Nerds are terrified that if someone makes Musk feel bad, he won't invent the warp drive and then they won't get to bang green alien babes.
Trump's Payroll Tax Cut Will Kill Social Security by 2023
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Nerds don't understand that Musk has never invented anything in his life, he's just a CEO claiming credit for the work of his employees, not unlike other scum like Steve Jobs.
Folks, the boomers that y'all are okay with getting hurt when Social Security fails aren't the rich boomers that are trying to kill it to boost their hedge fund. Because they have hedge funds. Or own hedge funds.
"Let it fail" helps those bastards
"Let it fail" helps those bastards
I don't think there is a blind spot. Most of the world recognizes the shit he does as such.
But most of the world also recognizes that Americans put him into power and Americans didn't impeach him and instead implemented most of his nonsense and Americans still like him enough that there is a good chance of reelection.
Every stupid thing Trump does lowers the perception of the US for most of the world.
Musk has a very emotional fanbase. But i wouldn't decribe those people as "Nerds". Nerds tend to know stuff about their topics of interest. Including that Musk is not actually an inventer but someone who sells ideas and visions.
I see that argument repeated all the time but why does it matter? Musk founded those companies, hired those people and took the initiative for those product lines. Does he like, needs to put the screws into every SpaceX rocket by himself or put the tires on every Tesla car? Yeah both Apple and Musk's companies would be nothing without the brilliant engineers that made their products possible in the first place but that isn't the point. There is no innovation and technological progress without competition and people taking risks. If there was no competition or drive for profit would there ever be an iphone or even another American rocket to the ISS? Musk took a risk with Tesla and SpaceX and it paid off. Pushing the innovation and distribution of electric cars and filling the lacunes in Nasa's space program and continuing the trend of manned space travel where it left off in the 60s. That he knows how to organize, invest and hire the right people is his skill. If other people's talent are facilitated by Musk's companies why does it matter if Musk himself isn't an inventor? Also that seems counter to the reports that Musk is a micromanager who is involved in the minutae of his operations.
As so many people, from Edison to Ford to Bezos, it's not about how good you are, it's how well you can bully good inventors to work for you
I remember "Ok Boomer" and "Kill all Boomers" were all the rage before the Wuhan-flu, like a year ago.
We're arguing semantics here, but i differentiate between "nerds" and "geeks". The latter would fit your description. The definition of a "nerd" broadened, and got hazy over last years. It can be loosely applied to anyone from a sorta socially awkward person, to a MCU fanboy, to a gal that constructs her own 3d printer from parts salvaged at a scrapyard. Some nerds are also geeks of course.
Back to Musk: I don't really care about questioning his contributions to science, or lack thereof. What i have problem with is him being shielded as an misunderstood visionary even when the criticism is about stupid shit he posted on Twitter. And boy, did he post a lot of stupid shit.
Which also ties to Trump, BTW.
I would say a nerd is someone highly knowledgable about an (intellectual) topic but with below par social skills. A geek is a fan of something that mainstream society deems uncool. In both cases, there is usually an implication that that they are too involved with, even obsessional about, their topic of interest. As you say, there can be a significant overlap.
The main problem is that social security could be viewed as a sort of "contract". Changing the outgoings to existing retirees and near-retirees could be analogous to a breach of contract, politically even if not legally. In practice, the boomers are getting their money and if anyone tries to stop that, there will be years of court cases and the party that tries will be devastated in elections. The boomers are getting their pensions, we're paying for them, and that's absolutely how it will be.
* * *
Governments have become extremely hostile to taxes, so they've been seeking to pay for public expenditure by selling off assets. In the USA, they've drained the once-healthy social security fund. Really, it's just shifted the burden of pension payments to later generations: they could have just borrowed and run up the national debt (which also has the same effect of leaving later generations to pay more) except that of course that also brings bad press.
In the UK, they've done this through selling property. That hospital and the land it's on? That used to be owned by the state. The state sold it to a private corporation, the corporation built a new hospital, and now the state leases the land and hospital back off the corporation. The total cost to the state over the lifespan of the hospital is much higher, but because it saved the state having to come up with a large initial payment upfront to rebuild the hospital (thus needing immediate taxes or borrowing), it was done: politically expedient inefficiency. That's one the reasons Labour's ex-leader Tony Blair is unpopular nowadays.
Thus the basic problem is chickenshit politicians unwilling to make it clear to the people that if they want something, they damn well need to pay for it. Not even the right wing can escape this: yes they sort of want to force the government to spend less, but they'll still crumble when they face the realities of ending public services and find some way to kick the can down the road. In the meantime, I think the loss of assets is potentially serious. Assets are an incredibly useful tool for any entity as security for their debts. Hollowing out the government asset base, forcing it to a more "hand and mouth" existence, makes it more vulnerable. And if it ever wants to build those assets back up, it's yet more financial burden on future taxpayers.
He needs to at least do some of the physics calculations for his rockets and cars, or write some of the code for their programming.
Elon Musk is, at least by education, a physicist. I doubt as you say he contributes practical scientific advice to projects, but his background is likely to provide insights and ideas that your basic management / financial whizz would not.
I think this is true of a lot of the super-successful CEO founder-types (Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, etc.): they might first and foremost businessmen rather than inventors, but their technical expertise has likely given them an edge because they have a better idea of what sort of developments might work and how to make them happen. Incidentally, Page and even more so Brin of Google seem slightly different: they appear to have happily handed off a lot the business leadership stuff, suggesting it's not really their thing.
Eh, or just claim to be a business genius and not and inventor genius. And not call people pedophiles when they rescue people he was blathering on about building a magic submarine to rescue.
Or a fan to an excessive degree of something society generally deems cool, but only casually invests in (like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones).
There is no "Wuhan-flu." We currently have a pandemic of coronavirus. Is that what you were thinking of?
So you don't actually know what the current pandemic is? Wow, whoever was supposed to inform you really fell asleep at the wheel. Okay, let me give the Cliff's notes. The current pandemic is being caused by the coronavirus, which is different from the more common influenza. While there are similar symptoms, as they both cause damage to the respiratory system, the two diseases are distinct from one another. The "Spanish flu" didn't actually originate in Spain. The 1918 pandemic was caused by the H1N1 flu strain, which is distinctively not called covid-19. Calling it the Spanish flu was a result of newspapers tracking the early spread in Spain at the twilight of WWI and mistakenly believing that's where it originated when the reality is that the virus reached the civilian populace in Europe after incubating for several months in the trenches infecting the crap out of soldiers. If you'd like to learn more about the 1918 pandemic, here's a helpful video series:
Somebody having self-detrimental politics doesn't necessarily mean I want them to die. If some boomer declares that everybody dies someday and the the coronavirus is a hoax the Chinese made up to hurt our economy, then dies, I can't help that. There's actually very little anybody can do to protect somebody else from their own stupidity.
However, if Mitch McConnell et all gut Social Security, they *don't* get hurt via their own stupidity. They make fucking bank hurting other people. That's bad.