Head-to-Head - Elon Musk - A debatable figure

Owen. You've heard of Elon Musk, right? I certainly have. I was wondering, what do you think of him? Well, he certainly achieved amazing things, but he is one of these ceo gurus, one of these business leaders that people look up to uncritically in a kind of a hero worship way. You don't think he is a hero. He certainly is a hero to his millions of Twitter followers and to all the investors in Tesla, they love him. I'm not a follower of his on Twitter, but I do wish I had invested in Tesla some years ago, looking back because I think Elon Musk is kind of the innovative force behind these companies like Tesla innovating is always a risk and he seems prepared to take risks. Yes, he certainly does. And of all the tech gurus, I suppose he has the biggest plans. He wants to colonize Mars or augment the human brain's capabilities and I wouldn't put it past him that he manages to fulfill these dreams. However, do we really need to colonize a dead planet? Millions of kilometers away? I mean, we've got a perfectly good planet here. And when I think of putting microchips into people's brains. That's when I really get scared. One of the things I like about him is that his space plans aren't frivolous. Like, you know, space tourism instead he wants to launch satellites so that he can provide internet access everywhere on earth, like at sea or on top of Mount Everest. In that way. I think he's better than a lot of other billionaires who want to fly to space for fun. That's a good point. Although he's completely focused on his dream of colonizing Mars. He also is doing a lot for our planet. However, our electric batteries in electric cars really the most environmentally friendly. And when, when one of his rockets blasts off, oh my God. Can you imagine the amount of Co2 produced? I think you're right, of course. But going to space also has benefits for all of us and I think a certain amount of cost is, is always going to be involved. I also think that Elon Musk has a more business sense perhaps than he's given credit for. He's always thought of as this nerdy scientist guy. But remember he looked at what uh NASA was doing flying to space and they didn't use reusable rockets because they didn't need to, they had so much money they could afford to throw their rockets in the sea and build new ones. Whereas he looked at that and said that's not a good business model. You know, we can do it better and it's ultimately more efficient and resource saving than the way it was done before. It's true. And actually Elon Musk and Bezos and Richard Branson, they have brought space back into the public mind, back into business, so to speak, or actually they created business from it. But just because of his achievements, can we really ignore his Twitter presence? I mean, he's nearly a Trump level tweeter. He's a troll on Twitter and sometimes this has consequences like in 2018, when he talked about taking Tesla private and was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and had to step down as Tesla chairman for three years or the infamous Thailand cave rescue tweets the way he conducts himself sometimes is not really very good. I think that's fair to say that's why I don't follow him on Twitter. And I try to ignore all that as much as possible to his credit though. He has admitted that his Twitter behavior is sometimes unacceptable. And um, he's promised to try and do better. He said once that his tweets were mostly made on the porcelain throne. So on the toilet. And I can well imagine that another issue is his avoidance of tax in America. That's a very big deal there. And people talk about it a lot, not just with him, but with a lot of billionaires who can use legal loopholes to avoid paying tax. True. That as you said he's not the only one who does that and I'm sure all of us would try to reduce our tax bill if we could. I think the real problem is not so much Elon Musk, but just the, the tax system needs changing. If someone like that isn't paying tax and that's legal, then there's something wrong with your system. That's true. It really exposes the limitations in America's tax laws and it's the same here, of course. So for me, Elon Musk, he's not a danger to the world. He's not a bad person. I think he's a guy with a huge ego who is a ridiculous amount of power and influence. He's certainly very, very goal directed. He doesn't seem to care what's in his way as when hears from the employees of Tesla spacex. He's very tough on them. I find that, yeah, his fans look at him uncritically and believe everything he says or certainly seem to and that's not maybe the best, but he certainly has achieved many and many of the things he set out to achieve and that's hugely impressive. Ok, I'll try not to look at him uncritically. I think you have a point with what you said. But ultimately, my opinion, we get more out of having Elon Musk than we lose. So he finishes up in the plus. I'll go with that.