San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Where Musk’s spacey ideas make sense
Ihad hoped to avoid writing anything about America’s most overexposed billionaire philosopher king. But Elon Musk’s seemingly casual plans to purchase Twitter, a move that would put him in charge of the world’s most important media platform, make it unavoidable.
This past week I devoured the 2017 biography “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” by Ashlee Vance.
I have long had a dull dislike of Musk. The facts of his life and personality — made clear from this biography — have sharpened some of my animus.
At the same time, the book made me admire far more what he’s created. His mission and ambition are literally otherworldly. His companies’ engineering achievements are unmatched.
The Twitter purchase — because it magnifies his personality flaws and multiplies his power seemingly without serving his mission — seems unhelpful. But it’s not the most important part of the Elon Musk story.
His personality
Vance’s biography provides plenty of evidence of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s personality. He is clearly capable of grueling work. And because of his total indifference to the feelings of others, the book shows, he makes unreasonable demands. To work for Musk is to be subjected to a grueling master.
You don’t want to work for him. People are a means to an end and will be dismissed as
He delivers
soon as the ends are met, or unmet. Vance writes, “What was clear is that people who worked for him were like ammunition: used for a specific purpose until exhausted and discarded.”
You do not want to be married to Musk. His first wife, Justine, relates how, early in their relationship, she would complain, “I am your wife, not your employee!” To which
Musk replied, “If you were my employee, I would fire you.”
He is grandiose. He is a hype machine creating castles in the sky long before they have solid foundations. In his focus on the mission, he is not held back by realism, modesty or truth.
Less clear from the book than from Musk’s Twitter personality the past five years is that he enjoys being an online troll. Where this unattractive part of his personality comes from is not clear. But as Justine, his ex, once wrote about him, quoting the musician Moby, “There’s no such thing as a well-adjusted public figure. If they were welladjusted they wouldn’t try to be a public figure.”
Despite his megalomania and hyperbole, the impressive thing this biography makes clear about Musk is this: He has a world-beating record of actually delivering on big ideas.
PayPal truly is useful. Tesla cars really are amazing. SpaceX
The Twitter purchase
— because it magnifies his personality flaws and multiplies his power
seemingly without serving his mission —
seems unhelpful.
rockets really are cutting edge, altering the relationship between the private sector and space exploration. I come away much more respectful of this part of him. The challenges of creating these solutions seemed insurmountable to every observer except, seemingly, Musk.
Most important, I respect and admire the central mission that has animated his past 20 years: to colonize Mars.
Because there are no fossil fuels on Mars, we’re going to need to harness solar energy. Hence, his takeover of SolarCity Corp. Once you get to Mars, you’ll need advanced batteries to store the solar energy and battery-powered electric vehicles to move on the planet, so you need Tesla. Obviously, to get there you need cheap, plentiful and improved rocketry, which SpaceX provides.
The Boring Co.
The following point didn’t come from the biography but someone else’s writing last week. It absolutely blew my mind. The Boring Co. is Musk’s contribution to transportation policy, proposing underground tunnels between and within cities.
San Antonio, for example, is contemplating contracting with the Boring Co. to build an underground transportation tunnel between downtown and the airport. The city needs such a tunnel like a fish needs a bicycle. The Boring Co. had never made sense to me, and San Antonio dabbling in this is utterly bizarre.
But! The Boring Co. makes sense if you take seriously
Musk’s plan to colonize Mars. Were humans to inhabit that uninhabitable planet, much of life would have to be lived underground in massive tunnels.
Musk tweeted last week that tunnels are immune to surface weather conditions. “It wouldn’t matter to Hyperloop if a hurricane was raging on the surface,” he wrote. “You wouldn’t even notice.”
While that’s untrue in the case of flooded urban subway systems in heavy rainstorms, we can intuit that Musk is actually picturing his future Martian colony protected from the harsh conditions of the red planet.
Understood as part of the Mars mission, the Boring Co. finally makes sense! Although, to be clear, not in San Antonio, which is more inhabitable than Mars (except in July and August, when it’s basically a tie).
Anyway, in sum: The biography is good. His personality is awful. Musk’s maniacal focus on colonizing Mars is consistent and impressive.
What, at this point, is left to say about his purchase of Twitter?
The purchase doesn’t seem to contribute to his mission regarding Mars, so that part is puzzling. The purchase does seem to stem from his personality issues.
Do I worry he will impose his trollish views on an important global platform? Yes, consistent with my big idea that we should be figuring out a way to limit the oversize impact of all billionaire philosopher kings on our society.
Musk’s engineering greatness is unquestionable. The threat to our society from the concentration of power in the hands of a few is also unquestionable.
Michael Taylor is a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, author of “The Financial Rules for New College Graduates” and host of the podcast “No Hill For A Climber.” michael@michaelthesmart money.com | twitter.com/ michael_taylor