John Oliver's main story on Sunday's episode of "Last Week Tonight," did a deep dive into Elon Musk, who is more than the CEO of the social media site still known to many as Twitter, he also serves as the CEO of five other companies.
Oliver explained that there are a lot of people who hate Musk and a lot who love him, then warned that each side will probably find something to hate about the report. For Musk, however, anything about him that doesn't paint him in a positive light is generally criticized by him.
Among the things that Oliver pointed out is that when it comes to his company SpaceX, Musk didn't invent anything that somehow made space travel smarter or faster. As one clip Oliver showed explained, he simply streamlined things that NASA had already invented. The person compares Musk to Henry Ford, who didn't invent automobiles but streamlined the manufacturing of them.
Oliver pointed out that it isn't the only thing Musk and Ford have in common and encouraged folks to search for the commonality using the keyword antisemitism.
Charlie Bolden, NASA administrator from 2009-2017 explained that what worked for SpaceX could never work for them. In an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2021, Bolden said that if NASA lost rockets at the rate that SpaceX did, they would have been "out of business."
The same kind of method of pressing for success is how Tesla became a large company. Musk didn't invent Tesla or the electric car, he merely took over the company. Musk got investors to buy into the car before they were successfully built. Then he jacked up the price on them when it became clear he couldn't afford to do it for what he'd initially quoted them. Musk admitted to a "bait and switch."
What Musk tends to do that isn't the best business decision, Oliver pointed out, is over promise before he can fully deliver. Such was the case with his Tesla truck, which he claimed was indestructible. He asked one of the staff to chuck a steel ball at the window to show off how strong it was. It turns out the indestructible glass broke after all.
Oliver truly appreciated that someone like Musk could believe so firmly in his product that he ignores things like attractiveness, accessibility, performance, durability, practicality, safety, and "who on Earth wants to spend up to $100,000 to drive every child's first attempt at drawing a car."
Then there was the time Musk tried to promote a robot prototype by having someone dance while dressed up as a robot.
"Apparently all you have to do to launch a robotics company is a spandex body suit and a dancer," said Oliver. "So, with that in mind, behold! My new creation!" A dancing man dressed as a robot came out on stage with the host.
One of Musk's critics, Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU, explained that for all of that achievement, there were some real costs. Musk was able to make electric cars something other car companies had to begin manufacturing and SpaceX made it cheaper and easier to go into space.
"The problem is with the word net, and once we decide that a company or an individual is a net good for society, we don't want to hold him or the company accountable for anything," said Galloway.
That's when Oliver began walking through all of how Musk is hurting people, either workers, through technology and outright lying about data while refusing to back it up.
See the video below or at the link here.
Elon Musk: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) www.youtube.com