(theme music playing) - So much news! And here's some of that. Here is some news. What will we talk about? News? Probably. So many of the news to do some of. Also hello, hi. I hope you're doing well. We never just talk anymore you
and I because we never did. Okay, enough of that. Let's crack open the ol' News
Lion and see what's inside. (rock music playing) Oh good it's an Elon
Musk episode this time. That should be fun. Should be a real hoot. He's always doing something that Elon. Hosting Saturday Night Live that's news. Should be a lot of laughs dressing like Caveman Lawyer bonking Union representatives
on the noggin. A sketch where he saves
earth with a rocket dinosaur, and becomes king of Mars
and everyone thanks him. There's a sketch probably. Now, we talk a lot about him on this show, unless we can avoid it, often highlighting his labor
practices and worldview instead of his attention-seeking tweets like "69 days after 420 again ha ha", or "pronouns suck", or "take the red pill", or, more importantly, "the
coronavirus panic is dumb", and perhaps most relevantly, "there will be close to
zero new cases in the US by the end of April 2020." But the tweets are a nice reminder that all the money in the world
can't buy you self-awareness. But this isn't about
making fun of his tweets. This isn't about his terrible tweets, no, get it away or I'll (beep), I'll (beep) right here on camera. In fact, no. Another thing it's good to remember this extremely hyped up
CEO of a rocket company who is sure to have killed
it on Saturday Night Live doesn't actually have
an engineering degree, or barely even much of
a science background. I mean, neither do I. But we all know the dichotomy
between people who believe he's like a real-life Tony Stark, and people who, you know, don't. The weird sycophantic
following, Joe Rogan, et cetera. And on that subject of Tony Stark, who Marvel better hashtag
bring back Tony Stark to life good clear slogan, we are all wanting the character to have been now not dead anymore for us, well he's part of a certain fantasy where pompous jackasses
with bad PR ultimately are the ones who save the world. We love the trope, the Edison types, the Sherlock Holmeses, or
much more iconic Dr. Houses, who yes don't play by the
rules of civilized society, but are just too darn
genius to be constrained by the desires of mere mortals. You know, Pickle Rick and so on. Us naysayers are mere footnotes on their inevitable chapter in history as these rude titans make
sweeping changes to the world, and so on. And I bring that up because I'm pretty sure that's
how Elon and his followers see him, right? Because otherwise, what! And for that reason, perhaps we should cast aside
Elon Musk's personality, and killer meme tweets to actually explore what he is and isn't doing
to actually change the world. If he will in fact be remembered
with the likes of Tesla as he clearly wants to be. Or rather even if this is the case will he have deserved it? At least in terms of what he's
done so far, good and/or bad. And how he prioritizes which
advancements need to happen in order to bring us into
that Star Trek utopia that sci-fi imagines. Or more iconic, the movie
Tomorrowland imagines. Aka the second best movie
about how dystopian media creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, and like billionaires in general who are also probably bad
like Elon Musk is often bad. But not just because he tweets bad. Even though his tweets are hilarious it's not the point of this episode not the point, it's not the point. Dear Christ, get that thing
away from me it's amazing. I guess I'm saying that Elon Musk is bad in the way we talked about
doomsaying in that movie. Ironic to his public image, his vision of the future is
actually far more cynical than a lot of other tech bros. Okay, so, let's crack
open that Title Bobcat, and get to the episode. (rock music playing) Wow, not your best work, Bobcat. Go make another weird Bigfoot movie. But that's more or less
the question, right? Putting aside his
personality and sick memes, is Elon Musk helping the world? - Well, you see someone
like Elon Muck, I mean, what the hell do you make
of someone like that. You know, I mean, what did he do? He made an eclectic car which
is basically impossible, and it works which is
basically impossible. - Well, let's start with the most obvious
accomplishments of Elon. He is after all the pioneer
of commercial electric cars. I mean if you don't
count the Chrysler TEVan, Ford Ranger EV, GM EV1, Honda
EV Plus, Nissan Altra EV, and Toyota RAV4 EV that
all came out in the 90s before getting discontinued but hey he did have the first lithium-ion powered highway legal car, a $100,000 sports vehicle
designed for rich wads. But not the first
mass-produced and affordable highway legal electric, that's actually the Mitsubishi i-MiEV which came out just a year after. So yeah, okay, not the pioneer, and a bunch of companies were already pursuing electric cars so let's scratch that out. But he did found Tesla. Wait, no he didn't do that, that was engineers Martin
Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. But he gave them money, and
then they made him a founder. And helped design the
aforementioned Roadster, and by help I mean he
suggested they use carbon fiber on the body panels, which is pretty neat I think? To be fair I'm probably being reductive about Musk's role within the company, and I'm sure he was an important part, and we should give him that, probably. But also, no? See, Musk himself only has
his name on three patents. The first being the design for a car door, the second being the design
for the body of a car, and the third and most
interesting being the design for Tesla's charging port. Why that's interesting is,
as this blog points out, it's not like such large cable
ports didn't already exist. Also his patent is just
on the connecting point, and not the cable or really the tech. Just the shape and locking
mechanism of the charging port. Which to speculate seems like it might
have to do with the fact that you can't charge any electric vehicle at a Tesla station just Tesla cars unless you find an adapter. And one of the things
Musk definitely did early in Tesla production, is push for as many charging
stations as they could make, charging stations being one of the biggest missing components for America's switch to electric. Meaning that one of the
reasons their cars sell so much is because their charging stations account for about 40 percent
of the stations in the US. But hey, if you're nice he might let your company use his charges in a low-key capacity. So yeah, potentially
solar-powered charging stations that are free and available are very good. Electric cars are good. It's good that Elon Musk's
company makes electric cars. But it's easy to imagine that
Elon Musk is less concerned with switching America to electric cars so much as he wants to switch
America to his electric cars. Even if that screws over other more affordable electric car companies. And that's still okayish. It's capitalism and we
love that, don't we folks? But it also plays into a central theme that not enough people seem
to understand about Elon Musk. That he is in fact a rich guy who wants to continue to be rich. Possibly more than that he
wants to change the world. But soft pitch, if you want everyone to
have an electric car, and are a billionaire, develop a cheap way to convert people's
existing gas-powered cars into electric vehicles, and then let them all use
your charging stations. But essentially, he's just another CEO trying to dominate an industry, not your friend especially if you are, you know, his employee. Specifically an employee
that wants to unionize, or God forbid talk to the press. That's the story of a Tesla whistleblower who Elon Musk made a mission
to destroy the life of by suing for $160 million before having his people call in a fake spree shooting
threat in the employees name. He then accused the reporter
who covered the initial story of taking bribes for Tesla short sellers. He then continued to harass this reporter, setting an army of nerds on her before trying to get her fired based on absolutely no evidence because cancel cancel
culture am I right folks? Because yeah, rich people, gotta protect that money. Everything's memes and jokes
until unions are mentioned. Like Amazon and many other tech companies, Tesla has been really
good at squashing down anyone who even utters the word union. This includes but isn't limited to illegally firing Richard
Ortiz for union organizing, as well as threatening
to pull stock options of employees who followed along. The National Labor Relations Board would go on to identify 12
violations of US labor laws, including a series of anti-union
tweets that Musk made. And boy, unions would be swell for them. You know, considering how in 2017 Tesla was reporting an
extremely high number of injured employees who were at the time complaining
about long work hours, and hard physical labor. According to one employee, people would collapse on the line, and others would be told to
just start working around them. Because for all the cool
tech futuristic promises it's still just a factory. And you need to treat your
factory workers like humans? And when this made the news, Elon Musk promised to personally meet with every injured worker, and then go down to the
factory and do their job to better empathize. And that's really cool
had he actually done that, which according to his employees
he did not actually do. Also, going down and performing
someone's job for an hour doesn't actually give you an idea of what it's like to do it all day. And the way Musk treats his employees hasn't gotten better since then. In 2020, employees are still talking about long and grueling hours. Not to mention how hard he went to war over keeping his factories
open during the pandemic, resulting in hundreds of cases of COVID which were unavoidable by his employees lest they be fired for not coming in. Incidentally, hundreds of
COVID cases at one company sure seems like the
opposite of his prediction that there would be next to zero new cases in the entire United States
by the end of April 2020. Like extremely the opposite of that. In other words, maybe let's not have him
on Rick and Morty episodes, you know? Maybe don't hype up the tech equivalent of a Dickensian coal magnate? Even if he's like that meme guy. Don't put him on SNL. You don't see Bill Gates on SNL, I mean, except for when
he painfully edits himself into sketches. - 49th floor. - Oh no, here we go,
here we go, here we go. (techno music playing) - Okay, yeah, yeah, and
Christmas pumpkin is? - He's a (indistinct) thing. - And the snow man are? - [Both] Part of it. (audience laughing) - Any questions? - We didn't have to show that clip, and certainly that much of it but we did. What a hoot, that Gates
who doesn't want people in underdeveloped countries
to have easier access to a life saving vaccine so much that he convinced Oxford
to throw away their plan to make an open source COVID vaccine, and instead make a deal with
Astra-Zenica, which they did. Good job philanthropists. But we're talking about
the wrong rich guy. Elon is the one we want sort of. They're all pretty bad. All part of a similar mentality, Elon, and Gates, and
the Bez, ol' Shiny Bez. And it can really be best summed up by very wealthy tech nerds who fantasize about getting us to a Star Trek future except for the part where
money doesn't exist, and employees are treated with respect. Because it's hard to
actually be utopian-leaning when you own all the money? And so what they really have
is a sort of top-down thinking where you try to create the end-result, or aesthetic of a utopia without actually doing the structural work needed to earn that. Shoot for Star Trek, skip a bunch of steps
and horde your wealth, and instead get The Expanse. Because again, some of the structural work would involve taking a
bunch of their money. Amazon wants a future where
you can order anything you want on a device and get it that day without thinking of the
toll that would take on local businesses, and
of course their employees. Automation is invented without considering a universal basic income for
the jobless it would create. And of course, Tesla is
creating Timecop vehicles that drive themselves, and run on electric power without considering that
it's cool future shape is tragic on pedestrians, or that most firefighters have no idea how to put out their car fires, and most people are going
to abuse the autopilot, and so on. And like I really can't stress enough that I'm not trying to
knock these inventions, or technological progress, and like of course I'd
like one of these cars, and would accept one if,
for example, given to me, and my crew for free in exchange for being less
critical because I take bribe. But these inventions mean exactly nothing without a change in
infrastructure and human rights to allow society to actually enjoy, and benefit from them. Space communism didn't pop up because capitalists made
personal rockets and batteries. (theme music playing) As important as electric cars are, they're actually useless
in terms of the environment if their batteries are
charged from fossil fuels, which a lot of them are. And some people even argue that
their construction process, plus this fossil fuel fact doesn't make them much
better for the planet. But I'm not a car doctor it rather just strikes
me as a great example of this top-down thinking. Where Tesla is only now
dabbling with the idea of setting up battery powered cities that still need an energy source, and from there might finally think about actually generating renewable energy on a scale that would actually help. But in fairness, we don't
expect other car companies to worry about this kind of stuff. But also in fairness we don't treat the CEOs
of other car companies like they're going to save the world, or make lists about how great
of an inventor they are. And I really can't stress this enough, Elon Musk hasn't invented anything. He's smartly invested
in a lot of technology that already exists. And the extent of a lot of his ideas was to take a thing we have
and think, but what if online. It's a pretty common tactic. You take a thing, make it
compatible with the internet, design it to look a little more slick, and charge more for it. Then hope that people don't
notice and call you a genius. Tesla's first $100,000 sports car vs the way more affordable electric cars that were coming out at the same time. Or Lyft, inventing the city bus, and calling it something else, and charging more money for it. Or inventing SlimFast, again. Or Elon Musk coming up
with the idea for trees. Although to be fair, he has donated a million
dollars to plant trees. Which is only $159 million less than that lawsuit I mentioned. And this seems as good a time as any to talk about Musk's Boring Tunnel, a great example of reinventing a thing that already works fine. What began as a really
expensive way for Elon Musk to personally avoid traffic, the idea sold to the public
was a futuristic new way for drivers to go long distances without interruptions of traffic. A sort of super fast carpool lane promising to take people
from Westwood to LAX in only five minutes. The final concept was a
system of super fast sleds that your car would descend into, and then gleam that cube all
the way to your destination. Real Jetsons trash that we love to imagine without really thinking
about the logistics of. And did I mention that the Boring company is actually an offshoot of SpaceX? That's gonna be important later. By 2017 Musk was talking about installing these future
tunnels in other cities like DC, and New York,
and Texas, and so on. In 2019, Musk was able to drive Tesla cars at around 116 MPH through
this paved tunnel, provided they were controlled by a person, and not by their autopilot feature which despite its name
is not an autopilot. But it was about this time that the public started to
ask a very relevant question, which was "Wait, did
you just make a tunnel? Because we have those." But to be fair, again, still, Elon's tunnels aren't like other tunnels in that they are really small, and therefore inescapable
in an emergency, so there. Things get more hilarious as a tweet the year before revealed that Musk had decided
that the Boring tunnels would prioritize pedestrians
and cyclists over cars meaning that it wasn't so
much a super tunnel for cars as it was a subway system. Cut to now, and Musk had somehow
managed to sell this idea to Las Vegas, only after
failing in Chicago. Do we have a clip of
his pitch to the city? - Well, sir, there's nothing on earth like a genuine bonafide,
electrified, six car monorail. What'd I say?
- Monorail. - This was back in 2018
when the city of Las Vegas put out a request for proposals for a new people moving system starting with their convention center. They chose Musk out of
several other proposals after promises of a cheaper process resulting in a futuristic shuttle system. So, after all those millions
what did they come up with? - Well, as you descend the
escalator into the loop station you see the Teslas waiting
to whisk you into a tunnel 43 feet below ground. Now you might think, all
right, it's like a subway, but this is more like
a highway underground. - Great Scott! It's like being regaled
by the labyrinthine tales of some Wellsian socerior! Stairs that move downward you say? Highways beneath the earth? Impossible I tell you! This CNBC clip continues hilariously as the people of Las
Vegas try extremely hard to pretend like they
weren't completely grifted into re-inventing Boston's Big Dig. - [Presenter] Here's how it works. You enter the station
and call for a Tesla. - The system operates
like an Uber, or Lyft, where you have an app on
your phone you say, I'm here, I wanna go there. Car comes up, has an identifier on it that matches with what is
on the app on your phone. - [Presenter] Passengers don't
have to make multiple stops because there are multiple exits. You go directly to your station of choice. The convention center has three, but plans are in the works to
build a loop system citywide. - Congratulations on
creating a literal highway? Only in a very small
space and underground, and therefore less safe, especially for Teslas which catch on fire more than all other cars. Which all means that the tunnel can only carry a fraction of the traffic Musk promised it would. Specifically only about
800 passengers an hour, and not the 4,400 the
convention had aimed for. That's about 19,000 people per day assuming it runs all day, compared to the 4.3 million
who use the subway in New York. Did I mention that you
can't drive your car, and have to call a Tesla
driver to come get you? You go down an escalator, call a taxi, and then have someone drive
you through a colorful tunnel, and drop you off. It's managed to be worse than both a subway and a highway somehow. It makes you sort of question
Elon's predictive abilities. It makes you sort of question how much of an innovative
futurist thinker he actually is. And it all kinda makes
you wonder if Elon Musk really thinks this is the
future of transportation so much as an expression of his distaste for being around other people, and an excuse to test
out his Boring machine? Remember how I said it
was developed as SpaceX? Well that's because Elon's
actual hopeful use for it is to mine on Mars. Of course it is. In other words this Vegas
project, his LA tunnel, all seems like a way to test a prototype, and get paid for it, and sell the dirt to the poor as an aside. What actually goes in the tunnels
is merely an afterthought, and conveniently involves
Tesla cars he already built as opposed to a train or shuttle. Like the Vegas plans didn't even include a
design for turnstiles, or any way to regulate
the flow of passengers. It didn't have any way to
deal with fire regulations, because they didn't actually care, or know what they were doing. Because pretty much any
infrastructure planning Elon does on Earth sure seems like it's all
just a big test for Mars which is not earth. Take his Starlink internet, a new satellite internet
system launched by SpaceX that will save the world. In reality it's being pitched
as a solution to internet loss in more rural areas of the country that could expand globally. At the moment the beta test is limited to mainly
the Pacific Northwest. It certainly sounds like
an altruistic endeavor into advancing technology if it didn't cost $500 to set up, and a monthly bill of $100. Hey, remember when I said
that it's being pitched to rural areas? - Costs is definitely a barrier for many especially in our community. We have a really high unemployment rate during a non-tourist season. Some people don't have any income for a large portion of the
year due to seasonal work. There's logging, and then there's fishing. - [Narrator] In Neah Bay, where most residents on
the Makah Reservation live the poverty rate is around 30% according to 2019 Census Bureau figures, that compares to 10.5% nationally. - Yeah, sounds actually not very helpful. But at least if you pay the $500, and can afford the
additional hundred a month you'll then get internet speeds that are below the national average. Hm, okay, so that's less good, equally expensive internet that requires rocket launches to make? Maybe we should I dunno, just expand internet infrastructure, and make it freely available to everyone? You know, like a Star Trek might do but here on earth? Maybe someone with a lot of
money can help with that. I dunno, but hey, it's still a neat idea that could evolve over time which is why OneWeb, Virgin Qualcomm, SoftBank and Hughes Networks Systems, are also companies doing the same thing. So Starlink is expensive for the consumer, slower than average, and not
at all the only of its kind. Why is Elon doing it? - [Elon] We see this as a way for SpaceX to generate revenue that can be used to develop more and more
advanced rockets, and spaceships. And that we think this
is a key stepping stone on the way towards establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars, and a base on the moon. - Ah, right, Starlink is purely speaking a potential source of revenue
so Elon Musk can go to Mars. It is less so revolutionary as it's just another
support system for SpaceX. He's just selling cable which
probably isn't a surprise. It's not a surprise that rich people like being rich I guess. In theory I could be making a video about the CEO of a pudding company with a similar conclusion. But there's yet to be a pudding CEO with as much weird celebrity, and influence around them as Elon. There's yet to be a pudding CEO hosting Saturday Night Live with an incredible amount of wealth. At least not yet, but you never know what advances
might happen in pudding. I don't know. Also, there's no pudding CEO who is also openly using his
wealth to accumulate resources in order to escape the planet earth. We really don't talk
about that fact enough. That Elon Musk is trying to escape because he clearly doesn't think the earth is going to survive. And while he really tries
to frame reaching Mars as this gift he is giving to humanity he'd probably just settle
for saving one person at the expense of, there it is. And the products he offers specifically the proposed
solutions to infrastructure like Starlink and his tunnels are actually kinda half-assed, and clearly not his top priority. Like out of all his investments, he's dumped way more money
into SpaceX than anything else. It's his top solution to climate change. Doing a contest, and
leaving the planet that is. It's his approach to most things, escaping people. The reason he doesn't wanna
focus on public transportation, but rather tunnels filled
with personalized death pods, is because he personally just doesn't like being around people. Ignore the efficiency and
accessibility of trains, because people are gross. Also because it doesn't
always take you where to go, and isn't always on time, two problems apparently
far too insurmountable for our space genius here. But like, dude clearly just
wants to live alone on Mars. Maybe Grimes can come, maybe. And when you realize that about him, that he sees most of humanity as doomed, and icky to begin with, you kind of question how
helpful he is, you know. Like how is assuming the earth is doomed, and that we need to ascend to the stars any different than believing
in say, the Biblical rapture? An apocalyptic finale where only the most deserving are saved? But instead of God picking, it's the guy who thinks
Woke James Bond is a joke. Get away, tweet! Get the
(beep) away you tweets. Remember when I talked
about top-down thinking? It's kinda like when you
watch a Michael Bay film. He clearly wanted to have an
explosion every 15 minutes, and so starts there, and then goes backward to
justify it within a script. Maybe not always an explosion, sometimes it's boobs, or amazingly a very drawn out explanation of how to (beep) a teenager. But you get what I'm saying, in that the fundamental story is secondary to the aesthetic result. Well Musk is kind of the
Michael Bay of technology. He starts where he wants
the future to look, and works backward. He loves the idea of a Star Trek world, but doesn't actually want to do the work that gets us there. He wants to go to Mars, but doesn't wanna create
or leave behind a society worthy of that. And his excuse is that climate change
has made that impossible. But also even recently, he's talked about how climate
change isn't that big a deal, and moving to renewables
is just a good idea to do sooner rather than later. Like he says it's not good,
but we'll probably be okay, and if/when it gets bad it'll be because of the current poor
countries industrializing? - Like I don't think
we're currently doomed. If we keep going and if we're complacent, then I think we could... There is some risk of sort
of non-linear climate change. This has to end up with
renewable sustainable energy, it's tautological, and really just the question of, do we try to get there sooner or later, and we should try to get
there sooner, it's obvious. I think at the, you know, the sort of 400 possibly even 500 ppm level,
I think it's probably okay. But you know, as the world industrializes, and we're sort of at 8 billion people get to 9 billion people have a lot more industrial
output per person, you could see that, you
know, what might be okay it's sort of 4 or 500 possibility
of CO2 in the atmosphere might become quite dire at a thousand. - [Host] Yup. - And the trend is
certainly in that direction if we don't do anything about it. - Also weird moment at the
end where he talks about how you don't wanna (beep) up the ocean because then the reefs will die, and the host points out that
that's already happening, the reefs are dying. But he responds, - Yeah, yeah, exactly, yes. - Oh sure, sur, sure,
sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, sure, sure, sure, sure. It's a weird disconnect
where climate catastrophe is both immanent, we
gotta get out of hear. And like also, eh, sure, like let's just slowly move
away from fossil fuels, but we'll be fine ultimately, and like, I don't know, maybe we shouldn't really take seriously the data analysis and predictions of a guy who said there'd be next to
zero new COVID cases in the US by the end of April 2020, and then had hundreds at his own company. But also let's say he
actually does believe that climate change has doomed
or could doom the planet. Has he even tried do something? Like really tried, or even considered? Because there are things he could be doing to help both environmental
and societal problems. Helpful things that shockingly
don't involve space. When you think about how
technology changes society you have to think about
the biggest inventions, and the time in which they existed. Fire for example, allowed
cavefolk to warm themselves, and find rest at night, allowing our thoughts to
evolve in a calmer environment. Also, campfire (beep)
and smores. Great stuff. Perhaps a more relevant
example is the internet, and what it's done for
you know, everything. In terms of social justice smartphones have helped more people notice that perhaps cops shouldn't have guns. There's no denying that technology
leads to societal change, but not all technology. Some technology is just
pointless and evil, others are just way too ambitious to work. You gotta really hit it just right. Tesla, the inventor he mattered
because what he invented filled a hole we desperately
needed to advance. It allowed us to live
and work differently, to communicate easier, etc. Cut to now, and we have very
specific issues popping up. Climate change being a big one, along with wealth
inequality, civil rights, more Pop-Tart flavors, and so on. Going to Mars doesn't actually help that. It's like a hundred steps
away from where we are, and at least right now probably isn't going to be remembered as a brilliant solution
to any of our problems. It is a cynical act by a rich guy who isn't betting on the human race, and doesn't super seem
to have a grasp on it. Here's Elon misinterpreting
and mangling a quote from the late Carl Sagan, his
famous Pale Blue Dot quote. - Channeling Carl Sagan. "Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone
you've ever heard of, every human being whoever
was lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident
religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager,
every hero and coward, every creator and
destroyer of civilization. Every king and peasant,
every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer. Every teacher of morals,
every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mode of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Our planet is a lonely spec in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all those vastness, there is no hint that help
will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The earth is the only world
known so far to harbor life. There was nowhere else, at least in the near future to which our species could migrate." This is not true. (chuckling) This is a false, Mars. - And I think Carl Sagan
would agree with that. He couldn't even imagine it at that time. - First of all, Mars isn't like a safe place for humanity to migrate to at the moment. We got a few robots up there,
we're figuring the place out. Second of all, Carl Sagan was
very aware of Mars existing, and could imagine a future where humans try to set up shop there. Carl Sagan was alive when we,
you know, went to the moon. But third of all, and most importantly, Musk didn't finish the quote. Here is that quote. "There is nowhere else, at
least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth
is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and
character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits
than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and
cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." The quote isn't about how
we have nowhere to go, it's about how important
and precious this place is. Even a successfully terraformed Mars is dog(beep) compared to Earth. So the point is, let's
make this place good, make it worth saving. It's just weird he didn't finish the quote is what I'm saying, I don't
know, what was I talking about? Aha, Elon Musk thinking climate
change means we're doomed, but also sure, sure I
guess it's mostly fine, but also, what are we to do but leave! Now I certainly don't want to suck off Bill "Don't Give Poors The Vaccine" Gates but he actually wrote a whole book on ways we can fix climate change that doesn't include the
wealthy bouncing from Earth, and recreating the plot of Elysium. He's still a rich weirdo, but at least Gates
recognizes that a single dude isn't going to reverse the process so much as a society all pushing
toward a singular goal is. And there's other less
flashy tech being developed that has nothing to do with Musk, and perhaps should get more attention. Bricks that store energy as
opposed to a futuristic battery, or just selling dirt to the poor. Flexible solar panels, self-healing materials
that cut down on waste, alternative fuel sources, just
uh, feeding cows differently, bladeless wind farms that don't kill birds as our former president
was so concerned about, lab grown meat, and just pushing for
government policy change. There are even ways technology can help with wealth inequality at least a little. But mainly the internet and automation have shined a light on
problems and solutions that even the really rich
jerkwads can't ignore. But again, Musk doesn't really
care about the incremental, or more tedious work, or him not being able
to do whatever he wants. Offering a prize to whoever can remove
carbon from the atmosphere ignores the simple truth that we have to reduce
emissions ourselves, and very quickly. It's top down. The solution being a futurist fantasy rather than a principled approach. And for that reason, the reality always ends
up way off the mark. Or even worse, the approach completely misses
the lesson we've yet to learn with the incremental
advancements we're skipping over. You know what's also fun? Talking about them Dogecoins, am I right? Musk loves those and all the memes. And I know we weren't
gonna talk about his tweets but aside from his no
new COVID cases in the US by April 2020 banger, and his "that guy trying to save people but who also criticized me
is probably a pedophile" work of art, he's made tweets that
completely (beep) the market. A good recent example being
his lust for Dogecoin, and role in boosting it. Dogecoin, if you don't
know is a cryptocurrency based on a meme, and is therefore funny to have
an actual sway on the market. It works off something called
a proof-of-work algorithm which funny story, requires as much electricity
to maintain as a small country. Lots of lol's from Elon, guy who claims to be
concerned about climate change way to get those memes. (theme music playing) Now, I'm not saying that Musk doesn't care about the environment so much that he doesn't
care about anything? Or rather, his ego and wealth will always overtake
anything he might care about. He certainly doesn't care about people. And I'm willing to bet
that he considers himself, and his goal of going to Mars, and preserving the human
race as a noble cause beyond basic human
rights and worker safety. But back in his head, I'm guessing he ultimately just fantasizes about how he's gonna go to
Mars with Leonardo DiCaprio. Because he's not actually
interested in preserving humanity so much as preserving a certain
better group of humanity. And so with that mindset, what does it really matter what he does to the workers of earth? If climate change is going to overtake us but also it's probably fine actually, what's a few more
thousand rocket launches? Rockets that with a single launch emit more carbon dioxide into the air than a car would in two centuries? What's a little space debris
hurled around the planet when his goal at least in his head is to save humanity in theory. Because if he doesn't, well that would all be a lot
of hurting the environment for literally no reason, wouldn't it? Have we considered that? That perhaps Elon's
space quest fizzles out, and we're just left with a lot
of extra trash in the world? Have we considered the toll just the rocket launches alone are taking? After all he has to launch
from somewhere, right? And in order to create SpaceX, Musk created a launch site in
the town of Boca Chica, Texas. The residents didn't get much of a say despite Musk planning to launch thousands of rockets per year. Sure enough they began
getting notes on their doors telling them that their windows might explode every now and then. Residents who lived
there long before SpaceX have begun to move away thanks to debris crashing
over beaches, into wetlands. Did I mention that Boca Chica has a national wildlife refuge, where more than 500
species of migratory birds, and sea turtles live? SpaceX, in fairness I guess, would later help out to
preserve some of this. But obviously the best way to help would be to not have these launches there. And it would be very
irresponsible to act like SpaceX is doing their best considering that just back in December, the Federal Aviation Administration flat out denied a rocket
launch for SpaceX, citing a tweet from Musk saying, the launch had a one-in-three
chance of complete success, and concerns of how an explosion would affect the surrounding communities. And then SpaceX ignored the FAA, and did the launch anyway, and the rocket exploded. Musk then tweeted that the
FAA Space Division is bad, and, quote, "Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars." And by humanity he of course means him. He regularly ignores federal regulations meant to protect people because again his noble
cause is just too damn noble. And by noble I mainly mean the
aristocratic use of the word. I really can't stress
enough that when Elon Musk talks about bringing humanity to the stars as a sort of higher cause, he's not actually talking about you. You and I are the people
he would sacrifice in order to make that happen. And not like cool space deaths, more like the, slowly running-out-of-resources
kind of deaths, because Carl Sagan
failed to consider Mars. He's no different than
any other rich person building a water horde
and underground bunker. A reminder that statistically speaking the characters in Mad Max all
got there through trust funds. We love the promise he gives us. The Star Trek future, which another thing I can't stress enough is just a promise. He's just a guy telling us
that he's gonna save the world so long as we give him money,
and get out of his way. But much like his Vegas Tunnel, it's all in a prototype stage and silly. All the articles and books don't
say he has saved the world, just that he will, or
could, or is trying to. His Gigafactories could power the world, SpaceX could colonize Mars, but will he actually do that? He throws out a lot of ideas because it costs him nothing to do that. But at the end of the day he's just the CEO of an
electric car company. And he's not even the
first person to do that. He's not the only or first
private company working on space, or solar, or batteries. He's not the first space
billionaire weirdo. And even if SpaceX or
Tesla changes the world, he's not actually the guy doing the work. You know, less Tesla more Edison. So maybe, just maybe, until we actually see what
influence Elon Musk has perhaps don't do stuff like this. - How do you wanna be
remembered in history, alongside Wright Brothers, Elon Musk, Zefram Cochrane, or a
failed fungus expert? - Like extremely gross. Hey, SNL, very gross stuff. Stop it. Hey. - Mr. Musk, how are you? - (indistinct), congratulation
for the promotion. Thank you very much. - Elon.
- What's going on? - Those Merlin engines are fantastic. - Well, thank you. You know, got an idea for an electric jet. Stop it, hey, it's embarrassing, because the answer is no. Elon Musk isn't Iron Man. Because Iron Man, for all
his you know, fashy faults did pull through and save the world. You know, with the magic rock glove. And his actual inventions
that he actually invented. Also he's imaginary. Musk isn't that. He's a guy talking up a
big game like Iron Man, but not actually doing those things, and might even be doing the opposite. Like some kind of Irony Man, that's it, great idea. (end credits music playing) Rocket head. (groans) Rocket head back on. Hey, everybody, thanks for watching. Like and subscribe the video
and the channel if you like it, and want to subscribe to it. We've also got a patrion.com/somemorenews, and a merch store. We've got a podcast called, Even More News if you're into those things. And I have nothing more to
add to this part of the video. So I'm gonna end this
sentence right about nowish.
Had no idea about hyperloop in Vegas, hilarious!
Musk is a big peddler of ideology, namely the idea that a billionaire can usher in a new era of "sustainable energy and transportation" coupled with space exploration. Except of course, this relies largely on great man theory (Elon isn't singlehandedly designing or building the electric car batteries or solar panels) and ignores that Musk is first and foremost a capitalist. He poorly treats his employees, his ideas like boring tunnels and electric cars being sustainable are essentially marketing tools and do little to improve transit, and his Mars colony will likely be out of the reach of a vast majority of the public (and his stans). Elon illustrates the major limitations of assuming that by buying goods like electric cars we are also buying into an eco-friendly, "better' future, something that Zizek talked about, although with Starbucks.
I hate Elon stans. This country is my home, but I wish they would educate themselves a lot more and stop Worshipping bastards. SNL had him host for fucks sake. A dude who was behind coups and human rights violations and horrible worker treatment. Kind of like Donald Trump who was currently saying fascist rhetoric on the campaign trail and had countless sexual assault accusations including with two thirteen year olds.
But they’re both rich, so fuck it in their eyes.
That’s mainstream America and we have a long way to go. And since people dont listen to us, we just have to try as many things as possible and protest: Protesting starts a national dialogue. Let’s hope we can keep people on the debate of capitalism vs. a more viable system.
The fact Ellen spews destructive idiocy and he's rarely if ever publicly challenged on his dumbass comments and ideas, and he never has any sense of humility to admit his faults just means more of his arrogant brand of idiocy continues to spread through society like a cancerous cult. This is especially dangerous considering these behaviors and ideas are being spread through one of the most influential industries in the US and are creating an exclusive culture of self-reinforcing self-righteous ignorance.
“All the money in the world can’t buy you self awareness”
Great job, Cody!
Why are there so many elon stans in this thread?
I just wanted to share this insight from a friend of mine who, at the time, had not seen or heard about the movie:
"I feel Cody Johnston, but I'm not always sure I enjoy watching him.
Less because I disagree with him and more because he feels like a tired time traveller desperately trying to prevent a dystopian future"
[removed]