Yep. I agree it can be interpreted in other ways and would agree with you that taking everything into account he’s probably had more impact at the margin on the positive stuff than the negatives, so far. There was certainly a bigger shortage of people with the means and the motivation to take on EVs and commercial space in the early 2000s[1] than peopl willing to spout stupid stuff on social media in the last three years.
I think battery and photovoltaics were coming down in manufacturing cost over the last decade regardless, but you don’t automatically get complex products out of that...
Oh, I meant it to include everything, sorry for the confusion. So, he’s done a bunch of net-good stuff but now he’s doing a bunch of net-bad stuff, is the former still larger than the latter? How should I express it in the title so that it is clear?
“Has he been net positive for humanity overall” would be be clearer that it’s looking at everything he’s done so far
But I actually think it’s more interesting if it’s an ambiguous question. The stuff he’s done so far is significant but not necessarily aligned with what he’s doing now and what he might do or intend to do in future. The trajectory he is on now is… not upward. The influence that he has now isn’t necessarily more than when few people knew who he was, and he sounded more strategic as well as more amicable then. And the stuff he may or may not do in future is speculation.
And actually, since some time I tend to think that he’s probably been vastly less net-good in the past than I previously thought. Not really because of him, but because Chinese companies are beating everyone, including Tesla, with their EVs (and I don’t think he’s had any influence in China betting hard for EVs, though I might be wrong here); so if Tesla would have not existed, the adoption of EVs would just have been only delayed for few years (and mostly only in the west). So his net-positive contribution -for me and now- seems much lower than it seemed before.
Yep. I agree it can be interpreted in other ways and would agree with you that taking everything into account he’s probably had more impact at the margin on the positive stuff than the negatives, so far. There was certainly a bigger shortage of people with the means and the motivation to take on EVs and commercial space in the early 2000s[1] than peopl willing to spout stupid stuff on social media in the last three years.
I think battery and photovoltaics were coming down in manufacturing cost over the last decade regardless, but you don’t automatically get complex products out of that...
Oh, I meant it to include everything, sorry for the confusion. So, he’s done a bunch of net-good stuff but now he’s doing a bunch of net-bad stuff, is the former still larger than the latter? How should I express it in the title so that it is clear?
“Has he been net positive for humanity overall” would be be clearer that it’s looking at everything he’s done so far
But I actually think it’s more interesting if it’s an ambiguous question. The stuff he’s done so far is significant but not necessarily aligned with what he’s doing now and what he might do or intend to do in future. The trajectory he is on now is… not upward. The influence that he has now isn’t necessarily more than when few people knew who he was, and he sounded more strategic as well as more amicable then. And the stuff he may or may not do in future is speculation.
Ok, thanks. I leave it like this, then. Then everyone will have answered to the same question :-)
And actually, since some time I tend to think that he’s probably been vastly less net-good in the past than I previously thought. Not really because of him, but because Chinese companies are beating everyone, including Tesla, with their EVs (and I don’t think he’s had any influence in China betting hard for EVs, though I might be wrong here); so if Tesla would have not existed, the adoption of EVs would just have been only delayed for few years (and mostly only in the west). So his net-positive contribution -for me and now- seems much lower than it seemed before.