Nov 28, 2022·edited Nov 28, 2022Liked by Michael Huemer
Forget Musk's efforts to save the human race, transition the world from carbon fuels, his other projects. And forget the Gates Foundation's attempts to end malaria. And Andrew Carnegie's libraries. Forget philanthropic projects of the wealthy. Or whether those projects are driven by ego or love of mankind. Put all that aside.
Our ancestors lived in caves, infested by parasites, chased by predators, constantly on the edge of starvation. Today we have nice things like indoor toilets and medicine. Electric light, refrigerated food, airliners, the Internet. We didn't steal that wealth from other cavemen or from space aliens. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game.
People created those technologies, that wealth. Out of plants and animals, dirt and air, and their own cleverness and work. Who did that? All of us, yes, but a few made vastly larger contributions than others.
Our society is wealthy because of Boulton's engines, Carnegie's mills, Vanderbilt's railroads, Edison's lights, Gates' software, and Musk's cars and rockets. Most of us have always plowed our farms, woven our cloth, done our jobs. And mostly broken even - fed ourselves, raised our children, helped our neighbors survive...and created very little that was new.
But some people are better at creating wealth than others. Just as an Albert Einstein is rare, or a Tiger Woods, or a William Shakespeare is rare, there are a few rare people who are vastly – incredibly – better at creating wealth than most everyone else. Today we call them "billionaires".
They may not be better than most of us at physics, or golf, or literature, or in any other way, but they have a rare talent for creating wealth. Billionaire's money (when honestly earned; I exclude crony capitalists and kleptocrats) mostly reflects value created. Value that benefits us all.
Earning a billion dollars is **really** difficult. See how many try, and how few succeed.
And the living standard at $100 million is virtually identical to that of $100 billion. Most rational people retire when they have enough - long before billionaire status. We are very lucky that a few of these astoundingly productive and capable people keep working - keep chasing dreams - long after their personal material needs are satisfied. They made our world, and will make our future.
Sure, Musk makes us look bad. But only in the sense that Mahatma Gandhi does. Nobody should feel jealous of Shakespeare's writing, Edison's inventiveness, Einstein's discoveries. Nor should we resent them for their talent and success. Au contraire.
You make a great argument. You're completely right that we should be incredibly thankful for the material progress we've made, and thankful to those billionaires who continue to work for what they see as the good of the world, like Buffett and Musk.
But I think you put too much emphasis on the specific qualities of individuals. You seem to have, essentially, a "great man of economics" conception of how material progress is made. Whereas I think that, as you briefly gesture towards, such progress is better understood as a collaborative and cumulative process. Sometimes the people who become billionaires are ones who gave it the final push. Sometimes they're basically unremarkable people who were in the right place at the right time. And yes, sometimes they are once in a generation visionaries.
But to conceive of wealth as simply a measure of the value created by a person ignores all of the other factors that influence who makes money, and all the ways in which you can become extremely rich while producing hugely negative value (cigarettes companies most obviously). And that's presumably what Musk critics think he is doing although I agree with the author that they are incorrect to think so.
We should not villify billionaires simply for being rich. But it also shouldn't make them immune to criticism when they appear to be doing harm, as is the case more often than you seem to allow..
"We resent people who earned their riches. Why? Because when we see someone who has done so much better than us, that reflects badly on us."
That's far too uncharitable. I would say, instead, that:
(i) something like the "labor theory of value" comes intuitively to most people, and only gets broken either by explicit study of economics or experience working in highly productive fields that don't superficially look like "labor";
(ii) therefore, it's also intuitive to feel that wealth earned by means other than obvious "labor" must have been coerced or swindled from others in some way, especially when that wealth is of an order of magnitude impossible for anyone to earn via "labor" in a thousand lifetimes;
(iii) for those who can understand abstractly how the kind of ways Musk earned his wealth are enormously productve, they still participate in a society where the labor theory of value is intuitive, and in which sensitivity toward others' feeling of being swindled, is an invaluable sign of social solidarity.
Good observations. I agree that many people have a tendency to embrace a view of labour, value and wealth along those lines. However, often people who have that view don't hold it consistently: they criticise the fact that there are people who accumulate a lot of wealth by means other than labour (stricto sensu), true; however, the very same people would freak out if you proposed to pay miners or factory workers as much as a university professor or an engineer. Maybe the problem is that many people expect wealth to be proportional to "merit", in some very broad and probably ill-defined sense - more or less encompassing intellectual skills, effort, fatigue and the likes. They cannot see that much merit - in that ill-defined sense - in what an investor or an entrepreneur do, so they see a grotesque disproportion between their wealth and their apparent merits.
I suppose that, as with many other issues, people tend to rely upon evolved intuitions about fields other than their own, while recognizing how badly incorrect those intuitions are with regard to the field they know intimately. A paramedic presumably knows that the best paramedics aren't the ones running around the most or most drenched in sweat at the end of the day, but still tacitly assumes that a line cook is just a line cook, all worth about the same wage, since they all clock in the same hours and end the day equally tired. (Until, that is, they have a personal experience with one of the line cooks who's a massive fuckup. But then they forget again what they've just learned about labor vs. productivity among cooks.)
It even seems like many people inclined toward the LToV are willing to accept very high earnings, when they can very clearly see the impressive work, with the flagship example being elite professional athletes. And yet, I suspect that the nature of the productivity is generally misattributed, e.g. thinking of LeBron James earning his salary by scoring points and winning games/championships, rather than by putting eyes on screens for advertisers.
"The amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced, i.e., the extent to which his activities have helped to satisfy other people’s desires, because you get money in a free market by giving other people things they want."
This is a remarkable statement. Would you say the same thing about the Koch brothers, the Sackler Family, or the robber barons of yore? Sometimes rich people get rich by doing shitty things.
Set Musk in particular aside, because the larger issue here is how should we feel about billionaires in general.
1) Character evaluation depends on intentions: Billionaires generally wouldn’t have produced less wealth if they didn’t think it was altruistic to do so. Because everything billionaires do is out of self-interest, we shouldn’t think of them as specially morally praiseworthy.
2) Character evaluation depends on recency: I think badly of Musk because he seems to be headed in a bad direction. Sort of like a doctor who saved a thousand lives but just last week committed a murder (Note for people who don’t understand the concept of analogies: I’m not saying Musk killed anybody). What adjectives would you use for that person? I wouldn’t say they’re a “good person” because their actions *recently* have been terrible.
In the same way, although Musk has done a lot off good in the past, Musk should be criticized because he’s unbanning most banned people on Twitter, which I expect will make our political culture more hostile, ugly, and 4-Chan-like.
3) People don’t typically despise Billionaires *for being billionaires*. We know this because our attitudes towards billionaires in general are either positive or indifferent: there are 2k billionaires, and only 2 of them are seriously criticized (Musk and Bezos). So, we’re criticizing .01% of this class of people. I'd argue we're really criticizing people with too much ego who put themselves in the news, or maybe people who make the news for bad working conditions regularly.
Take the first example: Kanye West was a billionaire (though not by a ton), and he's no longer one. That didn’t take away any of the criticism; despite being far less monetarily successful, he is still widely despised. The real issue seems to be his antisemitic tweets and enormous ego.
Interesting to know that PublicIntellectualsforCharity do not support free speech, and extremely disappointing. And, actually, that they are hostile to free speech, and thereby, ugly. I prefer open minds and despise those who support the initiation of force to achieve their goals, such as the use of censorship. Businessmen like Musk believe in accomplishment and trade to achieve their goals.
If by "does not support free speech" you mean "doesn't want Twitter to become 4-Chan/would rather our country's biggest (private) forum to be a place where well-intentioned people would be wise to spend their time" then sure. That is, I'm pro-free-business, and Twitter is at liberty to moderate their content however they wish. I am also pro-quality-curation, because the "private companies are morally obligated to have no TOS" conception of "free speech" is an experiment we've run many, many times. 4 Chan. Dregg. r/incels. r/coontown.
No ones' rights are being violated by a social media company's TOS policy. So, if there's still a moral case at issue, it's a utilitarian one. And consequentialism clearly favors some content moderation.
"Ugly and Hostile" is a personal preference in forum management not a character flaw. I grant that from a private perspective neither policy is against free speech, if we ignore possible conflicts of interest of threats from the government. There is no change in policy allowing illegal activity or threats of violence. Thanks for sharing your feelings, that is all they are. Good thing the left convinced the right that the first Amendment was absolute before they changed their mind.
IME, many people do despise the mega rich for being mega-rich. The view is something like: well, they got that rich by being bad (cause that's the only way to get that rich) and/or they should have given away so much wealth as to have never gotten that rich in the first place.
Nice post. However, there may be alternate explanations for why there is general suspicion about people like Musk.
(1) Luck vs. Effort: there is research suggesting that humans have innate sharing rules: items that are high variance and, therefore, somewhat insensitive to effort and initiative are expected to be shared equally within the "band," while low variance items, which can be predictably obtained in amounts proportional to effort, are not expected to be shared.
(2) Our evolutionary history has not prepared us to expect (those rare) individuals whose productivity is many orders of magnitude larger than the vast majority.
(3) Modern markets, which are evolutionarily novel, make the connection between effort and reward difficult to fathom.
(4) Intentions matter more than outcomes: again, looking at deep time, humans have lived in mostly small groups where a person's intentions matter much more than whether they are able to deliver on this occasion or that. This is no longer true in the context of mass societies and markets with their invisible hand effects, where the best of intentions can create hell on Earth (e.g. socialism) and conversely where folks acting on less-than-lofty motives still end up doing an enormous amount of good (e.g. "evil" billionaires and "robber barons").
(5) Reverse Dominance Hierarchies: there is evidence that humans have a disposition to gang up on the "alpha" (those with a large power differential in their favor) in their band and to limit their power or in extremis eliminate that individual.
(6) Although dyadic exchange guided by the profit motive has been present over deep evolutionary time for humans, it wasn't the main form of benefit delivery. Most benefits came from family, close friends, and allies and band members and were outside the framework of dyadic exchange - they were shared rather than exchanged this for that. Although we partake in exchange we are disposed to be suspicious of our exchange partners precisely because they are not engaging with us for the "right" reasons: they are not our family, friend, or ally.
Taking (1) - (6) together, Musk and Gates and other like them may be seen (implicitly) as exploiters writ large and therefore dangers to us and our "band".
“First, the amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced…”
Here is the crux of why I disagree with this article: it equates economic value with moral value.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not obscenely rich, apparently you forfeit the right to criticize the wealthy as they move to shape society in their own image of the good.
“What are YOU doing?” is heartily patronizing to every person who didn’t have half, a tenth, a hundredth the opportunity to amass a hoard of gold. Elon Musk was born into privilege. Any person who chose instead to serve the public in other ways - perhaps in service to the democratic government our humble author apparently so despises for its coercive power - you aren’t contributing as much as Elon! Therefore, you have no right to criticize the great and powerful wizard of Tesla!
Has Elon produced more moral value than most other people on the planet? I wouldn’t say so, although I suppose it’s open to argument how much good Tesla’s innovation has done. The value judgments of this piece ignore every scientist and engineer who made those technologies possible. It arrogates to Musk every credit that anyone under the auspices of Tesla or any of his other companies ever did, and equates that to Musk’s moral value.
Musk isn’t uniquely bad (not even close to the Koch brothers) but he’s certainly not above reproach. He isn’t a uniquely wonderful human being who produces enormous moral value. He’s a tremendously wealthy and influential person who has spread damaging conspiracy theories while also overseeing great innovations. Like most human beings, he has a distinct vision of the good, imperfect and worthy of more critique because of his disproportionate influence on society.
“But at least he’s trying to do something good.”
The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. Calling Musk’s critics wastrels benefits no one. It is of concern to every single person what wealthy people choose to do with their vast fortunes, because those fortunes give them undue influence over the lives of ordinary people.
We aren’t using social pressure to punish the people who do the most good, whatever the hell that means. Economic good? Moral good? Social regulation of the most powerful classes in society is natural and obvious. Those with the greatest influence, those most active in using that influence, should fall under strict public scrutiny. Just as our democratic government falls under scrutiny, imperfect, but nonetheless present.
Elon receives criticism because he has disproportionate power to affect change, not because people are jealous of his fucking paper. Your conflation of moral and economic value fills me with incandescent rage.
It does conflate economic value with moral value but in the context of economic ventures that serve to do something about existential threats to humanity.
I suppose these ventures’ activities constitute “do[ing] something” about existential threats to humanity, but they are businesses. They exist to make money. If the technologies help people, all the better, but we shouldn’t conflate helping people with bottom lines. They happen to coincide.
Accepting that Musk deserves some credit for the technology doesn’t give him a blank cheque vis-à-vis his critics, who actually have very little power and influence to shape the course of events. It’s not that Musk hasn’t done any good, rather that people of power should be criticized. Most of that criticism will come from people who aren’t - can’t - do as much. That’s obvious, and it’s not a bad thing. People have a stake in what the powerful do with their enormous wealth, whatever their occupation or charitable pursuits. Being annoyed with critics of the powerful, rather than focusing on the people with the actual power, strikes me as absurd on its face.
Incidentally, I appreciate that the author left out the role of federal money in making Musk’s ventures possible.
Although I enjoyed this article, my initial impression was that it seemed too uncharitable to Musk's critics, who might at times be mistaken but could easily have their hearts in the right place. My personal opinion of Musk has not been/is not uniformly positive, so I'm biased towards skepticism about blanket judgments of a population that includes me.
After reading the responses of Musk's critics in the comments below, I've changed my mind. Without exception, they seem to be driven by what I can only call bad motives. Nasty people, again without exception. I don't want to be associated with them. Quite remarkable.
I won't say that my opinion of Musk has been improved, but I'm certainly more sympathetic to Huemer's article than I was when I first read it. I owe a debt of gratitude to the commenters who took time and effort to expose themselves as exactly what the article claims they are, and I am also grateful to Mr. Huemer (or should it be Prof. Huemer? idk) for highlighting the ubiquity of pure envy that I too often overlook.
"Without exception" means that every single response from Musk's critics can be considered to have been cited. This should make it easier to criticize or debate me, not harder, as anyone wishing to do so can use any comment/response made prior to my own as material demonstrating me to be mistaken.
Your failure to understand this is evidence (not necessarily conclusive) that you are not particularly bright.
What you likely intended (but failed) to say is that my evaluation of Musk's critics was not persuasive, and this is of course correct. I had no intention of changing anyone's mind with my remarks; I only wanted to express my gratitude to Mr. Huemer and his commenters for helping to change mine.
“Your failure to understand this is evidence (not necessarily conclusive) that you are not particularly bright.”
Very perceptive of you. Perhaps then you could illuminate me on the “bad motives” behind my own criticisms of Musk and this article. Or any other Musk critic in this comment section, where I observe not obvious bad faith but, at worst, a misunderstanding of the article or Musk’s record.
I didn’t intend to say that you were not persuasive (although owing to a serious deficiency of evidence, you were not). I was, owing to my low intelligence, having difficulty evaluating the claim you put forward. It is not possible to evaluate the validity of your comment from the comment itself, because none of the instances of bad faith in question are cited.
You are correct to say that “without exception” means every critic. But this is so absurd a claim to make, I assumed this could not be the actual meaning. Even knowing the motivations of people we know in person is difficult, forget strangers on the Internet. The criticism I read did not appear to be bad faith in nature, and you failed to point out even one example of bad faith.
So, consider this an invitation to expand on your argument with regard to my own criticism or someone else’s. This shouldn’t take someone as bright as yourself very long.
>Very perceptive of you. Perhaps then you could illuminate me on the “bad motives” behind my own criticisms of Musk and this article.
Perhaps. I don't know if you're open-minded enough to accept and grow from the kind of harsh criticism I'll levy, but I suppose it can't hurt to try. We'll start with where you ended:
"Elon receives criticism because he has disproportionate power to affect change, not because people are jealous of his fucking paper. Your conflation of moral and economic value fills me with incandescent rage."
This calls back to your opening remark:
"Here is the crux of why I disagree with this article: it equates economic value with moral value."
We may deduce from your own words, then, that you were filled with incandescent rage while writing your initial comment. I do not believe it should be controversial to claim that incandescent rage is a bad motive.
And that would be enough to answer your prompt, but I have something else to add: Your opening remark is COMPLETELY FUCKING RETARDED.
Huemer said this:
"First, the amount of money he’s made is a ROUGH INDICATOR of the amount of economic value he has produced..." (emphasis mine)
You responded with this:
"Here is the crux of why I disagree with this article: it EQUATES economic value with moral value." (again, emphasis mine)
Suggesting that Thing A is a ROUGH INDICATOR of Thing B is NOT THE SAME as EQUATING Thing A with Thing B. So your entire rage-fueled comment was based on a STUPID MISUNDERSTANDING (that you made because you are STUPID).
>Or any other Musk critic in this comment section, where I observe not obvious bad faith but, at worst, a misunderstanding of the article or Musk’s record.
Your observation skills are deeply flawed and not to be trusted. My judgment is more reliable than yours.
>I didn’t intend to say that you were not persuasive (although owing to a serious deficiency of evidence, you were not). I was, owing to my low intelligence, having difficulty evaluating the claim you put forward. It is not possible to evaluate the validity of your comment from the comment itself, because none of the instances of bad faith in question are cited.
In addition to being dumb, you seem pretty autistic. Sometimes people make claims without feeling the need to justify or defend them. This is pretty common, actually. It's something normal people do all the time.
>You are correct to say that “without exception” means every critic. But this is so absurd a claim to make, I assumed this could not be the actual meaning.
Go back to the original context of the claim in question: I clearly refer to every critic "in the comments below [Huemer's article] [that existed when I made my remark]." Far from being an absurd claim, it is a perfectly true one. Exactly which misapprehension you're laboring under is ambiguous, but your failure either to understand the set of humans being referred to (in the ridiculous event that you somehow believed I was referring to every Musk critic in existence) or to recognize that those posting here (including yourself) show evidence of bad motives is another demonstration (as if there needed to be one) of how unintelligent you are.
>Even knowing the motivations of people we know in person is difficult
lol, so you are autistic, that makes sense
highly intelligent, socially well-adjusted people do not find it terribly difficult to discern the motivations of people they know in person; i understand that you couldn't know this directly, not being a highly intelligent, socially well-adjusted person, so you'll just have to take my word for it (or not)
>forget strangers on the Internet
strongly considering it
>The criticism I read did not appear to be bad faith in nature, and you failed to point out even one example of bad faith.
think we've already covered how much we should care about the way things appear to you, and AGAIN i failed to point out even one example because i didn't care about
just realized i don't care enough to finish fisking your retarded remarks
feel free to take the last word; unless it's a lot more interesting than what you've said so far i probably won't waste more of my time responding
best wishes (seriously, i think you're stupid but still hope good things happen for you, at least insofar as what you want doesn't harm others)
“I do not believe it should be controversial to claim that incandescent rage is a bad motive.”
It’s called hyperbole, big guy. I know you didn’t have to pay attention in school owing to your crazy IQ, but it would’ve helped here. I don’t actually feel incandescent rage at some random article. I feel mild irritation. If you think that’s enough to invalidate my entire point, then you should probably consider the tone of the article in question (where the author literally says Musk’s critics annoy him).
“Suggesting that Thing A is a ROUGH INDICATOR of Thing B is NOT THE SAME as EQUATING Thing A with Thing B.”
Well, then why does Huemer treat it as such? He occasionally qualifies this distinction, but even if you accept that it is a “rough indicator” (which is a bad assumption) he doesn’t treat it as one. Musk’s economic contributions are morally valuable in some unspecified way. That’s the assumption of the article, equivalent or roughly so. Either way, it’s a bad, unproven assumption.
“Sometimes people make claims without feeling the need to justify or defend them.”
Yes, especially people with zero evidence.
“Far from being an absurd claim, it is a perfectly true one… your failure either to understand the set of humans being referred to (in the ridiculous event that you somehow believed I was referring to every Musk critic in existence) or to recognize that those posting here (including yourself) show evidence of bad motives is another demonstration (as if there needed to be one) of how unintelligent you are.“
Blah blah blah, you still haven’t provided any valid evidence of bad faith. Your evidence of mine immediately falls apart because it’s based on exactly one hyperbolic statement and nothing of the substantive criticism. As for the others, you didn’t even bother.
“highly intelligent, socially well-adjusted people do not find it terribly difficult to discern the motivations of people they know in person”
An interesting statement, given that you couldn’t even deduce my motivations. But I wouldn’t expect you to. People are complex. We can certainly understand, to some extent, the motivations of people we know well. But that’s not a comprehensive understanding. People have many sides to them.
Non sequitur, I don’t appreciate the use of autism as an insult. It’s unnecessary, irritating, and makes you look like a petulant child.
Basically folks, the best my friend can do is barrage me with ad hominem attacks while providing no substantive proof of any accusation he levies against Musk’s critics in the comments.
I can only hope that this caliber of person isn’t indicative of Musk’s defenders because, if so, he’s in even worse shape than I thought.
the level of autistic retardation you display here in continuing to try and "debate" someone who clearly has no interest in debating you is most commonly found in trannies and faggots
if you would like to remain attached to your cock and balls without catching GRIDS, i advise you in the strongest possible terms to steer clear of porn. this is your best shot at a fruitful and spiritually fulfilling healthy sex life
if you are already past the point of no return, then may god have mercy on your soul
Insightful as usual. I only add one humble suggestion: some people have a tendency to assume that others - especially the rich - are always driven by ulterior motives, even when they seem to act in an altruistic way. I often mention the release of Tesla's patents in conversation with people who attack Musk, as an instance of altruistic action: the response that I usually get is "There must be some other reason why he did that"; in other cases, people simply insist that it cannot be true. Not sure why some people are inclined to interpret the actions of others in this way: do they have an a priori pessimistic view of human nature? Do they have the urge to feel morally superior by attributing to others a bad character? Or maybe they are secretly selfish themselves, so they're inclined to ascribe the same attitude to everybody? I don't know.
Yes, Elon Musk clearly wants to save humanity from global warming. That's why he pushes personal EVs and sabotages efforts to expand public transportation, because he cares so much about the environment. That's why he won't let other EVs use Tesla's charging network. That's why he flies around in a private jet. That's why he avoids eating meat. That's also why he is launching tons of satellites into space so, which burn incredible amounts of fossil fuels, because he cares about, wait.... Well, surely getting internet access to rural poor areas is worth that, because those people can afford 600 dollar installation fees and $100/month subscription fee.
And he clearly cares so much about humanity, that's why his plan to save humanity is to fly rich people to mars to escape earth. That's why he illegally busts unions, because he cares about people. That's why he forced people to work during the pandemic, causing 100s of cases of covid in his factory. Because he just loves people sooo much.
Elong Musk is a clown. He's a horrible person. He's a pathological liar and scammer. And speak for yourself, as he's definitely not better than me. Which doesn't say much, as he is, in fact, a lot worse than the average person. Idk how a philosopher, who sometimes writes so intelligently about some things, like ethical veganism and moral realism, can have such silly takes.
Side note: what EA thinks the government shouldn't spend money to solve extreme poverty? It's a silly strawman. We criticize useless billionaires like Musk, and we also criticize the government. It is possible to do both.
"we are subconsciously resentful that that person is making us look bad by being better than us."
Perhaps, or perhaps people are just bad at math, and think he could just wave a wand and solve world hunger but he refuses to, or have a none consequentialist ethical system in which being a billionaire is bad.
I mean i guess its almost certainly a combo that varies from person to person.
Nurse here- Gates' vaccine practices in developing countries are nothing to be happy about. The average person can't name 2 ingredients in any injection or explain the toxicology of vaccines, let alone explain why it's so healthy for these compounds to be permanently stored in our bodies.
It is one of the leading causes of modern diseases, the timelines add up with the ushering in of mass injections. We are sicker in industrialized Western society than impoverished Africans- Billy boy is spreading this to these developing countries for reasons that have nothing to do with our well-being.
Lots of points that really made me think. Most of the previous comments hit on issues I had, but I would still offer that our government gets hours of criticism everyday across mainstream media about how it’s not doing a good job, not to mention all of social media posts and written articles.
Um, lots of people resent the royal family. Probably it's mostly in countries that HAVE a royal family, but in those countries it's fairly common (and occasionally a majority view). Members of royal families are subjected to mockery and criticism. They appear as actors in conspiracy theories.
It's fair to object to particular criticisms of Musk (or Gates, or Charles III) as being stupid. It's fair to point out good things that Musk (or Gates or Charles III) have done. But pointing out the good that they've done is not a valid way to answer the criticisms. "You say he's done bad things? What about the good things he's done? Hunh? What about them?" Having done good things in no way makes it wrong to criticize the bad things they do.
Hell, even if Musk were better than me (I doubt he is), it still wouldn't make it wrong for me to criticize him for doing bad things. Any criticisms must be answered on their merits (or lack thereof).
> I was also struck by the people wringing their hands about a rich person controlling Twitter, people who weren’t concerned about a different group of rich people who controlled Twitter before Musk.
And here I see a couple of important differences that argue against your position. Twitter was not free of criticism before Musk took over. It was criticized for letting Trump post; it was criticized for blocking Trump from posting. But what used to be criticisms of a company have become criticisms of an individual -- because that individual has taken complete control of that company. Now there is a face that we can put in the photo next to the article where before we had to put a logo. If he hadn't been rich he wouldn't have been able to put himself into a position where he gets criticized for such things, but that doesn't mean he's being criticized /because he's rich/.
Rich people are not criticized for being rich. They may be criticized for how they became rich. They may be criticized for not spreading their wealth around. They may be criticized for using their wealth to advocate for less free speech or for freer speech from haters. They may be mocked/criticized for eating pizza with a knife and fork.
Rich people get more criticism because their actions are more likely to be known to people who disagree with those actions. To the extent that royals have power in a country (even if only soft power) they likewise get criticized. Powerful people get mentioned in conspiracy theories because conspiracy theories turn on there being people using power in secret. People who have power in public might reasonably be believed to use those powers in secret as well.
> No one is going to start tweeting complaints that Huemer isn’t optimally spending his money to stop world poverty, that Huemer isn’t stopping disinformation, or that Huemer’s power is a threat to democracy.
And yet you do get criticized -- by people who know (more or less) who you are and what you do and say. Not because you're wealthy; not because you have a Ph.D.; for your specific acts and omissions.
> Hell, even if Musk were better than me (I doubt he is), it still wouldn't make it wrong for me to criticize him for doing bad things. Any criticisms must be answered on their merits (or lack thereof).
For one, can you justify that you did more good to the world than Elon Musk? That was basically the measure of goodness used and I find it really difficult to believe that I am responding to someone who's impacted the world that much.
Also, the point of the article is not that it is wrong to criticize Musk or Gates for things that they did and you think are bad, that is quite clear.
> Now there is a face that we can put in the photo next to the article where before we had to put a logo.
There were other faces before. Those executives are famous. Musk gets so much bad attention from the media not only because he's more famous than Jack Dorsey, but also because he's not a leftist (in the same sense as the average journalist is a leftist) __and__ is very outspoken about his views. I mean, just look at the FTX scandal. So many news outlets trying to save his image after stealing so much money of so much people, while musk is roasted for stating the absurd opinion that free speech is good and that twitter was going about censoring some groups of people much more than others. You may personally be judging the actions of people by their own merits and not by their perpetrators alone, but the average news outlets and the average critic on twitter must definitely is not.
> And yet you do get criticized -- by people who know (more or less) who you are and what you do and say. Not because you're wealthy; not because you have a Ph.D.; for your specific acts and omissions.
Just before were you started the quote, he wrote "I haven’t done anything like any of the above things that Elon Musk has done. And __for that reason__, I’m not under attack". The point is that the things that he outlined are broadly considered good or even noble actions, and for someone who hasn't moved a finger to help with the objectives those actions were trying to help accomplish, he hasn't gotten much criticism, which contributes to the perception that people are not angry at Musk because he has done bad things.
Yeah. I am a lifelong Libertarian Party ticket voter; I broke my rule twice voting for Obama, and think he's great. That said, criticizing him for killing thousands of people is still okay.
You lost me on Gates. Intent matters. Gates, his family, and their associates for generations have regarded us as stupid cattle to be herded and culled, and not worthy of the agency to make our own decisions and govern ourselves.
He's an "altruist" in the same way that I care whether the cows and hogs I raise for food are sick. I am affectionate to them and responsive to their suffering but in no way do I respect their autonomy as intelligent beings or want there to be any less disparity in the power between us.
Gates is a megalomaniac. I don't dislike him specifically because he's a billionaire. I dislike him because he's a globalist powerbroker that wants to turn me into a digital serf for my own good.
Forget Musk's efforts to save the human race, transition the world from carbon fuels, his other projects. And forget the Gates Foundation's attempts to end malaria. And Andrew Carnegie's libraries. Forget philanthropic projects of the wealthy. Or whether those projects are driven by ego or love of mankind. Put all that aside.
Our ancestors lived in caves, infested by parasites, chased by predators, constantly on the edge of starvation. Today we have nice things like indoor toilets and medicine. Electric light, refrigerated food, airliners, the Internet. We didn't steal that wealth from other cavemen or from space aliens. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game.
People created those technologies, that wealth. Out of plants and animals, dirt and air, and their own cleverness and work. Who did that? All of us, yes, but a few made vastly larger contributions than others.
Our society is wealthy because of Boulton's engines, Carnegie's mills, Vanderbilt's railroads, Edison's lights, Gates' software, and Musk's cars and rockets. Most of us have always plowed our farms, woven our cloth, done our jobs. And mostly broken even - fed ourselves, raised our children, helped our neighbors survive...and created very little that was new.
But some people are better at creating wealth than others. Just as an Albert Einstein is rare, or a Tiger Woods, or a William Shakespeare is rare, there are a few rare people who are vastly – incredibly – better at creating wealth than most everyone else. Today we call them "billionaires".
They may not be better than most of us at physics, or golf, or literature, or in any other way, but they have a rare talent for creating wealth. Billionaire's money (when honestly earned; I exclude crony capitalists and kleptocrats) mostly reflects value created. Value that benefits us all.
Earning a billion dollars is **really** difficult. See how many try, and how few succeed.
And the living standard at $100 million is virtually identical to that of $100 billion. Most rational people retire when they have enough - long before billionaire status. We are very lucky that a few of these astoundingly productive and capable people keep working - keep chasing dreams - long after their personal material needs are satisfied. They made our world, and will make our future.
Sure, Musk makes us look bad. But only in the sense that Mahatma Gandhi does. Nobody should feel jealous of Shakespeare's writing, Edison's inventiveness, Einstein's discoveries. Nor should we resent them for their talent and success. Au contraire.
You make a great argument. You're completely right that we should be incredibly thankful for the material progress we've made, and thankful to those billionaires who continue to work for what they see as the good of the world, like Buffett and Musk.
But I think you put too much emphasis on the specific qualities of individuals. You seem to have, essentially, a "great man of economics" conception of how material progress is made. Whereas I think that, as you briefly gesture towards, such progress is better understood as a collaborative and cumulative process. Sometimes the people who become billionaires are ones who gave it the final push. Sometimes they're basically unremarkable people who were in the right place at the right time. And yes, sometimes they are once in a generation visionaries.
But to conceive of wealth as simply a measure of the value created by a person ignores all of the other factors that influence who makes money, and all the ways in which you can become extremely rich while producing hugely negative value (cigarettes companies most obviously). And that's presumably what Musk critics think he is doing although I agree with the author that they are incorrect to think so.
We should not villify billionaires simply for being rich. But it also shouldn't make them immune to criticism when they appear to be doing harm, as is the case more often than you seem to allow..
Well put.
This is one of those essays that can help me be a better person. You told the truth and pulled no punches. Thanks so much!
"We resent people who earned their riches. Why? Because when we see someone who has done so much better than us, that reflects badly on us."
That's far too uncharitable. I would say, instead, that:
(i) something like the "labor theory of value" comes intuitively to most people, and only gets broken either by explicit study of economics or experience working in highly productive fields that don't superficially look like "labor";
(ii) therefore, it's also intuitive to feel that wealth earned by means other than obvious "labor" must have been coerced or swindled from others in some way, especially when that wealth is of an order of magnitude impossible for anyone to earn via "labor" in a thousand lifetimes;
(iii) for those who can understand abstractly how the kind of ways Musk earned his wealth are enormously productve, they still participate in a society where the labor theory of value is intuitive, and in which sensitivity toward others' feeling of being swindled, is an invaluable sign of social solidarity.
Good observations. I agree that many people have a tendency to embrace a view of labour, value and wealth along those lines. However, often people who have that view don't hold it consistently: they criticise the fact that there are people who accumulate a lot of wealth by means other than labour (stricto sensu), true; however, the very same people would freak out if you proposed to pay miners or factory workers as much as a university professor or an engineer. Maybe the problem is that many people expect wealth to be proportional to "merit", in some very broad and probably ill-defined sense - more or less encompassing intellectual skills, effort, fatigue and the likes. They cannot see that much merit - in that ill-defined sense - in what an investor or an entrepreneur do, so they see a grotesque disproportion between their wealth and their apparent merits.
I suppose that, as with many other issues, people tend to rely upon evolved intuitions about fields other than their own, while recognizing how badly incorrect those intuitions are with regard to the field they know intimately. A paramedic presumably knows that the best paramedics aren't the ones running around the most or most drenched in sweat at the end of the day, but still tacitly assumes that a line cook is just a line cook, all worth about the same wage, since they all clock in the same hours and end the day equally tired. (Until, that is, they have a personal experience with one of the line cooks who's a massive fuckup. But then they forget again what they've just learned about labor vs. productivity among cooks.)
It even seems like many people inclined toward the LToV are willing to accept very high earnings, when they can very clearly see the impressive work, with the flagship example being elite professional athletes. And yet, I suspect that the nature of the productivity is generally misattributed, e.g. thinking of LeBron James earning his salary by scoring points and winning games/championships, rather than by putting eyes on screens for advertisers.
"The amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced, i.e., the extent to which his activities have helped to satisfy other people’s desires, because you get money in a free market by giving other people things they want."
This is a remarkable statement. Would you say the same thing about the Koch brothers, the Sackler Family, or the robber barons of yore? Sometimes rich people get rich by doing shitty things.
Set Musk in particular aside, because the larger issue here is how should we feel about billionaires in general.
1) Character evaluation depends on intentions: Billionaires generally wouldn’t have produced less wealth if they didn’t think it was altruistic to do so. Because everything billionaires do is out of self-interest, we shouldn’t think of them as specially morally praiseworthy.
2) Character evaluation depends on recency: I think badly of Musk because he seems to be headed in a bad direction. Sort of like a doctor who saved a thousand lives but just last week committed a murder (Note for people who don’t understand the concept of analogies: I’m not saying Musk killed anybody). What adjectives would you use for that person? I wouldn’t say they’re a “good person” because their actions *recently* have been terrible.
In the same way, although Musk has done a lot off good in the past, Musk should be criticized because he’s unbanning most banned people on Twitter, which I expect will make our political culture more hostile, ugly, and 4-Chan-like.
3) People don’t typically despise Billionaires *for being billionaires*. We know this because our attitudes towards billionaires in general are either positive or indifferent: there are 2k billionaires, and only 2 of them are seriously criticized (Musk and Bezos). So, we’re criticizing .01% of this class of people. I'd argue we're really criticizing people with too much ego who put themselves in the news, or maybe people who make the news for bad working conditions regularly.
Take the first example: Kanye West was a billionaire (though not by a ton), and he's no longer one. That didn’t take away any of the criticism; despite being far less monetarily successful, he is still widely despised. The real issue seems to be his antisemitic tweets and enormous ego.
Interesting to know that PublicIntellectualsforCharity do not support free speech, and extremely disappointing. And, actually, that they are hostile to free speech, and thereby, ugly. I prefer open minds and despise those who support the initiation of force to achieve their goals, such as the use of censorship. Businessmen like Musk believe in accomplishment and trade to achieve their goals.
If by "does not support free speech" you mean "doesn't want Twitter to become 4-Chan/would rather our country's biggest (private) forum to be a place where well-intentioned people would be wise to spend their time" then sure. That is, I'm pro-free-business, and Twitter is at liberty to moderate their content however they wish. I am also pro-quality-curation, because the "private companies are morally obligated to have no TOS" conception of "free speech" is an experiment we've run many, many times. 4 Chan. Dregg. r/incels. r/coontown.
No ones' rights are being violated by a social media company's TOS policy. So, if there's still a moral case at issue, it's a utilitarian one. And consequentialism clearly favors some content moderation.
"Ugly and Hostile" is a personal preference in forum management not a character flaw. I grant that from a private perspective neither policy is against free speech, if we ignore possible conflicts of interest of threats from the government. There is no change in policy allowing illegal activity or threats of violence. Thanks for sharing your feelings, that is all they are. Good thing the left convinced the right that the first Amendment was absolute before they changed their mind.
IME, many people do despise the mega rich for being mega-rich. The view is something like: well, they got that rich by being bad (cause that's the only way to get that rich) and/or they should have given away so much wealth as to have never gotten that rich in the first place.
Nice post. However, there may be alternate explanations for why there is general suspicion about people like Musk.
(1) Luck vs. Effort: there is research suggesting that humans have innate sharing rules: items that are high variance and, therefore, somewhat insensitive to effort and initiative are expected to be shared equally within the "band," while low variance items, which can be predictably obtained in amounts proportional to effort, are not expected to be shared.
(2) Our evolutionary history has not prepared us to expect (those rare) individuals whose productivity is many orders of magnitude larger than the vast majority.
(3) Modern markets, which are evolutionarily novel, make the connection between effort and reward difficult to fathom.
(4) Intentions matter more than outcomes: again, looking at deep time, humans have lived in mostly small groups where a person's intentions matter much more than whether they are able to deliver on this occasion or that. This is no longer true in the context of mass societies and markets with their invisible hand effects, where the best of intentions can create hell on Earth (e.g. socialism) and conversely where folks acting on less-than-lofty motives still end up doing an enormous amount of good (e.g. "evil" billionaires and "robber barons").
(5) Reverse Dominance Hierarchies: there is evidence that humans have a disposition to gang up on the "alpha" (those with a large power differential in their favor) in their band and to limit their power or in extremis eliminate that individual.
(6) Although dyadic exchange guided by the profit motive has been present over deep evolutionary time for humans, it wasn't the main form of benefit delivery. Most benefits came from family, close friends, and allies and band members and were outside the framework of dyadic exchange - they were shared rather than exchanged this for that. Although we partake in exchange we are disposed to be suspicious of our exchange partners precisely because they are not engaging with us for the "right" reasons: they are not our family, friend, or ally.
Taking (1) - (6) together, Musk and Gates and other like them may be seen (implicitly) as exploiters writ large and therefore dangers to us and our "band".
Gates is really, really interested in reducing my rights and civil liberties and thinks I'm a stupid farm animal that needs his guidance.
Musk wants to sell me a flamethrower and have free speech.
“First, the amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced…”
Here is the crux of why I disagree with this article: it equates economic value with moral value.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not obscenely rich, apparently you forfeit the right to criticize the wealthy as they move to shape society in their own image of the good.
“What are YOU doing?” is heartily patronizing to every person who didn’t have half, a tenth, a hundredth the opportunity to amass a hoard of gold. Elon Musk was born into privilege. Any person who chose instead to serve the public in other ways - perhaps in service to the democratic government our humble author apparently so despises for its coercive power - you aren’t contributing as much as Elon! Therefore, you have no right to criticize the great and powerful wizard of Tesla!
Has Elon produced more moral value than most other people on the planet? I wouldn’t say so, although I suppose it’s open to argument how much good Tesla’s innovation has done. The value judgments of this piece ignore every scientist and engineer who made those technologies possible. It arrogates to Musk every credit that anyone under the auspices of Tesla or any of his other companies ever did, and equates that to Musk’s moral value.
Musk isn’t uniquely bad (not even close to the Koch brothers) but he’s certainly not above reproach. He isn’t a uniquely wonderful human being who produces enormous moral value. He’s a tremendously wealthy and influential person who has spread damaging conspiracy theories while also overseeing great innovations. Like most human beings, he has a distinct vision of the good, imperfect and worthy of more critique because of his disproportionate influence on society.
“But at least he’s trying to do something good.”
The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. Calling Musk’s critics wastrels benefits no one. It is of concern to every single person what wealthy people choose to do with their vast fortunes, because those fortunes give them undue influence over the lives of ordinary people.
We aren’t using social pressure to punish the people who do the most good, whatever the hell that means. Economic good? Moral good? Social regulation of the most powerful classes in society is natural and obvious. Those with the greatest influence, those most active in using that influence, should fall under strict public scrutiny. Just as our democratic government falls under scrutiny, imperfect, but nonetheless present.
Elon receives criticism because he has disproportionate power to affect change, not because people are jealous of his fucking paper. Your conflation of moral and economic value fills me with incandescent rage.
Respectfully,
Connor
It does conflate economic value with moral value but in the context of economic ventures that serve to do something about existential threats to humanity.
I suppose these ventures’ activities constitute “do[ing] something” about existential threats to humanity, but they are businesses. They exist to make money. If the technologies help people, all the better, but we shouldn’t conflate helping people with bottom lines. They happen to coincide.
Accepting that Musk deserves some credit for the technology doesn’t give him a blank cheque vis-à-vis his critics, who actually have very little power and influence to shape the course of events. It’s not that Musk hasn’t done any good, rather that people of power should be criticized. Most of that criticism will come from people who aren’t - can’t - do as much. That’s obvious, and it’s not a bad thing. People have a stake in what the powerful do with their enormous wealth, whatever their occupation or charitable pursuits. Being annoyed with critics of the powerful, rather than focusing on the people with the actual power, strikes me as absurd on its face.
Incidentally, I appreciate that the author left out the role of federal money in making Musk’s ventures possible.
The part about Musk is good. Bill Gates on the other hand promoted lockdown tyranny China style, pity he didn’t withdraw on a private island instead.
Although I enjoyed this article, my initial impression was that it seemed too uncharitable to Musk's critics, who might at times be mistaken but could easily have their hearts in the right place. My personal opinion of Musk has not been/is not uniformly positive, so I'm biased towards skepticism about blanket judgments of a population that includes me.
After reading the responses of Musk's critics in the comments below, I've changed my mind. Without exception, they seem to be driven by what I can only call bad motives. Nasty people, again without exception. I don't want to be associated with them. Quite remarkable.
I won't say that my opinion of Musk has been improved, but I'm certainly more sympathetic to Huemer's article than I was when I first read it. I owe a debt of gratitude to the commenters who took time and effort to expose themselves as exactly what the article claims they are, and I am also grateful to Mr. Huemer (or should it be Prof. Huemer? idk) for highlighting the ubiquity of pure envy that I too often overlook.
Make sure not to cite any actual responses that might open you up to criticism or debate of any kind.
"Without exception" means that every single response from Musk's critics can be considered to have been cited. This should make it easier to criticize or debate me, not harder, as anyone wishing to do so can use any comment/response made prior to my own as material demonstrating me to be mistaken.
Your failure to understand this is evidence (not necessarily conclusive) that you are not particularly bright.
What you likely intended (but failed) to say is that my evaluation of Musk's critics was not persuasive, and this is of course correct. I had no intention of changing anyone's mind with my remarks; I only wanted to express my gratitude to Mr. Huemer and his commenters for helping to change mine.
“Your failure to understand this is evidence (not necessarily conclusive) that you are not particularly bright.”
Very perceptive of you. Perhaps then you could illuminate me on the “bad motives” behind my own criticisms of Musk and this article. Or any other Musk critic in this comment section, where I observe not obvious bad faith but, at worst, a misunderstanding of the article or Musk’s record.
I didn’t intend to say that you were not persuasive (although owing to a serious deficiency of evidence, you were not). I was, owing to my low intelligence, having difficulty evaluating the claim you put forward. It is not possible to evaluate the validity of your comment from the comment itself, because none of the instances of bad faith in question are cited.
You are correct to say that “without exception” means every critic. But this is so absurd a claim to make, I assumed this could not be the actual meaning. Even knowing the motivations of people we know in person is difficult, forget strangers on the Internet. The criticism I read did not appear to be bad faith in nature, and you failed to point out even one example of bad faith.
So, consider this an invitation to expand on your argument with regard to my own criticism or someone else’s. This shouldn’t take someone as bright as yourself very long.
>Very perceptive of you. Perhaps then you could illuminate me on the “bad motives” behind my own criticisms of Musk and this article.
Perhaps. I don't know if you're open-minded enough to accept and grow from the kind of harsh criticism I'll levy, but I suppose it can't hurt to try. We'll start with where you ended:
"Elon receives criticism because he has disproportionate power to affect change, not because people are jealous of his fucking paper. Your conflation of moral and economic value fills me with incandescent rage."
This calls back to your opening remark:
"Here is the crux of why I disagree with this article: it equates economic value with moral value."
We may deduce from your own words, then, that you were filled with incandescent rage while writing your initial comment. I do not believe it should be controversial to claim that incandescent rage is a bad motive.
And that would be enough to answer your prompt, but I have something else to add: Your opening remark is COMPLETELY FUCKING RETARDED.
Huemer said this:
"First, the amount of money he’s made is a ROUGH INDICATOR of the amount of economic value he has produced..." (emphasis mine)
You responded with this:
"Here is the crux of why I disagree with this article: it EQUATES economic value with moral value." (again, emphasis mine)
Suggesting that Thing A is a ROUGH INDICATOR of Thing B is NOT THE SAME as EQUATING Thing A with Thing B. So your entire rage-fueled comment was based on a STUPID MISUNDERSTANDING (that you made because you are STUPID).
>Or any other Musk critic in this comment section, where I observe not obvious bad faith but, at worst, a misunderstanding of the article or Musk’s record.
Your observation skills are deeply flawed and not to be trusted. My judgment is more reliable than yours.
>I didn’t intend to say that you were not persuasive (although owing to a serious deficiency of evidence, you were not). I was, owing to my low intelligence, having difficulty evaluating the claim you put forward. It is not possible to evaluate the validity of your comment from the comment itself, because none of the instances of bad faith in question are cited.
In addition to being dumb, you seem pretty autistic. Sometimes people make claims without feeling the need to justify or defend them. This is pretty common, actually. It's something normal people do all the time.
>You are correct to say that “without exception” means every critic. But this is so absurd a claim to make, I assumed this could not be the actual meaning.
Go back to the original context of the claim in question: I clearly refer to every critic "in the comments below [Huemer's article] [that existed when I made my remark]." Far from being an absurd claim, it is a perfectly true one. Exactly which misapprehension you're laboring under is ambiguous, but your failure either to understand the set of humans being referred to (in the ridiculous event that you somehow believed I was referring to every Musk critic in existence) or to recognize that those posting here (including yourself) show evidence of bad motives is another demonstration (as if there needed to be one) of how unintelligent you are.
>Even knowing the motivations of people we know in person is difficult
lol, so you are autistic, that makes sense
highly intelligent, socially well-adjusted people do not find it terribly difficult to discern the motivations of people they know in person; i understand that you couldn't know this directly, not being a highly intelligent, socially well-adjusted person, so you'll just have to take my word for it (or not)
>forget strangers on the Internet
strongly considering it
>The criticism I read did not appear to be bad faith in nature, and you failed to point out even one example of bad faith.
think we've already covered how much we should care about the way things appear to you, and AGAIN i failed to point out even one example because i didn't care about
just realized i don't care enough to finish fisking your retarded remarks
feel free to take the last word; unless it's a lot more interesting than what you've said so far i probably won't waste more of my time responding
best wishes (seriously, i think you're stupid but still hope good things happen for you, at least insofar as what you want doesn't harm others)
“I do not believe it should be controversial to claim that incandescent rage is a bad motive.”
It’s called hyperbole, big guy. I know you didn’t have to pay attention in school owing to your crazy IQ, but it would’ve helped here. I don’t actually feel incandescent rage at some random article. I feel mild irritation. If you think that’s enough to invalidate my entire point, then you should probably consider the tone of the article in question (where the author literally says Musk’s critics annoy him).
“Suggesting that Thing A is a ROUGH INDICATOR of Thing B is NOT THE SAME as EQUATING Thing A with Thing B.”
Well, then why does Huemer treat it as such? He occasionally qualifies this distinction, but even if you accept that it is a “rough indicator” (which is a bad assumption) he doesn’t treat it as one. Musk’s economic contributions are morally valuable in some unspecified way. That’s the assumption of the article, equivalent or roughly so. Either way, it’s a bad, unproven assumption.
“Sometimes people make claims without feeling the need to justify or defend them.”
Yes, especially people with zero evidence.
“Far from being an absurd claim, it is a perfectly true one… your failure either to understand the set of humans being referred to (in the ridiculous event that you somehow believed I was referring to every Musk critic in existence) or to recognize that those posting here (including yourself) show evidence of bad motives is another demonstration (as if there needed to be one) of how unintelligent you are.“
Blah blah blah, you still haven’t provided any valid evidence of bad faith. Your evidence of mine immediately falls apart because it’s based on exactly one hyperbolic statement and nothing of the substantive criticism. As for the others, you didn’t even bother.
“highly intelligent, socially well-adjusted people do not find it terribly difficult to discern the motivations of people they know in person”
An interesting statement, given that you couldn’t even deduce my motivations. But I wouldn’t expect you to. People are complex. We can certainly understand, to some extent, the motivations of people we know well. But that’s not a comprehensive understanding. People have many sides to them.
Non sequitur, I don’t appreciate the use of autism as an insult. It’s unnecessary, irritating, and makes you look like a petulant child.
Basically folks, the best my friend can do is barrage me with ad hominem attacks while providing no substantive proof of any accusation he levies against Musk’s critics in the comments.
I can only hope that this caliber of person isn’t indicative of Musk’s defenders because, if so, he’s in even worse shape than I thought.
the level of autistic retardation you display here in continuing to try and "debate" someone who clearly has no interest in debating you is most commonly found in trannies and faggots
if you would like to remain attached to your cock and balls without catching GRIDS, i advise you in the strongest possible terms to steer clear of porn. this is your best shot at a fruitful and spiritually fulfilling healthy sex life
if you are already past the point of no return, then may god have mercy on your soul
Insightful as usual. I only add one humble suggestion: some people have a tendency to assume that others - especially the rich - are always driven by ulterior motives, even when they seem to act in an altruistic way. I often mention the release of Tesla's patents in conversation with people who attack Musk, as an instance of altruistic action: the response that I usually get is "There must be some other reason why he did that"; in other cases, people simply insist that it cannot be true. Not sure why some people are inclined to interpret the actions of others in this way: do they have an a priori pessimistic view of human nature? Do they have the urge to feel morally superior by attributing to others a bad character? Or maybe they are secretly selfish themselves, so they're inclined to ascribe the same attitude to everybody? I don't know.
Yes, Elon Musk clearly wants to save humanity from global warming. That's why he pushes personal EVs and sabotages efforts to expand public transportation, because he cares so much about the environment. That's why he won't let other EVs use Tesla's charging network. That's why he flies around in a private jet. That's why he avoids eating meat. That's also why he is launching tons of satellites into space so, which burn incredible amounts of fossil fuels, because he cares about, wait.... Well, surely getting internet access to rural poor areas is worth that, because those people can afford 600 dollar installation fees and $100/month subscription fee.
And he clearly cares so much about humanity, that's why his plan to save humanity is to fly rich people to mars to escape earth. That's why he illegally busts unions, because he cares about people. That's why he forced people to work during the pandemic, causing 100s of cases of covid in his factory. Because he just loves people sooo much.
And he took over twitter because he cares about free speech, of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlL4xvn6xWE
Elong Musk is a clown. He's a horrible person. He's a pathological liar and scammer. And speak for yourself, as he's definitely not better than me. Which doesn't say much, as he is, in fact, a lot worse than the average person. Idk how a philosopher, who sometimes writes so intelligently about some things, like ethical veganism and moral realism, can have such silly takes.
Side note: what EA thinks the government shouldn't spend money to solve extreme poverty? It's a silly strawman. We criticize useless billionaires like Musk, and we also criticize the government. It is possible to do both.
"we are subconsciously resentful that that person is making us look bad by being better than us."
Perhaps, or perhaps people are just bad at math, and think he could just wave a wand and solve world hunger but he refuses to, or have a none consequentialist ethical system in which being a billionaire is bad.
I mean i guess its almost certainly a combo that varies from person to person.
Nurse here- Gates' vaccine practices in developing countries are nothing to be happy about. The average person can't name 2 ingredients in any injection or explain the toxicology of vaccines, let alone explain why it's so healthy for these compounds to be permanently stored in our bodies.
It is one of the leading causes of modern diseases, the timelines add up with the ushering in of mass injections. We are sicker in industrialized Western society than impoverished Africans- Billy boy is spreading this to these developing countries for reasons that have nothing to do with our well-being.
Nope: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270861/life-expectancy-by-continent/
Lots of points that really made me think. Most of the previous comments hit on issues I had, but I would still offer that our government gets hours of criticism everyday across mainstream media about how it’s not doing a good job, not to mention all of social media posts and written articles.
> Interestingly, we don’t resent the royal family
Um, lots of people resent the royal family. Probably it's mostly in countries that HAVE a royal family, but in those countries it's fairly common (and occasionally a majority view). Members of royal families are subjected to mockery and criticism. They appear as actors in conspiracy theories.
It's fair to object to particular criticisms of Musk (or Gates, or Charles III) as being stupid. It's fair to point out good things that Musk (or Gates or Charles III) have done. But pointing out the good that they've done is not a valid way to answer the criticisms. "You say he's done bad things? What about the good things he's done? Hunh? What about them?" Having done good things in no way makes it wrong to criticize the bad things they do.
Hell, even if Musk were better than me (I doubt he is), it still wouldn't make it wrong for me to criticize him for doing bad things. Any criticisms must be answered on their merits (or lack thereof).
> I was also struck by the people wringing their hands about a rich person controlling Twitter, people who weren’t concerned about a different group of rich people who controlled Twitter before Musk.
And here I see a couple of important differences that argue against your position. Twitter was not free of criticism before Musk took over. It was criticized for letting Trump post; it was criticized for blocking Trump from posting. But what used to be criticisms of a company have become criticisms of an individual -- because that individual has taken complete control of that company. Now there is a face that we can put in the photo next to the article where before we had to put a logo. If he hadn't been rich he wouldn't have been able to put himself into a position where he gets criticized for such things, but that doesn't mean he's being criticized /because he's rich/.
Rich people are not criticized for being rich. They may be criticized for how they became rich. They may be criticized for not spreading their wealth around. They may be criticized for using their wealth to advocate for less free speech or for freer speech from haters. They may be mocked/criticized for eating pizza with a knife and fork.
Rich people get more criticism because their actions are more likely to be known to people who disagree with those actions. To the extent that royals have power in a country (even if only soft power) they likewise get criticized. Powerful people get mentioned in conspiracy theories because conspiracy theories turn on there being people using power in secret. People who have power in public might reasonably be believed to use those powers in secret as well.
> No one is going to start tweeting complaints that Huemer isn’t optimally spending his money to stop world poverty, that Huemer isn’t stopping disinformation, or that Huemer’s power is a threat to democracy.
And yet you do get criticized -- by people who know (more or less) who you are and what you do and say. Not because you're wealthy; not because you have a Ph.D.; for your specific acts and omissions.
> Hell, even if Musk were better than me (I doubt he is), it still wouldn't make it wrong for me to criticize him for doing bad things. Any criticisms must be answered on their merits (or lack thereof).
For one, can you justify that you did more good to the world than Elon Musk? That was basically the measure of goodness used and I find it really difficult to believe that I am responding to someone who's impacted the world that much.
Also, the point of the article is not that it is wrong to criticize Musk or Gates for things that they did and you think are bad, that is quite clear.
> Now there is a face that we can put in the photo next to the article where before we had to put a logo.
There were other faces before. Those executives are famous. Musk gets so much bad attention from the media not only because he's more famous than Jack Dorsey, but also because he's not a leftist (in the same sense as the average journalist is a leftist) __and__ is very outspoken about his views. I mean, just look at the FTX scandal. So many news outlets trying to save his image after stealing so much money of so much people, while musk is roasted for stating the absurd opinion that free speech is good and that twitter was going about censoring some groups of people much more than others. You may personally be judging the actions of people by their own merits and not by their perpetrators alone, but the average news outlets and the average critic on twitter must definitely is not.
> And yet you do get criticized -- by people who know (more or less) who you are and what you do and say. Not because you're wealthy; not because you have a Ph.D.; for your specific acts and omissions.
Just before were you started the quote, he wrote "I haven’t done anything like any of the above things that Elon Musk has done. And __for that reason__, I’m not under attack". The point is that the things that he outlined are broadly considered good or even noble actions, and for someone who hasn't moved a finger to help with the objectives those actions were trying to help accomplish, he hasn't gotten much criticism, which contributes to the perception that people are not angry at Musk because he has done bad things.
Yeah. I am a lifelong Libertarian Party ticket voter; I broke my rule twice voting for Obama, and think he's great. That said, criticizing him for killing thousands of people is still okay.
Great take on Musk.
You lost me on Gates. Intent matters. Gates, his family, and their associates for generations have regarded us as stupid cattle to be herded and culled, and not worthy of the agency to make our own decisions and govern ourselves.
He's an "altruist" in the same way that I care whether the cows and hogs I raise for food are sick. I am affectionate to them and responsive to their suffering but in no way do I respect their autonomy as intelligent beings or want there to be any less disparity in the power between us.
Gates is a megalomaniac. I don't dislike him specifically because he's a billionaire. I dislike him because he's a globalist powerbroker that wants to turn me into a digital serf for my own good.