‘It’s Infuriating’ – Woman Shares What It’s Like To Be Elon Musk’s SpaceX Neighbor
You know what they say―you can’t choose your family or your neighbors. As it turns out, Elon Musk is not the kind of neighbor you’d wish to have in your quiet neighborhood.
Praised by many for his business skills and declared as one of the world’s “great geniuses” by Donald Trump, Elon Musk received some harsh words from a woman living in a small community of Boca Chica, Texas, near which some of the SpaceX company operations are based. With support from the state government, SpaceX came to the remote beach community at the southernmost end of Texas in 2014. The Boca Chica community has a tiny population of 26 and already has a history of its inhabitants complaining about SpaceX operations.
Speaking at an event, Elon Musk reportedly said earlier this year: “We are working with the residents of Boca Chica Village because we think over time it’s going to be quite disruptive. The actual danger is low to Boca Chica Village, but it’s not tiny. So, therefore, we want super-tiny risk. So probably over time, it’s better to buy out the villagers.”
However, not all of the villagers were “bought out”. One of them told Esquire: “They don’t want us here because it’s costing them money to have us here. But we were here first. This is where we thought we were going to live until we died.”
More info: Twitter
Yesterday, one woman shared a thread on what it’s like to live next to the SpaceX operations center
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A Texan writer, Rachel Monroe, has shared on Twitter about what it’s like to live in Boca Chica―the area where Elon Musk based some of the operations of his SpaceX company. The thread received a lot of attention, now counting more than 40k likes and 16k retweets. However, not everyone was in agreement with the tweet’s author and defended Musk. “No, that’s not an accurate headline – it’s another “hit piece” – many people just want to demonize and denigrate him and other successful people. It keeps them focused on an “us vs. them” narrative and be perpetually unhappy,” one of Musk supporters wrote.
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To set this absolutely straight: Mr. Musk's contributions to human progress, technology, economy, culture and so on are not the primary object of interest here, it is his relationship to his own promises. You can't weigh this against that and, if the result is positive, have lower standards on his reliability. This is not special about Musk, neither in his favor nor against him, this is just basic human decency that is to be applied by people running successful companies, too. If I cause my local grocery store to gain 50 € out of the stuff I buy and pay, I cannot be allowed to take stuff worth up to 50 € for free either. I can't say I exceeded a speed limit intended to make the road safer, and for nothing happened am not to be punished. No one of us can do so, only those who are rich enough to pay for alternatives are given the permission not to have to, allegedly for "human progress" or something alike. In cases of emergency ... all is different. Regular operations are not.
Most of Mr. Musk's contributions are done for the good of Mr. Musk.
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I agree with this chick and this is a case where a woman isn't being a "Karen". Elon Musk is being the Karen. Not only is he engaging in behavior that wouldn't be remotely tolerated from any other citizen who have lived there for years, but he is dramatically rising all of the housing and living costs. Sure after annoying the s**t out of senior citizens, selling their property for 3x times what they paid for will be great for them, but in the long term it will effectively price out what is left of middle class. Look at Silicon Valley. Before it became Silicon Valley, a person working a regular job could buy a house and the spouse could stay home and take of the family if the person so choosed, now good luck having a pair of married engineers finding a decent house under $1,000,000. I have heard of people renting out tents in people backyards for $1,000 a month.
He's what happens when you give a stoner all the money they need to explore their hare-brained schemes.
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Is Elon Musk turning into the new PETA? Where uninformed public love him but if you see some of the stuff he does it's terrible?
I'm not surprised. He's not only pretty bonkers, he insults people on Twitter and reportedly treats his workers quite badly. So why would he keep promises he made to those residents?
I never liked him or any of his products. But, aside from that: Keep doing what you promised to do, Elon. I always found those messianic entrepenours to be creepy af ... Steve Jobs (or, tbh, more his fans then he himself) was more than enough for me, but Elon makes him, Apple-Fanboys etc look like reasonable people just favoring a superior product (which Apple's stuff isn't, but seen as). ... anyone remember when he accused one of the divers saving a dozen children's lifes in that cave as a pedophile, without any evidence? I mean ... maybe he is. There's a court in case there are valid reasons to believe so to handle this. There are reasons states are in power of a lot of things, which is meant to be in favor of those who can't outlawyer big business like Mr. Musk's. And his cars are s****y as it gets - and I'm not even talking about them being electric, I mean in different fields than power technologies.
I notice several people saying that the original inhabitants should be willing to sacrifice what they had in the name of science, progress, etc. I wonder if they'd like it if Musk took over their neighbor hood. Musk may be brilliant, but he's an egotistical sociopath. He sounds a lot like Steve Jobs.
"declared as one of the world’s 'great geniuses' by Donald Trump" ... from one a-hole about another.
I can see why California booted him. This certainly seems to fit the definition of private nuisance.
Elon Musk is no genius at all. Pretty average really, just good at defrauding fanboys and other idiots for their money *Example - Tesla has never turned a profit but is valued far higher on the stock exchange than for instance GM, which produce a multiple of cars per year than Tesla.
I'm sure Mr. Musk could have found somewhere else to do his building & testing. And I'm sure his having "money" has nothing to do with his freedoms. It's disgusting that he's allowed to abuse that neighborhood.
I went to Google Streetview to see this lovely, remote beach community and it's two or three streets in the middle of a Gulf floodplain a few km from the ocean consisting of gutted out, crumbling, boarded up dilapidated buildings that look like they were abandoned over a decade ago, probably after the last hurricane. There were a handful of houses that looked occupied but even some of them had windows boarded up. Maybe the vehicle in the driveway was just abandoned. There was no actual signs of life though. Anyone there who refused to be bought out when SpaceX moved in made a poor decision. They could have actually moved someplace nice. https://www.google.com/maps/@25.9921175,-97.1830382,3a,75y,279.43h,91.35t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s5YFzTSazeJ2hTeMKgqKTYw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en
What the op doesnt mention is that they have been buying the properties. The first wave that accepted got double the market value, the outliers got it up to triple, and there are approx 7 people still hanging on, and they arent accepting the quadruple the market value spacex would pay them.
I grew up in a rust belt city that was absolutely loaded with filthy, polluting industries when I was a kid. The rivers caught on fire. Then, people started pushing to regulate these industries so they packed up and hauled a*s to other places without "overbearing regulations", like China, Mexico and Texas. You can have them. My city has begun to heal.
Raise your hand if you thought Muskie would be a "good neighbor" with his rockets. Yeah, me neither.
I didn't know anything about Musk before he had his 1st baby recently and named his baby sonething unpronounceable. Now I understand. He's totally self centered.
NOT his first kid. Educate yourself before you pass judgement.
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So Trump's opinion is valued only when praising one of your "Messiahs?" Interesting.
This guy is a total space karen... First he annoys the hell out of his neighbors, then he names his child something super weird
Never mind the SpaceX activity. WTF you want to live in Texas for anyway?
To set this absolutely straight: Mr. Musk's contributions to human progress, technology, economy, culture and so on are not the primary object of interest here, it is his relationship to his own promises. You can't weigh this against that and, if the result is positive, have lower standards on his reliability. This is not special about Musk, neither in his favor nor against him, this is just basic human decency that is to be applied by people running successful companies, too. If I cause my local grocery store to gain 50 € out of the stuff I buy and pay, I cannot be allowed to take stuff worth up to 50 € for free either. I can't say I exceeded a speed limit intended to make the road safer, and for nothing happened am not to be punished. No one of us can do so, only those who are rich enough to pay for alternatives are given the permission not to have to, allegedly for "human progress" or something alike. In cases of emergency ... all is different. Regular operations are not.
Most of Mr. Musk's contributions are done for the good of Mr. Musk.
Load More Replies... I agree with this chick and this is a case where a woman isn't being a "Karen". Elon Musk is being the Karen. Not only is he engaging in behavior that wouldn't be remotely tolerated from any other citizen who have lived there for years, but he is dramatically rising all of the housing and living costs. Sure after annoying the s**t out of senior citizens, selling their property for 3x times what they paid for will be great for them, but in the long term it will effectively price out what is left of middle class. Look at Silicon Valley. Before it became Silicon Valley, a person working a regular job could buy a house and the spouse could stay home and take of the family if the person so choosed, now good luck having a pair of married engineers finding a decent house under $1,000,000. I have heard of people renting out tents in people backyards for $1,000 a month.
He's what happens when you give a stoner all the money they need to explore their hare-brained schemes.
Load More Replies... Is Elon Musk turning into the new PETA? Where uninformed public love him but if you see some of the stuff he does it's terrible?
I'm not surprised. He's not only pretty bonkers, he insults people on Twitter and reportedly treats his workers quite badly. So why would he keep promises he made to those residents?
I never liked him or any of his products. But, aside from that: Keep doing what you promised to do, Elon. I always found those messianic entrepenours to be creepy af ... Steve Jobs (or, tbh, more his fans then he himself) was more than enough for me, but Elon makes him, Apple-Fanboys etc look like reasonable people just favoring a superior product (which Apple's stuff isn't, but seen as). ... anyone remember when he accused one of the divers saving a dozen children's lifes in that cave as a pedophile, without any evidence? I mean ... maybe he is. There's a court in case there are valid reasons to believe so to handle this. There are reasons states are in power of a lot of things, which is meant to be in favor of those who can't outlawyer big business like Mr. Musk's. And his cars are s****y as it gets - and I'm not even talking about them being electric, I mean in different fields than power technologies.
I notice several people saying that the original inhabitants should be willing to sacrifice what they had in the name of science, progress, etc. I wonder if they'd like it if Musk took over their neighbor hood. Musk may be brilliant, but he's an egotistical sociopath. He sounds a lot like Steve Jobs.
"declared as one of the world’s 'great geniuses' by Donald Trump" ... from one a-hole about another.
I can see why California booted him. This certainly seems to fit the definition of private nuisance.
Elon Musk is no genius at all. Pretty average really, just good at defrauding fanboys and other idiots for their money *Example - Tesla has never turned a profit but is valued far higher on the stock exchange than for instance GM, which produce a multiple of cars per year than Tesla.
I'm sure Mr. Musk could have found somewhere else to do his building & testing. And I'm sure his having "money" has nothing to do with his freedoms. It's disgusting that he's allowed to abuse that neighborhood.
I went to Google Streetview to see this lovely, remote beach community and it's two or three streets in the middle of a Gulf floodplain a few km from the ocean consisting of gutted out, crumbling, boarded up dilapidated buildings that look like they were abandoned over a decade ago, probably after the last hurricane. There were a handful of houses that looked occupied but even some of them had windows boarded up. Maybe the vehicle in the driveway was just abandoned. There was no actual signs of life though. Anyone there who refused to be bought out when SpaceX moved in made a poor decision. They could have actually moved someplace nice. https://www.google.com/maps/@25.9921175,-97.1830382,3a,75y,279.43h,91.35t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s5YFzTSazeJ2hTeMKgqKTYw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en
What the op doesnt mention is that they have been buying the properties. The first wave that accepted got double the market value, the outliers got it up to triple, and there are approx 7 people still hanging on, and they arent accepting the quadruple the market value spacex would pay them.
I grew up in a rust belt city that was absolutely loaded with filthy, polluting industries when I was a kid. The rivers caught on fire. Then, people started pushing to regulate these industries so they packed up and hauled a*s to other places without "overbearing regulations", like China, Mexico and Texas. You can have them. My city has begun to heal.
Raise your hand if you thought Muskie would be a "good neighbor" with his rockets. Yeah, me neither.
I didn't know anything about Musk before he had his 1st baby recently and named his baby sonething unpronounceable. Now I understand. He's totally self centered.
NOT his first kid. Educate yourself before you pass judgement.
Load More Replies... So Trump's opinion is valued only when praising one of your "Messiahs?" Interesting.
This guy is a total space karen... First he annoys the hell out of his neighbors, then he names his child something super weird
Never mind the SpaceX activity. WTF you want to live in Texas for anyway?
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