Musk was named Time's Person of the Year

Musk was elected time magazine's person of the year this year, and the time article is very long, which is a rough translation of the first part, and the full text can be read on the official website of Time magazine in English.

The richest man in the world doesn't have a house and has been selling his fortune lately. He threw satellites into orbit, using solar energy; he drove cars of his own making, using no gasoline and hardly needing drivers. As soon as he moves his fingers, the stock market will soar or plummet. His every word touched the hearts of a large number of believers. He dreamed of Mars, just as he wandered the earth, chaotic and indomitable. Recently, Elon Musk also likes to broadcast his live on Twitter.

On the evening of Nov. 29, the 50-year-old billionaire told his 66 million Twitter followers that "just sent some friends to the pool," after he had said that at least half of his tweets were "written on a porcelain throne." After an interval of 21 minutes, if you must know, there will be an update: "Splash water".

"Sometimes I do reach some resonance in terms of humor," Musk said of his pale expression. It was a warm, windy December day at Starbase, his new rocket-making and launch facility at the southern tip of Texas. His two "starship" rockets—dazzling, sharp-billed monkey cheeks, 160-foot-tall stainless steel silos—formed silhouettes behind him in the setting sun." But you know, not all jokes fall to the ground. "

This is the man who aspires to save our planet and secure a new habitat for us: the clown, the genius, the avant-garde, the visionary, the industrialist, the performer, the old stubborn; the crazy hybrid of Thomas Edison, P.T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie, and Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen, the melancholy, blue-skinned man god who invented the electric car and moved to Mars. His start-up rocket company, SpaceX, has surpassed Boeing and others to own America's space future. His car company, Tesla, controls two-thirds of the multibillion-dollar electric car market it has created, valuing it at as high as $1 trillion. That puts Musk in a net worth of more than $250 billion, making him the richest citizen in history, at least on paper. He has dabbled in robotics and solar energy, cryptocurrencies and climate, brain computer implants that protect against the threat of artificial intelligence, and underground tunnels that transport people and goods at super high speeds. He dominates Wall Street. Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine wrote in February: "The way the financial industry now works is that the value of things is not based on their cash flow, but on how close they are to Elon Musk." "In Musk's "Gamestonk!!" Tweets pushed the memory stock boom behind the stratosphere.

Image caption Mark Mahaney for Time magazine

Musk has spent his life flouting haters; now, it seems, he finally has a chance to put them in his place. Because 2021 is the year Elon is unfettered. In April, SpaceX won an exclusive contract from NASA to send an American astronaut to the moon for the first time since 1972. In May, Musk presided over Saturday Night Live. In October, car rental giant Hertz announced plans to add 100,000 Tesla cars to its fleet. Days after one of his rockets launched NASA's first anti-quasar planetary defense test, and weeks before another rocket launched its first mission to study cosmic X-rays, Musk sold Tesla stock in the process of selling 10 percent of his Tesla stock, a process that disrupted the market, cost him billions of dollars and should generate enough taxes to fund a year's work at the Commerce Department. What prompted Musk to sell his shares was that he posted a poll on Twitter outraged the liberal senators' proposal to tax billionaires.

Many people are described as people who are more important than life, but few deserve it. How many of us have actually exceeded our lifespan? How many people will be able to access the digital textbooks that our space generations will be learning? As Shakespeare observed in Julius Caesar, it is far easier to be remembered for doing bad deeds than for doing good deeds. How many people will leave a mark on the world—let alone the universe—for their contributions rather than their crimes? Just a few short years ago, Musk was mocked as a crazy liar on the verge of bankruptcy. Now, this shy South African with Asperger's syndrome, fleeing a brutal childhood, has overcome personal tragedies that have brought government and industry to the knees of his ambitions.

For Musk, his vast wealth is just a side effect of his ability to not only see, but also do things that others can't see, in areas where survival is at stake. Antonio Gracias said he was a close friend of Musk's two decades and had held positions on the boards of Tesla and SpaceX. In this case, ninety-nine percent of the people did not come out. There is a small group of people who are able to get out of trouble, who have the ability to make great decisions under great pressure, and who have a never-ending drive to change the course of humanity. "

Such cosmic ambitions are rarely without consequences, and Musk still has to be accountable to authorities on Earth. His company faces allegations of sexual harassment and poor working conditions; in October, a federal jury ordered Tesla to pay $137 million to a black employee who accused the automaker of ignoring racial abuse. The companies have also been fined for repeated regulatory violations. The federal government is investigating Tesla's self-driving software, which collided with a staggering number of emergency vehicles parked on the side of the road, causing casualties. The company's expansion in China needs to mingle with China's authoritarians.

The toll his tough style has done to employees is legendary. Former colleagues described Musk as stingy, cruel and spoiled, especially when frustrated or challenged. He recently separated from experimental musician Grimes, the mother of his seventh son. His brother and business partner, Kimbal Musk, said: "In business, he is a genius, but his talent is not sympathy for people." During the COVID-19 pandemic, he issued statements that downplayed the virus, violated local hygiene regulations to keep his plant running, and expanded doubts about vaccine safety. Musk told TIME that he and his eligible children were vaccinated and that "the science is clear," but he opposed mandatory vaccinations. Speaking of unvaccinated people, he said: "You're taking risks, but people are doing risky things all the time." "I believe we must be mindful of the erosion of American freedoms." For a person with an eye on Mars, the vast expanse of human suffering seems like an afterthought.

Musk can easily be cast as an arrogant super-badass, mingling with tech brothers and space playboys, for whom money is a score and rockets are the ultimate toy. But he was different: he was a manufacturing giant — moving metal, not bytes. His rockets, built from scratch on the ground-breaking vision of a self-taught man, have saved taxpayers billions of dollars, reinvigorated America's space dream and are launching satellites to expand internet access around the world. If Tesla delivers on its promises, it has the potential to deal a major blow to global warming. The man from the future where technology makes everything possible is reminiscent of our glorious industrial age, before America stagnated and stopped producing anything but rules, restrictions, barriers and Facebook.

Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society, said, "He's a humanitarian — not a good guy because he's not," and he met Musk in 2001 when the young, up-and-coming internet millionaire sent the group a big unsolicited check. "He wants eternal glory by doing great things, and he is the wealth of mankind because he defines great things as things that are good for mankind. He greedily pursues glory. Money is a means, not an end, to him. Who today would judge Thomas Edison based on which invention he made a profit? "

For all of his isolated qualities, Musk also embodies the zeitgeist of this marginal era. This is a year in which we emerge from a century-old plague and find nothing normal to speak of, a year in which we feel the brink of a brave or terrible new world, where no one is responsible and everything has to be renegotiated – from the way we work and travel to the way we find meaning and cherish. Musk is the embodiment of our infinite possibilities, our leader in a transformed world where old practices are set aside and unprecedented things become logical and the planet and humanity can still be saved. Maybe no one person should have all these powers. Perhaps this vision of the greater good comes at the expense of humanity. But if many people never vote or sign up for Musk's crazy zero-gravity flight, it doesn't matter to him.

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