Elon Musk, an Industrialist For the 21st Century 89
pacopico writes "Elon Musk has just come off a pretty amazing run. SpaceX docked with the ISS. Tesla has started selling its all-electric luxury sedan, and SolarCity just filed to go public. Bloomberg Businessweek spent a few days with Musk and got a look inside his insane factories in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. It's like Willy Wonka time for geeks. Among the other proclamations in the story is Musk saying that he intends to die on Mars. 'Just not on impact.' Musk then goes on to describe a fifth mode of transportation he's calling the Hyperloop."
A great lad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cool but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool but I don't think it's fair to call him an industrialist.
So far, none of his ventures have made money.
I'll accept that critisism as soon as you can explain to me what is so worthwhile about gaining increasingly more value and wealth? He's already rich. Does it matter if he is turning a profit if he is able to continue doing many great things?
Re:Cool but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cool but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cool but... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he's making money he's an industrialist.
If he's not then he's a philanthropist.
I think GP is merely arguing the word choice that's all.
These two aren't antonyms, nor even mutually exclusive. I would agree that profit-seeking is a nearly ubiquitous goal of industrialists, but that is not the defining characteristic. Being involved in industry is.
Being an "industrialist" doesn't require seeking a profit anymore than a "business" requires profit. There are certainly "non-profit businesses", and the phrase "non-profit industry" should be familiar to most here.
Industrialists don't have to be robber barons in order to be industrialists.
Re:Cool but... (Score:-1, Insightful)
what is so worthwhile about gaining increasingly more value and wealth
- OK, ask yourself a question: is it worthwhile building industries that are self-sustainable or just running welfare projects, personal pet projects that can only last due to subsidies and are not sustainable on their own?
Is it really hard to understand that a business that makes profits and not losses is the business that is going to survive? Is it better to build a business that survives by investing into it or is it better to build a temporary play ground that only misallocates scarce resources to something that is not market oriented and so cannot be sustained in the long run?
If you cannot answer this question, then you won't understand the problem with yours.
Re:A great lad (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not fair play - it's required by the government whose teat he's sucking at.