Herbert Hoover
Article
Herbert Hoover is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 05, 2024 and January 16, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “the example of Herbert Hoover, who started out as the Elon Musk of his day”; “Herbert Hoover was one of the world’s best businessmen”. It most often appears alongside Elon Musk, New York Times, San Francisco.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: November 05, 2024
- Last seen: January 16, 2026
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Elon Musk (2 shared issues)
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- New York Times (2 shared issues)
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- San Francisco (2 shared issues)
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- Trump (2 shared issues)
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- United States (2 shared issues)
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- Aaron Peskin (1 shared issues)
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- Adams (1 shared issues)
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- Alice (1 shared issues)
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- All-Seeing Eye (1 shared issues)
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- Avatar (1 shared issues)
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- barberpole theory of fashion (1 shared issues)
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- Bay Area (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
An even better question: if Musk did get a high-level position, would it go well? I would bet 30-70 no: he’s done some amazing things with his businesses, but the success rate for businesspeople trying to transfer their skills to government is low. Here I’m most moved by the example of Herbert Hoover, who started out as the Elon Musk of his day, did a good job as Commerce Secretary, but wasn’t able to cut it as President - he was too much of a move-fast-and-break-things autocratic CEO to handle a situation where he had to make compromises, appease stakeholders, and slowly build coalitions. You could imagine Trump thinking really hard about how to carve out a role that played to Elon’s strengths while shielding him from his weaknesses, but - no, sorry, I did a bad job starting this sentence, you can’t actually imagine Trump doing that.
Michael Jordan was the world’s best basketball player, and insisted on testing himself against baseball, where he failed. Herbert Hoover was one of the world’s best businessmen, and insisted on testing himself against politics, where he crashed and burned. We’re all inmates in prisons of different names. Most of us accept it and get on with our lives. Adams couldn’t stop rattling the bars.
Inline links: Herbert Hoover