer than like 99% of individual people worldwide will ever be.
I will save the schadenfreude for when he pays for the deaths of men, women, and children who were denied care from the USAID funds being cut.
He won’t though because although what he did is immoral it wasn’t illegal. After all the president of the United States authorised these actions they must be legal.
Financially he’s going to suffer but there’s nothing in law that can be done to him.
We’ve both seen how quickly the legislative landscape can change, let’s not write this loss off just yet.
*conservatives can’t afford his cars
Had to correct it
The are no liberal billionaires and very few liberal millionaires
I have known rich conservatives. I used to work with one who had a Ford F-150 Raptor.
Having an expensive vehicle doesn’t mean you can afford it. You can probably make the payments, but you can only really afford the vehicle if you’re keeping up with other financial goals.
My coworker has two luxury cars, and he’s in debt up to his eyeballs. He makes the same as me, his SO also works (mine doesn’t), and he’s always complaining about not having enough money, while we’re doing just fine.
He collected data on all Americans from multiple government agencies, successfully killed multiple investigations into several of his companies, and secured additional government contracts for those companies. Is that what we’re calling nothing these days?
How will he benefit from the data he collected? He’s not in advertising and even if he were a snapshot isn’t worth much - you’d need an ongoing stream. Location data from teslas would be more valuable than the data could’ve stolen with doge.
He collected data on all Americans from multiple government agencies, successfully killed multiple investigations into several of his companies, and secured additional government contracts for those companies. Is that what we’re calling nothing these days?
But he also inflicted a lot of long-term damage upon himself and his businesses. So the question in the post still stands.
And Trump is now threatening to cancel those government contracts. So he’s blown everything he’s gained (and then some) from his little fling with Trump.
TACO
That’s what trump does. He threatens. Then in the majority of times he gets distracted or backs down. Those contracts aren’t cancelled until they are cancelled.
Yeah he’s all TACO when doing things that’ll break the economy. But killing SpaceX won’t break the economy and he’s looking for something he can do that’ll make him appear strong. I wouldn’t bet either way on this, they’re both nutjobs.
I don’t know. Trump despises California to begin with and he has threatened to cut off federal funding to the state.
Even if we assume those contracts get canceled, unless they force him to destroy that data (which probably isn’t possible at this point) and reopen all those investigations then that’s not really true, is it?
Nobody has done more to disprove the “Rich people are smarter than everyone else” idea.
Seriously? I thought Edison at best, but Einstein? What did this shithead discover, exactly?
Edit: whoops wrong comment to reply.
Remember a decade ago when he was being lauded as our time’s Einstein?
… Hahahahahahaha
I’ve heard Tony Stark but not Einstein. I’d be insulted for Einstein.
And I am proud to have called bullshit on it from day one.
Whoever leads us to the promised land isn’t going to have a for profit LLC
Well done. I’m like most people in that I didn’t spot it until he started talking about a subject I knew about. The first Tesla Roadster looked amazing1, and then the hyperloop sounded like a cool idea2, and then oh wait what’s he saying about software development now?
1 because its body was made by Lotus
2 except it doesn’t work
Yeah, he’s like LLMs in that regard. Sounds plausible until it’s a subject you don’t have much knowledge of, then suddenly turns into a dribbling twat when it’s one you do understand.
Then you realise he was an idiot all along.
It wasn’t anything specific, it’s just… the idea of this guy being the real life Tony Stark didn’t pass the smell test. Not because he didn’t seem bright, but because I couldn’t believe ANYONE lived up to the hype that Elon had.
That and… well… the idea of the Private Corporation coming to save the day and guide us into a Utopia sounded way too much like a Libertarian Fantasy.
Yeah by his own PR team, mostly, but it was a pretty easy fascade to see through when you actually listened to the man speak. Still don’t forgive Dan Harmon for letting him shit on R&M with the eLoN tUsK bullshit. Or Star Trek Discovery for that matter, which happened much later after he had already shown his true face to the world. I know Harmon got paid because he’s talked about it, but I would really like to know how much he spent on getting a passing reference in the least popular ST show of all time.
A friend of mine has head canoned that the guy from Star Trek was joking about being from Elon Musk University and that it’s the old “Adolf Hitler School for Friendship and Tolerance” gag but in space.
I’m just gonna go with that because fuck it’s the equivalent of listing Deepak Chopra as one of the greatest philosophers of the 21st century in your hard sci-fi setting.
See also: Iron Man 2
The one where Tony blew him off and made him look a fool?
I would really like to know how much he spent on getting a passing reference in the least popular ST show of all time.
From what I have heard, that part of the line was not even scripted. The actor ad libbed it in hopes that it might lead to him being gifted a free Tesla vehicle.
EDIT: There was also the completely unrelated reference in a later episode, in which a character mentioned having gone to Musk Junior High School. That may have been a paid reference.
Damn, that’s somehow so much worse!
Forgot about the Musk jr high 🤦🤦🤦
My head canon is that in universe Musk Jr. High isn’t a real school and it’s just an edgy joke… the space version of saying you went to the “Adolf Hitler School for Tolerance and Friendship”
You say it for a laugh when you’re 14 or acting like it on Space 4Chan
Ah, the Terri Schiavo Academy. I love it.
Yeah I realized it as soon as I heard him on Joe Rogan. I was like “oh, this guy is actually not a super genius at all.”
Now I think he’s kind of a moron actually.
I knew it was a grift from the start because people who are kind and wise don’t spend millions purely to make sure I know how kind and wise they are.
There was also an episode of Young Sheldon where Sheldon had sent equations for reusable rockets to NASA, and at the end of the episode it showed Elon buying the equations from NASA.
He was also in South Park, and Rick & Morty. He had a great PR team considering what they were working with behind the scenes. They dressed him up real nice.
Then he fired them, because he didn’t like having to wear anything in public. Metaphorically-speaking.
I still cringe at him being mentioned in Star Trek Discovery…
Luckily that was evil mirror universe Lorca that said it, so it fits.
Literally had someone saying that earlier today. Something along the lines of “you don’t become the richest person in the world without some competency.” Just ignore the fact he started on third base…
I mean, yeah he had a lot of advantage, but he did have to do something right to become the richest man. But making some good gambles doesn’t make you a good person nor does it mean you’re great at everything.
Maybe he was good at finding companies at the right time to invest, but that means jack about any economic or political acumen. Same reason why we don’t want businessmen in politics, being good at one thing does not mean you’re good at everything.
He’s a modern day Wilbur Ross, with some edits on background and rich-parent launchpad thrown in.
Not even. He started on home, he just claimed he ran there and for some reason people believed him even though he still had a bat in his hand.
Elon has had “Penisdick” written all over him since day one
I don’t know exactly how much his parents were worth, but his net worth has increased by many thousands of times. That’s not “third base”, saying he got where he is by luck and nepotism is just wilfully ignorant.
Trump, on the other hand, would have done better if he just left his money in a savings account.
I dunno, man, we could probably get into an entire dissertation about this, but I’m not totally convinced that most of these fabulously wealthy people didn’t just fail upwards by throwing the spaghetti plate at the wall; the only difference between them and us is that, often, they start with a lot more spaghetti to throw
Pretty much all of the three digit billions crowd are in tech of some description. There’s definitely an element of being in the right place at the right time, but there’s also a lot of business skills as well.
A lot of their success seems to be recognising an opportunity before anyone else, whether that’s luck or skill is difficult to know.
Most of their success comes from knowing when to fuck over other people
They hire people to do that for them, don’t they?
How do they know who’s full of shit and who knows what they’re talking about though?
A lot of their success seems to be recognising an opportunity before anyone else
Pretty much everyone in the world has at some point in their lives had some idea or spotted some gap in the market that could be a successful product, but 99% of us don’t get to act on that because the rent is due and will be due again next month.
I genuinely think he’s had some sort of cognitive decline.
He went from being merely wealthy to the richest man in the world, and nearly everyone thinking he’s a genius, to being hated by nearly everyone and losing money fast.
yeah that much power and money certainly does something to your brain, the guy can’t think straight anymore
Also the dude apparently does a lot of drugs.
Generally the truly smartest people (the ones who actually figure out spaceflight, electric vehicles, satellite internet) aren’t the wealthiest. Sure many of them end up pretty wealthy due to stock options, high salaries, companies competing for them and the like. But often at the end of the day they just retire into their wealth and spend their days traveling or living in their huge houses or whatever.
But the CEOs, the politicians, the investors, the self-labelled “Founders,” those approaching or in the 1%; For those it’s not about making something, doing their jobs, changing the world, etc. It’s about winning. They need to feel better than others. And for most of them that feeling never goes away. They rarely retire, and often even when they do they still pull strings from the background (see Bill Gates). Some psychopathic part of their brain makes it so their most important and purest drive is to constantly get to that next target, that next exponential stock valuation, that next acquisition, that next news broadcast they can jerk off to about how they beat someone else in a campaign or about how line go up or whatever.
So when these people are in the middle of their career, they’re relatively unnoticeable by most. They’re “founding” companies by employing those smarter than them with money they have. They’re selling said companies, moving on. They’re making shady deals, laundering money, because they are smart enough to beat the system and the system is against them because they’re so smart.
But for those that amass enough wealth like Elon, the drive never goes away. But what do you do after you’re the richest person in the world? Well, try to become the most powerful person in the world. But you can’t just run for office, the ketamine has told you that it’s faster to latch onto the recent rapid rise in fascism so you join up with Trump. Who gives a shit what kind of person he is, especially because eventually you’ll beat him. He’s a stepping stone for now, a boost pad to get you speaking with those who can get you real power, and more money because it’s never enough.
But thinking that everything in the world works like a startup, and if you just hire more college grads, crack the whip, take stimulants to stay up to ship the product in a completely inconceivable world (government and social policy) to what you’re used to (technology and product development), it all falls apart. And then when you’ve always had success with the investors siding with you because “line go up,” you suddenly don’t have success because “line don’t go up” in the white house and Trump is getting pressure to find something to cover up giving 2 trillion dollars to the rich and there’s no quick fix.
So you do more ketamine, lash out. You always knew trump was a pedo, a garbage human, but it didn’t matter because he was a stepping stone, so now, probably earlier than you’d like, you pull out your cards of putting him down in the hopes that you can get that power that you need because the money doesn’t matter now, feeling that you beat him is what’s most important.
Think is, he never was a genius - actually quite far off from it
He is just a spoiled boy having luck with gambling the money he got
Looks more like too much Ketamine to me.
And lots of drugs & yes-men.
The drugs are definitely part of what happened.
So he’s a hero after all?
the one we didn’t need but deserve