Eccentric Billionaire Unleashes His Inner Trump

[Lexicus]

No one else did the thing to make it happen.

So you're using that fact to conclude that no one else could have?

 

[Ajidica]

Well, as it turns out, whether or not you and every other "urbanist" thinks they're "stupid" (exclusionary, inefficient, etc) has no bearing on their future. Instead, it will be determined by personal preference. Cars are appealing due to their versatility, privacy, and the control they offer the driver. Electric AV technology will make cars even more appealing moving forward. The future will not rely exclusively on rail but rather AV networks, buses, and some rail networks, much like today. But that's not even the real issue with the article which is simply the dumbfounding accusation that any effort to improve cars is counterproductive.

You still take up valuable real-estate in cities with unproductive parking lots if everyone is taking personal cars into the city.
Plus, most people commute along a handful of primary corridors. Using mass transit to get people out of the city to park and ride stations is far more energy efficient than everyone sitting in a couple thousand pounds of steel constantly needing to accelerate and decelerate.

I meant privacy in the basic sense of not being in a crowded/noisy environment on the way to work.

I, for one, prefer taking the bus* instead of driving on my commute. Faster and more comfortable than sitting in stop and go traffic. Stick my earbuds in and feel superior to the silly fools who have to pay for parking downtown. Plus, not driving to work every day lets me get away with having a tiny sports car with fewer creature comforts than an [insert unflattering comparison here]. I can enjoy the car when I take it out on weekends or track it without dealing with the firm ride on the terrible Minnesota roads.
*Though I wish I was still able to take light rail into the city.

No one else did the thing to make it happen.

Did someone replace Hygro with John Galt while I wasn't looking?

 

[Farm Boy]

That seems unlikely. But is he wrong? Do we pay too much in incentives to get our Musks? Too little?

 

[Azem.Ocram]

1. The government is good at blazing trails but the private sector is best at optimization, especially efficiency.
2. Fossil fuels and pollutants should be taxed more in order to internalize the negative externalities from them. Japan has a much higher petroleum/gasoline tax (approximately equal to the negative externalities if not higher) while US consumers benefit off the destruction of petroleum producers.
3. The US government has been spending in a deficit this entire century. What needs to be done is a raise in taxes, especially on the highest earners. Remove the cap on the payroll tax (changing it from being regressive to truly proportional), increase the capital gains tax, force all companies to pay the corporate tax on all profits in the US even if they are offshored (such as Apple saying their US subsidiary takes a loss on selling iPhones because their Irish HQ charges the US subsidiary too much).
3a) A lot of our problems would be solved if the Federal US Government charged (usually local) monopolies and (often national) oligopolies a high percent of profits made from Monopolistic practices (like income tax, have a lower limit (equal to the marginal cost) without taxation and have a graduated tax for charging ever higher amounts over marginal).

 

[Ajidica]

1. The government is good at blazing trails but the private sector is best at optimization, especially efficiency.

The private sector is best at extracting profit from something which is not always the same as efficiency. Conrail in the 1980s springs to mind.

 

[innonimatu]

I wonder how perception of Musk and his companies will change once the first BFR with people on it lands on Mars

You mean the suicide mission? That demonstration will be a good way to cease the wasting of resources on that pipe dream of planetary colonization for the next few decades.

There is literally nothing good you can get on Mars that you cannot get far better here on Earth. Wanting to take humans to Mars makes no sense whatsoever. Planetary colonization makes no sense whatsoever and will never happen barring some kind of fundamental science breakthrough to allow faster-than-light travel for humans.

 

[FriendlyFire]

That seems unlikely. But is he wrong? Do we pay too much in incentives to get our Musks? Too little?

Free Market* Bro !
* Dose not include banks, coal industry, steel industry or US agriculture.

 

[innonimatu]

But public spending didn’t happen, and Musk did the literal work of making a decades old dream viable.

What dream?

There is a reason little progress was made on space exploration in decades: there is nothing appealing out there near us, so why invest on moving there? Some stuff of science fiction, say terraforming Mars, has been exposed as just that: science fiction. The planet lacks more than an atmosphere, it lacks mass. It is too far from the sun. Those are not fixable things. It is inappropriate to biology as it developed on Earth. We gain nothing by trying to set up artificial environments there. Unlike say Australia, which was inhabitable if far way, life on Mars would be hell, for the likely short time it lasted. Humans there doomed to living in prisons, some small contained bases. It's an absurd proposition to waste resources pursing that condemned "dream".

If something is worth investing is, it is fundamental research. If something is worth applying engineering to, it is long-distance space exploration because any breakthrough, any anomaly that may lead to new theoretical finds and perhaps demonstrate a way to travel faster than light, may arise from dealing with those large distances. And dealing with other important fundamental questions (can we ever have fusion? Can we continue to explore small scale physics) can be done either here on Earth, or with robotic systems on space.

Moving stuff to a close planet by rocket? Already done, the science is done. It is not worth the investment on engineering refinements to do it on a larger scale, we won't learn what we need to get to the breakthroughs necessary for the SF dreams to come true. Those require getting to other stars. It may actually be impossible.

That seems unlikely. But is he wrong? Do we pay too much in incentives to get our Musks? Too little?

I suspect you do. He demonstrated how not to build a car (those battery fires will kill it, after they kill enough occupants, and close enough roads for too long), how not to build a factory (we'll automate everything and who our older competitors in the dust! oh wait, it doesn't work, who'd have know?), how not to produce solar panels...

He does seem to have demonstrated usable rockets that may save something in materials. I'm taking hobbs' assertion that those are useful and save something over the disposable alternatives. Nevertheless it is somewhat strange to see all this enthusiast in shooting more rockets into the sky while the whole world is paying lip service to a "global warming" scare. The energy spent in rocket launches, tourism travel, worldwide shipping, does have atmospheric impacts, and is not strictly speaking indispensable for people to have a good living standards. Yet more and more keeps being used.

 

[warpus]

There is literally nothing good you can get on Mars that you cannot get far better here on Earth.

They used to say the same thing about America you know

 

[inthesomeday]

New to this thread. What exactly did Musk do to make this happen, aside any evaluation of its merits as an actual thing to be celebrated?

 

[adcarrymaokai]

This article doesn't prove anything other than that its author happens to view rail as the future, not cars. That's actually a debatable premise, believe it or not.

I mean, I agree with you. Cars are convenient, and many people in California prefer them. However, you live in LA and realize than more cars, electric or not, won't make transportation better. LA traffic problem is two-fold: poisonous emissions and congestion. Electric cars solve the first problem (if it isn't too late), but they don't address the second. Now, everywhere else in the world, and even on the East Coast, many people don't even have a driver's license because they can get anywhere on foot or by public transit. It's not unimaginable. Cities in China and Japan are bigger, yet they manage to efficiently move people around because culturally it's more acceptable to take public transit. Same applies to New York and some other East Coast cities, where people simply don't own cars.

I understand Californians will debate the usefulness of cars, but if we had a better replacement, people would still use it. Think about Uber: it's not used very much around the world but is in high demand in California. Why? Because there are no poor public transit options, and people don't want to drive anywhere. I have traveled around the world, and people hardly use Uber anywhere else because they have local options. They simply don't need it.

Between the conference announcements and the flashy live-streamed launches, people seem to forget (or never realize) that SpaceX actually does something. That is, it launches communications satellites for companies such as Iridium and the nation of Bangladesh. That is a business.

SpaceX is probably the only successful venture of his, but it's still very niche, if you ask me. That's not some Thomas Edison level revolutionizing of the public life.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I, for one, prefer taking the bus* instead of driving on my commute. Faster and more comfortable than sitting in stop and go traffic. Stick my earbuds in and feel superior to the silly fools who have to pay for parking downtown

You and I would get along great I feel Got my driver's license six years ago and have driven like four or five times since. I either walk or take the bus/metro/tram/sub/train/car sharing.

 

[Lexicus]

You and I would get along great I feel Got my driver's license six years ago and have driven like four or five times since. I either walk or take the bus/metro/tram/sub/train/car sharing.

I let my license expire last year and haven't gotten it renewed because I never drive anymore. I ride my bike to work or when the weather's too bad I take the subway.

 

[Ajidica]

You and I would get along great I feel Got my driver's license six years ago and have driven like four or five times since. I either walk or take the bus/metro/tram/sub/train/car sharing.

I'm not that good at taking public transit! I'm perfectly happy driving unless I'm heading into the city. I hate urban driving with a burning passion.

 

[luiz]

I let my license expire last year and haven't gotten it renewed because I never drive anymore. I ride my bike to work or when the weather's too bad I take the subway.

I'm not that good at taking public transit! I'm perfectly happy driving unless I'm heading into the city. I hate urban driving with a burning passion.

Yes urban driving sucks and taking public transport to work makes more sense (at least until you're rich enough to have a driver ), but I cannot understand grown men without a driver's license. Driving around the country side, visiting small villages and crossing natural parks is one of the great pleasures in life.

So I'll keep my cars.

 

[Farm Boy]

I suspect you do. He demonstrated how not to build a car (those battery fires will kill it, after they kill enough occupants, and close enough roads for too long), how not to build a factory (we'll automate everything and who our older competitors in the dust! oh wait, it doesn't work, who'd have know?), how not to produce solar panels.

It's possible that we do. It's going to be a value judgement. But I'm pretty wary of arguments against learning for learning's sake. Though I'm probably friendlier towards not saying we should use everything we learn.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Driving around the country side, visiting small villages and crossing natural parks is one of the great pleasures in life.

I go hiking. It's healthy, you see a lot more and it doesn't actively destroy this planet. You don't need a car to do.. Any of those things you mentioned. But yes, having a driver's license is essential for those "just-in-case" moments.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I go hiking. It's healthy, you see a lot more and it doesn't actively destroy this planet. You don't need a car to do.. Any of those things you mentioned. But yes, having a driver's license is essential for those "just-in-case" moments.

Not to mention, just getting to some of those parks requires a car or motorcycle. Although i suppose if you have enough free time you could take a bicycle.....

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Not to mention, just getting to some of those parks requires a car or motorcycle. Although i suppose if you have enough free time you could take a bicycle.....

Depends heavily on the country. In most of central Europe you can get even to the tiniest city by train or bus. In America I'm sure there are many national parks you can only reach by car, but the reason for that is that public transportation in the US sucks ***.

 

[Zkribbler]

There is literally nothing good you can get on Mars that you cannot get far better here on Earth.

I 99% agree with you.

However, Musk's motivation for going to Mars is to make humanity a multi-planet species. That way, if Earth is destroyed, humanity will live on.