# Great Piece from Bloomberg Opinion "Money Stuff" by Matt Levine



## Eric714 (Feb 16, 2019)

Here's a great excerpt from https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...ant-the-good-stocks-in-the-index?srnd=opinion

BloombergOpinion
Money Stuff


 Matt Levine

 
*A metaphor*
Yesterday Tesla Inc. unveiled its astonishing Cybertruck, a "large metallic trapezoid" that looks like it was designed by people who give things names starting with "cyber." It looks like someone whittled the crude outline of a car and then stopped. It looks like an 8-bit video game. It is amazing and I want one; it makes me want to throw out all of my pretty Apple devices and replace them with clunky angular metallic cyberpunk monstrosities. I would 1,000% buy a Tesla smartphone designed by the people who made this thing; it would weigh 15 pounds and the sharp corners would cut holes in my pockets, but I'd feel like an intergalactic bounty hunter every time I texted someone.
Anyway also this happened:
In the demo, Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen initially took a sledgehammer to the truck, which withstood the impact. Then it all went wrong.
Von Holzhausen took a metallic ball in his right hand, wound up and tossed it at the truck -- smashing the front driver-side window, stunning the audience and viewers live streaming the event.
"Oh my f---ing god," Musk said, when the window broke.
"Maybe that was a little too hard," Musk said after the ball cracked the glass. So they tried again. A second test broke a second window.​It's the Tesla way, isn't it?

Elon Musk announces that everything is great and nothing can possibly go wrong.
Then he throws stuff at Tesla until it breaks.
Brief awkward pause, some swearing.
He does it again.
He's so great. I make fun of Elon Musk a lot, but that's only because he's fun a lot! The other day I was reading David Graeber's 2012 essay about superheroes, in which he writes:
These "heroes" are purely reactionary, in the literal sense. They have no projects of their own, at least not in their role as heroes .... In fact, superheroes seem almost utterly lacking in imagination: like Bruce Wayne, who with all the money in the world can't seem to think of anything to do with it other than to indulge in the occasional act of charity; it never seems to occur to Superman that he could easily carve free magic cities out of mountains.
Almost never do superheroes make, create, or build anything. The villains, in contrast, are endlessly creative. They are full of plans and projects and ideas. Clearly, we are supposed to first, without consciously realizing it, identify with the villains. After all, they're having all the fun. ​People often compare Musk to a comic-book supervillain (though they even more often compare him to Iron Man), and of course he is occasionally villainous, but really the point of the comparison is mostly just that he is so _busy_. In a movie, if an eccentric billionaire was building tunnels under the earth and sending rockets to Mars, it would be part of a nefarious plan to destroy the world. But no, he just likes tunnels and rockets!"I'm going to build a cartoon truck and then throw metal balls at it until it breaks!" What? Why? Who does that? Elon Musk does that! I'm so glad he does.

Nailed it.


----------



## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

The best fictional comparison for Musk (and I don't mean this in any sort of political way) is Hank Rearden.


----------



## SalisburySam (Jun 6, 2018)

DocScott said:


> The best fictional comparison for Musk (and I don't mean this in any sort of political way) is Hank Rearden.


Although it's been a very long time since reading _Atlas Shrugged_, I don't recall the word "fun" being used by Hank or anyone describing him. But otherwise, yes, similarities.


----------

