That’s a pretty low bar. His aid cuts will cost millions of people their lives. If you can avoid killing millions of people you are objectively s better person than he is.
On top of that, SpaceX, pays the minimum tax rate. Financial disclosures show SpaceX pays minimal direct income taxes, such as $78,000 in state taxes and $483,000 to foreign governments in past reporting periods.
So wierd. They pay almost nothing in and receive subsidies worth 16x more.
A trillion dollar company pays more in taxes than most small businesses.
That’s not what a subsidy is. It is in fact a contract. It is the government paying money for a service. A subsidy is typically money paid out with no direct deliverable but with an expectation that there will be some positive second or third order effect.
The government does pay for some level of starlink service, paid to field starshield (a DOW variant of Starlink) and for space x launches (really the only game in town) and even crew transport to the space station. Is there more? Yeah of course. It’s not a subsidy though no matter how you feel about it.
Let just say there are 9 million people in New York City and that Mamdani has helped every single one with his dumb policies. That still pales in comparison to the number of people Musk has helped. Let's just take Ukraine. Musk allowing Ukraine access to starlink is probably the reason that Ukraine didn't immediately capitulate. That means Musk has helped over 36 million people just in Ukraine.
No, I think that Ukranian opinions about whether Starlink “helps” vary.
USAID was a relief agency. And it saved lives and helped reduce suffering. Money laundering is a bogus justification DOGE glommed onto. And if there was a problem, there are many ways to address it short of ending the program.
How about people who have been killed by FSD? Subtract those? Or is Elmo just infallible.
It is an undeniable truth that starlink was foundational to the survival of Ukraine. There is no varying opinion on what is objective fact.
Not that any of the nonsense you're spouting matters but why are you trying to subtract numbers when that's never what this conversation was about. It was about whether people were helped. Seems like an attempt at goalpost moving
Yeah pointing out falsehoods about someone isn’t “defending them”, and it speaks to a pretty low moral character that someone would think it is. The value of the truth doesn’t change whether you like someone or not.
Yeah, you would have to shit on people like Dan Rasky here, a NASA engineer, who worked with Elon on Dragon and talked about it in a NASA interview in 2014.
Visitors be visting, people want easy answers to hate on Musk, but don't want to go to the effort to actually cultivate an interest in aerospace to understand what he has, and hasn't done.
The truth is, Shitty people, can be technically skilled.
Werner Von Braun, on top of being a Nazi, had literal slave labor under his employ.
Yet everyone agrees he very much contributed to the development of the Saturn V.
Some people just can't reconcile those two things.
he even had the gall to use the name of Tesla, who famously had all his work stolen by rich assholes who wanted to take credit for the inventions he created.
He is a 1000 times better than you Elon! You will never be loved by people as much as Mamdani does! You trillion will not be able to buy you love. We all hate you!
So he gave himself the title of engineer at his own company? I think that’s fairly weak evidence. I’m actually not in the camp that thinks Elon is dumb. Could he be an engineer if he wanted to? Maybe. Do I think he is? No. First no one has the time to be involved in every aspect of rocket design and EV car design. More importantly, he has multiple companies to run plus side projects like promoting fascism and running the government for a short while, and arguing on X. There is no way he’s more than superficially involved in any engineering. He might have some broad, high-level understanding of things but the idea that he’s some genius that his engineers turn to when they are stuck on a problem is just mythology he’s created for himself. You don’t need to be an engineer to have the broad level of understanding to talk superficially about what the engineers at your company are creating.
"So he gave himself the title of engineer at his own company? I think that’s fairly weak evidence"
No? He couldn't hire a Chief Engineer, so he took on the role.
And the book documents this, you should read it. If you do so, you will admit you were wrong.
"No. First no one has the time to be involved in every aspect of rocket design and EV car design. "
Yes, because he's project and system oriented. For the Rockets, it's the engines he focuses on. For Tesla, there are cars he'e been more invovled with than others.
Model S is distallation of his philosphy, it is very much his product. Model 3, X and Y were lead by other engineers, but when the production of 3 fell into hell, he personally took charge of it and saved it from failing by living on the Nevada plant for nearly 3 years.
When that had happened, Falcon 9 was already flying. Its design, including the D merlin engines, was settled years earlier. Starship dev didn't pick up until 2019, after Model 3 hell was over with.
Cybertruck has been touch and go, so he's spent more time at SpaceX, focusing on Starship, and more importantly, Raptor, whose dev he leads.
"but the idea that he’s some genius that his engineers turn to "
He's the technical manager who sets the requirements and the path foreward. The buck stops with him.
If you want a preview of what this is like, look to Jim Keller.
He's a chip architect who worked for Elon at Tesla, and has since been a VP of technology at AMD and Intel.
So what? My Chief Test Engineer at my last compayn was a Physics major, just like him.
You don't need the degree to be an Engineer. It's the responsibilities you take on that make you one. And he has.
Tom Mueller, the (former) VP you're talking about, has stated over and over again, Elon is an Engineer.
"Not true, I am an advisor now. Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor. I offer my 2 cents to help from time to time"" - Tom Mueller
It's like a fire hazard label. It just reminds us of relevant data. Every few months, people need to be reminded of what a lying sad sack this grifter is and why his opinions don't matter anymore.
No one will remember Elon Musk. No one will raise a glass in his honor, no one will arrange a feast to celebrate him, no one will sing his praises. His mark on history will be nothing, his legacy is to be forever forgotten. Humanity will survive him as it did every other destroyer.
This is such a fucking funny example because you're right Elon Musk is basically an Edison and Edison was a piece of shit who stole other people's ideas and got credit for it
“Not true [about Elon not being in charge of engine development], I am an advisor now. Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor. I offer my 2 cents to help from time to time“ -- Tom Mueller
I’m not the one claiming Elon musk, who has yet to demonstrate aptitude in any field to have ever existed, designed a rocket. Even one that explodes all the time is without a doubt beyond him
I can talk about the enterprise’s warp drive all day without actually having any idea what I’m talking about nor does it mean I designed a warp drive for faster than light travel, even IF one of my favorite sycophants totally swears that actually I’m super smart.
Keep in mind I don’t know how to play chess but argue with chess.com about it, pay people to play Diablo for me, throw tantrums when my cobbled together submarine is useless, and have no idea how a laser projected 3d mapping technology could possibly work well to supplement a normal camera for understanding an environment. Not to mention designing (via crude scribbling) the worst and lest useful car on the market today.
You SHOULD assume I’m lying when I claim to design anything at that point. Surely I should demonstrate SOME kind of competence in any field first?
He has a Physics degree, just like the Principle test engineer I worked with at my last company.
"Not true, I am an advisor now. Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor. I offer my 2 cents to help from time to time" -- Tom Mueller, former head of propulsion.
Time for some copypasta. Fellow believers of truth, feel free to save this to reply with the next time someone posts this here:
This is basically a collection of false implications held together by a meme.
Tesla wasn't some successful automaker Musk swooped in and bought.
Musk joined Tesla in April 2004 as chairman, when it had no commercial vehicle and had never sold a car.
Tesla's first vehicle, the Roadster, wasn't commercially introduced until 2008.
Tesla's own SEC filing says Musk had been "significantly and actively" involved since its earliest days, recruiting executives and engineers, raising capital, bringing in investors, and contributing directly to the Roadster's engineering and design.
He was chairman throughout the Roadster's development, became Product Architect in 2008, and CEO later that year.
He then led Tesla through the development and launch of the Model S and the company's transition from an EV startup into a mass-production automaker.
A 2009 settlement recognized five Tesla co-founders: Musk, Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, JB Straubel and Ian Wright. The attempt to establish Eberhard and Tarpenning as the only founders had already been rejected by a judge.
Then there's the "your wealth is from acquisitions and hostile takeovers" claim.
That's just historically backwards.
Musk founded or co-founded:
Zip2
X.com, which merged with Confinity and became PayPal
SpaceX
Tesla, as one of its five recognized co-founders
OpenAI, as a founding co-chair
Neuralink
The Boring Company
xAI
Tesla's SEC filings themselves identify him as the co-founder of Zip2 and PayPal, founder of Neuralink and The Boring Company, and head of SpaceX since its creation. NASA likewise states that SpaceX was founded by Musk in 2002.
The eBay line is especially stupid. Nobody says Musk invented eBay. Musk founded X.com, it became part of PayPal, and then eBay bought PayPal. That's an exit from a company he helped create, not Musk acquiring eBay.
Twitter/X is the notable major company he actually acquired. And he bought it in 2022.
By 2021, before he bought Twitter, Musk was already the richest person in the world with a fortune exceeding $200 billion, overwhelmingly because of Tesla and SpaceX.
So Twitter obviously isn't where his fortune came from.
"Everything you have was built by workers" isn't an argument either.
Yes, companies employ workers. Henry Ford didn't personally tighten every bolt on a Model T. Steve Jobs didn't solder every iPhone. Jensen Huang doesn't personally manufacture GPUs.
Founding, financing, recruiting, engineering, product development, strategy, manufacturing and scaling a company are still called building a company.
And "government welfare" is doing a lot of dishonest work here too.
Tesla received a $465 million DOE loan to develop the Model S and manufacturing capacity. Tesla repaid the entire loan, with interest, nine years early.
SpaceX receives billions from NASA because NASA buys rockets, cargo delivery and astronaut transportation from SpaceX under contracts. NASA explicitly describes its commercial crew contracts with SpaceX as fixed-price contracts for transportation services.
That called government procurement. That isn't a welfare check.
And SpaceX isn't exactly delivering nothing in return. NASA notes that SpaceX became the first private company to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, the first commercial spacecraft to visit the ISS, and later developed operational cargo and crew transportation for NASA.
So the actual history looks almost nothing like this meme:
Musk built and co-built multiple companies, sold two early startups, founded SpaceX from scratch, joined Tesla before it had produced a single commercial car and helped develop its first product, subsequently led it for nearly two decades, and was already the world's richest person before purchasing Twitter.
You can dislike the guy all you want. You don't need to rewrite his résumé to do it.
Can you tell me any rocket company on this planet that does not get money from a government agency? In the US, Boeing, SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and Blue Origin receive massive government contracts to launch military satellites or resupply the International Space Station.
how do you know that? I mean, its probably true on some level, but he got the same contracts from other admins. He's gotten the most money from the Biden admin so far actually.
For some scale, in FY2025 alone the federal government had 56,725 unique small-business prime contractors.
That's just small businesses, not the entire federal contractor base. They received about $179 billion in prime contracts, roughly 28% of eligible federal contracting dollars.
So "SpaceX receives government money" isn't much of an argument by itself. The federal government purchases goods and services from tens of thousands of private companies every year.
The relevant question is what the government paid SpaceX for and whether SpaceX delivered it.
And in SpaceX’s case, a lot of that “government money” is payment for actual launch, cargo, satellite, and crew services, not just grants handed over with nothing received in return.
NASA awarded SpaceX its $2.6B Commercial Crew contract in 2014, after an open competition, before Trump was president. Boeing got $4.2B in the same competition.
So now you're alleging Trump is a time traveler?
For perspective, Boeing received about $23.2 billion from DoD contracts in FY2024 alone.
SpaceX's cumulative federal contract obligations from roughly 2008-2026 are about $16.7 billion total across NASA, DoD, Space Force, etc.
So Boeing got more from the federal government through DoD in a single year than SpaceX has received in federal contract obligations over most of its existence.
Why did Biden not release the Epstein information you whiny libs always complain about? Because Epstein was a Democrat fundraiser and Dems frequented his Island and the lolita express.
I'm sorry you feel the need to get on the internet and defend a guy who publicly threw Nazi salutes and wanted to go to the wildest parties on Jeff Epstein's island where they fucked kids.
I was just pointing out how sad it is to hold someone up like that.
Born on third base and you think he hit a home run.
Must be sad to live a life where you keep track of the "accomplishments" of Nazi pedophiles.
I remember when being a Nazi pedophile was a bad thing, way back before Republicans started electing them and making up myths about their "success." Then you find out their parents owned a slave labor emerald mine in apartheid SA or got them into a school they never deserved a seat at after dodging the draft 5 times. Then the myth starts to fall apart and you're just stuck being a Nazi pedophile cheerleader.
That is just simply factually inaccurate. If you are going to make an emotional post at least get your facts straight. He founded Zip2 and PayPal. He is considered the driving force behind Tesla and legally a cofounder. SpaceX, Neurolink, The Boring Company and on and on.
I will always praise my maker
I will always return to my taker
I will never be a faker
I will never be a forsaker
I will always praise my maker
I will always return to my taker
I will never be a faker
I will never be a forsaker
As much as I dislike Elon, the original founders of TSLA wouldn't have created as much value as he did. Elon created so many millionaires not by executing, but by hyping up a different pie in the sky every year without delivering so the ridiculous valuation got normalized.
He is a taker, a parasite, but also one that gives by existing.
I actually think he deserves credit for helping Tesla and SpaceX become successful even if he didn’t start Tesla and even if both companies have expert engineers that contribute to the success. But I still think he’s a parasite. I think he’s done more harm than good and taken more than he’s given. I will never forgive him for taking aid money from the world’s poorest people so that he, the world’s first trillionaire, could have more tax breaks. Sentenced millions of people to death by doing that. Those lives are far more valuable than reusable rockets. And I care about global warming because I know people will suffer because of it. What good is buying a car that is better for the environment if I’m helping enrich a man who uses his wealth to pressure the government to stop helping those in need? He’s harming people more than his cars are helping.
Mamdani has built a rather successful administration. Terrifying right wing trolls and Nazis.
Meanwhile… Musky is despised by his own children, but pedophiles love him.
I can’t stand the guy, but he founded SpaceX and I think it’s safe to say Tesla wouldn’t be the company is today without his personal investment and leadership.
They would both be significantly better companies if he didn't exist I promise. You should read about the people who had to follow him around fixing his mistakes
You're right Tesla would be a lot less shitty without him, he brought a lot of shitty things to it and it would not be the same. Tell me exactly what he got his hands dirty on at spacex. Tell me one thing that he does at SpaceX other than be a guy with money
He founded SpaceX. It would not exist without him. When Musk came in to Tesla it didn’t even have a production car. He was deeply involved in developing their roadmap, production future and scaling the company.
So Elon, if someone has a job serving people like in hospitals, hospitality, restaurants, pilots...etc. They build nothing, they are just Takers.
Fuck you man, you are a psychopath.
I'm gonna call out this person who's calling him out. See how easy that was? Better headline: ignorant person speaks about things they have no first hand knowledge about yet implies certainty
The post is about him hitching his wagon to good ideas making him what his is, and then the pot calling what he views as a kettle black. Ebay is just another one of those things.
He's Edison, not Tesla, but he really wants you to think he's Tesla.
At Tesla he had the same idea as the other two. The first two went to AC propulsion to invest in getting their car to market. ACP wasn’t interested, but offered to license their tech to them. So they started Tesla to do that. Soon after, Musk also went to ACP to invest. They turned him down too, but sent him to the first two.
Then Musk ditched the whole licensed car idea and designed their first car in house, the Roadster. That’s how Tesla got its name in the papers and pulled in enough investment to start work on their next car.
So no, Musk wasn’t hitching on anything there.
Again you mentioned eBay when Musk had nothing to do with the founding of EBay, and nobody says he did.
If Tesla were alive today you’d be saying he’s Edison because you’d personally hate him, and people you hate can have no talent.
It's more engineering. He guided the engineering away from standard aerospace practices in order to make things much less expensive, and even more robust.
No one person did. It was a group effort, including him. Mueller once said Musk had taken over the Raptor 2 design, which was a pretty drastic change. He still did it with engineers.
Musk himself always credits the team for everything. We know of his contributions from others who worked there.
Pretty sure you're just trolling at this point. You honestly think Musk himself is in the Raptor 2 design meetings offering meaningful design input that isn't just project management or "why not a lever here?" stuff that Forrest Gump could do? You honestly think he's in there taking about the intricicies of aeronautics and propulsion?
He did a shit load for Tesla and even slept on the factory floor… you can pick at the details but the major takeaway is it’s utterly insanely nonsensical to make the claim he had nothing to do with Teslas success… the man made magic happen against all odds in one of the most difficult markets to crack… and then… then he open sourced the EV patents to ensure the world embraced electric against the wishes of all other car manufacturers at the time… he single handedly changed the world for the better
I'll admit he was a major force behind its growth, took substantial risks, and Tesla's 2014 patent pledge was a real move to encourage EV adoption. But there's a difference between giving him credit and pretending he single-handedly built the company or transformed the entire world. Don't forget he helped defund USAID and interfered with our elections. And considering how Trump is destroying the American way of life and insane level of corruption, that elon took part in, he's a force that has negatively impacted America and the world abroad.
He did everything legally to help ensure trump beats out the “unburdened by what has been Kamala / sleepy Joe combo” … one more success to attribute to him
😂 yeah Trump sleeps sooooo much in the oval office. And as for legal, Elon will get caught eventually. I'll find you after we win the midterms. Be well.
I have zero doubt his lawyers ensured everything he did was within the bounds of the law… that said any articles suggesting empathetically that he will “get caught” from a big media outlet out of interest
Because leadership sets the agenda. Staffers can only execute policies they have authorization and political cover to carry out. Without Musk pushing DOGE, securing executive backing, and making dismantling USAID a priority, those staff members wouldn't have had the authority or directives to do it in the first place.
Don’t the people at his companies follow his agenda and authorization to make cars and rockets? How come he doesn’t get credit for their successes but he does for directing people to defund USAID?
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u/foo-bar-25 1d ago
Mamdani has done far more to help people.