Wrong Question

It's not that he's too powerful

The Big Picture asks, “Is Elon Musk Too Powerful?” But I think that’s the wrong question. Every example in the linked posts points to Elon being anything but powerful. Incompetent, narrow-minded, and stubborn; yes. Oh, and let’s not forget arrogant. But powerful? Not really. Instead, I submit that Elon Musk’s position of power is wielded poorly.

At the end of the linked post, there is an excellent question:

But one wonders with Musk: once he has so much power at his fingertips, how likely is he to relinquish it?

Futurism has an article detailing the fiasco that was moving X (formerly Twitter) servers.

Musk became impatient with the leadership at Twitter when they explained to him that it would take careful planning and time to move more than 700 servers from Sacramento, California to a much cheaper facility in Portland, Oregon.

It would appear Musk becomes quite impulsive when he is impatient.

Instead of waiting for an orderly process to be put together, though, Musk decided to hastily move the servers with a motley crew consisting of himself, his cousins, a smattering of Tesla and SpaceX staff, and a moving company whose staff wanted to be paid in cash.

Musk was so impatient that at one point he shimmied himself under a server floor and used a pen knife to open up an electrical cabinet in order to unplug the server.

And, as noted by CNBC, he’s not above being an asshole when impatient.

Over the years, Musk had been faced many times with a choice between what he thought was necessary and what others told him was possible. The result was almost always the same. He paused in silence for a few moments, then announced, “You have 90 days to do it. If you can’t make that work, your resignation is accepted.”

This is not an example of a man with critical and analytical thinking skills. This is an example of someone acting from a position of power and control. A man who wants what he wants when he wants it, and he always wants it right damn now. Elon Musk is not a person I want to have unrestricted access to situations involving National Security. He does not appear to listen to the advice of people who understand problems better than himself and becomes a bully when he doesn’t get his way. So, despite his position of power because of wealth, Elon Musk lacks the competence to wield that power effectively and safely.

Now, I am all for learning from our mistakes. Lord knows I’ve made more than my fair share. However, the situations described in the articles are examples of errors that should not be caused by a man already in a position of power and control.

"In retrospect, the whole Sacramento shutdown was a mistake," Musk told Isaacson. "I was told we had redundancy across our data centers. What I wasn’t told was that we had 70,000 hard-coded references to Sacramento. And there’s still shit that’s broken because of it."

This is too little, too late. These lessons are usually learned as one rises into power and control, not after achieving that position.