The US “Time” (Time) published a cover article saying that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s amazing move to buy Twitter and take it private has made his views on politics, society and human discourse a a pressing question.
Musk, who will soon take control of the world’s most influential social media platform, claims he’s in the business not for profit, but for the good of society. He said an inclusive arena for free speech was important, but did not answer how such a platform could be achieved.
In addition, Musk also avoided answering the current state of democracy in the United States, and also explained a question from the side: why his political position is so elusive and why his purpose is always widely misunderstood. It also helps explain why he wants to buy Twitter.
Many people hate Musk because he maintains a rogue and hateful public image. On Twitter, where he has more than 80 million followers, he intersperses silly or provocative remarks with memes about sci-fi or computer chips.
His friend Bill Lee (who claims to have initially convinced Musk to buy Twitter) said that Musk’s emergence as “probably the most viral social influencer ever” was accidental, not intentional, he believes It’s a way to vent your anger and connect directly with people.
Musk often expressed it in a detrimental way: referring to a heroic cave diver as a “pedo guy” (pedo, but Musk later explained, meant “creepy old man”, used to insulting a person’s appearance and behavior, with no sexual connotations), vulgarly mocking a senator’s photo on Twitter. His tweets got him into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which sued him in 2018 for misleading investors.
In fact, Musk usually doesn’t care much about other people’s feelings, as his own brother Kimba put it: “In business, he’s an expert, but he doesn’t have the talent to ’empathize with people’ .”
What matters, however, is not whether Musk is a nice person, but what does he want from this $44 billion platform? In trying to decipher Musk’s motives, people on both sides of the aisle appear to be getting it wrong.
Misunderstandings about Musk
Many liberals in the United States believe that Musk is a greedy profiteer who deals with the government to maximize his interests and avoid responsibility. But most of Musk’s billions are on paper, not hoarded overseas, reflecting investors’ valuation of Tesla.
If he sometimes pays little or no federal taxes, it’s mostly because the U.S. tax system taxes personal income, not personal wealth (like stocks).
Ron Wyden, a liberal U.S. senator, said: “The scam is legal here.” So those who think Musk should pay more in taxes Man should blame the tax code, not him.
Furthermore, Musk doesn’t seem interested in getting rich, except as a means of fulfilling his ambitions for humanity. He’s pushed himself to the brink of bankruptcy on multiple occasions, as in 2008 when he took out his own money to help Tesla through a tough time. He considers himself an engineer and is annoyed at being described as an “investor”. Tesla was said to be the only publicly traded stock he owned before his bid for Twitter.
Another misconception about Musk is that his company is deceiving the U.S. government. In 2010, Tesla received a $465 million U.S. federal loan, but that was a few years after Musk poured millions into the company. Tax credits for electric vehicles have also been a source of profits for Tesla over the years. But even if it’s really impossible for Tesla to succeed without government help, it’s odd to hear liberals in the U.S. criticize the deployment of public funds to encourage environmental innovation.
SpaceX has also received billions of dollars in government funding through NASA contracts, even though the company has had to rely on Musk himself and his pockets to get through its infancy. Arguably, Musk’s innovations in rocket design have saved taxpayers billions of dollars. For example, the cost of American astronauts traveling to the International Space Station is greatly reduced.
American liberals have also taken issue with Musk’s corporate leadership, blasting him for disregarding public health and safety. Of course, there is some truth to this criticism. In 2020, as the pandemic raged, Musk ignored requests from local public health authorities to keep his factories open, putting workers at risk.
In addition, Tesla is facing lawsuits over working conditions, including allegations of sexual harassment and racial abuse. In February, the California Fair Employment Agency claimed the electric car company had tolerated “rampant racism” for years and allowed widespread discrimination, a claim Tesla denies. While Musk himself has not been accused of harassing employees, the work climate at his company must be blamed on him.
Moreover, Tesla has been boycotting unions, which seems to have led the Biden administration to praise GM and other EV “laters” while ignoring Musk’s contributions.
The contempt annoys Musk, and for good reason: A U.S. company (Tesla) has become a world leader in an industry critical to the climate future (electric vehicles), but the U.S. president seems overly grateful for his politics Allies (GM, etc.) without acknowledging, let alone celebrating, Musk’s success.
ideal futurist
Musk dislikes U.S. government regulation, seeing it as bureaucratic suppression of innovation. He has said he thinks the U.S. budget deficit is out of control and is worrying. He also expressed his opposition to the harsh “woke” culture that dominates liberal discourse.
His explanation for the Twitter acquisition centered on concerns about free speech in the U.S. resonated with conservatives who see themselves under scrutiny from the Twitter platform, especially Trump. All of this has led many on the American right to side with Musk. So before the deal was struck, a group of Republican congressmen sent a letter to Twitter’s board purportedly threatening a congressional investigation if Musk’s takeover bid was rejected.
Today, conservatives celebrating his takeover of Twitter may mistakenly see him as an ally, even though Musk is a staunch supporter of Obama, who stood in line for six hours to shake hands with the former president. After Trump was elected, Musk agreed to serve on two presidential advisory committees (Strategy and Policy Forum and Manufacturing Jobs Initiative), but he lasted less than six months, resigning from both committees in June 2017. to protest the government’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
In addition, Musk has been careful to remain neutral on some issues, including the Texas abortion bill, angering those who believe he is morally obligated to take a stand. But his positions on many key public policy issues appear largely progressive.
Musk sees himself as transcending the political divide between the American left and right. It’s a perspective that has propelled his career: a refusal to choose one or the other, and to think in new ways.
One thing critics have overlooked about Musk is that he’s not just another businessman moving money between ledgers.
When he took over Tesla, engineers and investors had been working for decades to make electric cars viable; Musk had the vision to back a new battery design and the courage to go all out when many doubted it would work to go. When he started SpaceX, the U.S. had effectively abandoned the space race it once dominated; Musk taught himself rocket technology and invented spacecraft from scratch.
There may not be much consensus among American liberals and conservatives, but almost everyone sees that the “digital public square” (the open platform represented by Twitter) has seriously collapsed. It’s unclear what ideas Musk will bring to the challenge, after in a statement announcing the acquisition he proposed “enhancing the product with new capabilities, making algorithms open-source to increase trust, defeating spam bots, and making a All humans authenticate.” If fixing social media was easy, someone would have done it already.
Musk is an ideal futurist, too preoccupied with his grand ambitions and ignoring the sordid details of governance.
The lesson of Musk’s career is to take his ambitions seriously. He was rich not because he played with the American system, but because he was a genius who used his incredible willpower to mobilize resources and pursue his ideas. He’s been working on what he believes to be humanity’s biggest problems, and as he recently put it, he’s decided that “having the most trusted and broadly inclusive public platform is extremely important to the future of civilization.” Now, Musk has chosen him The next puzzle you want to solve.
Source: Sina.com
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