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points by bunderbunder 1 day ago | 0 comments

It’s slightly amazing how persistent the Elon hype is. Quite a few of those problems are at least partially due to own goals that Musk himself has been scoring.

I realize that some of it is just a cult of personality, and that part will be unusually sticky because of things like cognitive dissonance. But that can’t be all of it. My next best guess is a bunch of it is a whole bunch of institutional investors are privately thinking these companies are way too risky, but keep it to themselves because it’s not their money they’re putting on the line and taking a contrarian position would risk angering a presumably vocal subset of clients of unknown size. Which isn’t a great way to make yourself popular with your boss.

[–] brightball 1 day ago

If he had delivered Neuralink alone, the hype would be valid. Doing that...plus SpaceX, Tesla, Boring, etc.

The biggest knock on him is that he says something will happen at a certain time and then it comes later. Even the sub-$30k EV. Cybercabs cost < $30k.

[–] turtlesdown11 18 hours ago

What "hype" has been delivered by the Boring Company?

[–] archagon 1 day ago

No, the biggest knock against him is how he caused hundreds of thousands of people in the third world to die from sudden cutoff of food and medicine. This will never be forgiven or forgotten.

[–] FeepingCreature 1 day ago

No seriously, this actually didn't happen. That one website is a "model" and simply doesn't account at all for the fact that most of the critical parts of USAID were picked up by other US aid programs.

It looked like it might happen for a bit! And it is quite bad of course that that could have happened! But it didn't.

[–] archagon 1 day ago

Yes, it fucking happened. These people have names and reputable journalists on the ground talked to the grieving family members of the deceased: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2026/07/how-pulitzer-final..., https://www.propublica.org/series/the-end-of-aid

I have read multiple articles to the same effect from other publications. Aid got cut off instantly (to the extent that supply trucks were left without gasoline), people could not access medicine and food that they needed to survive, and then they died, horribly. That was just ground zero.

Get out of your bubble before you destroy yourself.

[–] FeepingCreature 1 day ago

Yes, people died. People did not die at the scale reported.

edit: Okay fine, I'll rephrase it. There is no convincing evidence at this point of mass deaths. It's entirely speculative on the basis, frankly, of assumptions we know to be wrong.

[–] olelele 21 hours ago

Seriously my dude, this is not a hill to die on.

[–] FeepingCreature 11 hours ago

Please by all means! I was behind the 700k number for months before I read the fine print and the SA mortality stats. Please give me better data.

[–] brightball 1 day ago

That did not happen…

[–] archagon 1 day ago

It did. Go ask your LLMs about it if you don't believe me.

[–] brightball 1 day ago

Confirmed. Those numbers come from models and estimates but are not supported by anything that actually happened on the ground. Funding was transferred to the state department.

[–] archagon 1 day ago

It looks like you're pretty bad at prompting. Here, let me help you out: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2026/07/how-pulitzer-final...

(I literally just asked Gemini "how many deaths are verified to be caused directly by the sudden shutdown of usaid?" to find some articles I had read featuring actual journalists tracking deaths on the ground.)

[–] FeepingCreature 1 day ago

This is literally an interview that doesn't even list a number with a source. The one number it lists is a self-declared estimate of 700k deaths of which it sources three (3).

[–] misiti3780 1 day ago

Trump did that, not Elon. The president is the only one with the power to cut that aid. Sure, he was the "face" of it but Trump signed the EOs

[–] afavour 1 day ago

Elon proposed it and implemented it. Yes, Trump signed off on it but by that logic no one in the Trump administration is guilty of anything other than Trump himself, which we all know is not true.

[–] UltraSane 1 day ago

Elon actually bragged about destroying USAID on Twitter.

"We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead."

This is the richest man in the world being GLEEFUL abut destroying an organization that helps the poorest people in the world. Musk is basically Ebenezer Scrooge.

In an interview when asked about it he insisted their was vast amounts of fraud in USAID.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886307316804263979?lang=en

[–] scottyah 1 day ago

USAID was a pretty evil organization that was founded and used to bribe warring organizations under the guise of humanitarianism.

[–] sirtaj 55 minutes ago

It was definitely a mixed blessing, but I had a close relative (a local, not an American) who worked with them in some poor countries for some years. The verdict was, yes, it's pretty clearly a CIA front, but they also did some real and serious humanitarian work.

[–] archagon 1 day ago

Whatever USAID is guilty of, it is indisputable that thousands of people died from aid being suddenly cut off without a tapering period. You can find many news articles talking to people on the ground that confirm this.

[–] UltraSane 1 day ago

What does "bribe warring organizations " even mean?

[–] scottyah 10 hours ago

It was formed during the cold war to mingle in the proxy wars. We sent guns to the militias, and basically bribed towns and villages (by selective donations) to come to the USA's side. It's basically a mechanism to pay off warlord bribe demands.

[–] MisterMower 1 day ago

The money was ostensibly used for noble purposes but usually ended up funding unsavory characters or organizations that are actually at cross purposes with stated US goals. A lot of humanitarian aid we send to the Middle Eastfor example, ends up in the hands of terrorists.[1]

1. https://oig.usaid.gov/node/7283

[–] throwitaway222 1 day ago

MrBeast did more for people in Africa than USAID ever did. The only thing USAID tents were used for was filming ISIS videos.

[–] archagon 1 day ago

The man who fires the gun is just as culpable as the man who makes the plan. And boy, did Musk enjoy playing executioner! He acted with gleeful, reckless abandon and gloated about “taking a chainsaw” to USAID. And as I recall, they shoved Rubio in front of the cameras only after Musk's illegal rampage already happened, as a sort of fig leaf.

[–] mahboi 1 day ago

Most people don't even pay attention to what he announces, myself included. It happens if/when it happens. I got on a plane and had fast internet for the first time thanks to Starlink, that's great. But when someone at work is telling me about his "FSD" car, sure, show me it going around the block while we sit in the back.

[–] bunderbunder 1 day ago

All of those are debatable at best from a business perspective.

Neuralink is still in clinical trials. So it hasn’t actually been delivered yet, and there’s no actual guarantee that it will be.

From a certain perspective, SpaceX’s launch business was an effort to create an airline in space. And that’s exactly what they did, profit margins and all.

Starlink is looking good right now, but its profits seem to be heavily propped up by crony capitalism, a system that the US electorate arguably voted against in a big way earlier this week. Plus, their up-and-coming competition was recently handed a gift beyond their wildest dreams, courtesy of Elon Musk, in the form of a clear demonstration that dependence on SpaceX is a major strategic liability.

The AI bit, well… yeah.

Tesla has had some past greatness, but, as I mentioned above, all of their recent misfortune is wholly or partially the fault of its own CEO. Worse, many of the minds more directly behind past successes have left the company. Investment is about future prospects, not past glory.

Boring Company’s greatest commercial success thus far is the Las Vegas loop. That’s all that needs to be said about that.

[–] brightball 1 day ago

Neuralink

Speech Restoration - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2100342084011978896

Controlling a Power Wheelchair - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2080405463649100114

Playing Games - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2057943187746849002

Using a computer & drawing a signature - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2057222230807830948

Painting with a Robotic Arm - https://x.com/neuralink/status/2055351348728668340

[–] bunderbunder 1 day ago

But again, from a business perspective this is all just PoCs, not products delivered to market. There’s a whole gauntlet, including a very difficult and expensive regulatory approval process, between all of it and a successfully delivered product that can start generating ROI.

[–] scottyah 1 day ago

Hah, and what, pray tell, has bunderbunder done to so casually dismiss the thousands of engineers pushing the boundaries of physics in almost every single one of those companies?

[–] bunderbunder 1 day ago

You have completely missed the point. I never said a single word about whether or not engineers have engineered. I’m talking partially about whether Musk’s companies merit the valuations they’re getting, and partially about whether the investor goodwill that Musk’s companies receive is merited.

Furthermore, what exactly are you getting at, anyway? If I just uncritically gave all my money to anyone who I think might have hired people who are better at mechanical engineering than I am, then I would have no money.

[–] rplnt 1 day ago

> and then it comes later

Ignoring dozens if not hundreds of promises that never came. You can't wait forever.

[–] mahboi 1 day ago

You can in fact wait forever if you're not investing money in the company

[–] Geezus_42 1 day ago

What did useful thing has Boring done?

[–] sho 1 day ago

> a whole bunch of institutional investors are privately thinking these companies are way too risky

What's that saying? "In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone"?