In Musk We Trust

We would be doing the future an injustice if we did not include Elon Musk in the discussion. The guy has basically been the poster boy for the future for the last decade.

Some even say he’s “from the future”. <insert spooky music>

In all seriousness, Elon has constantly pushed the envelope in revolutionizing each of the industries he jumps into. Elon Musk has become a common household name; practically synonymous with the future of technology.

There’s no two ways about it, Elon Musk has been a driving force in slowly changing the ‘old world’ landscape into a fresh new future.

The question is:

Should we be relying on just one person to bring about a hopeful future?

Table of Contents show

The Hyperloop: On My Radar

The date was August 13^th, 2013, it was a Tuesday (I cheated – I looked it up). I get to my 6’ x 12’ cubicle, fire up my work computer, and load the yahoo homepage. (I’m dating myself here, I know.)

It started out just like every other workday morning with some time to myself, since everyone in the office was still half asleep at 7am. I’m not a morning person, so my coworkers also knew not to bother me before 8:30.

Scrolling through, one of the articles caught my eye. “Elon Musk has An Idea that could Revolutionize the Transportation System”.

I was intrigued to say the least.

It was a short article, without much substance, summarizing this thing called the “Hyperloop”.

Apparently, the hyperloop was a combination of an air hockey table, a bank drive thru tube, and a train that would transport people from LA to San Francisco in half an hour… What the heck?!?!

Up to this point, I had heard of this guy, Elon Musk, in passing. He was the guy who was making the cool electric cars and building space rockets. At the time, to me, none of these ventures looked like they were going to take off in a big way. (no pun intended)

I did a little more digging and hit gold!I found a download of the entire hyperloop proposal right there for public viewing as a PDF! I quickly looked at what was on my plate for the work day and prioritized things.

It took me all of 40 minutes to get my work done for the day and push off the non-priority crap to the following day. I was a very effective employee.

With an open day ahead of me – I could now get down to business. I settled in with a hot chocolate for some light reading into the inner workings of this “hyperloop”.

Four hours later….

Holy crap, it could work!

I love travelling, but I hate air travel. Well, let me back up a minute. I HATE airports and everything associated with them. And putting aside the fact that air travel is one of the worst of humanity’s carbon emission activities, the actual ‘flying’ part isn’t too bad.

But, to travel FAST in a sustainably carbon neutral hyperloop “pod” … blew my mind!

After that, I was on a hyperloop kick for a month. What an ingenious idea!

Unfortunately, that bubble burst fairly quickly when Mr. Musk told the public that the concept was in our hands now. We could do whatever we wanted with the idea to make it a reality.

And of course, we all know how that goes…

There currently are only a few hyperloop prototypes and startup companies, but that’s about it.

Where is the LA to Vegas route we were promised?

Or for that matter, California was going to build a $100 billion Mag Lev train from San Francisco to LA. (That still hasn’t broken ground either, as far as I’m aware.) Elon’s hyperloop proposal claimed it could traverse through the same corridor for roughly 1/10^th of the cost with lower travel times and faster speeds.

Alas, a hyperloop future isn’t upon us yet. Even though there’s still no real hyperloop for the public, we can still hope that somewhere down the… pipeline, we’ll be travelling in pods!

Tesla: Driving Change

First off, in hindsight, I look back and want to kick my ass for not buying some Tesla stock.

Right now, Elon has his hands full, between Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company, Neuralink, Twitter, and whatever else will tickle his fancy in a few months.

Putting aside all the current… drama, this guy has his hands in so many different arenas. He’s consistently working 80 to 120-hour weeks between all his endeavors.

I’m not going to lie, I was a pretty big fanboy for a while; A Musketeer, if you will.

Finally! A guy who was actually making ‘it’ happen. And by ‘it’, I mean The Future. Something I take a little bit of an interest in. (See: THIS ENTIRE WEBSITE)

Because the world needs people like you – who care.

Join the Movement!

Get access to “The Vault” with our free resources to create a better tomorrow. Plus, be the first to know about any Future news!

Overall, I am still a fan and applaud his drive and vision. But now, I feel kind of sorry for him. He places this huge burden on himself. I think it’s in his nature – that unquenchable drive, but mark my words, it’s got to be taking a toll on him.

Who is his backup? Is there a succession plan? Who is the assistant to the self-proclaimed “TechnoKing” of Tesla?

His principles on the environment, sustainability, and the need to convert to renewable energy used to be spot on. (check out this video for his perspective.)

In a nutshell, he reasoned that society has to accelerate the use of renewable energy on both fronts: consumption and production. We’re going to run out of fossil fuels eventually anyway; and, in the process, we’re catastrophically contaminating the environment and our ecosystems by using fossil fuels.

I’m paraphrasing, but I couldn’t agree more.

With the advent of Tesla, Elon Musk focused on the consumption side of the equation; specifically, the transportation sector. He definitely had a pretty daunting road ahead of him in tackling the fossil fuel behemoth that is our civilization. But tackle it, he did, head-on.

It seemed like an impossible feat at the time, yet, 20 years later, Tesla appears to be thriving for the most part.

Even now, Tesla is still only a small fish in a big ocean [of car manufacturers]. Still, you have to give the guy credit, I think we can all agree that history will eventually look back and give Musk praise for bringing electric vehicle use to the masses.

Every car manufacture is now slowly producing less fossil fuel vehicles in favor of electric cars. Tesla’s competitors are moving in the right direction, albeit, too slowly.

The “Tesla effect” is too hard to ignore now. If they don’t transform, they’ll lose their customer base, since the market pressure seems to be in favor of “going electric”. (But, I’m no economist.)

Unfortunately, I hate to burst the proverbial Tesla bubble, but the electricity that powers their electric cars is not produced solely from ‘green’ renewable sources. 80% of the electricity produced in the US is from fossil fuel plants.

Additionally, most of the electricity used to manufacture the cars are not from entirely clean renewables either. Only 12% of the electricity supplied by “the grid” are from renewable power sources.

So regrettably, we’re still not doing enough to combat climate change. We need to totally overhaul how our civilization operates, not just a small slice of the transportation sector. We need to completely reimagine our world from the ground up.

SolarCity: The Dark Side of the Sun

This is a good time to bring up Elon’s [first…?] red headed step child – SolarCity. Originally, this was Elon’s attempt to attack the production side of our reliance on fossil fuels by mainstreaming the proliferation of solar panels.

I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics, but to give a brief background, as far as I’m aware, Mr. Musk was somehow involved in helping fund/found SolarCity in 2006. He was acting chairman of the company, while the day to day operations were managed by some of Elon’s cousins. After a decade, SolarCity was (re)acquired by Tesla in 2016. SolarCity is now, as far as I’m aware, a branch of Tesla.

But, it seems, since its acquisition, former SolarCity products have fallen off the map a bit. Other than one presentation where Musk highlighted Solar Roofs and the upgraded Powerwall batteries, we haven’t seen much in the way of solar-related products.

Solar panels just don’t have the same “sex” appeal to the consumer as the cars.

I actually wasn’t even sure if Solar Roofs were available to the general public, so I checked and indeed, they are for sale on the Tesla website. But going solar doesn’t seem to have the same momentum as the slick cars do. Believe me, I wish they did.

The problem is that in order to gain traction, these products have to come down in cost. No one wants to spend 50 grand on a roof and $10,000 on a battery, when they literally don’t have to buy either and pay under 20 grand for a regular roof. Since solar products don’t appear to be moneymakers, I have to question whether they have fallen by the wayside in terms of priorities for Tesla.

Have they given up on solar panels because there is too much competition out there? After all, they are a company; and a company needs to focus on bringing in profit to survive. I personally believe that someone other than Elon really needs to be the point person for SolarCity products for them to become truly viable to the masses. That or Tesla needs to re-think the entire model.

Here’s the crux of it – electricity production is a whole different side to the equation, and it’s a beast of a problem. In no way am I suggesting that Mr. Musk hasn’t done enough. He just doesn’t have the bandwidth.

Totally understandable – this is just another case of someone biting off more than they can chew.

But, I am pointing my finger at the rest of us – we haven’t been doing enough. We need to step up and pick up the reins. We need a BOLD Plan to Save our Planet.

SpaceX: Elon’s Race to Mars

SpaceX’s stated goal right from day 1 was to “Make humanity a multi-planetary species”. Expounded further, Elon argues that by setting up a colony on another world, we would mitigate the risk of total human annihilation in the event that Earth gets destroyed by some unknown catastrophe.

In layman’s terms, basically, putting all our eggs [in this case, humanity] in one basket [Earth] is a bad idea. Being we’re all in the same place, anything could really wipe us out: nukes, plagues, climate change, asteroids… etc.

Logically, this makes perfect sense. Have a backup plan in case things go sideways here on Earth. Can’t argue with that.

Part of me believes this is a worthy cause, but another part of me wants us to get our shit together here first before we go out into the great unknown.

I get that we probably should start to put people in space full time, since who knows if or when we’ll get any other chance. Plus, by starting now, we’ll be further along towards establishing a self-sustaining separate civilization.

But one could contend, that if things go really sideways here on Earth, the other “colony” is pretty much screwed any way since they’ll be reliant on Earth for the foreseeable future.

Just looking at the situation from a number’s standpoint, Mr. Musk proposes that by 2100 he would like to see a Mars colony with 1 million people. On Earth, we’re looking at a total population of around 10 billion people by 2100.

Don’t get me wrong, I think establishing a Mars colony is a noble cause, but with someone as brilliant as Musk, I feel more of his bandwidth should be focused on helping the majority on this planet rather than a small fraction on a different planet.

All I’m saying is that maybe before we establish too big of a foothold in space, we should focus on the home front first and foremost. We need to make sure everything is on the up and up here before we should realistically colonize other places.

If we don’t solve some of the major issues here first, then only the privileged few have access to space travel and the rest stay behind. We don’t want people seeing Mars as an escape from Earth’s issues and shirk our responsibilities here.

Twitter: A Social Faux Pas?

… And then there’s Twitter. Musk’s latest… fixation.

As if he didn’t have enough on his plate. In addition to revolutionizing the transportation industry, pushing more sustainable energy sources, and bootstrapping humanity to become a multiplanetary species, Elon Musk surprised everyone in 2022 by buying one of the biggest social media companies in the world.

Talk about not having enough bandwidth…

Elon couldn’t just focus on the already huge industries he was trying to disrupt. He wanted to add more to the mix. The guy seems to have a fondness for self-punishment.

Interestingly enough, up to this point in his life, it seemed that everything Elon touched turned to gold – from PayPal and Tesla to SpaceX. He was even touted as the real-life Tony Stark.

People had even started to dub him as the “savior of mankind”. No doubt, a bit of a stretch, but if you’d have read the Wait but Why’s feature on him back in 2015, you might have turned into a believer yourself.

But any way you slice it. Everything was on the up and up until the Bird app caught his fancy.

A chink in the armor started to appear. Musk wanted to control a slice of the social media pie as well. To public appearance, it seemed like a vanity purchase of 44 billion dollars to merely stoke his ego and remain in the limelight.

After all, what better way to stay in front of people then by buying one of the biggest social media companies in the world as your personal microphone?

To his actual fans, Musk seems to have strayed from his previous humility and original well-intentioned motivations. (As seen here.)

Musk is definitely more vocal with his opinions and seems to have changed his views in only a couple of short years. His stances on many topics have shifted since buying Twitter. Also, he’s focusing on things that weren’t in his domain previously. Including freedom of speech, expressing population growth concerns (not enough), and even indulging in divisive conspiracies.

The values he stood and stances he supported so adamantly, even a couple of years ago, such as the existential risk of climate change, seem to have taken a backseat. (see this video.)

The Twitter buyout seems like a move (either conscious or subconscious) toward a different direction for Musk. Some are struggling to keep up with the “New Musk” outlooks. While others aren’t happy and are changing their colors accordingly.

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people”
– Eleanor Roosevelt –

All in All, I think we can agree that he needs to get back in touch with his calling to help humanity and leave the social gossip to other people who have no better pastime. While freedom of speech and other issues are important, these are outside of his wheelhouse and not the best utilization of his talents.

There is no doubt Elon Musk is one of the greatest futurists of our age. He just needs to get back to his roots and prioritize the things that will actually help transform our world for the better.

Elon Musk: Person of Yester-Year

And the point of all this rambling is, the future needs to be a priority for all of us, not just Elon Musk.

While Elon Musk thrives on big, world changing engineering disruptions, he seems to be floundering in the social arena and politically charged waters he now finds himself in.

After all, Elon’s current preoccupations, are, at best, minor side shows to the really BIG problems we face as a species. There will be no point in debating the minutiae of other issues if we see the worst effects of climate change.

In the end, Elon Musk is human and, as such, has his flaws, just like the rest of us. He can’t save the world because he’s just one person. He can’t be everywhere and be all things for humankind.

We cannot rely on one person to be humanity’s “savior”.

But we also can’t afford to just stay stagnant. We have to ask ourselves: Are we just okay with the status quo… indefinitely? Who else is making the future happen?

Spoiler alert:

Mr. Musk is human, which, as we all know, comes with its own baggage. None of us are perfect, even him, as evidenced by his recent diversions and his constant relationship turmoil.

Elon seems to get sidetracked easily and gets distracted from what’s actually most important. His larger than life mind is all over the place. He needs to focus on getting back to the basics and learning to stick with following through on his original world changing businesses. This is what he excels at, not re-tooling social media.

Any way you look at it, you got to give the guy credit – his drive, persistence, and perseverance are completely… unparalleled. His unwavering commitment in getting an idea implemented is superhuman.

When asked about his third rocket failure and whether he thought he had to pack it in, Elon replied back with:

“No, I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated.”

Yes, he is just one guy, but look at what just one guy can accomplish with a team of people in his corner.

This type of leadership can be championed by anyone with a bold vision, not just billionaires. We need to step up and attack other industries and problems with the same single-minded focus. Humanity would be unstoppable!

Whatever you think of the ‘current’ Elon Musk, we still need more people with his qualities. We need people with the same unquenchable motivation and steadfast resolve to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

But instead of just relying on the likes of Elon Musk, let’s trek our own path. Let’s start a movement, in solidarity, to take on the world’s biggest problems. This is a mission where everyone can pitch in and save our world, not just billionaires. We can build a better future, together.

Because The Future is worth fighting for.