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Comment by H8crilA | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk vibes. For example when he was shilling dogecoin, or bragging about not caring at all about the $420 SEC settlement. It's oddly fun to watch such exceptional narcissists, both when they rise and when they fall. They're so invested in their image.

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Elon has been important in at least 3 major companies that have real products that are delivering real value today.

I can't speak to his mental health, but SBF is simply not comparable.

I've loathed Elon since the Thai cave fiasco but I think this is entirely fair.

It was a judgement of personality traits/disorder. Not of commerical success.

SBF, Musk or Trump behave like privileged children that believe rules/law do not apply to them. They want everyone to know and admire them for their awesomeness, in fact it's their awesomeness that buys them an infinite number of get-out-of-jail cards.

Yes, Musk is the most useful out of all of them, by a mile. Still, the personality type/disorder is the same.

Important in being a source of money. The rest? Not so much.

Being a source of money alone was not enough to establish a successful private space launch company. There were plenty with even more money available and even actual institutional support that never got anywhere.

One of the three he certainly wasn't important as a source of money (X/PayPal), as that is where he got the seed money for the other ventures you are diminishing his involvement in.

For Tesla he was an original source of money but has also been the CEO since 2008 (the same year they began production of the original roadster). So all the things people know Tesla for today (and have made it a hugely valuable company) happened under his direct leadership as CEO.

For SpaceX the idea that he is just a source of money is clearly ludicrous, given that it is entirely his brainchild. Since founding the company, he has done an excellent job of hiring all the right people that have made the company what it is today, and is clearly leading the vision and focus of the company.

Elon has also engaged in crypto market manipulation by shilling and dumping DOGE regularly. They're absolutely comparable.

DOGE is a joke and anyone who thinks that it's a serious investment deserves to lose money. It's an idiot tax.

Ponzi schemes are a joke, too. Obviously they're not going to scale -- but people running them are often caught and sent to prison.

I find it baffling that you're defending his antisocial and exploitative behavior.

The creator of DOGE straight up told everyone that he created it as a joke. Ponzi schemes, on the other hand, are marketed as legitimate investments.

What the creator of DOGE said is completely irrelevant to this discussion. If you think there's nothing morally wrong about abusing your position to swindle your fans in technically-legal ways, then any further discussion is pointless.

For what it's worth, I have the same level of disdain towards all celebrities/public figures who abuse their power in this way. It's alarmingly common these days.

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