Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) ❤
No. of Recommendations: 1
Very insightful and what a complicated many faceted character, pure, driven genius.
Enjoyed the chapter about Gates approaching Musk for the Giving Pledge whilst having a large short position on Tesla. Elon didn't like that; apparently Gates lost $1.5bn.
Quote
"Gates is a hypocrite".....
Giving Pledge with a focus on the environment and good for humanity, whilst shorting one of the most successful EV companies.
Gates finally send over his 5 key giving themes, must asks "do you still have a short on Tesla" Gates "Yes" results in a twitter shitstorm.
Neither side gets it.
Grimes , called it a "Dick measuring contest".
No. of Recommendations: 24
"Gates is a hypocrite".....
Giving Pledge with a focus on the environment and good for humanity, whilst shorting one of the most successful EV companies.
I don't get what's hypocritical about that.
Gates (or his investment advisors) thinks Tesla is overvalued (it is) and they short it.
That has nothing to do with the good that Tesla could do. It's just a stock pricing bet.
No. of Recommendations: 0
That's what Gates said (overvalued), Musk said he's a hypocrite. Not my opinion.
Author then states Musk would never short anything that's to the benefit of humanity.
Also similarly discussed about his cutting off of Starlink for use in Crimea which may then be of detriment to humanity and escalate nuclear war.
Gates and Musk also clashed over colonizing Mars Musk see it as an insurance policy for humanity.
Musk thinks very differently and it's fascinating.
No. of Recommendations: 15
No. of Recommendations: 29
Musk is willing to take large risks with no promise of payback until a long time in the future, which very few investors are gutsy enough to do. This approach requires enormous vision and self-confidence and has paid off spectacularly for Musk.
But once you move much beyond that, Musk doesn't impress me as particularly intelligent. The stock shorting comment is but one example. Shorting a stock is not hostile to the company. It is not hypocritical to have an opinion on the stock valuation and also wish to help humanity. That is an illogical conclusion on Musk's part.
In order for Mars to be a lifeboat for humanity, at least of portion of Mars would need to get modified to be nearly identical to Earth. Same gravity, solar wavelengths, same micro-organisms, atmospheric composition, etc. Not only that, all the plants and animals that we need to live need to have their environments closely replicated too. And bringing the things we need with us will cost about $1 million/pound. You don't have to think about this very long or very hard to realize it is infinitely easier and cheaper to simply not screw up Earth in the first place.
Similarly, I'm not very impressed with his flirtations with cryptocurrency, especially Dogecoin which was created to illustrate the absurdity of cryptocurrency. Musk also has a penchant for making predictions that never come true: Full self driving in 2014, millions of robotaxis by 2020, manned missions to Mars by 2024, the Tesla human robot, all kinds of hyperloops and tunnels coming soon, etc. I think he believes those predictions when he makes them. But it seems like the reason his predictions are so consistently wrong is that he's simply not thinking through the problem and therefore not understanding how hard these really problems are.
The jury is still out on the Twitter experiment, but it doesn't seem to be going well for the same reasons. We'll see.
So I wouldn't say "genius" is the right adjective. "Visionary" is probably a better fit.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Fair comment. Should have added "off the wall" genius. Seems to have an intensity like no other.
No. of Recommendations: 4
sykesix
"You don't have to think about this very long or very hard to realize it is infinitely easier and cheaper to simply not screw up Earth in the first place."
Bullseye. A dead center hit on the head of the nail. Why is it that such an obvious truth escapes so many? Some of whom are supposedly credited with advanced critical thinking skills???
