Listening to Elon Musk’s performance during his quarterly profit call is akin to watching a street hustler playing a pea and thimble trick. He wants your attention to be diverted from the company’s dire profit performance from making electric cars and towards his plans to populate the world with humanoid robots.

So ambitious are his aspirations – which (I kid you not) include putting an end to world poverty, global democratisation of health care and the creation of his own army of robots to achieve these lofty goals – that it’s difficult to focus on the real world and the current state of Tesla.

Elon Musk clearly wants to be the general of his army of robots.Credit: Getty

The road to ending world poverty runs parallel with a plan hatched by Musk and his board to award him $US1 trillion in remuneration and lift his stake in the company from 13 per cent to almost 29 per cent.

To be fair, he hasn’t argued that pay equality would be part of his utopian vision. Nor does the Musk manifesto mention secession to a new land called X, but you would have to think that the title of king would appeal to him, remembering he did flirt with the idea of creating a new US political party.

One thing is certain:........

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