Musk - worst than a flawed genius?

In response to this Facebook post, by Nikola Danaylov, linking this Current Affairs article...

I feel that Musk has been a necessary catalyst for essential technological changes. Given the major societal problems we have from excessive wealth inequality and corrupt capitalism. (And endemic misplaced belief in the "great man" narrative.) But he's an only-barely-good-enough solution. Like chopping off a gangrenous limb, rather than administering antibiotics in time, etc.

From his public behaviour, he certainly appears to be a narcissist. Reports, via Wired, highlighting his workplace antics (random firings, appalling safety practices, etc). The diver smearing debacle, etc. Even his string of marriages, push me towards agreeing that he might well have diagnosable ASPD/sociopathy/psychopathy. (Any hints of conduct disorder in childhood..?)

I think there's been, in recent years, an encouraging rise in awareness of the characteristics of sociopaths, and the issues that their lack of guilt, empathy, etc, tend to cause. I discovered that an online friend was one, after an incident, and it opened my eyes to them. It let me spot others, like streamers in the gaming community, who later turned out to have also done harm to others.

Our societal conditions have promoted so many ASPD men (overwhelmingly) to the top. I firmly believe Boris Johnson and perhaps all of the UK government's cabinet fit in this category, Dominic Cummings being a very clear example of sociopath. Trump, of course, Bolsonaro and many other heads of state, as well as CEOs, etc. It's extremely worrying. And goes hand in hand with misinformation, as they are naturally skilled manipulators of other's opinions.

This is way I have ambivalence about Musk's repeated references to Bank's Culture novels. I love them and their hopeful (attainable) ideology. But I suspect that it doesn't matter if that means anything to Musk, internally; he knows what appeals to his engineering employees, to capture their enthusiasm. The power of passing cultural references, etc.

Musk's pressing of underground transport tubes for individual cars really struck me as a solution for the 1%, in it's massive inefficiency. (Although, I *am* onboard with fully autonomous transport being a total game changer.) Also interesting to read that linked through article on Starlink being fundamentally limited in it's customer capacity, too. I thought it would be a too-good-to-be-true surprise if it were possible to break with the physics of wireless data transmission, just like that.

►2021-07-07 Addendum: I'd not realised just how massive and rapidly bubbling Musk's personal wealth is... Blue line, compared Ford, MacDonalds and Kazakhstan:

YouTube - Insider News