Elon Musk: the Man, the Myth, the Con
Like millions of us, I too felt as though Elon Musk was going to “save the world” — whatever the hell that means. I thought he was this brilliant electrical engineer who was going to take humanity to the next step as we settle on Mars. So… what changed?
Before Elon Musk was a household name, or the ass end of a tragic joke, I had read his biography simply based on the stuff he was doing with Tesla and SpaceX. At that time, he was still a brilliant engineer who was going to save the world in my mind.
Believe it or not, I remember a time when I would have to explain to people who Elon Musk was any time I mentioned him, and I used to talk about him quite a bit. I used to listen to his “lectures” and took his advice on working long and hard hours to heart.
In fact, when people would ask me why I was working 70–80 hours per week travelling the country, I would tell them, “because Elon Musk says if you want to be the best at something, you have to put in a minimum of 70 hours per week”.
Yeah… I actually believed that, and practiced it. It came at the cost of my mental health and sobriety, but believe you me, I wanted to be the BEST at what I did — just like Elon.
Something changed recently, however. I fell out of “love” with him when he made a very questionable move a few months ago. I couldn’t explain it at the time, but something didn’t feel right about his Twitter announcement in 2022. Even though I thought he was the “greatest human being on Earth” (my words… and probably his), my intuition was telling me that something was amiss.
Elon Musk Wants to Purchase Twitter
When it was announced that Elon Musk planned to make a bid on social media giant, Twitter, I immediately felt something was wrong. I couldn’t comprehend why he would WANT to buy Twitter.
Sure, he uses it more than anyone else (now that Trump is off the platform), but why would he want to OWN it?
Well, he didn’t leave me hanging for too long. Shortly after the initial announcement, the whole “freedom of speech online” argument surfaced. According to Elon, part of his rationale for purchasing the company was to undo a lot of the censorship and shadow-banning practices that plague every social media platform these days.
Well hey, who can argue against that, right? Shit, I love my freedom of speech, so I should be all for this acquisition, yeah?
Then why throw shade at him?
Because he is completely, and embarrassingly, full of shit.
You see, Elon isn’t actually a free speech advocate. He is for speech which makes him look good. He likes speech that makes him sound like the founder of Tesla and PayPal and any speech with which he agrees.
If you need the proof, you can see how he dealt with a group of employees from SpaceX who wrote a letter expressing their disappointment in Elon Musk as CEO with his many, many publicity stunts.
Musk likes to Tweet, and speak publicly, about (among other things cited in the letter) capabilities of SpaceX which are not yet reality. This is similar to how Steve Jobs revealed the first iPhone when they couldn’t even run everything on a single prototype. In fact, there are a lot of parallels between Musk and Jobs.
So, Elon Musk fired about 5 employees from SpaceX for speaking out against him. In other words, SpaceX employees are not protected by freedom of speech and can lose their jobs for saying the wrong things.
This behavior is coming from the man who once said, “constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of anything you’re doing is worth more than gold…”
Okay, maybe that doesn’t apply to HONEST critique!
If he isn’t for freedom of speech, then why does he really want to buy Twitter?
To answer that, let’s look at the first company he founded.
PayPal Turns into PayDay
If you’ve read about Elon Musk, you’ve undoubtedly heard that he was the founder of PayPal, and it’s how he got started on his journey to creating Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink.
There’s only a slight problem with that…
Elon Musk never worked for a company named PayPal. The company, known as “Confinity” at the time, was founded by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek in 1998.
At the same time, Elon Musk was working on his own online company called, “Zip2”. Without getting too far into the weeds, it was essentially a search engine for phone numbers and addresses. It was basically “Yellow Pages” on the internet in the late 90’s.
While the idea sounds imaginative and futuristic, Elon was reportedly a horrendous coder who wasn’t savvy enough to futureproof his code and allow for easy editing of the code for changes to the interface.
However, Elon was eventually able to convince some people with big money and some financial experts to invest in his company which was then rebranded to “X.com” — and this is where the story really gets going!
Skipping most of the grainy details (there are plenty of videos about this exact topic with terrific research and evidence) Elon was acting as CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of “X.com” when they eventually managed to merge with the aforementioned company, “Confinity”.
While a lot of people in the company disagreed with the decision, thinking it sounded like a porn site, they “embraced” the X.com name until they were finally acquired by an even larger company called “eBay”.
Through some conditions, the company was purchased under the name “PayPal” (instead of “X.com”) by eBay for a very handsome payout — part of which went to Elon Musk himself since he was still considered CTO of the company.
You may be thinking, “well, he wasn’t a founder of PayPal, but his code helped the company get sold”. Unfortunately, that’s not even true. You will learn in the video linked above that Elon’s code was scrapped in its entirety due to its cumbersome structure and lack of expandability.
So, Elon Musk had basically nothing to do with being a founder of PayPal in any way shape or form. He was lucky enough to have his company merge with another company which actually had intellectual property worth something of value.
After that, Elon took his money from the PayPal deal and founded another company which eventually made him the wealthiest person in the world.
Tesla Motors is Born
Elon Musk is probably most commonly known as the founder and CEO of Tesla, a company which manufactures electric vehicles.
In fact, if you asked any random person to describe who Elon Musk is, they will inevitably say “Tesla” and “Founder” in the same sentence. That is his big claim to fame!
There’s a slight problem with this one as well…
Yeah, Elon Musk had absolutely nothing to do with Tesla Motors Inc, as it was then named, which was established by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in the summer of 2003.
There is actually a really great interview with the two co-founders where they discuss how they came up with the idea for the Tesla Roadster (pictured above) and how they partnered with luxury sports car manufacturer, Lotus, to help with the body design.
Getting back to the main point here, Elon Musk had absolutely nothing to do with the company at the time of its inception. In fact, Elon was probably still riding high on his PayPal cash — when he wasn’t crashing million-dollar McLaren F1's while trying to impress real engineers.
That’s not to say that he had nothing to do with the company after its inception, because he clearly did and still does. His involvement with the company began in 2004 when he invested approximately $6.5 million into Tesla Motors Inc to help them with much needed capital.
Technically, that made him the majority share holder of the company, and that is when things started to get rather interesting.
You see, shortly after Elon invested in the company, they had the prototype for what they hoped would become their first production model. The New York Times published an article about the successful prototype and the founders who created and designed the vehicle.
As you would imagine, there was no mention of Elon Musk in that article, and that makes sense, right? His only contribution to the company, and the prototype, was a rather large sum of money. Sure, that’s a useful contribution, but that doesn’t automatically make him a co-founder.
Taking it as a personal slight, Elon demanded that the article be republished with the mention of his name and contributions to the founding of the company. Needless to say, that did not happen, and that started what would become a hostile takeover of a corporation.
Over the next several years, Elon Musk systematically removed the actual co-founders of the company and erased any mention of their names from the company website, mission statement, or any official company text.
Eventually Musk got exactly what he wanted, and he now has complete control over Tesla Inc (company name change).
But again, to be perfectly clear, Elon Musk was NOT a co-founder of Tesla Motors Inc. That is simply a falsehood.
Musk’s version of things is that Tesla Motors Inc was merely a shell company with no employees, no intellectual property, and his investment is what actually started the company. If that makes him sleep better at night, that’s fine, but he’s still not a co-founder, and Tesla Motors Inc was NOT a shell company before he came along.
Promises Made, Promises Inept
So, what has Elon done during the past decade or so since he wrongfully became CEO and co-founder of Tesla Inc?
Talk.
And talk.
And talk some more.
If there’s one thing Elon can do, it’s tell a cute story with an adorable punchline. In the years since his hostile takeover of Tesla Motors Inc, Elon has held several press conferences and other interviews to express his vision for Tesla and the products that will be coming in the future.
The big picture idea for the company is to manufacture fully autonomous, self-driving, vehicles for all sorts of reasons ranging from environmental concerns to alleviating congestion on the roadways.
The only problem is, the cars are not fully self-driving. Yes, most of the cars come with driver assist and limited autonomous driving, but the driver must still have their hands on the wheel to “check in” with the vehicle every so often.
To be clear, I am not knocking that safety feature because it has probably saved hundreds of lives. But, the point here is that the vehicle is not even close to being fully autonomous — as Elon has promised year after year after year.
Elon has also promised that Tesla will revolutionize the trucking industry and drive the costs of logistics and other delivery challenges down. He plans to do this with his line of electric semi-trucks.
The trucks were revealed to the world in 2017. Now that it is 2022, there are thousands of these trucks all over the interstates and our supply chain has never been better…
Wait, no, that’s not what happened.
Five years later, and there are exactly ZERO Tesla semis on the road transporting goods. Yet, every couple years or so, Elon loves to remind us that he plans on saving the world, yet again, in just a matter of months. All of his promises are always just around the corner.
Speaking of which, aren’t you glad that most new homes being built in the US have Tesla/SolarCity solar panel shingles? To quote Elon, “all of these homes are solar”, when he showcased the botched product outside of his California home claiming that all of the houses on his street had them installed when they absolutely did not.
As you guessed, that miracle product was also just an illusion.
Actually, it was more of a scam than anything else. See, Elon needed a good reason for his interest in the financially questionable acquisition of SolarCity as it was strapped for cash and about to default on multiple loans.
Most of the folks on the board at Tesla Inc were not too keen on the acquisition, and they couldn’t see a good enough reason for the two companies to merge. In their defense, the two companies aren’t exactly in the same industry. Sure, they both have to do with electricity, but using that logic, Metallica and The Beatles make similar sounding music because both bands use electric guitars.
To get the board interested, he claimed that the two companies were working on a new roofing solution that promised to decrease the cost of new roof installations, decreased electric bills, and of course… eliminate unsightly solar arrays drilled through your roof.
Essentially, it was a shingle that doubled as a solar panel. Or, a solar panel which doubled as a shingle. The idea is actually pretty slick, and I was totally interested back when it was revealed.
The point is, all these years later, and that product simply does not exist.
In fact, I visited the “Gigafactory Buffalo” plant (pictured above) a couple years after it had finished construction. It was an absolutely giant facility with a skeleton crew and what seemed like miles of empty offices and cubicles.
You can even see how empty the parking lot is in the image above!
I sell process instrumentation, and that’s why I was visiting. I also wanted a tour of their production floor (this helps me uncover sales opportunities and learn more about processes in general) but I was told that would not be possible.
I asked if it had to do with any type of security clearance, but that wasn’t it at all. The fact was, there was no plant floor. There was no manufacturing process to be seen there. The building itself, as unbelievable as it sounds, was/is basically a vacant lot of offices which was 100% funded by the taxpayers of New York and costs Elon Musk exactly $1.00/year to lease.
Hopefully you’re starting to see a trend here. Anything that comes out of Elon’s mouth is essentially a lie, or a conflated interpretation of the truth.
In fact, even the stuff about physics that he spews is complete and utter garbage.
But, how could that be?
Well, that would be because he doesn’t have a PhD as most people assume. He was indeed accepted into a PhD program at Stanford University, but he dropped out two days into his first semester.
He is also NOT a licensed engineer. He literally has no real credentials. His credentials are cute little stories he makes up about himself, and people just eat it up!
We didn’t even scratch the surface of all the other ridiculous promises he’s made over the years. Think about it, someone who is supposedly an engineer and physicist thinks it’s a great idea to deploy 42,000 internet satellites in low Earth orbit. That’s about 200 times the number of satellites currently in orbit around the globe…
He has failed to deliver on virtually every promise he has ever made, and now I’m to believe that he wants to own Twitter, and take it private, to “protect free speech”?
So, What’s Next?
What’s going to happen next? Will Elon Musk actually buy Twitter? At the time of the writing of this article, I have no idea if the offer is still valid or not because he has gone back and forth several times. It’s hard, and practically pointless, to keep track at this point.
If you want to dig a bit further into the aforementioned financially questionable acquisition of SolarCity, take some time to watch this video series. It’s a recap of a lawsuit against Elon Musk and Tesla for some potentially fraudulent activity around SolarCity.
After watching that series, the whole Twitter acquisition seems to make a bit more sense, and of course, it’s not for the reasons one might think.
For Twitter, I believe he is going to buy the company at a premium (as he has promised) so that he can take it private. From there, all he has to do is wait for a little while and “make a few changes” that he’s promised. After a few years, he can issue a new IPO, the company will be worth more than it was before, and Elon will make out like a bandit on both ends of the transaction.
Regardless if that happens or not, I don’t think there is a limit to what Elon Musk can accomplish, for better or worse. He has successfully conned millions of people around the world (including me, admittedly) into thinking he is a super genius self-made billionaire who simply wants to help humanity and make us an interplanetary specie.
Because of this character he has carefully developed over the years, most of his fans will simply dismiss anything negative about him. In their minds, even if he does do something bad, all the good things he has done and will do more than make up for any wrongdoing. They are ready to justify his every whim.
Personally, what I think is next for Elon is downright scary. As of today it is actually not possible for Elon Musk to be elected President of the United States as he was not born in the US, but what if he were able to convince people to rewrite that stipulation?
Think about it, during the last year or two, Elon has been cozying right up to the Conservative side of the aisle. He has already made enemies with the Democratic party, and that fact alone may be enough for the Republicans to want to have him run — just to “get the libs”.
He has moved his manufacturing plants from California to Arizona and Texas, and I personally believe that was a publicity stunt to get on the Conservatives’ good side.
And, when you think about it… the whole “freedom of speech on Twitter” argument actually appeals more to Conservative users than to any other user on the platform. Most of the speech that is censored or shadow-banned on the platform leans more to the right (to be clear, I do not agree with that practice, regardless of political affiliation, but the point remains true).
Let’s face it. If Elon were to run for President, he would run as a Republican… just like another con artist we used to know!
I mean, Elon would make for the perfect Politian. He is underqualified, has no idea what he’s talking about, and tells more lies than Donald Trump himself. He even has the same maturity level of Donald Trump if you’ve ever seen anyone try to challenge anything he says.
The point is, there is no telling what’s going to happen next in this crazy world, but I have a bad feeling about any future in which Elon Musk is as powerful and influential as he is now.
Nobody who can manipulate an entire stock exchange with a single Tweet should be given the keys to the castle… again.
What do YOU think?
Is Elon Musk a genius, self-made billionaire, or just another clever con artist living the “American Dream”?
