What has the world come to when people actually think Zuckerberg is the lesser of two evils.
Musk is starting to look like a bit of an asshole, but Zuckerberg is the king of assholes.
Where would the EV market be without Musk buying Tesla? The Prius hybrid would probably still be the most electric thing on the market.
Where would private space exploration without his founding of SpaceX? We would still be waiting for the next US President to cancel their predecessor’s NASA plans and make new plans.
Where would be without Zuckerberg? Probably using a myspace clone with a lot more UI flexibility and crazy banner ads.
Musk put self-driving EV cars on the road and William Shatner in space. Zuckerberg convinced people to give them their data then monetized it and used that knowledge against them.
My opinion on that is that someone would’ve done what musk have money for at some point as well. All of those companies were mostly rehashed concepts that became viable due to faster computers, better materials, and better battery technology. I usually don’t say this about actual inventions made by scientists and engineers, but most of the time billionaires just provide a concept and daddy’s money and that really doesn’t take a lot of skills that I think are worth anything.
That is the thing though, everyone knew someone should be doing what Musk did but no one with real money actually was. Even if he is just the money and the direction and doesn’t help figure a single thing out, he is still the driving force.
Should he be necessary in a perfect society? Of course not. In the society we have though, he was instrumental in pointing Space Travel, EV, and to a lesser degree self-driving in the direction many people were hoping it would go.
The reality is that after he became wealthy enough for most people to want to retire he risked it all to do a couple of good things at an important time. Even if he only did it for the chance to make more money, I am still glad he did it.
