Perhaps it's time to defend Elon Musk

Elon Musk has been a prime target, Public Enemy #1, facing off against Big Oil, Big Auto, and Big Aerospace. He lives in the crosshairs of the Mainstream Media, Short Sellers, and Twitter Trolls. Yet, regardless of the ongoing FUD, an army of supporters have attempted to fight back. Recently an award-winning author, Douglas Coupland, has joined the fray with a brilliant editorial in The Guardian.  

Above: Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Flickr: OnInnovation)

First, it's worth recognizing that whether or not you like Elon Musk, he's done a lot of good for the air we breathe. Coupland writes, "Musk pretty much single-handedly shamed and forced the global auto industry to accelerate the electric car rollout by seven to 10 years. Yet people kvetch, and it makes me wonder if there is something fundamentally flawed about our era that it is almost impossible to get people to say something nice about pretty much anyone else."

And in an age of divisive politricks, Elon doesn't fit neatly into any box. "The left doesn’t like him because he doesn’t fund them or show interest in their causes. And the right doesn’t like him because he messes around with the stock market and doesn’t take classical capitalism seriously," writes Coupland.

"For example, he thinks short selling the stock market should be banned. Musk donates to Democrats and Republicans only because it’s the cost of having a voice in government. He seems to see left versus right as an obsolete binary and instead focuses his altruistic energies on ecology and invention," he adds.

Fact: he's smarter than you, get over it. "Musk has a huge IQ. He is measurably, scientifically, clinically and demonstrably the smartest person in any room anywhere. He can tell you the square root of your Amex card number at a glance. He can tell you, I don’t know – the square root of zinc. He has mild Asperger’s, which prevents him from snagging on details and talking himself out of trying new things. He’s a perfect storm," says Coupland. 

Okay... but isn't all that tweeting about crypto kinda sketchy? According to Coupland, "Cryptocurrency does seem to be the one topic where Musk genuinely enjoys messing with people’s minds – as well as with stock market regulators. I suspect that he doesn’t have a stand on crypto at all – my guess is that he sees cryptocurrencies as being interesting simply because they exist at all, like Klein bottles or those Japanese Kit-Kats in flavors such as pumpkin or green tea."

In the end, does Elon Musk even care about all these haters? Perhaps he's too busy to care. Coupland concludes, "[Elon] isn’t trying to save the world, only to make it better. Musk has created three multibillion-dollar companies in four profoundly difficult fields in which to create anything. And these companies are successful, usually without help from the people we once considered gatekeepers. Like lots of people who do lots of things, he’s too busy for elaborate introspection."

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Source: The Guardian