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May 30, 2015
Elon Musk: The P.T. Barnum and Charles Ponzi of Retarded Nerds and Millennials everywhere.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at May 30, 2015 8:34 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
He has been remarkably successful at bilking people for money on ridiculous products.
Posted by: Christopher Taylor ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://americandigest.org/sidelines/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 30, 2015 9:51 AM
Correction Mr. Taylor, Mr. Musk has been remarkably successful at bilking the American Taxpayer for money. Nonetheless, if Musk can successfully “decentralize” electricity generation, that could be a rather powerful market disruption. By far the greatest of my lifetime.
Posted by: Jason at May 30, 2015 12:57 PM
re: " if Musk can successfully “decentralize” electricity generation" Jason
NOT GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY but battery storage with Lithium (DANGER, Will Robinson!) batteries in one's home. Also, rather expensive compared to Lead-Acid ones. And, don't forget the problem of energy loss in converting from the grid to the battery and then back again.
Musk appears to me to be a huckster.
Dan Kurt
Posted by: Dan Kurt at May 30, 2015 2:32 PM
Meh. The man may well be a nerd, and to the extent that he feeds at the public trough, he probably isn't very admirable.
BUT...
I'm all for anything that will decentralize (or even just help decentralize) the generation and distribution of electricity. The Great Blackout of 1965 (in the northeast US) points out the perils of over-centralizing things -- there are just too many single-points-of-failure present in One Big System, and any one of them could bring the whole thing down. Just ask the Soviets, er, Russians.
As for going to space, we pretty much have to. Our resource-base here on Earth isn't getting any bigger. If we are to have any hope of bringing seven or eight billion people up to an American-style standard of living, we're going to have to do things like mine the asteroid belt.
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People's still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
Posted by: Hale Adams at May 30, 2015 6:19 PM
Correction Mr Jason, Musk has not bilked taxpayers for to do so is a crime punishable by law.
It is the politicians that continuously bilk the taxpayers and they hate competition.
Posted by: ghostsniper at May 30, 2015 6:46 PM
He's getting a lot of money in government subsidies, so he must be OK.
Right?
Posted by: chasmatic at May 31, 2015 11:10 AM
Parasites are seldom OK.
Posted by: ghostsniper at May 31, 2015 7:21 PM
Hey. Big fat suggestion guys?
Stop being Knee Jerks.
Yeah, yeah, I get it that Musk is a crony capitalist. I don't like that either. He's also been a successful entrepreneur without fed help. PayPal and SpaceX for instance.
And SpaceX in particular is very likely to change the space transportation paradigm. That is a very good and very important thing. He will be remembered in the future for that most of all, and be forgiven his "sins."
Posted by: DonRodrigo at June 1, 2015 8:25 AM