Elon musk might know a lot about manufacturing space ships and electric cars (edit: that’s a big might). But that’s not general knowledge of manufacturing, in fact out of a lot of manufacturing that’s very specific and highly technical manufacturing.

But beyond that, Elon is not and probably never has been the head of manufacturing at any of those companies, and he hasn’t worked a significant amount of time (probably not any time at all) in any of his factory floors. so it’s impossible to give him points for practical manufacturing skills.

And even if you could twist your brain around to give him that. There are people in charge of manufacturing larger companies with much more diverse portfolios. Let’s say something like Hitachi who has people who know manufacturing magic wands to mopeds to precision l scientific equipment.

Or how about those companies in China that make every knick-knack and consumer electronic on the planet.

Fuck, if you wanted to name American CEOs and give them credit for manufacturing everything they produce under their company Jeff Bezos owns Amazon and Blue Origin, the direct space ship manufacturing competitor to SpaceX.

We always wondered what the great filter might be for the Fermi Paradox. Turns out one of the big ones is just that our petri dish is so delicate we can’t advance very far without it collapsing immediately.