this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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This fucking dude could have spent <$1M hiring a small team to spin up a heavily customized X-branded Mastodon server, but instead he spent $44 BILLION dollars buying and ruining Twitter.
How fucking crazy is that? That's fucking crazy... right?
this is the guy who decided to build a tunnel under LA to skip traffic and then instead built one in las vegas that gets traffic jams
wait he actually built that?
yes but he built it in las vegas. It has a few stops and relies on teslas, each with a driver, and it functions as a very basic "public transit" system. Almost none of what he initially promised are present in the final design. Originally it was going to be his "hyperloop" thing. Then it was "autonomous vehicles." Now it's "teslas driven by people"
This makes the most sense. Man he's trying really hard to not admit that a subway works pretty well, isn't he?
Haha you are right, he did try to reinvent the subway!
And any of the problems he mentioned could basically be fixed by spending -more- on public transit, rather than less… with the exception of it leaving from wherever you want and there being other people (though the more they run, the fewer people need to take each).
That's what bugs me about all of his "inventions", is that they aren't really new ideas, or even if they are they're wildly expensive for the benefits. Cities like Vegas look at him and thought "Oh wow finally we'll solve traffic with these new ideas!" when really they just need to invest in actual proven infrastructure like subways and commuter rail.
It's well known that Elon pitched the hyperloop in California because he wanted to kill California's high speed rail, because he'd rather have people buy Teslas then have an inexpensive fast way to travel between cities. He delayed the project for years over his wild claims, and people are still hesitant to it thanks to his selfishness.