[HN Gopher] Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
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Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
Author : rbanffy
Score : 282 points
Date : 2025-06-07 13:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spacenews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (spacenews.com)
| Neil44 wrote:
| This feud is just a pantomime for the crowd in my opinion.
| There's a bigger play here.
| michaeljx wrote:
| You grossly underestimate the pettiness and pedantry of those
| involved
| solardev wrote:
| Lol, I guess this is what happens when two assholes surround
| themselves with sycophantic yes-men for far too long.
|
| Nobody taught them how to play nice. I've met eight year olds
| with more civility and maturity than those two...
|
| Oh well. Reminds me of that Alien vs Predator movie: Whoever
| wins, we lose.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm inclined to Hanlon's Razor.
| phpnode wrote:
| the variation I prefer is: never attribute to wisdom that
| which is adequately explained by stupidity
| dahart wrote:
| I absolutely would be too, if there wasn't a long
| demonstrated history on the part of both of these people to
| use public drama as smoke to distract from other things
| they're doing.
| hiatus wrote:
| What are you alluding to here?
| mystified5016 wrote:
| That's giving these people _far_ too much credit.
| dahart wrote:
| Are you sure? You know that Trump constantly talks about his
| TV ratings? I forget who it was, but I remember there being a
| story last year or the year before, of someone who was
| publicly criticizing Trump met with him and was expecting to
| be absolutely whipped and scolded, instead behind the scenes
| Trump thanked them for making good television. The financial
| impact on Musk's companies do make this seem real, but
| somehow I wouldn't be surprised if this drama was fake. It
| did occur to me, and I can tell I'm not the only one... the
| top Google autocomplete for me for "is the trump" is "is the
| trump musk feud real".
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/president-
| trump...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/television-
| tr...
| epistasis wrote:
| When described from 10,000 feet, I could almost believe this.
| If Musk were smart he might be doing something like this on the
| route to rehabilitating his image with customers.
|
| But the particulars on the ground show that Musk is not smart,
| just vindictive, power-hungry, petulant, and childish. He
| literally posted that he would decommission Dragon because of
| Trump's threat, which was stupid in intent and stupid in
| potential negotiating effect on Trump (Trump does not know what
| Dragon is and does not care):
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/06/05/musk-trump-spacex-dragon...
| hsnewman wrote:
| Both use deception and disruption to get to their goals. Now
| they both are at the receiving end. This will not end well for
| either.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| If it was a charade Epstein would not have been mentioned.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| This reads like pretty classic infighting between a dictator and
| one of his more powerful cronies.
|
| I am surprised at how fast it happened, though. Usually this
| comes towards the end of a dictatorship. Maybe our dear leader is
| just as incompetent at being a dictator as he is everything else.
| solardev wrote:
| I hope it escalates into a pay per view cage match.
| tjpnz wrote:
| The last time Elon proposed a cage match he pussied out.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| And then lost a fight to 5 year old son?
| tjpnz wrote:
| To a 62 year old.
| davidcbc wrote:
| His mommy wouldn't let him do it
| jeffbee wrote:
| I bet a lot of readers think you are joking here.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Elon already has a black eye so I think the cameras weren't
| invited.
| username223 wrote:
| > Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship.
|
| It doesn't seem that way to me, e.g. Putin arrested
| Khodorkovsky (the richest man in Russia) in 2003. The way I see
| it, the politician needs the oligarch's money to gain political
| power, but then he has actual state power, including guns and
| the judicial system. At that point the oligarch has no purpose
| -- after all, the politician can just make new ones -- so it
| makes sense to cast him out or destroy him.
|
| Trump could bankrupt SpaceX with the stroke of a pen and bleed
| Tesla dry by revoking EV credits. He could even try to revoke
| Musk's citizenship over (real or fake) issues with his
| immigration status in the past. If Elon thought he was buying
| the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking
| things through.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| > If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange
| for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
|
| This is the funniest part to me, in the context of THIS
| president. The guy that demands fully loyalty but gives none?
|
| I can't imagine being the richest guy in the world, and
| embarrassing myself to such a degree all for.. what? He paid
| maybe $300M to help elect the guy, wore all the stupid hates,
| lavished orange man with praise.. and for what. What was ever
| the upside? The possible downside was obviously asymmetric to
| any clear eyed viewer.
|
| And so that asymmetric downside now begins.
| roxolotl wrote:
| This crop of billionaires was created from a time when
| capital was ascendant and state power was on the decline. I
| think as a result they've come to believe that the state is
| mostly there for their benefit especially during Republican
| administrations.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I think it's also a mark of the self delusion some of
| these "Great Men" tend to have, before you even get into
| the surrounding yes-men & ketamine.
|
| Probably some sort of "well I am worth $400M, but if I
| can get that to $2M, I can do my Mars space colony with
| enough room for my harem, for sure".
|
| vs "Gee I have more money than one can ever spend and
| remain mortal.. I could go enjoy my life like Bezos
| before it all evaporates..."
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| The Bezod who sat next to him at the inauguration?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Sure they all attended
|
| But few have tied themselves as explicitly to the man as
| musk. Funded. Wore the dumb hats. Went on campaign trail.
|
| It was like a deep romance. You don't walk away from that
| stench.
|
| Meanwhile Bezos has been on his yacht in the
| Mediterranean lol
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Haven't they ever seen House of Cards?
| elcritch wrote:
| Not that both the Republicans and Democrats are very pro
| large business. Remember Harris raised at least _twice_
| as much money from billionaires than Trump.
|
| They're just pro different big businesses, largely based
| on their demographics.
|
| Personally I'm still annoyed that Obama's administration
| had the DOE take over servicing federal student loans to
| "protect students" only for them to somehow be sold to a
| private company based in Chicago from what I can tell.
| Cipater wrote:
| Surely this is untrue?
|
| Isn't it the opposite? What are you basing this on?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/apr/01/billionaires...
|
| https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-buying-
| elec...
|
| _Billionaire spending heavily favored Republicans. Over
| two-thirds (70%) of billionaire-family contributions went
| in support of GOP candidates and conservative causes.
| Less than a quarter (23%) backed Democratic hopefuls and
| progressive causes. (The remainder went to committees
| without a clear partisan or ideological identity._
| elcritch wrote:
| I hadn't looked for a while, but Harris was out raising
| and out spending Trump substantially when I'd last read
| up on it. Much of that seemed to come primarily from big
| donors.
|
| Sure the more of the top richest people may have donated
| more to Trump or Republicans, but Harris raised much more
| overall.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/11/04/trum
| p-v...
|
| Seems like they both raised about the same from their top
| 20 largest donors:
|
| > The Harris campaign received significantly more funding
| than Trump's, outspending the Republican advertising
| machine by more than 70 percent in the final stretch of
| the election.
|
| > According to data from Open Secrets, Harris received
| almost $400 million from her 20 largest backers. Trump
| received over half a billion dollars from his top 20,
| which included over $100 million from SpaceX, Elon Musk's
| rocket company.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/11/04/trum
| p-v...
|
| My take of that is that Trump raised a bit more from
| concentrated donations from the richest billionaires, but
| Harris overall raised more from larger numbers of
| billionaires and millionaires.
| jyounker wrote:
| Everyone who consorts with Trump ends up covered in shit.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It was weird to see all those billionaire tech bros lining
| up to kiss his arse. What is the point of spending all that
| effort to be super rich and powerful if it means you have
| to grovel to a terrible human being like Trump? Does not
| compute.
| zitsarethecure wrote:
| "This time WE will be in control." is probably what they
| were thinking.
| willhslade wrote:
| Didn't Musk dismantle the federal agencies that were
| investigating and suing his companies?
| username223 wrote:
| Well... Sure, he got Starlink approved for rural
| broadband funding and ended some NTSB investigations into
| Tesla's "suicide mode." But those things can be reversed
| with a quickness if he's no longer on Trump's side.
|
| He also wrecked a lot more of the federal government that
| doesn't affect him one way or the other, and may have
| harvested a ton of data for his AI company. We'll see if
| anything comes of that.
| modzu wrote:
| maybe he wanted a ticket to the island, maybe he got it
| root_axis wrote:
| > _He could even try to revoke Musk 's citizenship_
|
| At the very least, an arrest by ICE is a real possibility.
| His brother has admitted on camera that they were illegal at
| one point, and there is now a lot of precedent for "arrest
| first - ask questions later" even if you're a natural born
| citizen.
| awalsh128 wrote:
| I was not as surprised. It is a lot like the pattern in his
| previous term with people that he brought on and then had a
| fallout with and they became the enemy like cabinet members,
| VP, etc. This second term is markedly different in that he
| appointed only due hard yes men. I think the only difference is
| that Musk was very useful for his money and independent sway.
| shrubble wrote:
| I always ask myself, "what is being done by the left hand, while
| we are distracted by the right hand?"
|
| Could this dust-up have anything to do with some other bill being
| passed or a policy implemented? I can think of the big
| reconciliation (BBB) bill, and Palantir getting access to more
| information on American citizens, as 2 things that the public
| could be distracted from by the Musk-Trump issue.
| fullshark wrote:
| The public doesn't need elaborate schemes to be distracted, no
| one actually cares about that stuff. Republicans don't even
| really care about massive deficit spending in the budget which
| is out in the open.
| rayiner wrote:
| Correct. Republicans voted to close the border and deport
| illegal aliens, not cut the budget deficit. The fiscally
| responsible republican party hasn't existed since the 1920s.
| Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers
| Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other
| republicans weren't going to cut those either, but they were
| going to talk about reforming them.)
| mindslight wrote:
| One has to love this chameleon of a Republican "platform"
| where values and ideals are championed to browbeat support
| for a particular action, but then written off as irrelevant
| when they're awkward for analyzing other actions - while
| other values and ideals are dragged out in support.
|
| A week ago, "the debt" was really important. Now that Dear
| Leader has declared otherwise, apparently it's not. Right
| into the memory hole it goes.
|
| The reality is there is no platform beyond anger (the
| base), and naked autocratic power (the politicians).
| Everything else is post-hoc rationalization.
|
| (and just to clarify so I'm not written off as some
| progressive partisan: I'm a libertarian who was unaligned,
| understood and saw merit in both camps' ideals - until the
| Republican party turned its back on conservatism in favor
| of cult of personality reactionaryism)
| rayiner wrote:
| There is a platform:
| https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. No taxes on tips
| was on the platform (#6) as was no cuts to medicare or
| social security (#14). Balancing the budget was not on
| the platform.
|
| There are republicans who care about the debt, but the
| party as a whole doesn't. The economic libertarians have
| been thoroughly marginalized in the modern GOP, because
| economic libertarianism is unpopular.
|
| To be clear, I admire the traditional small government
| conservatives, though I am not one. The GOP hasn't been
| that party since the 1920s. The mass immigration of the
| 20th century made that approach unviable. We're a country
| of machine politics now and it's only going to become
| more pronounced. The guy who ran on "No Taxes on Tips" to
| buy the Latino vote in Nevada was never going to balance
| the budget.
| mindslight wrote:
| That platform statement does not contain values or
| ideals! It contains _goals_ , which could possibly be
| achieved in very different ways. Values and ideals are
| then trotted out in support of the specific policies that
| purport to achieve those goals, and my point is that
| those ideals are highly inconsistent and seemingly sum up
| to mere blind anger.
|
| Your individual assertion that you don't care about a
| balanced budget isn't particularly relevant to the larger
| context where an overwhelming amount of Trump supporters
| _did_ just make arguments professing support of the need
| to get the budget under control to justify last week 's
| policies.
| rayiner wrote:
| Just because people don't have a grand unifying theory
| tying their preferences together doesn't mean their
| preferences are motivated by "mere blind anger." Trying
| to fit your preferences into some internally consistent
| framework is a high-IQ fixation.
|
| That's especially true because society is hard to
| analyze. For example, I think it will be bad for society
| to encourage greater race and ethnic consciousness in a
| diverse society. I can point to all the sectarian
| conflict that exists in countries around the world as an
| example of what I seek to avoid, but that's hardly
| definitive. Is the upshot that we have to proceed with a
| vast social experiment, because we can't provide a closed
| form analysis of the proposal _a priori_?
| tzs wrote:
| It looks like Trump has decided to approach deficit
| reduction like he approaches climate change: claim that
| it is a hoax that his policies will increase the deficit
| [1].
|
| According to that document he actually is cutting the
| deficit by $1.407 trillion with the One Big Beautiful
| Bill, and with the tariffs and deregulation the deficit
| will be cut by least $6.6 trillion over the next 10
| years.
|
| [1]
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/mythbuster-
| the-o...
| tzs wrote:
| > Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he
| considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The
| other republicans weren't going to cut those either, but
| they were going to talk about reforming them.)
|
| Technically they weren't going to cut them, but they also
| weren't doing anything to effectively address the upcoming
| shortfalls in the SS and Medicare trust funds and in fact
| the tax changes they are trying to enact would shorten the
| time to those shortfalls.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > Palantir getting access to more information on American
| citizens
|
| This is overblown IMO. The government already has this data on
| citizens and they're merely using it how they like (i.e.
| consolidating it through a contractor)
|
| The time to stop this would've been before it was collected in
| the first place.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I think you're falling into the "they are playing 5D chess"
| trap, whereas the truth is almost certainly much simpler: two
| powerful men with giant and brittle egos, who were on a
| collision course from day one, have now collided. That's it.
| rayiner wrote:
| They're to powerful men with huge egos who fundamentally
| disagree on political priorities. Trump had a platform:
| https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. Balancing the budget
| wasn't on it, but the following was: "FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT
| SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO
| CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE" (all-caps original).
| yb6677 wrote:
| I would have said the same, except Trump would never have
| agreed to Elon tweeting about him being in the Epstein files as
| that now sticks to Trump permanently.
|
| And that line of attack makes it seem a genuine fallout.
| krick wrote:
| That's what I usually think too. Even if just to be cautious:
| people alluding to "Hanlon's razor" (as if it's a real thing)
| are basically declaring themselves the smartest in the room, so
| by another well-known eponymous effect they are usually the
| dumbest in the room. Usually the worst suspicions are confirmed
| later.
|
| This time, though, I'm running with the crowd. I think this is
| just too much. I mean, come on, screaming on Twitter that Trump
| didn't release Epstein files, because he is in them? Sure, it
| doesn't hurt him, it's no news nor a real accusation, but I'm
| pretty sure Trump didn't _want_ that to be posted. The whole
| thing doesn 't look nice for anybody, it doesn't help anybody.
| No, I really think Musk has become totally insane this time,
| or/and is drugged out. The left hand still may be doing
| something, but that's taking the opportunity, not making this
| all up for the sake of distraction.
| yb6677 wrote:
| It is my opinion that US government won't cancel SpaceX
| contracts, as firstly SpaceX is the market leader, and secondly
| Elon could setup a second SpaceX base overseas, be it in China,
| Europe or wherever. And the USA will not want Elon working with
| other countries that closely.
|
| Elon would just lose a bit of money short term, the US government
| will lose a lot more.
|
| Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn't have the cards.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| > Trump is a deal maker
|
| He's absolutely not
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| But we are now allied with North Korea, secured peace in
| Ukraine, and have permanent trade deals with everyone.
| randallsquared wrote:
| As a US citizen, it's not clear to me that Elon legally can set
| up anything overseas without starting from scratch, and going
| that far might just make him the next Gerald Bull.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > and secondly Elon could setup a second SpaceX base overseas
|
| I'd be very surprised if this is possible given ITAR
| regulations.
| andyferris wrote:
| I was recently wondering whether the Australia/UK (AUKUS)
| exemptions for ITAR might mean SpaceX could operate freely in
| those countries. For example Australia is a reasonable launch
| location.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn't have the cards.
|
| That contradicts almost everything we've seen on his
| government. He doesn't seem to be a deal maker, doesn't seem to
| even grasp the concept of deals, and doesn't seem to care if he
| has the cards or not.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| cia would step in before we ever allowed that to happen.
| AngryData wrote:
| A lot of SpaceX technology has export restrictions. On top of
| that, Elon himself doesn't have any engineering knowledge or
| degrees and his entire knowledge base on space travel is from
| Kerbal Space Program that he played for like a week. So what
| exactly is he going to bring to other countries space programs?
| The people working at SpaceX aren't going to move to China, and
| Elon can't just pack his rockets up in a suitcase and fly
| somewhere else with them.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Trump is a deal maker
|
| Is he though?
|
| He didn't write the book 'The art of the deal'.
|
| He is a terrible businessman. I read that most of his
| properties are loss making. How many other people have lost
| money on a casino?
|
| He didn't end the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 24 hours, as
| he said he would.
|
| What good deals has he made?
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| "Trump is a deal maker"
|
| I hear that all the time but what deals has he made as
| president? He more seems like a bully who tries to beat up
| people but then quickly retreats when they hit back.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's wild to me how many conspiracy theories I've seen about how
| this is all staged, like it's a distraction or it's just Elon
| repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are
| cratering).
|
| Psychologically, I think this is reflective of cognitive
| dissonance. The two conflicting ideas are that two people with
| much to lose would get in the dumbest fight imaginable and the
| myth of meritocracy [1]. You see, people want or need to believe
| that people get into these positions through merit: skill,
| intelligence and hard work.
|
| That's simply not true. We are talking about two of the
| egotistical, thin-skinned, genuinely stupid narcissists on the
| planet. Drugs may even be a factor. There is no planet where a
| charade like this involves calling the _president of the United
| States a pedophile_ [2].
|
| Media reports seem to universally agree that everybody in the
| administration absolutely hates Elon. Additionally, IMHO Elon is
| absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible room reader
| and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a loyal following.
| He does not. Any clout he has is solely because of being a Trump
| acolyte.
|
| The myth of meritocracy is perpetuated to keep you working hard
| to make somebody else rich. It is to reinforce the existing
| social and economic order. It is to assign blame to those who are
| poor because poverty is treated as a personal moral failure.
|
| If Trump chooses to, he can effectively bankrupt Elon. That's how
| insane all of this is.
|
| For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance.
| There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military
| contracts real awkward.
|
| There are negotiations over a trade deal with China because of
| the tariffs and what is quite likely the dumbest trade war in
| history. The terms of that deal could be fatal to Tesla's future.
|
| Trump could even get Elon denaturalized and deported. How?
| Immigration fraud. It's fairly clear from the facts (and his
| brother's statements about 10 years ago) that when Elon dropped
| out of a Stanford PhD to start a company he was technically
| undocumented. If you misrepresent to USCIS then it is absolutely
| grounds for denaturalization should they choose, although such
| proceedings are incredibly rare.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
|
| [2]: https://deadline.com/2025/06/trump-musk-epstein-files-
| claim-...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| There's nothing invalid about meritocracy, but that's not what
| we have. We have some other kind of "ocracy": government by the
| lucky. I lack the Greek literacy to name the phenomenon
| correctly but that's what it would translate to in English.
|
| Neither Trump nor Musk has any business running anything more
| impactful than a used car lot or a corner Starbucks franchise,
| but their competition was permanently out to lunch in both
| cases, and here we are. How can anyone be surprised when two
| merit-free, chaos-loving narcissists fail to get along?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Meritocracy is like perfect communism, in that it's never
| been tried (and never will).
| mmustapic wrote:
| " For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that
| was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each
| of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger.
| Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us
| for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving
| while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns
| reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea
| of earning, and you will begin to be able to think."
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Meh, tell it to Darwin. Heat death will come for us all
| in the end, and there is no refuge to be found in our
| navels. Why accelerate it by embracing mediocrity? We
| should identify talent, reward it, and do the best we can
| with what we have, while we can.
|
| The part about "identifying talent" is where people seem
| to lose the plot, unfortunately.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It's much easier and more satisfying to give
| opportunities to family and friends, so that's what we
| do.
|
| The current US administration has gone all-in on this
| idea. Not an actual merit hire in the bunch.
| busyant wrote:
| I had a history prof who said "Communism is for the angels.
| But the angels don't need it."
|
| That being said, I don't fully agree with grandparent's
| statement that ...
|
| > We have some other kind of "ocracy": government by the
| lucky.
|
| As much as it pains me to say it, it wasn't just "luck."
|
| Musk is reasonably bright and Trump is ... well ... he's
| not as dumb as many portray him.
|
| Instead they're both horribly broken in other ways.
|
| Trump seems devoid of empathy and that metaphorical vacuum
| is filled with malevolence. He also appears to have very
| little self-control.
|
| I can't tell you what is broken with Musk. Maybe the same
| stuff as w/ Trump, but to a slightly lesser degree.
|
| Luck certainly played a part in their respective successes,
| but so did intelligence and ruthlessness.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's been described as kakistocracy (government by the people
| who are most unsuitable for government).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I think you're aiming for some idea of "tychocracy," but
| really, you mean "oligarchy."
| coffeemug wrote:
| There is no myth. Both Trump and Elon have generational talent
| in their respective domains. This is the kind of talent that's
| so unique, it creates its own domain that didn't exist before,
| and that no one will be able to replicate after.
|
| But they're both unstable, and have many other negative
| features.
|
| One can have an extraordinary talent in starting generational
| companies, and have a social media addiction (among possibly
| other addictions and problems) that makes one unstable. These
| aren't mutually exclusive.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| One of their fathers was a successful slumlord, and the other
| owned an emerald mine in South Africa. Those provide a one-
| time advantage (which in Trump's case would have been more
| profitable if he had socked it away in an index fund.) How do
| they establish 'generational talent' for being POTUS or
| building rockets and cars?
|
| It _will_ be interesting to see if any of Elon 's offspring
| choose to follow in his footsteps. Probably not the
| transgender child he disowned, or the one whose name has to
| be written with Unicode characters, but that leaves something
| like 20 others to vie for the throne.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > One can have an extraordinary talent in starting
| generational companies
|
| I though Musk was just adept at buying certain companies
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Maybe he is talking about Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump
| U, Trump Airlines...
| sidibe wrote:
| The only talents they are great at are grift and daring
| someone to enforce rules against them in a society that
| largely relies on people holding themselves to standards and
| risk avoidance instead of active enforcement.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > Both Trump and Elon have generational talent in their
| respective domains
|
| That's an interesting way of saying they were born into a
| wealthy family
| bobsmooth wrote:
| I was also born into a wealthy family but I haven't created
| multiple billion dollar companies.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Well presumably you have some actual morals.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| I bet you would have no moral given the opportunity.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| This seems like the sort of projection where someone is
| inadvertently "telling on themself".
| intermerda wrote:
| I bet you have none, opportunity or not.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Neither has Trump, so don't feel bad.
| kaptainscarlet wrote:
| The proof is in the black eye.
| spacemadness wrote:
| MAGA cope is astonishing in its intensity. I've never seen
| anything like it. Truly a different take on reality.
| kortilla wrote:
| >For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security
| clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes
| SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
|
| This isn't an issue. Execs nor shareholders are required to
| have clearance and even the ones that have clearance aren't
| read in to top secret stuff without a need to know. Elon's
| focus was starship which is quite far removed from any of those
| contracts (falcon gov launches or starshield). Gwynne Shotwell
| runs and will continue to run those parts of SpaceX just fine
| without Elon having clearance.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Execs nor shareholders are required to have clearance and
| even the ones that have clearance aren 't read in to top
| secret stuff without a need to know_
|
| No clearance would absolutely compromise Musk's ability to
| control SpaceX. (I think that's a good thing.)
| tzs wrote:
| Aren't they using the same rockets for non-government
| missions that they use for government missions, so the
| classified parts of government missions would just concern
| the payload and where they fly it to? Musk shouldn't need
| access to that information to run the company.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the classified parts of government missions would just
| concern the payload and where they fly it to?_
|
| Which in turn affects practically everything from launch
| timing to fuelling thresholds to whether the rocket can
| be used in reusable or expendable mode and thus whether
| that booster can be reused for the next launch. (Same for
| Starshield's requirements impacting Starlink.)
|
| Note that I'm not even touching ITAR, which Musk could be
| found subject to as a triple national.
| sneak wrote:
| Why wouldn't it be staged? There is a much simpler explanation
| than "this is cope for people who think life is based on
| merit".
|
| To underestimate your enemy is the most common mistake.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| You think a carefully staged spat between two men with long
| track records of impulsive idiocy is the _simple_ solution?
|
| I mean, there is a sense where a conspiracy is always the
| simplest explanation for public affairs, in the same way "a
| wizard did it" is simple. But that's not usually what people
| mean when they talk about Occam's razor.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > or it's just Elon repairing his image and trying to rescue
| Tesla (whose sales are cratering)
|
| I'm not going to say for sure that it's true, but this is not a
| conspiracy, or even a super genius move by Elon. I think it's a
| very natural and plausible instinct given the circumstances. He
| can't have avoided noticing the crash in sales, and the back of
| the mind can realize things the consciousness is in denial
| about. It would just register in his mind as "need to detach my
| image from this enemy".
| thrance wrote:
| > Elon is absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible
| room reader and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a
| loyal following.
|
| Two things:
|
| * Being on the spectrum doesn't make you completely clueless.
| Elon is also a drug addict, as was revealed recently to all
| that couldn't tell yet. And his unique position of "richest man
| ever" certainly must warp his self-image into a form of
| sociopathy.
|
| * He _does_ have a loyal following, looking at the braindead
| blue check marks approving of his every tweets. Although it 's
| hard to say how many of them they really are, as they are
| extremely vocal.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance
|
| Probably a bit late to do that as Musk can tap into the
| Starlink setup at the White House:
| https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/unvetted-starli...
| state_less wrote:
| What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat? Shouldn't
| those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the country is served
| by them and at what price.
|
| Trump needs to take his lumps on his BBB. That bill is full of
| pork for billionaires and cuts funding for poor folks. It should
| come as no surprise that people don't like it.
| kaonwarb wrote:
| I fear you materially overestimate Trump's rationality.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat?
|
| Well, SpaceX is owned by Musk. Therefore Trump, if seeking to
| hurt Musk, could attempt to hurt SpaceX.
|
| The ends justify the means. The country's best interests are
| collateral damage, the benefit that SpaceX offers the country
| is not relevant to Trump's ego/feelings having been hurt.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| They referenced the contracts directly in the disconnected
| social media exchange on Thursday.
| busyant wrote:
| > Shouldn't those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the
| country is served by them and at what price.
|
| I'm always amazed when I read questions like this.
|
| I mean ... have you been paying attention?
|
| Law firms getting security clearances canceled, incarceration
| without due process, Harvard defunded, memecoins, gutting of
| the federal government, &c. &c. &c. &c.
|
| Every data point screams malevolence and lack of concern for
| the common good of the nation.
|
| And you're confused about decision-making over SpaceX that
| "seems" to ignore how the country is best served?
|
| Don't get me wrong. You pose a valid question. In fact, only a
| person who _himself cares_ about the common good would ask this
| type of question.
|
| But man, the big flashing warning signs should be answering
| your question for you.
| BirAdam wrote:
| So, the government would do what, lean on Russia with whom the
| USA is currently engaged in a proxy war? Also, for Boeing or Blue
| Origin, the cost would currently be higher per launch, and as far
| as I know, no one has the kind of satellite network that SpaceX
| does.
|
| Of course, those are sane considerations. I suppose I shouldn't
| accuse the Donald of any kind of rational thinking.
| jmyeet wrote:
| SpaceX is critical infrastructure to the US at this point and
| its continued availability and operation is of national
| security interest.
|
| That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite,
| actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to
| national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option
| for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they
| absolutely could do.
|
| Less nuclear: the US has a lot of control over what SpaceX
| does. The FAA (and to a lesser extent the NOAA) has to approve
| every launch. They could simply gorund SpaceX.
|
| If you think SpaceX could simply move operations elsewhere,
| think again, The US prohibits ASML, a Dutch company, from
| selling EUV lithography machines to China.
|
| Apart from all of that, SpaceX is absolutely dependant on US
| government funding and contracts. Withdrawing those, or even
| the threat of such, allows the US to wield a lot of power over
| SpaceX.
|
| What's rather surprising about this feud is that Trump is
| currently the adult and has been uncharacteristically
| restrained in his response thus far. Of course, all that could
| change. It was Elon who _heavily implied that Trump was a
| pedophile_ , which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
| cyclecount wrote:
| If it's critical infrastructure it should be nationalized
| dingnuts wrote:
| We have a national space agency that has had plenty of time
| and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
|
| Why wouldn't SpaceX turn into the funding and political
| football that NASA is, if it were nationalized?
|
| Like, this isn't a hypothetical. SpaceX only has a market
| because of the incompetence of the "public option."
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > We have a national space agency that has had plenty of
| time and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
|
| That's quite inaccurate. NASA doesn't do much themselves,
| they hire external contractors but keep significant
| control over them. SpaceX got more funding and less
| control and they didn't start from scratch, NASA gave
| them all of their technical documentation, now-how and
| working prototypes.
|
| NASA could have done everything SpaceX does if they were
| given the same conditions and funding, however, they've
| never had funding for blowing up five spaceships in row,
| they were held to much stricter standards.
|
| The entire story looks like a blatant attempt to take
| control of space operations away from NASA and thus from
| the government.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Challenger
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| how do explain other governments funding efforts to copy
| spacex without success, its easy to hand wave away
| peoples efforts and achievements with hindsight
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| _onlyrealcuzzo_ above commented that Trump canceling SpaceX
| contracts would be "literally the path that led the USSR
| to ruin".
|
| However, we have a case of a private contractor trying to
| manipulate the president by means of "revelations" and
| decommissioning of a service important for national
| security. If the president cannot change those contracts
| the US would be literally on the path to oligarchic
| Russia... I'm not sure what's worse.
|
| Trump is generally moving in the direction of reducing
| government control of corporations to the point of risking
| government capture by oligarchic interests. What's
| happening now is a direct consequence of his policies and
| it's ironic that Trump's powers are being questioned when
| it comes to corporate regulation.
|
| Trump's personal faults are irrelevant at the moment, if
| the GOP doesn't stand firmly behind Trump we are going to
| find ourselves in an incredible mess.
| testing22321 wrote:
| This is a very anti-USA way of thinking because it doesn't
| allow companies to extract profit.
|
| Healthcare, education, roads, prisons, electricity,
| transit, all of it is designed in the USA so a company can
| extract profit.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| This is hardly a charitable interpretation. The lack of
| competition provides for little incentive for
| improvement. Now, for prisons, I think for-profit prisons
| are quite problematic because the incentives are abjectly
| antithetical to justice.
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| enjoy the snap reaction brain drain as entrepreneurs move
| their efforts offshore, people are being disingenuous by
| saying its as simple as deciding to nationalise a company
| everyone said would fail and who china and Europe are
| desperately trying to emulate, all over retaliatory
| statements, be careful what sort of government behaviour
| you normalise because you happen to be on the winning side
| of that behaviour, seasons change
| someothherguyy wrote:
| > an absolutely insane thing to do
|
| Is it?
|
| The statement itself doesn't seem to imply anything other
| than Musk seems to think he is in those files.
|
| Trump is in some of the JE "files" that were already released
| (flight logs).
|
| I think the cultural obsession with the unknown surrounding
| Jeffery Epstein informs what people infer from statements
| like that.
|
| There are many less-than-flattering ways that Trump could be
| associated with JE that do not include pedophilia.
| the_af wrote:
| But Musk is not implying any of those less-than-flattering
| things. Nobody knows what Musk _actually thinks_ , but what
| he implied is pretty clear. He calls it "a bomb", and we
| all know what that means.
|
| And this matters, because Musk was a major campaign
| contributor and advisor to someone he has now implied to be
| a pedophile. What does this say about _Musk_?
| someothherguyy wrote:
| > we all know what that means
|
| Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague
| statements or evidence.
|
| > What does this say about Musk?
|
| Who knows? Musk has thin associations with Epstein and
| Maxwell as well, he is a proven liar, is at times visibly
| manic, and has been reported to drop relationships at a
| whim when challenged.
|
| There could be plenty of things driving his behavior, but
| I don't think this informs anything new about his
| character.
| the_af wrote:
| You got me wrong: I'm not talking about the veracity of
| the accusation, I'm asking about what it says _about
| Musk_ (regardless of its truth).
|
| Especially in the eyes of Musk fans.
|
| This guy is now effectively claiming he helped get
| someone elected president whom he knew was a pedophile.
| Musk claims Trump got elected _thanks to his support_
| (again, Musk claims this). He also claims Trump is a
| pedophile.
|
| So what do Musk fans think about _Musk_ (not Trump) in
| light of this?
| spuz wrote:
| Honestly, if there were any fans of Musk after he
| imitated a Nazi salute, I don't think their perception of
| him has much further room to sink.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague
| statements or evidence.
|
| When it comes to drawing conclusions about the intent of
| the person making the vague statement, this is an error.
| It helps create the plausible deniability that public
| manipulators use to their advantage.
| jmyeet wrote:
| As per usual, every accusation from a narcissist is a
| confession.
|
| You know who absolutely is connected to Epstein? Elon's
| brother, Kimbal (allgedly) [1].
|
| And while not related to Epstein but is just gross and in
| a similar ballpark, Elon's father Errol, had a
| stepdaughter from his wife's first marriage, Jana
| Bezuidenhout, who grew up in his house from age 4. He
| later went on to father two children with Jana (the first
| when she was 30, I believe) [2]. It's unclear when the
| relationship began. The only public statements are after
| Jana had a break-up.
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-
| girlfrie...
|
| [2]: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/artic
| le/31886...
| the_af wrote:
| Didn't know these details about Musk's family.
|
| It doesn't surprise me at all that a guy so gross in his
| personal life comes from a gross family. Everything about
| Musk is deranged.
|
| Do you remember the (not so distant era) when Musk was
| the nerd's and hacker's darling? SpaceX, his genius, his
| vision! This was before we knew much about his personal
| life and opinions. It seems so long ago now... Before he
| took to Twitter to claim it was OK to coup countries for
| their resources, or started naming children like
| mathematical formulas.
| yubblegum wrote:
| > Everything about Musk is deranged.
|
| He's a symptom. It is our society, globally, that has
| become deranged. Almost all public figures are a shade of
| scumbag these days. Maybe they always were and there is
| no longer any reason to hide it.
| the_af wrote:
| Regrettably, I must agree with you.
|
| I can speak for Argentina, where the situation (the sharp
| deterioration of public discourse, the "rule by Twitter
| posts", flamewars between government officials,
| incredibly aggressive public discourse, obvious fraud
| that doesn't get prosecuted if it's done by some
| political factions, etc) mirrors the US in many ways. I
| would say in Argentina we repeat tragedy in the form of
| farce, except what's going on in the States is also a
| farce.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a
| pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do._
|
| How is it insane to repeat what everyone already knows? The
| only novelty here is Musk himself saying it to his legions of
| followers, who would have been otherwise inclined to downplay
| the significance of it.
| the_af wrote:
| It's insane because of the implications: Musk was a major
| contributor to Trump's campaign, and a major advisor, and
| _at the last minute_ he implies Trump is a pedophile?
|
| This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a pedophile
| elected! He couldn't have learned this at the last minute,
| he obviously held this ace in his sleeve.
|
| This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the eyes
| of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get a
| pedophile elected president if it would suit his business
| vision.
| mindslight wrote:
| Wow, that is some amazing threading of the mental needle
| to focus blame on Musk. Doesn't this indictment apply to
| every single person who voted for Trump in 2024? Those
| pictures of Epstein, Trump, and Maxwell having themselves
| some grand old times have been popularly circulating for
| like a decade at this point.
|
| If the indictment doesn't apply, then why can't Musk play
| the same card of "I didn't know/believe/accept" while he
| was supporting, but only recently has he "now come to
| know" ?
| the_af wrote:
| Why wouldn't I heap blame on Musk (as well as on Trump,
| mind you)? The guy's deranged and repulsive.
|
| I don't think your objections are fair. Let's go over
| them:
|
| The average Trump voter doesn't know much about Epstein,
| and certainly doesn't believe Trump was involved in
| anything with that scandal. Any evidence that may turn up
| would be considered "fake news" to them. Whatever you may
| think of Trump voters, and whatever things they really
| are to blame for, knowingly voting for someone they
| believe to be a pedophile isn't one of their sins.
|
| Musk just implied Trump is a pedophile (or is suppressing
| certain documents because of his links to a pedophile).
| Musk also claims without him Trump wouldn't have been
| elected. These are _Musk 's claims_, so he has thrown
| away any possible defenses of "but I didn't know/believe
| this" and "but I'm irrelevant in the grand scheme of
| things".
|
| You also claim Musk could defend himself with "but I
| didn't know at the time". This is very, very weak. When
| exactly do you suppose he learned this? In the few days
| that have elapsed since this very public falling out,
| maybe even a few days before? Oh, please. You know you
| don't believe this, these two were heaping praise on each
| other and calling themselves friends for most of their
| collaboration since Trump's second term, and only _now_
| Musk found out about Epstein? What, an aide rushed this
| info to him just in time for their current breakup?
| Absurd.
|
| Any way you slice it, Musk had this accusation up his
| sleeve the whole time, he just chose to deploy it now.
|
| So again I must ask, what does this say -- in his fans'
| eyes -- about Musk as a person?
|
| PS: You seem to believe I'm somehow defending Trump here.
| If that's your worry, let me be clear that I think Trump
| is a disgrace. I don't know whether he's a pedophile
| though, unlike Musk I don't claim to have seen any secret
| documents. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if both
| Trump and Musk are pedophiles, these aren't exactly
| examples of decent human beings.
|
| PPS: it has also just occurred to me you could be
| wondering why I'm focusing on the outrageous things Musk
| has said, but not on the contradictory, absurd or just
| plain dumb things Trump is saying about Musk? Well,
| because Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do
| lots of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now.
| Musk, as the world's richest person, has a much longer
| shelf life and more time to do damage to the US and the
| rest of the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult
| following. So I wonder what his followers think.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| IME Trump supporters will justify anything he does or may
| plausibly have done. They're too invested in him or have
| bought into the idea that the other must be so much
| worse.
|
| Elon stans seem to have a similar mindset.
|
| Getting folks to think critically about Elon's actions
| would require an Epstein video of Trump engaging in SA
| with a clearly underage child. Likely only if coming out
| of police evidence lockers sealed before AI video
| existed. And it would have to be reported widely and
| maybe even released publicly without cuts (only
| blurring).
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| This is also a left smear. Many conservatives have
| expressed dissatisfaction with this bill that is the
| focus of all this. It's not true what you are saying.
| It's not true that those that voted for him agree and
| justify everything. Regardless of what you may think of
| Covid response, many conservatives expressed disagreement
| with him on that as well.
|
| It is not as if supporters will deny all but a clear
| video tape of such an incident. There is no evidence this
| is true and there is plenty of reason to think it does
| not exist. The fact that Trump turned on Epstein while he
| was alive and Epstein's attorney tried to find ways to
| smear Trump because of his involvement with the
| prosecution stands at odds with Musk's claim that many
| here are granting prima facie.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Trump has a reputation for walking in on women and teens
| in the dressing areas at his pageants. At least one of
| Epstein's GFs said Trump assaulted her. Epstein said he
| was Trump's closest friend.
|
| It's very possible the Epstein files do have (or used to
| have) damning evidence. Though IME folks who call
| themselves MAGA are unlikely to take any evidence
| seriously.
|
| Trump himself has said he believes he could shoot someone
| on 5th avenue and get away with it.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| You're talking about Stacey Williams allegation a couple
| weeks before the election and right after those regarding
| Doug Emhoff? It's not as simple as piling on a list of
| allegations. If it is so possible why did Epstein not use
| it against Trump especially when Trump was trying to have
| adverse action inflicted on Epstein? As far as the 5th
| Avenue thing, this is another one of these things that
| happens on the left where they take all of his jokes so
| literally and just run with it. I saw another normie take
| from that Lawrence O'Donnell in which he was just beside
| himself up in arms over Trump's tweet about Biden being a
| robot was absolute proof that Trump believed in Biden
| robots and that he was mentally incapacitated. One can
| have criticism without it devolving into breathless
| derangement.
| mindslight wrote:
| "I only just realized!" is obviously disingenuous, but it
| suffices for the routine plausible deniability.
|
| The real distinction is whether you believe that someone
| who has done bad deeds can be supported for other
| reasons, or whether they need to be repudiated in their
| entirety. For example even if you know Trump is a child
| rapist (and you condemn child rape), but you think as
| President he's going to do good for the country, you can
| still support him for President while being
| intellectually consistent [0].
|
| This is separate from the issue of whether the person who
| has done wrong should face justice (eg continuing, you
| can think that Trump should go to jail but modulo that
| not happening, that he will do good for the country [0]).
| And separate from the issue of whether someone in a
| position to facilitate justice happening has an
| overriding duty to do so (I don't think Musk is in this
| position either though. Trump's one actual skill is
| escaping consequences).
|
| > _This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a
| pedophile elected! He couldn 't have learned this at the
| last minute, he obviously held this ace in his sleeve..._
|
| > _This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the
| eyes of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get
| a pedophile elected president if it would suit his
| business vision._
|
| The second does not immediately follow from the first.
| Modulo the larger distinction I made above, it may just
| be the case that every second powerful figure is some
| kind of child rapist or similarly morally bankrupt, and
| this has been normalized, so even if you have morals to
| be applied you just have to hold your nose to get
| anything done. I have no idea, but I do know Epstein was
| connected to _a lot_ of people.
|
| You're also imparting a narrower _business_ vision rather
| than political or moral where such compromises would be
| see as more justified. So no, these events might indict
| Musk in your mind further, but I don 't think this is a
| universal conclusion.
|
| > _Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do lots
| of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now. Musk,
| as the world 's richest person, has a much longer shelf
| life and more time to do damage to the US and the rest of
| the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult following._
|
| I've got the complete opposite take on this. Trump has
| his hands on the actual levers of power, power which
| continues to acrete the more he destroys our
| institutions. Whereas Musk seems close to his limit with
| buying Xitter and blackmailing politicians (about funding
| opponents). It feels like Musk is just an avatar of the
| terrible dynamics of wealth concentration, which are
| present regardless of him personally. While Trump is
| actively pushing our society off a cliff in a way we will
| not be able to come back from. Just a feeling per my own
| heuristics, I'll have to ponder this more.
|
| [0] just to be very explicit this is certainly not my own
| view about Trump!
| safety1st wrote:
| This isn't the first time Musk has baselessly accused
| someone of pedophilia on social media.
|
| He did it randomly to some guy he didn't like in Thailand
| who saved some kids trapped in a cave. He's probably done
| it other times.
|
| It's just an Elon Musk thing. Go totally unhinged on
| social media and defame people without evidence. He does
| it all the time.
|
| The only guy more famous than Musk for saying absolute
| nonsense on social media, is Trump.
|
| It is all fake, lame, and nonsense.
|
| What's shocking is that the people running our country
| are behaving like absolute children. I feel like they
| wouldn't be able to hold down a job at my company because
| they're so unhinged, they would have been fired long ago,
| and yet here they are, billionaires, deciding the fate of
| 350M people.
| the_af wrote:
| Yeah, I remember that other accusation.
|
| To be clear, I'm not debating the veracity of the
| accusation, I'm asking what it says _about Musk_ that he
| claims to have knowingly helped elect president someone
| he knew to be a pedophile.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| I think Musk has pluses and minuses. I think he does have
| some mental issues volatile and lash out and make poor
| decisions even if I do agree with some things and
| disagree with others. To be honest, he is someone that
| staked his reputation on completely verifiably and
| provably lying about the legitimacy of his ranking in a
| video game and at a time with all eyes on him besmirched
| a large streamer he previously has thought of partnering
| with on X as best by "bad at video games." It's just
| terrible judgment. I'm surprised the "normie" didn't
| focus on kind of pathetic it looked to lie about videos
| games and instead they made wild accusations comparing
| him to the bad people from 30s.
| rpmisms wrote:
| > He couldn't have learned this at the last minute, he
| obviously held this ace in his sleeve.
|
| Why? He could easily have learned this after the
| election.
| the_af wrote:
| Not after the election, since he supported Trump (barring
| some disagreements) until a few weeks ago. They parted
| with a hug, just before this blowup.
|
| So are we supposed to believe Musk just found out about
| the Epstein link, hidden in unreleased documents, in the
| last few days? It's extremely farfetched.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, I would assume that anyone who's still a Musk
| supporter has no morals to speak of anyway, so I'm not
| sure why they would be concerned by this implication.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| Everyone knows what? There have been no shortage of
| journalists trying to destroy him, where is the evidence.
| He was quite involved in assisting prosecutors against
| Epstein, as a civilian. As others have pointed, Musk does
| have a penchant for making this exact allegation,
| unfounded, against people he disagrees with, even over the
| most bizarre of things. If we all just say we know
| allegations against people we disagree will true, without
| basis in fact, then we are no better than parliamentary
| monarchy for which we fought a revolution against, let
| alone kangaroo courts around the world.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| > nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
|
| This isn't at all clear. It's clear that they could easily
| compel them to prioritize and fulfill government contracts.
| Far less clear that they could just take it. It is clear that
| the current administration could "try" but such an effort
| might result in a lawsuit that lasts longer than the
| administration does and thereby become moot.
| asadotzler wrote:
| The most correct reply here.
| root_axis wrote:
| It may take a long time to be fully litigated, but the
| courts also take a while to act, and we've seen that this
| administration takes full advantage of this fact. The odds
| are also stacked against Elon here because the national
| security interests would likely make a compelling argument
| to stay any injunctions SpaceX might seek. SpaceX might
| prevail in the end, but the whole process would get very
| uncomfortable for Elon in the meantime.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Actually the defense production act provides a perfectly
| viable path actually supported by law to ensure that the
| governments interests are served.
|
| An injunction would be entirely logical as it prevents
| irreparable harm based on a fanciful understanding of the
| law unlikely to prevail and hurts the government not at
| all.
|
| Certainly the government trying to steal like a common
| criminal puts anyone in an uncomfortable position but the
| only real risk is the fact we live under incipient
| fascism.
| yubblegum wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. This is a clear case of eminent domain.
| Doesn't spacex have a board to control their ceo?
| sneak wrote:
| You don't get more milk by beating the cow.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _That may sound like it gives Elon power. It 's the
| opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly
| threats to national security infrastructure like this. The
| nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize
| SpaceX, which they absolutely could do._
|
| A public-private partnership is the dream for any
| shareholder. Guaranteed revenue and profits funded by taxes,
| investment capital from the government on great terms,
| becoming "too big to fail", etc.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| SpaceX can move to another country if the US starts creating
| problems. Plenty of countries will happily take them.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > lean on Russia with whom the USA is currently engaged in a
| proxy war?
|
| Are they though? Trump is on Putins side. Who disputes that?
| mellow-lake-day wrote:
| Yes, it's quite disingenuous to say that USA is engaged a
| proxy war. Ukraine has military support from other countries
| but they are the ones making decisions at the end of day.
|
| For example Ukraine just carried out a complex drone attack
| on Russia's bomber fleet, this was careful planned by
| Ukrainian miliary without any involvement of the US and US
| was not informed of this ahead of time. And after the fact
| USA got upset with Ukraine for doing that.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| The DoD would certainly just take care of Elon if they had to.
| Who are we kidding. The DoD are the actual owners of Space X.
| Hes a figure head / civilian face.
|
| They are literally just running the Howard Hughes playbook over
| again. Hes a front guys.
| mellow-lake-day wrote:
| >with whom the USA is currently engaged in a proxy war?
|
| USA isn't currently engaged a proxy war with Russia
| rpmisms wrote:
| Yes we are.
| mellow-lake-day wrote:
| Ukraine is fighting a Russian invasion. And republicans are
| pressuring Ukraine to give up. How is that a proxy war?
| afroboy wrote:
| But numbers don't lie, USA still sending billions of
| weapons to Ukraine even with the Trump shenanigans.
| protocolture wrote:
| They would have to tip a bunch of money into boeing to help
| them get to space x parity in time for Artemis launch dates. It
| isnt happening.
| seydor wrote:
| Maybe this timeline leads to nationalization of spaceX
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Apparently, Musk is very popular among Republicans:
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/06/elon-musk-...
| abxyz wrote:
| Musk is popular amongst republicans because Trump has
| championed him. The pro-Musk Republicans are also pro-Trump
| republicans and their loyalty to Trump will beat out whatever
| respect they have for Musk. Musk is not a threat to Trump,
| because Trump's entire platform is built on Trump-or-bust. Musk
| was a useful idiot to Trump. Musk thinking that Trump's Epstein
| connection was somehow going to hurt Trump shows just how
| impotent Musk is. Trump fans couldn't care one iota about that.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| If anything, Trump fans will pat him on the back for pwning
| those 13-year-old libs.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's really that simple. If you want to know what MAGA
| supporters believe about any topic, just look up what Trump
| last said about it. He could change his mind three times in a
| single day, and they would also change their mind (and
| talking points) in lock step three times.
| Winsaucerer wrote:
| Some people really do act like that, in my limited
| experience. Trump's opinion changes and lo and behold their
| beliefs have updated to the same view as Trump's.
| ffiirree wrote:
| Yep. In 2016 all of Trump's scandals were already exposed. It
| didn't do anything. Trump can easily walk away from Musk
| right now with no problems. Tesla is probably not going to
| last at high valuation much longer anyways
| oskarkk wrote:
| YouGov made a survey on June 5, asking "If you had to choose,
| who would you side with more between the following?" with Musk
| and Trump to choose. For Republicans, it's 71% Trump, 6% Musk,
| 12% neither, 11% not sure.
|
| https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/survey-results/daily...
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Trump has unprecedented power of retribution. The best Elon can
| pull off is swearing at opponents in an interview.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore,
| so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government
| contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as
| corruption in any way, shape, or form.
|
| Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the
| president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things
| about the president.
|
| If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should
| extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on
| merit and based on nepotism instead.
|
| This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone
| says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it
| shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough,
| they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the
| money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on
| promises, and it shoots the country in the head.
| the_af wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the
| election campaign and a major advisor to the president now
| declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats
| an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk
| knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him
| after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes
| of his supporters, what does this say about Musk?
|
| (Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant;
| what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to
| know is a pedophile).
| aisenik wrote:
| Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated
| with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu
| lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less
| reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the
| situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the
| dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child
| rape is resolved this way).
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| It's kind of his pointless go-to A-bomb insult, yet, this
| time, it's within the realm of possibility. I mean, I don't
| not believe it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
| majormajor wrote:
| Trump/Epstein connections have been reported on for years
| with photos and videos so anyone who cares probably was
| already on the anti-Trump side.
|
| While Musk has a bigger megaphone than most media, he also
| has a credibility issue - and now especially for the Trump-
| true-believer crowd that is likely the only group whose
| bubble would be so shielded that they'd see it as news.
| redeeman wrote:
| trump was one of the people that originally provided all
| they knew about epstein to the prosecutors, and once he
| realized what epstein was, he was banned from all trump
| venues. What did other do?
| jordanb wrote:
| Not only that but Musk was able to successfully argue in
| court that he's such a well known liar that a reasonable
| person wouldn't take his accusations of pedophillia
| seriously
| the_af wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know this.
|
| I didn't even know this was a possible defense at all,
| "everything I say is bullshit, so if anyone takes it
| seriously, that's on them".
| xnx wrote:
| Fox news attempted this defense in court "Fox
| persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation,
| any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate
| amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
| casefields wrote:
| Maddow and MSNBC made the same argument in court. It's a
| very useful defense for these entertainment news
| programs.
| wat10000 wrote:
| A pox on all of them.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| My memory is a bit fuzzy, but that was also Trump's
| family's response to the financial statements related to
| his businesses when it came up in court. But I don't
| remember which court case it was.
| amiga386 wrote:
| > Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker
|
| Laughably so.
|
| Musk: I can save those boys trapped in the cave! We can use
| this stupid submarine thing of mine.
|
| Hero: No need, I and my Navy SEAL cave-diving pals have got
| this.
|
| Musk: How dare you! You're a pedo.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44779998
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45418245
| lostlogin wrote:
| Would you bet against accusation in this instance?
|
| The existing recordings and convictions against Trump
| don't seem to have hurt him. Why would this?
| thrance wrote:
| He was sued for that by the guy and won his trial by
| convincing the judge that "pedo" is actually common
| Afrikaner lingo, and it was a casual insult. This country
| is a joke.
|
| Also doesn't remove the fact Trump was one of Epstein's
| closest friends, and everything points to him being
| involved in some way or the other in those affairs.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Musk's brother was introduced to his girlfriend by
| Epstein.
|
| Epstein mentored a young model who went onto be a
| neurosurgeon and married Microsoft's Sinofsky.
|
| Bill Gates had a meeting with Epstein during which an ex-
| girlfriend of Epstein's who was once Miss Sweden just
| happened to turn up with her 15 year old daughter.
|
| I'd quite like someone to investigate if our billionaires
| are being honeypotted left, right and center because it
| appears you can control a big swathe of the world's
| wealth if you get old rich nerds laid.
|
| It's still not clear if Epstein made his money by
| blackmailing yet another Billionaire.
| Geee wrote:
| He supposedly learned it after the fact.
|
| Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that.
| However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has
| actually been public information for a long time. It's known
| that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no
| evidence he went to the island or did something wrong.
|
| It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the
| actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to
| the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult,
| rather than a serious accusation.
| krapp wrote:
| To be fair Elon claimed that Trump is mentioned in the
| remainder of files which have yet to be released.
| Presumably what evidence there is of wrongdoing, if it
| exists, exists there.
|
| "Pedo guy" Musk being Musk, though, who knows? What is the
| likelihood Musk would even have access to those files if
| they were so damning to Trump and still sealed?
|
| Nothing about this is "quite obvious." It could go either
| way. To be honest I wouldn't put it past either one of them
| to be on Epstein's "list."
| Geee wrote:
| I think the tone of the message would be way more serious
| if it was a serious accusation based on actual evidence.
| Now it reads like a kindergarten level conspiracy theory,
| which almost seems like a joke. The silly claim was that
| Trump being in the files is the reason why they aren't
| released.
|
| And apparently he has now deleted the tweet.
| krapp wrote:
| Without seeing the unreleased files we can't know how
| silly the claim is.
| the_af wrote:
| > _He supposedly learned it after the fact._
|
| When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his
| administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his
| going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons
| explicitly _not_ about any pedophile rings.
|
| So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's
| because he just learned of it.
|
| I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves
| like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act?
| What is true is that accusing _the president of the US_ of
| being linked to a pedophile ring is _not the same_ as
| accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
|
| The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the
| president of the US might.
|
| (Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel
| compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think
| this is a fight between two nasty people).
| evan_ wrote:
| I think having 400 billion dollars earns a person a
| measure of resp- well, whatever Trump is capable of that
| would equate to respect
| wefinh wrote:
| Trump is very interesting critter to observe.
|
| >>>What is true is that accusing the president of the US
| of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as
| accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
|
| I think you might have bigger issues here. Trump has
| links to mafia - and that is a fact. I'm more interested
| on what he was doing in regards to Ukraine, as post
| Soviet mafia(Georgian-Soviet Jewish mix in NY) via NY US
| Italian? mafia helped him a lot and gave him loans for
| his projects. Over the time Kremlins took over Soviet
| mafia and incorporated it - it might sound like a joke,
| but it is the truth - all the countries have mafia, but
| in Russia mafia is running country.
|
| So, from the actions of Trump on how he is dealing with
| Ukraine, Trump is no better than Biden and Democrats that
| were frozen by fear because of the threats that Putin
| said. Which is good... if you want to see fireworks of
| nuclear weapons in action, because US actions(and
| inactions) are enabling that. Putin will use nukes on US
| - for many reasons - mainly because Putin is not at fault
| here and is misunderstanding American mindset, which is
| not completely decommissioned by Democrats.
|
| From what I understand Musk simply has no leverage what
| Kremlin mafia has over Trump, also Musk is autistic who
| has no training on how to influence other people the way
| how Putin(could be slightly autistic, as he is mirroring
| what Russians want - just like Hitler did) does as he is
| blunt and uses brutal force, which people as social
| beings does not appreciate.
|
| There is also significant difference between Trump and
| Musk - Trump can say things bluntly, but he also can
| operate on personal level and have different attitude to
| very important people - also he likes flattery. Musk has
| only one of those qualities - he can say things
| bluntly(but without confidence and aura of power), but as
| autistic he is completely unaware of when he should
| really shut up when he is not in control of situation.
|
| PS Trump, Musk, even the opposition to me are insects and
| entomology of humans is just a hobby to me. Unlike most
| of people from US(and apparently people that can't
| understand that they are not part of US) I have my own
| thoughts, that I don't have a need to resonate and change
| in frequency according to some general line of one side
| or other.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| wtf did i just read?
| root_axis wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZJorAVgHy7Y
| thrance wrote:
| Trump was Epstein's _best friend_ according to the latter,
| in his conversations with the ghostwriter that would write
| his memoirs. There are videos of the two at 1990s parties,
| judging women and laughing together. Trump was also
| mentioned in Epstein 's black book.
|
| I feel like you downplay their relations with your "Trump
| had some relations with Epstein". There is definitely
| something fishy as to why they still haven't released the
| entirety of the files, and lie about having done so.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting
| influence of power.
|
| Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be
| better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to
| destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults
| could come in and run the country / companies.
|
| I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had
| redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first
| sentence.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| July 4th we commemorate getting rid of one mad king overseas
| and replacing him with.. oh wait.
| mindslight wrote:
| You should always self-host your foreign mad king. The
| latency to England is just too high.
| ithkuil wrote:
| KaaS (king as a service)
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| Canada has done it the right way. Self host but have a
| redundant backup across the pond.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| We actually had one back in the 1800's:
| https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-joshua-norton-
| emperor...
| jmyeet wrote:
| 6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are
| Supreme Court justices.
|
| All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme
| Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing
| out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity".
|
| Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make
| prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of
| its way to say you can't even examine the communications
| between the president and the DoJ.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the
| impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's
| perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity
| and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for
| government ministers.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| We have legislative immunity called the speech and debate
| clause. It doesn't shield lawmakers from other crimes, nor
| should it, and it certainly doesn't imply some sort of
| expansive executive immunity.
|
| The founders were rebelling agaisnt an untouchable
| executive, remember?
| voidfunc wrote:
| If the founders thought it was so important the President
| not have immunity from all crimes they would have written
| it such rather than leaving it to interpretation.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If the founders thought it was so important the
| President not have immunity from all crimes they would
| have written it such
|
| They did; by writing in explicit immunities for some
| constitutional officers for certain activities, they
| implicitly rejected other immunities for those and other
| constitutional officers, by the legal principle
| "expressio unius est exclusio alterius".
| wqaatwt wrote:
| That the opposite of how laws work..
| nradov wrote:
| This contract dispute has nothing to do with Presidential
| immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.
| Cancelling SpaceX contracts for political reasons would be
| wrong but not criminal.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| The point is we won't find out because presidential
| immunity also protects against discovery. Cases that
| previously could have been decided on the merits won't even
| make it to adjudication.
| nradov wrote:
| No, that's not how it works. The Trump v. United States
| case had no bearing on civil discovery.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| What about Nixon?
| overfeed wrote:
| Bur it protects against criminal discovery, Civil cases
| can be quashed by current president uaing methods that
| used to be criminal for a president.
| CalChris wrote:
| Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this
| Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the
| Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm
| unaware of.
|
| This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around.
| Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
| deeg wrote:
| I have absolutely no sympathy for Musk but the president--any
| president--shouldnt be able to do this.
| consumer451 wrote:
| The biggest self-indictment in that post by POTUS was "I
| was always surprised Biden didn't do it!"
|
| I am not surprised that Biden didn't cancel all SpaceX
| contracts for political reasons, neither are most rational
| people.
| jyounker wrote:
| Trump doesn't believe that smart people with power can
| have ethics or morality because he doesn't have them
| himself.
| majormajor wrote:
| It's not ethics or morality, it's just "not being a
| child." A president not personally retaliating against a
| critic doesn't need to have anything to do with ethics,
| it's just requires a post-middle-school mentality of "I
| may not be happy with this person but I [my country] can
| still benefit from things they do."
| ithkuil wrote:
| The property of "being a child" in an adult is
| effectively a matter of ethics and morality
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| No, it can be justified with rationality alone.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Rational and ethical have a lot of overlap.
| ithkuil wrote:
| I phrased it poorly:
|
| Being an adult child has moral and ethical consequences.
|
| Behaviours and emotions that are totally legit and
| tolerated in a child are no longer so in an adult.
|
| An adult that has all the privileges and freedoms of
| adulthood over childhood, like the ability to vote,
| drink, drive and hold an office, also has to abide by the
| moral obligations of being an adult.
| belter wrote:
| 1 Musk = 13 Scaramuccis . Please update your SI unit tables
| accordingly.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| That 40% are in a cult about 1 mad rant away from an ivermectin
| Jonestown.
| yongjik wrote:
| On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash
| your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse
| course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract"
| does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A:
| Musk.)
|
| I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not
| _quite_ be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at
| least it looks more entertaining! : /
| Phenomenit wrote:
| That's the key right? It's world as content. Nothing means
| anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media
| platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this
| downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of
| "politics". But that's not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what
| happens next!
| blibble wrote:
| > Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
|
| did people expect any different when they elected a reality
| TV star to be president?
|
| one that's such an incredible businessman he managed to
| bankrupt not one, but two casinos
| martin-t wrote:
| He's first and foremost a narcissist (strongly grandiose
| subtype, and all over the place on the communal/malignant
| axis).
|
| That condition should make him ineligible for any position
| of power. This is what a society gets when it elects
| someone mentally ill (in the harmful-to-others rather than
| the typical harmful-to-ill-person sense).
|
| I am continually astounded by how many people, even if you
| explain the symptoms to them, will be unable to see it -
| not just in this one case but in general. There is
| something in many people that makes them attracted to those
| who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly
| above things.
| thoroughburro wrote:
| Narcissists are over-represented as CEOs and such, as
| well. I think a fair number of Americans like
| narcissists.
| brookst wrote:
| This is a good observation, but I think causality is
| reversed: narcissists by nature develop whatever skills
| will attract the most adoration.
|
| Trump plays the strongman / oppressed white man card. If
| the populace valued different things he would happily
| parade around in neglige. He's just playing to the
| audience, and it's not narcissism so much as bullshit
| archetypes that they want.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Corporate politics doesn't adequately punish the traits
| narcissists and sociopaths present. Quite the contrary,
| those traits can easily become assets in their careers.
| martin-t wrote:
| Exactly. It's an evolutionarily beneficial trait. We're
| no longer competing with other species (why social traits
| developed), we're competing against each other (where the
| right amount of anti-social traits works best).
| rbanffy wrote:
| We desperately need to fix those incentives for society
| and civilisation to survive.
| martin-t wrote:
| Unfortunately that is way outside too many people's
| Overton window. And, also unfortunately, I don't think
| the average human is sufficiently intelligent to
| understand why he should care.[note 1]
|
| Throughout history, we see cycles of freedom and
| oppression, separated by either collapse or revolt.
|
| - Collapse happens when anti-socials gain so much power
| in an organization (whether it's a corporation or state)
| that it starts to function so poorly that it's overtaken
| by competitors (or even destroys itself).
|
| - Revolt happens when they gain/use that power too
| blatantly and people notice. Peaceful revolt is possible
| on the surface but ultimately, all true power is backed
| by violence - sometimes that violence is just thinly
| veiled behind multiple steps of action and reaction
| (unarmed protesters attacked by police will bring rocks
| and Molotovs next time which will cause even more attacks
| from the police which might escalate into civil war).
|
| But right now we're at a point where oppressors have
| enough history to learn from. They don't care about
| collapse and revolt only happens when people are willing
| to act. So what they're doing right now is conditioning
| everyone that violence is wrong. This comes in many
| forms: bans on social media (every TOS forbids promoting
| violence these days), forced self-censorship (just watch
| a couple youtube shorts, good luck finding one where
| "kill" isn't spelled "k*ll" and bleeped out), zero-
| tolerance policies (school will punish both aggressor and
| target when they get into a fight), ...
|
| Trump is a fascist (https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-
| acquisitions-1933-and-the-...). Last time people like him
| got into power in the civilized world, one was shot and
| hung upside down from a gas station, the other killed
| himself in a bunker. But this time when people reached
| for the 4th box of liberty, they were almost universally
| shunned. So he got into power, elected by the stupid
| people, and to nobody's surprise immediately started
| dismantling the system which exists to keep him in check.
|
| He will do it slowly enough that each time he takes a
| step towards his goal, he will only piss off a small
| portion of the people and there will never be enough
| organized opposition at once. At least this time the
| dictator-elect is so old he might snuff it from natural
| causes before he does too much damage.
|
| But the average person will not learn from it. The idea
| that a group of people as large as tens or hundreds of
| millions needs one special individual at the top is the
| peak of human stupidity.
|
| ---
|
| [note 1]: Some people see this as too arrogant to be said
| openly but them it becomes just an excuse for them to
| shut down their logical faculties and reject what I say
| based on primitive instincts, proving my point.
|
| - Anyway, look at how many democracies use the
| plurality/FPTP voting system which is known to be pretty
| much the worst possible (https://rangevoting.org/).
|
| - Look at how many people in the west will say that
| democracy is obviously good and dictatorship obviously
| bad but don't question why nearly all corporations have
| hierarchical (dictatorial) power structures.
|
| - Look at how many people are OK with spending a third or
| half of their salary on rent, which is just free money
| that goes to people who contribute nothing to society.
|
| - Look at how many people are unable to differentiate
| between morality (what is right) vs legality (what the
| state will penalize you for) and how even the language is
| warped to mix them (people saying "I did nothing wrong"
| when they are talking about breaking the rules, whether
| they are laws or whatever screed a subreddit mod came up
| with).
| btilly wrote:
| In order to see it, you must recognize the ways in which
| he fooled you. People would generally rather be fooled
| again than face the thought that they were fooled at some
| point in the past. And the more that they have been
| fooled, the stronger this bias is.
|
| Trump is an absolute genius at fooling people in small
| ways, then over time ratcheting up the cognitive
| dissonance until he fools them in big ways. See
| https://specialto.thebulwark.com/ for a detailed
| explanation of how he did this with one of the many
| people that he has turned into puppets.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| > There is something in many people that makes them
| attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider
| them only slightly above things.
|
| It's the slave moral and if you think the majority of
| people would be better (given the opportunity) you are
| naive
| tilne wrote:
| Like of the Nietzschan philosophy? So in the case of
| trump the idea is that his voters like him because he's
| different from the "evil" aristocratic class that trump
| claimed to oppose (eg "drain the swamp")?
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| > Like of the Nietzschan philosophy?
|
| Yes, but the rest I disagree.
|
| I just think that most people (on both political sides)
| are not really better. If they would be given the
| position of power they would be corrupted and incompetent
| too.
|
| So in a sense you got what you deserve - and your
| democracy is working.
| tilne wrote:
| How does it connect back to the Nietzschan philosophy you
| mentioned?
| goatlover wrote:
| People can just listen to his biographer or many former
| aides, but they choose to believe what they want. Many
| religious supporters still think he's a Christian.
| brookst wrote:
| I miss the days when I wasn't an extra on a b-rate tawdry
| reality show.
| jordanb wrote:
| > Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
|
| The revolution wouldn't have been televised but the
| polycrisis will be live streamed.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > he'll trash your business one day and then the next day
| he'll reverse course
|
| TACO, as the saying goes.
| rchaud wrote:
| > but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR
| to ruin.
|
| The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic
| entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door
| for a strongman ruler was:
|
| a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying
| vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by
| its business elite or by foreign leaders
|
| b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight,
| with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open
| looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites
| who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the
| country at the mercy of international creditors looking for
| deals heavily tilted in their favour
|
| c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of
| confidence in the country's currency and ability to service
| its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously
| led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term
| Capital Management.
|
| Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All
| it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like
| Chechnya.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Present circumstances in America are very different. When
| Putin took power, Russia's economy had been declining
| rapidly for a decade; then over his first decade, the GDP
| _dectupled_. If the US were to somehow achieve $600,000 GDP
| per capita by the end of Trump 's current term, yeah,
| Americans would probably want to reevaluate their
| conventional wisdom about what good governance looks like.
| But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Well, there's an easy way to get to $600,000 GDP per
| capita, just crash the value of the US dollar by 10x. And
| this may well be in Trump's reach.
| woke_ai_god wrote:
| The GDP rise your talking about is to some extent an
| exchange rate phenonomena. Russia's currency collapsed in
| the early 90s, by the 00's it was able to strengthen and
| stabilize. Quality of life went down, but it was not
| proportionate to the collapse in GDP. Thinking about
| similar phenomenon occurring in the United States is kind
| of pointless, that would require a collapse in the
| dollars reserve currency status which would have dramatic
| ramifications world wide. The Dollar is the yardstick, if
| another currency became stronger, it would be the
| yardstick, and that's an entire regime change kind of for
| everybody. While Russia's currency can collapse in
| strength vis a vis the dollar, and then increase a great
| deal, but it was weaker than the dollar at every point.
| The collapse in its strength meant that it was difficult
| for the country to trade in that period. But Russia still
| had its domestic industry through the entire period,
| which wasn't affected to the degree that the collapse in
| trade and currency value would suggest,
|
| Also the volatility of economic growth of smaller
| countries tends to be much higher than anything
| experienced by developed countries. When you start from a
| small scale, GDP jumps of 10x are hardly unheard of.
| While increases of such magnitude in an already developed
| country would be unprecedented.
|
| Also, the Russian economy is just a series of frauds run
| by lawless oligarchs stacked on top of each other. The
| only limiting factor on them is when Putin randomly
| decides to throw one of them out of a window. It's a pure
| patrimonialist system, which is a system sustained by
| lawlessness, manipulation, and fraud. This is of course
| the truth of the fascist system itself, its simply an
| attempt to wrap the whole of society in one big
| patrimonialist network. There's a _reason_ they _had_ to
| invade Ukraine - the bills were coming due, and they knew
| the only way they could make good on promises they
| otherwise couldn 't keep was a sustained program of
| national subjugation and exploitation. This was
| inevitable from the moment the system was set up. This
| system is inherently unstable.
|
| The words of the participants in the system while it is
| ongoing are meaningless. They are wrapped in some kind of
| patrimonial network or another, supporting some kind of
| overhyped fraud or another that represents all their
| dreams and aspirations. They are censored, subject to
| constant manipulation, and deliberately manipulated with
| false flags and psy ops. Their whole society is designed
| as a giant cartwheel to shove people into various frauds.
| I can be sad for victims of fraud, yes, but that doesn't
| make them any easier to deal with before they give up on
| their expectations and stop believing the lies of the one
| who is defrauding them, who frequently sicks them on
| anyone who attempts to combat the fraud, telling them
| that "Actually that person is the one who's keeping you
| from getting your money!" Hitler arrayed millions of
| German youth upon fields of slaughter with such tactics
| once before, why would we expect any different outcome
| now? We should've known better.
| dh2022 wrote:
| If you really want to find out the reasons why USSR failed
| I suggest reading "Collapse the fall of Soviet Union" by
| Zubok or "Collapse of an Empire" by Gaidar. They are easy
| to read books. Said reasons are quite different from what
| is going on in USA at the moment.
| paganel wrote:
| By 1998 the shit had already hit the fan big time for the
| common people in Russia, all "thanks" to Shock Therapy
| (which you allude to at your point b)). That was the real
| tragedy, nothing a more "experienced" president could have
| fixed (other than doing what Putin ended up doing, which is
| trying to reverse some of the craziness of said Shock
| Therapy).
|
| I write this from direct experience, as I grew up as a
| kid/adolescent in nearby Romania in the '90s, where we had
| our very own Shock Therapy. In fact my present political
| stance (a return to nationalism and a reversal of what
| globalisation has brought about) is heavily marked by that
| very traumatic period in my life (and the same thing is
| valid for many of my compatriots).
| cycomanic wrote:
| So you want to reverse the development in Romania over
| the last 3 decades [1] ? I agree that the way the
| transition from the Ceausescu regime was handled was less
| than ideal to say the least. But let's not forget that
| rampant nationalism and isolism was what got Romania into
| the mess in the first ace. I would even argue that every
| time a government/regime is bringing out the nationalism
| card it is to cover up for rising inequality, decreasing
| quality of life and all sort of other issues. An appeal
| to the "nation" is just not necessary otherwise.
|
| [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/fig3_330480915
| vkou wrote:
| Yeltsin _was_ the strongman ruler of the 90s. When
| parliament wouldn 't kowtow to him, he launched a bloody
| coup and then rewrote the constitution to consolidate power
| in his office.
|
| The only thing that he was truly unsuccessful at as a
| politician was failing to shrug off some bullshit credit
| card bribery scandal.
|
| When you've deployed tanks and mortars against the lawful
| government, _and everyone 's fine with that_ I can't
| understand why you'd let a few thousands dollars that you
| put on a company credit card bring you down.
|
| > Present circumstances in America aren't that different.
|
| They are different, in the sense that _all_ the damage
| happening right now is both unnecessary and self-inflicted.
| Russia needed to do _something_ to transition from the
| USSR. Shock therapy was a terrible 'something', but it's
| at least possible to see _how_ it got there.
|
| 2025 is... Something else entirely.
| cma wrote:
| > an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a
| unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't
| respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
|
| Probably can't mention Yeltsin in the context of strongmen
| without mentioning the shelling of the parliament building.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_c
| r...
| jajko wrote:
| You are completely missing Gorbachev, the fall began with
| him. He was a good guy, but a bit naive within soviet
| situation. _Everybody_ , and I mean _EVERYBODY_ hated
| russians. That 's where brutal oppression came from for
| rest of soviet republics, that's where eastern Europe
| satellites were invaded and controlled from via strong firm
| hand (and many military bases). I know this damn well as I
| was raised thre and saw first hand the continuous
| destruction of what we would call normal society that
| russians brought along with them everywhere they went.
|
| When the soviet empire twitched a bit and seams became just
| slightly more loose, everybody run the fuck away from them.
| You can't be literally enslaved for 2 generations and
| ignore whats around you and whats happening to all your
| citizens, family, friends, yourself. Not when you clearly
| see how west has technological, moral and societal
| advantage in its approach and its getting bigger every
| year. The only exception is Belarus, and the only reason is
| that the dicktator there needs desperately strong
| continuous backing or he would be brought down in quick
| coup.
| tpm wrote:
| The fall didn't begin with Gorbachev, it began with the
| communist party being clueless at adapting to new
| situations, essentially what China managed to do after
| Mao, the Soviets didn't after Stalin and the rest. The
| regime ossified and fell apart, at first slowly and then
| rapidly. Gorbachev just refused to spill even more blood.
| netsharc wrote:
| Somebody needs to make memes about Elon looking forward to
| some taco and get Trump to see them...
| WalterBright wrote:
| America's ruin will be spending itself into bankruptcy.
| dashundchen wrote:
| Trump and Republicans had a great hand in this (Afghanistan
| and Iraq invasions, Bush tax cuts, Trump tax cuts, PPP
| helicopter money for the rich), and are looking to double
| down with their current disaster of a bill. Hope you're
| opposing that.
| brookst wrote:
| This wouldn't be possible as the world's reserve currency
| and provider of political stability. At incredibly low
| interest rates, most investments are positive ROI.
|
| But by destroying the US' position as reserve currency and
| establishing the country as too untrustworthy to do
| business with, Trump has made your statement true.
|
| We can't afford what we spend without those special
| economic benefits. And we just threw them away for no
| reason.
| 6figurelenins wrote:
| The geopolitical stability is now cheaper[1] than the
| debt service.
|
| Naturally, that calls into question the incredibly low
| interest rates, and the reserve currency status.
|
| If you need to blame Trump, the last straw was COVID.
|
| > At incredibly low interest rates, most investments are
| positive ROI.
|
| Step 1: Hold short term rates at zero, forever Step 2:
| ??? Step 3: Profit Step 4: Wow, that's a lot of debt
|
| [1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/first-time-us-spending-more-
| debt-in...
| matwood wrote:
| If you truly believe that, the fix is the opposite of what
| the GOP is proposing. Freeze spending at today's levels,
| raise taxes (uncap SS, add higher tax brackets, add a
| wealth tax, etc...), then let the economy grow naturally.
| n2d4 wrote:
| > So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract"
| does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A:
| Musk.)
|
| But Musk initiated it, by going against Trump's bill. The new
| conclusion is "to get contract, you must kiss ass so much and
| you can't say anything bad, ever"
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy
| in its own way."
| tempodox wrote:
| I've said before that by the time Trump is through America will
| lie in ruins. I may have been too optimistic, it might happen
| earlier.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I agree entirely.
|
| Higher education and research are already being affected.
| Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.
|
| Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.
|
| Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure
| of the fragility of the base US system of government. The
| fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple
| carts is not something really forgotten.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| > by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins
|
| If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?
|
| GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years? Dollar losing >50%
| of its value against a basket of major currencies? Credit
| rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies? Loss of reserve
| currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)?
| Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days? Mass
| emigration of >2 million Americans annually?
|
| I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your
| price.
| bix6 wrote:
| I'd argue we're already there with all the social
| fragmentation but I reckon we'll see a measurable decline
| in scientific output / discovery.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| Patents? Journal articles published?
| bix6 wrote:
| Funding is already falling ie NSF disbursements so I'd
| expect the h-index to fall off significantly. So sure
| patents will fall, journal pubs will fall, enrollment
| will fall, staff count will fall, total experiment count
| will fall, grant count will fall.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Likewise that Elon can say Trump is "ungrateful" that be
| received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew
| the nomination for Elon's NASA administrator. It's just open
| bribery.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| American democracy died on the day the supreme court
| overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US
| politics is a mere playground for billionaires and
| corporations.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Harris outspent Trump 3:1. Hillary outspent Trump 2:1. It's
| not that easy to buy an election.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| This is misleading (it is approximately correct if you
| look only at candidate committee spending, but it
| excludes outside spending--where the advantage went the
| other way, and the outside spending in 2024 exceeded
| campaign committee spending.)
| mindslight wrote:
| Even if the figure itself weren't misleading, basing the
| argument around it is. The problematic dynamic isn't that
| the most money makes for a guaranteed win - rather it's
| that whomever does manage to win will be inclined to work
| for their major sponsors, especially if they will be up
| for reelection.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| That figure does not include outside supporters spending
| campaigns. It's disingenuous to not include dark money
| spending.
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/final-
| price-t... It's closer to 1.8 billion for Harris
| supporters versus 1.4 billion for Trump supporters in
| 2024. That also does not include various media outlets
| bought in the past decades, including One America
| News/Fox/Sinclair sandbagging for Trump for the last
| eight years, at this point, shouldn't one include the
| budget for Fox News and OAN and Sinclair not to mention
| the spiking of negative news stories/opinions by LA
| Times/Washington Post? Even CNN was bought in past year
| by conservative and the leading story last month for a
| while was Jake Tapper's book about Biden.
| xnx wrote:
| Strong upvote. The Murdoch succession drama is one of the
| most important things affecting the future of US
| democracy. There are a lot of smaller and even more
| radical networks, but I don't think they have the reach
| and influence of Fox.
| WalterBright wrote:
| FOX is indeed all in for Trump. But on the other side of
| the ledger, there is the media that was all in for Biden
| - NPR, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, NYT, etc., during the
| same time period.
| rat87 wrote:
| The counterpoint is that there is no rational or sane
| defense of Trump. The rest of the media criticized Biden
| plenty, arguably way too much in their attempts to be
| seen as neutral. Meanwhile there is almost nothing good
| about Trump. So if they write like 90% stories that seem
| to be against Trump it means they're biased towards
| Trump.
|
| Almost regardless of political positions it's hard to
| argue Trump is fit or qualified to be president. He is
| openly corrupt, persuing an economic policy the vast
| majority of Conservative economists think is idiotic, and
| has called our veterans losers. Has never held any other
| government post has no knowledge of government policies
| and worse doesn't care to learn. Even though his
| ignorance is causing a lot of damage including to his
| voters he doesn't seem to care to learn about how any
| policy stuff works.
|
| To counter that you need media like Fox or worse OAN/News
| Max to put out propaganda because it's impossible for
| even the most partisan person to defend him if they're an
| honest and thoughtful person
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The counterpoint is that there is no rational or sane
| defense of Trump.
|
| The point is about does spending buying an election, not
| rationality or sanity.
| brookst wrote:
| Elon spent more on behalf of Trump than the entire
| official Harris campaign spent. This is a terrible
| argument.
|
| We know the Supreme Court legalized unlimited campaign
| spending, and we're not dumb enough to think Elon's money
| wasn't part of the Trump campaign.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Elon spent well over a billion dollars on the campaign?
| You'll need a cite for that.
| boojums wrote:
| I vouched for this comment because it sparked an
| interesting discussion chain on candidate vs. third party
| spending.
| creato wrote:
| This is why the standard for something to be considered
| improper behavior is (or used to be) the _appearance_ of a
| conflict of interest.
|
| People stopped giving a shit about anything. This is just one
| of dozens of things that would have been totally unacceptable a
| few years ago.
| andrepd wrote:
| The world is no longer a serious place.
|
| Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't
| know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination
| of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel
| the need to _ _pretend to care_ _ about honesty, character,
| seriousness, etc.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think they might have figured out that a lot of that
| honesty and character was a facade. Is the false appearance
| of morality better than just showing yourself as you really
| are?
| dasil003 wrote:
| You mean that people lie and cheat? That's always been
| the case. The point of honesty and character is precisely
| that they reflect a person's ability to value a higher
| good than their immediate self-interest. Let's not throw
| the baby out with the bathwater.
|
| The fact that reputation has been subjected to
| unprecedented arms race in the face of the internet and
| social media doesn't fundamentally change the game, it
| just makes it more exhausting and overwhelming to pay
| attention to.
| cycomanic wrote:
| That always brings to mind this comic:
| https://condenaststore.com/featured/he-tells-it-like-it-
| is-p...
| Gigachad wrote:
| This kind of stuff would not fly in Australia. Not to say
| that there is no corruption, but that it isn't absolutely
| blatant and ignored.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah. Same in Canada. Nowhere is free from corruption,
| but the magnitude and danger of this problem is uniquely
| American.
| slavik81 wrote:
| I have lived in Alberta my entire life and that used to
| be true here. It's different now. There's blatant
| corruption from our provincial government in the news
| every few months, but it seems like that's just accepted
| now. Things are not trending in a good direction in
| Canada.
| sirtaj wrote:
| The far right pretty much across the world is learning
| just how fragile and consensus-based the institutions of
| democracy are all at once. They're watching and learning
| from each other. Hence you have people like Bannon
| involved in similar tricks in multiple countries.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Oddly enough Albertans poll Carney as favourably as
| Poilievre. So I see what you see but in general I do not
| believe it's actually that bad.
|
| Plus Alberta has always on again off again thrown middle-
| child tantrums.
| Merad wrote:
| Are you really so sure? I think the vast majority of
| Americans would have expressed the same sentiment less
| than 10 years ago.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Obviously I can't tell you what will happen in 10 years,
| but if the Prime Minister of Australia did even one days
| worth of Trumps actions he would be removed within a
| month or two.
|
| Australia also doesn't have an almost religious worship
| of politicians. Australians don't identify as members of
| a particular party unless they literally are part of it.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| There's a huge difference between the US and Australia
| here that you slightly touch on - in Australia, the Prime
| Minister can be removed by the ruling party at any time
| vs the US where removing the sitting President can only
| be done via a handful of items from the Constitution
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Don't play coy. If a small number of Republican
| representatives decided they would impeach Trump they
| would have absolutely no problem getting the votes they
| need and you know it. They don't do it because that's not
| what they want.
| megamyth wrote:
| Republican representatives are lobbyists to the public
| for the 1%. It was clear that they hated Trump and wanted
| him out in his first run and what they want matters as
| much as what a car salesman wants for Ford.
| rat87 wrote:
| I'm not sure America had that sort of cult thing pre
| Trump. JFK was pretty popular as was Regan but even they
| weren't the same. You guys do have a vote of no
| confidence which theoretically is easier to pull off then
| impeachment (majority vote)
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Your government recently mandated technical capabilities
| for breaking encryption. Australians let that fly. There
| is nothing special about Australians, just as there is
| also nothing special about the British people who also
| did nothing when the UK mandated technical capabilities
| to break encryption.
|
| One could even make the argument that the people of these
| two countries are even more pliant than Americans when
| they enable a key capability for totalitarian
| surveillance states without a blink.
| Gigachad wrote:
| There was nothing blatantly corrupt or illegal going on
| there, it went through the normal process and was
| unfortunately supported by both major parties. I'm not
| saying objectionable laws never get implemented. I'm
| saying the Prime Minister is not a dictator with
| limitless power.
| jamil7 wrote:
| The corruption in state government, especially WA for
| example is pretty blatant but I get your point.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Only with a lot of effort. I'm old enough to remember the
| ICAC in NSW and the CCC in Queensland (Joh Bjelke-
| Petersen was a bit before my time)... the widespread
| "travel expenses" fraud that permeated for YEARS.
| gambiting wrote:
| I remember when _certain_ social media networks argued that
| having a real name policy will lead to a more polite,
| kinder internet, because people won 't be as rude with
| their real names attached to their posts. Turns out, people
| really don't care. I see the most vile, disgusting, racist,
| xenophobic shit on Facebook every single day, with real
| names and pictures showing smiling happy people hugging
| their kids on every one of them. Like you said - people
| don't feel any need to care about honesty, character, or
| even appearance of politeness or good manners.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Social media is easy to blame, but we had something
| similar, but worse happening in Germany well before the
| invention of the computer even.
|
| Human society has not developed an antidote to charismatic
| demagogues yet I'm afraid.
| aerhardt wrote:
| Human society is limited in the antidotes to human nature
| that it can code through law, institutions or culture.
| It's the same species throughout 1930's Germany and
| today.
|
| We shouldn't give up on law, institutions or culture, but
| accepting our failings instead of seeing humans as a
| perfectible project can at least give us solace in
| confusing times.
| herewulf wrote:
| Sorry, but Germany had just suffered a humiliating defeat
| and was punished severely for WWI in which all sides were
| equally guilty for all of it.
|
| When did something of this magnitude just happen in the
| USA?
|
| P.S.: This does not excuse Germany's actions wrt. WWII
| but it does help to explain.
| Scea91 wrote:
| > WWI in which all sides were equally guilty for all of
| it.
|
| Not true, while Germany was not solely responsible, it
| and Austria-Hungary were much more responsible than
| others.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| For many reasons (including the ones above) it's
| difficult for any institution within reach of the US
| government to analyze how the alt-right took power but
| from what I can tell the US economy is in a slow burn.
| It's been receiving patches roughly once a presidency but
| it turns out you can't combine a lot of short term
| solutions to make a long term one. Fixing the economy
| would require bold decisions and the parties took two
| different directions. The Republican party realized that
| any bold policy would get votes regardless of any other
| factor including coherency. This is why Trump supporters,
| when asked about their logic usually give some form of
| "things are bad, and they didn't used to be".
|
| To summarize, there are competing ideas for what got us
| here, but I think it was less of a real inciting event
| like WW1 and more of a breaking point that was eventually
| reached.
| gota wrote:
| Just an opinion, but -
|
| An entire cohort born between 1985~1995 reached their 30s
| in what they perceived as a far, far worse situation all
| around (financially foremost, but also almost every
| social aspect) than their parents.
| pessimist wrote:
| It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of
| identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered
| a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we"
| are winning and "they" are losing.
|
| I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist
| to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language,
| religion and so on.
|
| It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted
| land.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in
| the US, especially at the local and state level. The main
| difference is a significant portion of governance was
| temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as
| leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying
| experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has
| been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the
| aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root.
|
| The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this
| erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch
| increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive,
| leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing
| the power of checks and balances.
|
| There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku
| in Japan, and Francois Mitterrand in France tried to
| decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
| pessimist wrote:
| Low-level corruption at the local/state level is related
| but its effects are different though. In fact even today
| low level corruption in the US is extremely low by global
| standards - you can't bribe your way to a drivers license
| openly, for example. I'm sure it happens but it's not
| common or openly boasted about (parts of CA or DC could be
| an exception).
|
| Here the corruption is _openly_ displayed as a kind of
| peacock-tail to the beneficiaries.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I'd rather not have a whole discussion over this atm (I'm
| out rn - maybe later), but I recommend reading Yuen Yuen
| Ang's paper on "Unbundling Corruption" - there are
| different typographies of what "corruption" is, and some
| nations have always had a similar type of corruption
| compared to others.
|
| In addition, low level corruption is orthogonal to grand
| corruption as can be seen in Singapore, Japan, South
| Korea, and the US.
|
| Finally, Indian public discourse around corruption is
| non-targeted, and fails to contextualize significant
| institutional differences in how local, state, and
| federal governments operate in India compared to other
| states (be they democratic like the US or authoritarian
| like China).
|
| [Feel free to add questions or points of contention, but
| I won't be able to reply quickly]
| pessimist wrote:
| Fine, I don't disagree with anything you point out.
| However where we differ is that I believe identity
| politics is the trigger factor here, all the other
| changes you mention (loss of balance of power etc) are
| downstream of this.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Your causal diagram is backwards. Identity politics isn't
| the path to corruption. Corrupt politicians like Trump
| use identity politics to gain power to practice their
| corruption. Nobody who wanted to bring back Christian
| hegemony and re-oppress minority groups is cheering that
| Trump is threatening to take away contracts from Musk
| because "their side is winning."
| hiatus wrote:
| > Identity politics isn't the path to corruption. Corrupt
| politicians like Trump use identity politics to gain
| power to practice their corruption.
|
| These two sentences, taken together, lead me to exactly
| the opposite conclusion--exploitation of identity
| politics allows one to gain power to enact corruption.
| You play into what people want by being the savior they
| think they need and then once in power do whatever the
| hell you wanted in the first place.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > minority groups
|
| This includes 'women'. A group that probably has a small
| majority.
| brookst wrote:
| Women are definitely a majority by demographics.
|
| But in the US, "minority" means "less poticial power". By
| any reasonable measure straight white "Christian" men
| should be about 20% of the population, yet somehow they
| have 80% of political power.
| walleeee wrote:
| Idpol can exacerbate corruption. There are strong
| feedback dynamics.
|
| And to reply to the comment above yours, there are
| material factors upstream of idpol. It's not a
| coincidence that sort of thing is in renaissance across
| the world.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| > you can't bribe your way to a drivers license openly
|
| No but when it comes to local government contracts,
| building permits and similar stuff its quite different.
| Also a lot of (what sane people would consider)
| corruption is legal and institutionalized.
|
| i.e. bribing politicians running for office is perfectly
| legal and entirely expected by all sides (that Americans
| are so open about this is quite unique).
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I understand that US federal law makes it difficult for a
| politician to appropriate campaign donations and use them
| for personal expenses.
| neilv wrote:
| Interesting; is there an accessible 10-minute read on this
| US (edit: governance) de-politicized/re-politicized
| history, or does it have a name?
| medler wrote:
| The notion that this kind of politicization started in
| the 90s is fanciful revisionism. It wasn't really a thing
| in the US until about 2017. The word it's known by is
| Trumpism.
| neilv wrote:
| I'm familiar with the rise of talk radio, News Corp, Web
| propaganda, alt-right, etc., in politics and public
| sentiment.
|
| What's new to me is that the last couple decades might be
| a reversion to a pre-war mode of US governance.
|
| (I know WW2 was unifying in some ways, as we'd expect,
| but I don't recall much from school about how US politics
| was played before then, other than punctuated events like
| the Civil War, civil rights movement, etc.)
| alterom wrote:
| Trumpism is just Reaganomics brought to its logical
| conclusion.
| baobun wrote:
| This predates Trumpism.
| fcatalan wrote:
| 9/11 was a big turning point in my experience. American
| conservatives that I considered online friends were
| simple impossible to reason with within days and
| completely alien beings after a few weeks.
| jfengel wrote:
| Interesting. Things did change on 9/11 but it seemed
| incremental to me. Before that was the constant
| investigation of Clinton by Gingrich, the dog whistling
| of Reagan, Nixon's Southern Strategy, and before that to
| McCarthy and so on.
|
| This is high level rather than your direct experience, so
| it's not a contradiction. Just a different perspective.
| xnx wrote:
| Yes. Almost everything about our current situation can be
| traced back to Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. Things
| were much more civil and reasonable before that point.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I don't know. Nixon had goons breaking into the DNC
| headquarters (and his whole southern strategy led to
| racially polarized politics up to this day), and there
| was that senator who got beaten by another senator just
| before the civil war. Eisenhower waited in the car rather
| than attend a meeting with Truman on his inauguration.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace to avoid
| impeachment when it came out. The dude in the White House
| now did much worse and he was rewarded with reelection.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| First off, Trump skyrocketed to political fame with his
| nonsense claims about Obama's citizenship.
|
| The slide started in the 80's when Reagan killed off the
| 'fairness doctrine' which meant news outlets could
| present completely one-sided coverage of an issue.
|
| Couple that with massive consolidation of newspapers and
| TV news stations where all the programming is heavily
| coordinated and groups like Sinclair started pushing
| identically worded "false news" narratives across all
| their stations:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| its revisionism to say that the US has been free of
| politicization this bad. for most of its history, not
| counting the civil war very minor (and very major) issues
| sparked massacres, revolts, and even minor wars between
| states.
| metabagel wrote:
| It has actually been a gradual process for decades from
| the John Birch Society to Paul Harvey to Rush Limbaugh to
| Newt Gingrich to Dick Cheney to Citizens United to Donald
| Trump.
|
| Edit: Forgot Pat Buchanan. He belongs in there somewhere.
| nfg wrote:
| I recommend people read this to see why this comment is
| wrong: When the Cloke Broke by John Ganz
| https://a.co/d/hL4vo7d
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| You can see the rise of left-wing identity politics by
| looking at term usage in the NY Times:
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06
| /th...
|
| It started before 2017. The right adopted identity
| politics as a response to the left doing so. Note that
| even NY Times word usage is a lagging indicator -- this
| is a case of prestige media picking up trends which
| originated on social media such as tumblr.
|
| Vox even wrote a defense of the shift back in 2015, with
| an article called "All politics is identity politics":
|
| https://www.vox.com/2015/1/29/7945119/all-politics-is-
| identi...
| sirtaj wrote:
| Are you tracking actual identity politics or the term
| "identity politics"? Because the meaning of the term
| applies just as much to ending slavery, womens' suffrage
| and civil rights movements.
|
| Otherwise, you might as well argue that fake news only
| existed from 2016 onwards, because that's when Google
| Trends says it did.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| > corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is
| because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and
| "they" are losing.
|
| I think the end goal is domination. From
| https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267 :
|
| It's best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a
| virtue. It's how they signal that the things they are doing
| to people were never meant to be equally applied.
|
| It's not an inconsistency. It's very consistent to the only
| true fascist value, which is domination.
|
| It's very important to understand, fascists don't just see
| hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
|
| It's the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing
| you're able to deny others, because you dominate, is the
| whole point.
|
| For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue -- the greatest.
|
| https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/hypocrisy-and-
| fascism-2018-0...
| dralley wrote:
| >It's best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a
| virtue. It's how they signal that the things they are doing
| to people were never meant to be equally applied.
|
| For my friends - everything, for my enemies - the law.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| For my true friends, champagne! For my sham friends, true
| pain.
| kennyadam wrote:
| Close, but the correct version has better wordplay:
| "Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham
| friends."
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I used to love this pithy quote but reflecting on it more
| recently this doesn't seem like something limited to
| fascists or fascism. Indeed, this kind of thinking is
| used by those of any political leaning when ideology
| becomes more important than principles. An obvious
| example is the USSR.
| consumer451 wrote:
| This is a great example of the horseshoe theory of
| politics [0], which I believe in very strongly. I made a
| separate post if anyone cares to discuss it. [1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44214040
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| It should be a trident theory.
| rendall wrote:
| Horseshoe theory has always read like a Pythagorean
| epicycle to me, an attempt to redeem a broken model. For
| a reductive political model, I prefer the 2 dimensional
| Collectivist-Individualist, Authoritarian-Libertarian
| axes. No need to literally contort the outdated Left-
| Right spectrum.
|
| An added benefit is you get to avoid annoying semantic
| battles such as whether Nazis or Fascists are Right wing
| or Left wing.
|
| Plus you get to add other axes as needed. My favorite,
| perhaps relevant today, is _principled_ vs. _expedient_ :
| do we apply principles like this "Rights" stuff
| impartially, even to people with whom we disagree, or do
| we just git 'r done?
| popalchemist wrote:
| Agreed, the matrix expresses this idea more exactly.
| consumer451 wrote:
| To me, the horshoe theory is just a step in the right
| direction. It shows the limits of a straight 1D line to
| describe politics, and is a stepping-off point for deeper
| exploration.
|
| Ideally, maybe we would describe a person's politics with
| something like a tensor, where each value is the person's
| support of a specific policy.
| wyre wrote:
| Red fascism is a term that has been used to equate
| Stalinism with fascism, so maybe the quote still has
| merit?
| danielheath wrote:
| Authoritarianism is the umbrella term describing the
| behaviour of both fascist states and various others.
| AFAIK all fascist states have been authoritarian - but
| it's a common outcome anytime the people running the
| government are replaced en masse.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| The tyranny of the majority is another, often overlooked
| form of authoritarianism.
| WhyIsItAlwaysHN wrote:
| Good point, and much harder to challenge. If the majority
| is against an authoritarian there's protests and sabotage
| of social structures. If the majority oppresses a fringe
| group, it's often socially encouraged
| palmfacehn wrote:
| For these reasons, I personally believe authoritarianism
| cannot be opposed without a solid foundation of
| individualism. The problem becomes that explaining
| ideological nuance is rarely politically expedient or
| even rhetorically effective. Appeals to collectivism are
| more easily digested by the masses.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Absolutely. See "the only moral abortion is my abortion".
|
| Republicans can play all sorts of games because their
| mistresses will always be able to get an abortion on the
| DL without consequence, while "single black mom? 25 to
| life for murder!"
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| [flagged]
| wefinh wrote:
| Yeah, only the issue here is that @realFascists are in
| opposition to Trump. And reading this text in that light -
| it check out and not really a news.
|
| Also, frankly, you folks need to stop monopolizing these
| topics, based on highly polarized ideological filter,
| because even before Trump there was dissatisfaction about
| how Musk monopolized NASA contracts on the promise, that he
| would deliver more efficient and cheaper solution, while in
| reality the result is that NASA is currently paying more
| for Musks private solutions, than when it had to do it by
| itself. There are sure many other options to what Musk
| offers and if Trump is there to break up that monopoly and
| open up the market, then it is a win situation.
| avmich wrote:
| Can you clarify what reality you're talking about? How
| NASA would do it cheaper?
| shigawire wrote:
| Doublethink
| Cipater wrote:
| >there was dissatisfaction about how Musk monopolized
| NASA contracts on the promise, that he would deliver more
| efficient and cheaper solution, while in reality the
| result is that NASA is currently paying more for Musks
| private solutions, than when it had to do it by itself
|
| SLS, NASA's rocket, costs $2.5 billion, PER LAUNCH.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| That's all very nice but according to Trump this only
| suddenly became a problem only a few weeks ago due to
| some reason. So whatever you are saying has absolutely no
| relevance to this decision making. If Musk continued
| licking his boots he'd be doing fine..
| tempodox wrote:
| I think double standards would be a better term than
| hypocricy. Hypocricy would imply the pretense to be bound
| by certain rules, but the whole point of fascism is that
| those in power are not bound by any rules. They only make
| rules to bind others. I don't see any hypocricy in the
| openly advertised corruption of the current administration,
| it's just plain evil of the "we do it because we can" sort.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > I think the end goal is domination. From
| https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267
|
| I don't know whether Trump can accurately be described as a
| fascist, but its been clear to me since his first term that
| domination is the only thing that matters to him. The
| obscene wealth and the swaggering deceitfulness and the
| gold-plated bathrooms are just the secondary outcomes of
| his need to dominate.
|
| Domineering father-figure; raised as a sociopath; given a
| lot of money. Kind of inevitable.
| natmaka wrote:
| > "we" are winning and "they" are losing
|
| This is a very important rule stated by the War Nerd: 'Most
| people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your
| gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.'
|
| A small human group is compatible with this tribal behavior
| because the bulk of actions (or at worst their effects) are
| quickly perceptible to everyone. The larger the group, the
| less each person understands what is happening, even the
| effects of what he does.
| pengaru wrote:
| I don't know wtf War Nerd is, but tribalism being alive and
| well is nowhere near a new/novel observation worth noting
| anyone pointed out.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Agree that it is not a novel observation, but it is worth
| noting here. The discussion would be less ridiculous if
| there were less tribalism.
| natmaka wrote:
| It is about more than "being alive and well" but being
| omnipresent and determinant.
|
| Stating it is useful because many neglect (or maybe even
| ignore) this fact.
|
| The way the War Nerd puts it is IMHO the best.
| tshaddox wrote:
| In that case, it would be neat if corruption were illegal!
| ty6853 wrote:
| Or just more accessible, so the average person can get a
| piece of the benefits that cartels and megacorp executives
| already get.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Voila, we've ended up with a low trust society with
| "petty corruption", which is generally considered harmful
| as it establishes something about that society that
| cannot be easily corrected unlike "grand corruption."
| petre wrote:
| I see it as a continuation of the American Civil War in
| politics. There was always this attitude but now people are
| more redicalized, so it's more obvious.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It seemed more subdued during the 1990s/2000s, until a
| black guy became President, and a good one at that.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And then the Democrats wanted to put forward a... a... a
| woman, too!
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of
| identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually
| considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret
| this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
|
| So how could one design a political system so this behavior
| doesn't emerge / is not incentivized?
| Atreiden wrote:
| Get rid of FPTP and the Electoral College that enables a
| two-party stranglehold. If a vote for a third party wasn't
| a wasted vote, we could see nuanced parties and politicians
| emerge that don't have to tow a party line.
| secos wrote:
| Ranked Choice Voting goes a long way to solving this as
| well.
| t_mann wrote:
| Does it? Could you explain which mechanism you suggest
| using? Because the main results from social choice theory
| about ranked choice voting that come to mind seem to be
| all about impossibility of fair elections (eg Arrow) or
| even paradoxical situations such as cyclic preferences
| (eg Condorcet).
| pornel wrote:
| These kinds of perfectionism complaints keep the status
| quo of FPTP, which is the worst of them all.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| Since none of the proposed replacements can be perfect
| according to the theory, let's just stick with the worst
| one.
|
| Big fat /s
| trueismywork wrote:
| You need to educate the people and convince them on how
| it works. Easily a 30 year project in places like India.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Easily a 30 year project in the US, too.
| unicornporn wrote:
| How about not creating a precarious underclass with lack of
| (higher) education that is ready to vote for whatever
| solution promising to take down the system that made them
| so desperate for radical change?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I don't really buy the education argument. How do you
| "educate" somebody who lived through the first Trump
| administration and voted for more of the same? Let's get
| specific: what _exactly_ did they miss in school that
| would have driven them towards a different decision?
|
| At some point it's necessary to confront the
| uncomfortable truth: stupid people are easy for smart,
| ill-intentioned people to herd, which gives the latter a
| leg up in any democratic election.
|
| This bug in democracy was there in the beginning. But
| it's only now, 2500 years later, that it can be exploited
| effectively enough to invalidate the whole concept.
| Propelloni wrote:
| They missed that liberty and freedom is not a god-given
| right, but hard-earned privilege. They missed that
| liberty is not a personal property but a shared practice
| of pluralism. They missed that liberty is not absolute,
| but requires compromise and limitations so that we all
| can be free.
|
| To be fair, those are not things that are taught in
| school. If they come up at all it is in some historical
| context, a battle someone else fought--and won. There is
| no mention that maintaining a liberal democracy requires
| effort and vigilance. Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting
| democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal
| enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains
| to be seen. The USA mostly does not even have such
| mechanisms and it shows.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > At some point it's necessary to confront the
| uncomfortable truth
|
| Sometimes the truth is even more uncomfortable than "lots
| of people are stupid." A much more insidious scenario is
| when there's two groups with no major differences in
| education or access to facts, but one has a cultural
| which is actively and explicitly hostile to truth. In
| such scenarios, ever-escalating hostilities between the
| two groups is inevitable.
| avaika wrote:
| In no way this is a good example of such a system, but I
| still find Bosnia and Herzegovina political system
| absolutely hilarious. After Dayton peace agreement the
| literally put ethnicity requirement for presidents to
| Constitution as a hard rule. One Bosnian, one Serb and one
| Croatian. And yes, the country is ran by 3 presidents at
| the same time. So there is no longer a competition whether
| the main guy in the country will be theirs or ours.
|
| There were two guys: a Roma and a Jew in BiH who also
| wanted to take the president office. However according to
| Constitution they didn't have a chance. So they went to EU
| Human Rights Court to look for a justice. The court told
| the country it's kinda racist to have a rule like that and
| they should change it. This was like 15 years ago. Guess
| whether the rule has changed since then. (Sejdic and Finci
| v. Bosnia and Herzegovina for more details).
|
| PS. If you find 3 presidents not fascinating enough, then
| google for High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
| roryirvine wrote:
| Northern Ireland has a similar system, with an executive
| built on a forced coalition.
|
| The executive is led by a First Minister and Deputy First
| Minister (despite the difference in title, they have
| exactly equal powers), who are selected from the largest
| party representing each of the two main communities.
|
| Major decisions require cross-community support - at
| least 50% of all those voting AND 50% of the
| representatives of each of the two communities, OR 60% of
| all those voting AND 40% of the representatives of each
| of the two communities.
|
| On paper, it seems slightly absurd... but in practice,
| it's a reasonable way to deal with deeply divided
| societies.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I don't know... Never go to sea with two chronometers;
| take one or three. Two guys with equal power is a recipe
| for inaction in critical moments.
| sterlind wrote:
| having three is interesting because it gives a way to
| break ties. how do they handle candidates with mixed
| ethnicity, though? or the Serbians and Croatians
| converging, while the Bosnians move farther apart from
| both?
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of
| identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually
| considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret
| this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
|
| In history textbooks, it's known as the spoils system.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| For those unaware of ~1900 US political history and how the
| spoils system was dismantled through political will: https:
| //en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_...
| onetimeusename wrote:
| This whole article is speculation about a war of words on
| social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the
| chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any
| citation.
|
| >One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the
| exchanges as "bluster" that neither Musk nor Trump would
| actually implement
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Part of the problem is that
|
| * those who were concerned about it happening to others have
| seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a
| bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms,
| etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts
|
| * there is a subset that is just super cult of personality
| around the current president and will bend over backwards to
| justify actions
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It's not they don't see it - they don't care. This has always
| been the moral compass of the US.
| vkou wrote:
| > It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon
| anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his
| government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that
| as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
|
| They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he
| didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it
| to a person he just decided that he didn't like?
|
| Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting
| him with accusations of pedophilia.
|
| So far, all of this is quite normal.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| ~40% of the country sees that as strength.
|
| Democracies only really work with an educated and altruistic
| population, and the US is only getting further away from that.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This sounds like an utopian take or a case of "the grass is
| greener on the other side".
|
| Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated
| and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a
| Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you
| that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
|
| I am inclined to agree with Acemoglu that good institutions
| are more important than virtues of the population.
| danans wrote:
| > Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an
| educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a
| Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and
| tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid
| idiots, too.
|
| It seems like both of those can easily be true at the same
| time.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >This sounds like an utopian take or a case of "the grass
| is greener on the other side".
|
| Well, it wasn't. It's a take made by the 2nd president of
| the United States, John Adams:
|
| _" John Adams said, "Our constitution was made only for a
| moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the
| government of any other."[1] Morality and virtue are the
| foundation of our republic and necessary for a society to
| be free. Virtue is an inner commitment and voluntary
| outward obedience to principles of truth and moral law.
| Private virtue is the character to govern oneself according
| to moral law at all times. Public virtue is the character
| to voluntarily sacrifice or subjugate personal wants for
| the greater good of other individuals or the community.
| Specific moral virtues include charity, justice, courage,
| temperance, reverence, prudence, and honesty"_
|
| This is in a sense self evident because any self governing
| society can only function if its people are equipped with
| the reason, morality, and temperament to sustain it.
| Appealing to "good institutions" is tautological. The
| reason why some places have good institutions and others
| have bad institutions is precisely because of character of
| the people who build and maintain them.
|
| https://www.johnadamsacademy.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_
| I...
| JCattheATM wrote:
| > But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about
| politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country
| is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
|
| They're right, but it's a significantly smaller percentage
| than the US, small enough to not do nearly as much damage
| as the US counter-part population does.
|
| That Dane or Swiss person will also readily agree how
| shocking the average education level of the average
| American is.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| It's been going on a long time. Democrats and Republicans,
| especially in the Pentagon, have bought influence of
| politicians to get billions of tax dollars.
|
| So you should change the comment to say "most Democrat and
| Republican voters in the primaries apparently wont vote out
| those who give or take bribes." That would be correct.
|
| Jethro's advice to Moses in God's Word is still good advice for
| voters today. If a politician ever meets this criteria, then
| we'll see amazing things happen. That's below with verse 21
| highlighted:
|
| "19 Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with
| you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their
| cases to God, 20 and you shall warn them about the statutes and
| the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk
| and what they must do. 21 Moreover, look for _able men from all
| the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a
| bribe_ , and place such men over the people as chiefs of
| thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. 22 And let
| them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they
| shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide
| themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear
| the burden with you. 23 If you do this, God will direct you,
| you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to
| their place in peace." (Exodus 18:19-23) (ESV)
| xnx wrote:
| Every accusation from Trump/Fox/Republicans is an admission.
| This is the "swamp" they were going to drain. It is now
| overflowing.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's pretty incredible. NYT now:
|
| "President Trump said on Saturday that he believed his
| relationship with Elon Musk was over after the two sparred
| publicly on social media this week, and he warned there would
| be "serious consequences" if Mr. Musk financed candidates to
| run against Republicans who voted in favor of the president's
| domestic policy bill."
|
| So the president can decide who someone supports?
|
| Two truly awful humans fighting it out.
| bhouston wrote:
| This is what Trump is doing to Harvard right now. He even is
| pushing legislation to tax their endowment and also has an
| executive order to deny them and on them foreign students.
| overfeed wrote:
| ...and to law firms before then, US government contractors
| (worldwide[1]). If OP thinks thinks this is a nee Trump play,
| they haven't been paying attention.
|
| 2. The US embassy tried to get a Swedish city to agree to
| some anti-DEI clause in a vendor agreement. Using government
| money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II
| admin.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > Using government money to win ideological arguments is
| S.O.P. for the Trump II admin.
|
| This is _literally_ also what the dems were doing with
| USAID discrediting gamergate and funding bias news
| networks, neither party is above it.
| overfeed wrote:
| I remember when Obama threatened Fox Sports mergers due
| to how Fox News covered his first term in office, and
| trued to get the Saudis to sign a pro-choice vendor
| agreement with the embassy. Biden also threatened law
| firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them
| from government buildings and revoke security clearance.
| It was the standard thing for dems to do when dealing
| with political opponents.
|
| _Both sides_ are totally the same thing, there 's
| nothing to be done.
| nkrisc wrote:
| They see it; it's why they voted for him.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The new reality. Every corporate decision made today now must
| involve an analysis of the local and national government
| authority, thier political leanings and thier tendancy towards
| vindictivness.
|
| Does anyone not think that every major corporation is not
| commissioning psychological reports on certain US leaders? They
| have public affairs and social media consultants to gauge
| public reactions. Now they need head shrinks to tell them if
| and how the guy in the big office might react, be that a state
| governor, the president, or any number of politically-minded
| media owners.
| brookst wrote:
| Why pay shrinks when you can pay baksheesh to political
| underlings who claim to be connected? Sure, most of them
| aren't, but corruption is a statistics game. You spend $100k
| on that one guy who really does sleep with the masseuse of
| the astrologist for dear leader, and it can be a 10,000%
| return in days.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > If you can cancel contacts not based on merit
|
| That's a hard argument to hold in the context of recent
| history. Maybe for the better, maybe for worse, merit has taken
| a back seat in many cases as we prioritized other factors.
|
| What's interesting to me here is that the executive branch has
| authority to change these contracts. I do understand that's how
| it has worked for a while, and you could argue that these
| contracts are part of executing on congress's mandate, but I
| personally would prefer the executive branch not have this
| power.
|
| If it were up to me congressional committees would be
| responsible for this as part of budgeting responsibilities, and
| the executive branch would be much weaker than it is today.
| wrs wrote:
| As with so many other things the executive branch is doing
| right now, it _doesn't_ have exclusive power to do this.
| Congress sets the rules for how procurement works.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's not supposed to. It sure looks like it does. Power is
| more than what the written rules say you can do.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I think you're getting to the distinction between power
| and authority. Congress may have the authority to decide
| procurement (I'm not 100% sure on this, going with the
| discussion), but functionally the president may have the
| power to force their will through the system.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Congress has been too deferential to executive power for
| decades.
| wat10000 wrote:
| And nobody listened to the people saying that this
| concentration of power would be a disaster if the office
| was ever held by a craven jerkwad. And guess what
| happened!
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-wa...
|
| https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/130_days_of_elon...
|
| https://cepr.net/publications/corrupt-control-of-the-trump-a...
|
| If Musk is engaging in corruption with respect to the US
| government, then what could be done to stop it. Whatever the
| answer, almost certainly Musk's ties to the government would
| need to be broken, including contracts and funding.
| sega_sai wrote:
| It is also interesting, that many people here somehow have no
| issues with trump cancelling federal contracts with Harvard,
| prohibiting student visas for harvard, firing entire sections
| of NSF, NIH, NOAA, but when it comes to contracts with spacex,
| they react.
| handoflixue wrote:
| There's plenty of threads about all of those issues here on
| Hacker News - why do you think the people reacting to SpaceX
| didn't also react to the rest?
| sega_sai wrote:
| Some people do react to all, but the parent comment that I
| commented on just mentioned the spacex situation, like it's
| something new, while this is just the continuation of
| what's be going on for months.
|
| And I've certainly seen people on HN trying to defend grant
| cancellations, Harvard attacks, NSF firings etc. I
| obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions are on
| the spacex threats, but I _conjecture_ , that many of them
| don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on
| universities, science agencies.
| matwood wrote:
| Cancelling contracts out of spite or for revenge without
| due process is wrong in all cases. Including SpaceX.
| Though I have to say it's entertaining to see Musk's own
| companies be effectively DOGE'd.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "I obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions
| are on the spacex threats, but I conjecture, that many of
| them don't like them"
|
| Your original comment didn't mention that you were
| _conjecturing_ anything, you just stated your conjecture
| as an observation or a fact.
|
| Less charitably, this is called building a straw man.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Not commenting" does not necessarily translate into "having
| no issues".
|
| Too much stuff is happening, not everyone comments on
| everything, and frankly your comment is only helpful to the
| administration by dividing its opponents.
|
| If you want to see any efficient pushback at all, don't apply
| purity litmus tests to your potential allies.
| sneak wrote:
| You are taking this at face value. It's all farce.
|
| Elon helped Trump get elected. Now Trump has to help Elon get
| the Trump stink off so people stop calling it the swasticar.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| That is true. But the dubiousness of the whole thing starts a
| long way before that. Why is Musk there at all? Because we are
| sliding into neo-feudalistic conditions in which a court of the
| richest people steer the affairs of state and shape them in
| their own favor. And we've known what Trump is like all along.
| We didn't have to deduce that from the fact that he is now
| quarrelling with Musk.
| chrischen wrote:
| Maybe what you think of as corruption is not what your opposing
| party thinks of as corruption?
| jchook wrote:
| Exemplifying the meme.. "[Doing American things Americanly]:
| What are we, ASIAN???"
| protocolture wrote:
| Everything you say is true.
|
| That said I think SpaceX is the only service even in the
| running for said contracts. Nasa doesnt have the capability,
| and Boeing is quite a way behind. There was already speculation
| that SpaceX would have to take on Boeings commitments for
| Artemis.
| slimebot80 wrote:
| It's murky. NASA outsources a lot of money to SpaceX because
| Musk could burn through risk and money at levels NASA would
| get cancelled for.
|
| At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and NASA
| technology become a reason to fold into a national asset.
|
| China didn't achieve its Great Leap Forward by pandering to
| wealthy celebrities who cosplay as geniuses.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The Great Leap Forward (1958-62) was an absolute disaster
| that resulted in widespread famine.
| antifa wrote:
| It's a great example of _Move Fast and Break Things_
| applied to government.
| hollerith wrote:
| >Great Leap Forward
|
| Altough most readers will catch your meaning, that phrase
| does not mean what you think it means.
| protocolture wrote:
| >At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and
| NASA technology become a reason to fold into a national
| asset.
|
| Was speculating that this might be the outcome. If you
| wanted to punish musk this would be the way to do it.
|
| You would need to pay off Boeing at the same time but it
| could work.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think this was always true, it's just that most presidents
| add a few extra clauses to the requirements instead of
| blatantly saying they're going to cancel contracts.
| anon291 wrote:
| It's not like the previous party in charge didn't threaten the
| exact same thing. People still aren't seeing that both parties
| are descending into the sort of third world mindset while
| accusing the other of being the sole cause. This is a doom
| spiral in the making.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon. Graft has been a part of
| governance in every era. Typically, pandering to special
| interests is proportional to the government's slice of the
| economic pie. As the state interventions increase, so does the
| ability for bureaus to grant favors.
|
| What is somewhat unique here, is the brazen and flippant nature
| of the funding cut. I'm sure if we looked, we could find
| similar cases in US history.
|
| Author Patrick Newman has written on the topic of cronyism in
| US history. It is interesting to read the historical narrative
| framed from the perspective of who was lobbying and looting.
|
| Here's a recent lecture on the Marshall Plan:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBGo2WbAoPI
| popalchemist wrote:
| They see it as the guy on their side having more power,
| therefore they, by extension, have more power.
|
| Primate brain go brr.
| thrance wrote:
| More like fascist brain, those who haven't bought into the
| decades of propaganda recognize this benefits no one. Fascism
| is not a natural state of mind.
| popalchemist wrote:
| On the contrary, I think it appeals to our baser instincts.
| Primates, from whom we evolved, settle their power disputes
| in EXACTLY the manner of "might makes right," and that
| isn't just about the individuals competing for power, but
| the dynamics of the crowd and how their allegiances and
| values shift according to who is in power.
| delusional wrote:
| Not American.
|
| > ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any
| way, shape, or form.
|
| I'm definitely in agreement with the 60 percent. This should be
| unthinkable and political suicide. Openly speculating on if you
| can use the government as personal retaliation is absolutely
| undemocratic.
|
| So why is it so hard for me to care in this case? Because Elon
| Musk has used the government in the exact same way. He just got
| done cancelling random contracts he didn't like. He just
| circumvented democracy to play his little doge game.
|
| It is really hard to care about cheating when it happens to a
| cheater. Disgust at this move against SpaceX or Tesla has to
| start with consequences for Elon. If this is wrong, then Elon
| must be jailed.
| martindbp wrote:
| I think there has always been this type of corruption. The
| interesting thing this time is how open it is, and how clearly
| visible it is in the stock market, where who is president
| results in swings of hundreds of billions of dollars. This
| includes both Trumps corruption for (and now against
| Tesla/SpaceX) and Bidens lawfare against his them.
| panick21_ wrote:
| So far this is all talk, in effect non of the contracts got
| created because of that and so far non have been canceled
| because of that. This is all just media whoring around.
| HocusLocus wrote:
| It's just wild that ~40% of the country wouldn't just wait and
| see what actually happens.
| mcv wrote:
| Everything about the current US government is wild. Yes,
| cancelling government contracts because of this stupid fight is
| corruption, but so is everything else. There's not much that
| either Trump or Musk do that's not corrupt.
|
| I'd like to see both of them lose their power, because they
| only abuse it.
| cedws wrote:
| Trump is good at revealing the cracks in US democratic process,
| or lack thereof.
| motorest wrote:
| > It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon
| anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his
| government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that
| as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
|
| This is what a fascist dictatorship looks like. You have a
| leader who adheres to the persona of a strong man perpetually
| fighting against enemies who are both too weak and too strong,
| and at the drop of a hat their enemies change. Then of course
| rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in
| charge is the law, so he is supported in arbitrarily abusing
| and corrupting the state for his own personal benefit because
| his personal victories are sold as a show of stength.
|
| The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are now living
| under a totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the world is
| already well aware.
| curt15 wrote:
| >Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the
| strong man in charge is the law,
|
| Is it any accident that JD and Elon keep calling for "rule of
| the people" instead of "rule of law".
| absurdo wrote:
| > This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin.
|
| Or China to current-day prosperity. It's hard to admit but it's
| a double edged sword and there are winners and losers.
|
| Choose your poison wisely.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| What does a democracy do when people willingly and knowingly
| vote for fascism? "Vote for me and you'll never have to vote
| again" won...
| bgwalter wrote:
| There is so much theater and reality TV in the Trump
| administration that it's hard to conclude anything. Most of the
| theater is there to play to his MAGA base.
|
| First there was the (staged?) row with Zelensky. A couple of
| months later nothing has really changed.
|
| Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130 days
| in that position). Time for another public row to show that Trump
| is tough on subsidies for electric vehicles.
|
| SpaceX will of course continue to get funded. A large number of
| LEO satellites are needed for Trump's Golden Dome and Starlink is
| needed in crisis regions.
| krick wrote:
| That's a really good take, and I personally missed that his
| departure was pre-planned all along (you are the first I saw to
| mention 130 days). But, again. "So, thank you, Elon, as you are
| leaving your role anyway, how about making a little performance
| for the public? Be my friend, post on Twitter that I didn't
| release Epstein files because I'm in them..."
|
| ...Really?
| safety1st wrote:
| Yeah I think this is the most logical take.
|
| These guys are both masters of dominating attention on social
| media. It got them to where they are. The way to dominate the
| national attention in this world we've created, is to act like
| a child and call someone a pedo. They are not the leaders we
| wanted, but may be the leaders we deserve.
| it_citizen wrote:
| Well, he did get elected TWICE so, seems deserved enough to
| me.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/jmd/ethics/summary-government-ethics...
|
| It looks like it is 130 days per year, not a rolling start from
| the date of hiring.
| deeg wrote:
| There is no multiverse where Trump would knowingly allow
| someone to mock or criticize him. If Musk grovels enough Trump
| may let him back; he loves emasculating his rivals.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I really don't think the Zelensky thing was staged, and I doubt
| this was either.
|
| As far as I can tell about Zelensky, he had every intention to
| cancel Trump's proposed deal after the white house meeting, but
| he is losing the war with Russia so badly that he absolutely
| needs US support, so he had no choice but to come back to the
| table.
|
| Musk pulling out the Epstein thing and Trump pulling out the
| SpaceX contracts are both two subjects these guys are very
| touchy about. If they were faking it, they wouldn't have gone
| for the (emotional) throat on this one.
|
| That said, Trump always chickens out, so there's no real chance
| SpaceX is getting its contracts canceled, even the ones that
| legitimately are a huge waste of money.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| The Zelensky interview was only staged (manufactured) by the
| White House. You may have noticed immediately after the US
| stopped intelligence sharing just long enough for Putin to take
| back Kursk.
| energy123 wrote:
| This is so farfetched and I find it absolutely bizarre that
| anyone can have a worldview where they think this level of
| conspiracy is the most likely explanation for any of these
| things. It runs contrary to the point of a conspiracy which is
| to do things that benefit you. Being called a pedophile and
| splitting your base is not to your benefit.
|
| Even if it was to his benefit to get called a pedophile, there
| still would be no reason to assume 4D-chess genius. The
| malignant narcissist and drug explanation is right there. The
| long track record of infighting and interpersonal fallouts is
| right there. The track record of falsely calling people
| pedophiles is also right there.
|
| But for some reason we must discard all reason and conclude
| that Trump and Musk are conspiring.
| bgwalter wrote:
| Direct your bewilderment at the conspiracy theorists of the
| NYT!
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/technology/elon-musk-
| trum...
|
| "The spat was revelatory, it was epic, it was historic, at
| least according to the thousands of earnest and excited
| commentaries that were instantly published.
|
| It was also a well-timed outburst.
|
| Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump did not have a feud five days ago and
| might not have a feud five days from now. Until proved
| otherwise, all of this is theater. Think of it as the
| political version of professional wrestling. For a few hours,
| everyone was diverted by the spectacle of a brawl between the
| world's richest man and its most powerful person."
|
| Having you and other politically naive persons shoot down
| anything as a "conspiracy theory" is exactly what enables the
| system.
| tzs wrote:
| > Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130
| days in that position).
|
| He couldn't _legally_ stay more than 130 days, but Trump is
| already ignoring plenty of more important laws and getting away
| with it. I doubt adding this one to the list would make any
| difference.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >First there was the (staged?) row with Zelensky. A couple of
| months later nothing has really changed.
|
| I understand that the US stopped authorizing new shipments of
| gear to Ukraine like they were doing under Biden.
|
| I don't believe it was staged. I think it was a long-shot
| attempt by Zelensky to make his case directly to the American
| people:
|
| https://xcancel.com/RichardHanania/status/189556292259384155...
| ndr42 wrote:
| "one in eight Americans thinking women are too emotional to be in
| politics" [1]. Well, I don't know, maybe men should not holding
| high political offices /s
|
| [1]
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03616843221123...
| jyounker wrote:
| A friend who studied political science an conflict made this
| observation about American politics: 30% of the voting
| population is insane. They will believe the most mind-bendingly
| illogical things, and then vote for them, so the best you can
| ever expect from the general population is 70% agreement on
| reality.
|
| In that light, we're doing really well with only 1/8 believing
| such a thing.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I blame the leaded paint
| patrickmay wrote:
| Maybe neither should. The problem is the power existing in the
| first place, waiting around for someone like Trump.
| Fairburn wrote:
| Come on, as Beth says, those two should just fuck and get it
| over with.. We are all adults here. Say it with me: "Those
| two should just fuck and be be friends, again"
| tsoukase wrote:
| I am watching what's happenings in the US at the last months
| eating popcorn. It's unbelievable. World's strongest nation is
| reduced to a fight between an autistic and a f...er who happens
| to carry the nuclear codes that can annihilate the globe.
|
| Where are the official protocols, the dozens of federal lawyers
| and people behind the presidency, the century long political
| traditions, the Secret Services?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > fight between an autistic and a f...er
|
| There are many better nouns to describe Elmo that don't involve
| disparaging neurodivergent folks.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Please don't attribute Musk's behavior to autism.
|
| It's a disgusting and inaccurate smear against people on the
| autism spectrum.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| I'm autistic and I still like musk
| cbeach wrote:
| I'm autistic and proud of Elon Musk. Once all the leftwing
| tribal hysteria has blown over, we'll get back to recognising
| this man for his incredible achievements in sustainable
| transport, energy, space capability, neural interfaces, AI
| and many other fields.
|
| Whenever someone disparages Musk as an "idiot" my mind
| boggles. This man has achieved more than ten savants would
| hope to achieve is their entire lifetime.
| AngryData wrote:
| I don't believe Musk's claim at all that he is autistic, that
| is just his excuse for being an asshole and/or high on drugs,
| depending on the day.
| dottjt wrote:
| Not quite relevant, but I've noticed that there's this trend on
| HN where if there's a non-tech-related happening that's
| significant and it's obviously something that people want to
| discuss, people will try and find a tech-related angle in order
| to discuss the wider issue.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| If we all worked in machine shops, we'd be talking about the
| steel tariffs.
| pests wrote:
| Articles on HN dont need a tech angle to begin with so this
| doesn't make since.
| dvh wrote:
| I noticed one obsession in hn community: dating/relationships
|
| New lua library - 2 comments. Something about dating or
| relationships - 70 comments.
| thinkindie wrote:
| At least Berlusconi didn't have access to nuclear warheads.
|
| Seriously, I visited the US few times between 2005 and 2010 and
| each time people were raising the topic of Berlusconi. How can
| you have a president like that, who voted for him, bunga bunga
| etc etc.
|
| Now you know how you can have such personality in power too. With
| even more power.
| andrepd wrote:
| The Italians truly invent everything first, eh? Fascism,
| trumpism, etc
| thinkindie wrote:
| Trumpism is just another league I believe. You may say it's
| Berlusconism on steroids, but the global impact makes this a
| thing by itself.
| esafak wrote:
| It really isn't; Trump just has a bigger stage. Trumpism is
| a misnomer by itself; Trump has no ideology, no grand
| scheme that I can discern.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Trump has no ideology_
|
| I wouldn't say it's a misnomer, the lack of ideology is
| the signature appeal. It's exactly what affords Trump
| unlimited flexibility among his supporters since there
| are no expectations of consistency.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, I would say "acquisition of and wielding power" is
| the signature feature of Trumpism, and why he appeals to
| so many.
|
| Whether true or not (and FWIW, I think it is, at least to
| some degree), the left largely took the mantra of "tsk
| tsking" for a long time - you should feel bad about using
| a plastic straw, bad about driving your car, bad about
| the US' treatment of Native Americans, etc. etc. So
| Trump's complete shamelessness is appealing to many
|
| I read a good post recently that explained that Trump and
| the Republican's rank hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug.
| It shows that Trump and his team are unbound by the
| constraints they want to apply to others.
| baxtr wrote:
| Don't get me started on Roman Emperors...
| codedokode wrote:
| And alphabet.
| wefinh wrote:
| No, it is Google thing. Thread lightly, as people get
| offended by that...
|
| What a morons :D
| ecesena wrote:
| From the Italian letters alpha & beta :)
| foobarian wrote:
| Mafia!
| mousethatroared wrote:
| Western civilization.
|
| Oh, and before Berlusconi there was Menem. He's the original
| clown turned president.
| cenamus wrote:
| Greece?
| mousethatroared wrote:
| Argentina.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Ahaha I'm pretty sure he meant that it was Greece and not
| Italy that invented everything first.
| agumonkey wrote:
| desktop programmable computers with style ? https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
| credit_guy wrote:
| > How can you have a president like that
|
| Did people really think that Berlusconi was the president of
| Italy?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Mainly the people that voted for him.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Wasn't he?
|
| Unless you mean president !== primer minister, but that would
| be such a futile remark in this context.
| credit_guy wrote:
| That's exactly what I meant. A lot of people in the US
| don't follow politics in Europe, but those who are are
| unlikely to think Berlusconi was a president when he was
| actually a prime minister.
| linotype wrote:
| FAFO. The most predictable outcome in recent memory.
| 33hsiidhkm wrote:
| If you are familiar with John Lilly
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly), you may notice
| some similarities with Musk. Lilly used/abused ketamine and began
| to believe in some form of extraterrestrial oversight of earth,
| something like that. Musk keeps tweeting about "simulation
| theory", and to me sounds totally deranged. He says he thinks
| reality is a simulation (batshit imho), and that boring
| simulations are cancelled, and only exciting ones are allowed to
| run (by whom..?), stuff like that. He's out of his mind. I am not
| choosing sides here, and Trump's behaviour is absolutely
| deplorable (again, imo).
| n2d4 wrote:
| Are you referring to Musk saying "The most entertaining outcome
| is the most likely"? It's just a joke, it's a version of
| Occam's razor -- I can't find any mention of him arguing that
| this is genuinely how the world works.
| wefinh wrote:
| I would not consider Musk as a researcher of the topic - he has
| not published any papers or even works on philosophical level,
| so you are giving Musk too much of attention - just like his
| appearance in Simpsons.
|
| In regards to reality as simulation, well - the issue here is
| that definitions are not very precise. That simulation is
| reality to us. We have mind limitations, by which we operate
| just like animals have them and that makes our reality. I have
| experienced deja vu many times and the mechanisms to that might
| be linked that things are predestined - pretty much this is
| main belief, that all pre-Christian societies believed in and
| generally Christianity is not in opposition to that either - it
| just states that there is a free will to humans and that they
| must choose God over Santa and deja vu can be experienced only
| by saints that are in direct contact of Ultimate Being.
|
| I don't know where Musk is getting his ideas, but what is
| mundane and boring to some might be exciting to others. Insects
| controlled by pheromones might be living most exciting life
| that there is.
|
| I think I have heard some other ideas that most probably
| developed on the basis of ideas of Lilly. It involves
| reincarnation of souls in other beings. I'm not completely sold
| on idea(because that is presented as noble and next nuclear war
| is not under any definition), but that might explain why
| society is deranged as that right now, as current beings does
| not have noblest souls... though it can also be explained by
| many other factors. Though, the mechanics of transfer of
| nomadic souls would explain no need for transportation to reach
| all the other planets that have life, but also - that is not
| really what matters - we don't think that dinos had more
| importance over humans and to be fair humans themselves are
| just an episode in this Universe as well.
|
| The idea of Lilly can be expanded - pretty much Universe can be
| just a playground for various beings to experience whatever -
| just like a RPG game or a live movie, where you can play a
| role. It does not necessarily require soul mechanism mentioned
| earlier. But it also does not matter for your existence - you
| are as real and important as you want it to be. Or don't matter
| at all and there is no reason or value for anything.
|
| Regardless, your destiny is to live through this cosmic theater
| and experience Musk - do you like it or not. Pretty much your
| reality can also be formed by your mind and it seems, that Musk
| is very central part in it.
| tonymet wrote:
| So now that Trump opposes Musk- is Musk still a fascist ? Is
| Trump? Is it still ok to vandalize teslas ? I'm so conflicted
| yks wrote:
| I figure that's intended as a "gotcha", but a hallmark of any
| autocracy, fascism included, is the factional fights and
| purges. And few understand, but being an early supporter of
| fascism actually increases one's statistical chances of ngmi.
| bn-l wrote:
| Hey it's ok to be confused. This week we stop hating musk (but
| trump is still a baddie).
|
| You're allowed to make comments like this where you express joy
| at watching his suffering:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44196058. but only for
| another week.
|
| In 20 days musk will be a goodie and then you mustn't at all
| say anything negative at all about him. He's a goodie. Again,
| trump is a baddie (baddie status began in 2016 fyi, before that
| point he was a goodie).
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Hot take: they're both baddies, and they always will be.
| tonymet wrote:
| Was he when he was saving the world from climate change?
| Was trump a baddie when he was a B-tier celeb on
| Apprentice?
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Yes. Obviously.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| He was never saving the world from climate change, you're
| just naive.
| cptroot wrote:
| For what it's worth, the way you've phrased this question
| doesn't sound like you want to discuss any of these issues. It
| sounds like you have bones to pick with what people have said
| and want to argue about it.
| wefinh wrote:
| Frankly, I would phrase this question the same way. But it
| has more to do with society, that simply just don't want to
| be responsible for anything. And that is the same society
| that put Musk on pedestal, that Simpsons immortalized and the
| same society has a bones to pick when reminded about those
| glorious moments, but not to just be ashamed of themselves
| and their behaviour, like you are demonstrating here just
| perfectly.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Yes. He's insinuating that the only reason you would dislike
| musk is sure to his association with trump. He's also
| insinuating that people who dislike trump just like the
| opposite of what trump like, so that is trump dislikes musk
| then they musk like him.
|
| He's just a troll.
| yibg wrote:
| I know this was intended to be a snarky remark but I'm going to
| reply anyways. Despite US politics being the way it is, the
| world isn't binary. Just because 2 bad people are fighting each
| other, it doesn't make one of them good. The enemy of my enemy
| isn't always my friend. Sometimes it's just another enemy.
| intermerda wrote:
| The answer is yes to all your questions. What are you
| conflicted about?
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... Are you under the impression that people who share a broad
| ideology always get on with each other? Like, what? What on
| earth are you saying here?
|
| I mean, if nothing else, see Ernst Rohm.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| They're both still fascists, still ok to vandalize teslas.
| Their relationship has nothing to do with either point.
| everyone wrote:
| I used to follow all the spaceX stuff. But I cant watch any of it
| now, just cus its associated with that sack of shit musk. I want
| every endeavour of his to fail more than I want us to have a
| functional starship.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I've got to love that these two guys _both_ have their own social
| media platform.
| joshdavham wrote:
| That's actually fascinating! I didn't consciously recognize
| that till I read this comment haha
| unaindz wrote:
| What's trump's social media?
| __s wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Social came out of him
| being banned by twitter a few years ago
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Hopefully one day everyone will be on his own social media and
| when you want to check on someone, you get on his social media
| to see what he say.
|
| Like I don't know, how we used to do things with blogs, MySpace
| and so on ! The future is great.
| anon291 wrote:
| To be clear, the biden-musk dispute included threats to Tesla.
| The entire thing is insane. Musk has done more for America than
| either of the last two presidents.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Nooooo! Not muh heckin' Tesla stonks!
|
| It's just such a _shame_ that Elon was pressured into this
| messy politics stuff. After all, he could have just stayed in
| his own lane, kept his nose clean, made value for shareholders
| and saved America along the way. It was so easy! Hell, he could
| have just become president himself with his spotless track
| record of administrative accomplishment. Who _wouldn 't_ vote
| for him?
|
| Now look at the poor guy. Burned his bridges with the liberals
| when he bought Twitter, harassed queer people and reneged his
| environmental commitments. Now the bridge to modern
| conservatism is on fire, because _gasp_ the Republicans won 't
| agree on making a smaller, less-capable government! Those
| filthy backstabbers, how was Elon _supposed_ to know he was
| fraternizing with frauds, socialists and sex pests?
|
| It's... it's discrimination. Don't they know Elon is on the
| autism spectrum, how are they getting away with this
| harassment? H-hey, why are you guys walking away - this is
| important! America's _future_ is on the line, here!
| anon291 wrote:
| I don't care about Musk personally but if you think Trump's
| threat is the first direct named threat against his company
| by a politician, I think you are off your rocker
| bigyabai wrote:
| By most accounts, that's what typically happens to
| businessmen who have close ties to the Russian Federation.
| Doubly so if you spent your early 20s on a traipse around
| post-bloc oblasts looking to buy decommissioned weapon
| systems. Triply so if you're still picking up when Putin
| calls you.
|
| If it's any consolation though, Elon's not alone. Plus,
| he's probably earned a real nice dacha near occupied Sumy
| for the valuable work he's done the government.
| shmerl wrote:
| Two pathological narcissists were inevitably going to end up at
| each other's throats. It was only a matter of time.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Elon Musk has recently talked about forming a third party in the
| US. Does anyone have an idea of what such a party would look
| like? I imagine it would be significantly different than the
| Republican Party.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| If I had to guess, socially liberal sans wokism or welfarism
| with an initial focus on fiscal conservatism to pull the US out
| of the debt hole.
| sahaj wrote:
| Where, Musk grants himself all govt funding and zero taxes on
| corps and superrich.
| entropyneur wrote:
| I know a centrist gesture they could adopt as the party
| greeting.
| thrance wrote:
| Pretty much the same garbage economic policies, concerning
| concentration of power and abhorrent hatred of minorities, with
| the difference that H1B visas are welcome.
| jmpman wrote:
| The biggest threat to Musk's empire is simply to remove Chinese
| electric vehicle tariffs.
| miga wrote:
| When policy dispute escalates to ad hominem and fund cutting
| arguments, it becomes clear that the presidency no longer serves
| the institution, but becomes a personal kingdom.
| yalogin wrote:
| We have moved so past the "government is expected to be
| impartial" and now at "if musk backs a dem I will destroy him"
| stage. No one bats an eye. This is going to be the norm at least
| on the Republican Party. I worry every one expects presidents to
| weaponize everything against their perceived opponents.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That stood out to me, too. Even in the current environment,
| that's messed up. No, the sitting president does _not_ get to
| threaten peoples ' ability to make campaign contributions to
| the opposing party.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| In Europe, media and politicians are openly stating how you got
| to watch what you say to Mr Trump, be nice to him to get
| favored in deals.
|
| Like the trade tax, if you're nice to trump he may decrease
| your country tax.
|
| It was made very clear in France that we invited him to 14
| juillet, notre dame ceremony and other ceremony only to get
| favor from him.
|
| People of the United States pay the price for his favors, he
| gets the benefits.
|
| That's just one step before handling him bags of money.
|
| Of course all of that matters with previous presidents, they
| are humans before all, but it was marginal. With him, that's
| the first time it's openly spoken about on national tv and by
| politicians like it's nothing, like what we did with dictator
| from middle eastern except it's the president of the USA.
| Fairburn wrote:
| Those two embiciles should just fuck and get it over with. Geez.
| iamleppert wrote:
| What do we even need to be sending people into space for? It
| seems like a lot of savings could be had if we just completely
| shut down the entire manned space program. Unless there is some
| direct business case for it, why do it at all? Don't tell me some
| vague definition of "science". This isn't some new frontier that
| needs exploring, its well understood at this point. There needs
| to be a direct benefit to the american tax payer to justify the
| cost of putting a person up there. I don't see a reason to send
| people to space, if something needs to be done, it can be
| automated and sent as an autonomous payload. Sending people to
| space feels wasteful in the age of robotics, fast data links and
| autonomous systems. If we can operate a rover on mars, we can do
| whatever needs to be done in orbit or the moon or deep space,
| without human aid.
|
| It feels like a vanity and an anachronism to an era from the
| past. Manned space travel is risky, expensive, environmentally
| destructive, and for what? For some human being to manually
| manipulate scientific instruments in orbit that should have been,
| or could have been automated and get the same results?
|
| Gone are the days where people actually think we could be living
| in space. From what we know now, not only is it impractical,
| dangerous, inefficient, its also unhealthy. This isn't a question
| of some new technology that needs created to support it, it's a
| limitation of physics and millions of years of evolution on
| earth.
|
| Send satellites to orbit? Yes. Collect power from space? Yes.
| Conduct scientific research? Okay. But we don't need to send
| people to do that anymore. Manned space travel had its place in
| time, and it no longer makes sense to do it, so lets have the
| maturity to move on from the past.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Are you unfamiliar with the many world-changing technologies
| and inventions that have come about because of the needs and
| drivers of the human space program? On what basis do you form
| the belief that we would not continue to develop and benefit
| from new world-changing innovations despite all historical
| evidence that says otherwise?
|
| A huge amount of scientific invention is made incidentally to
| another goal. It's intensely myopic to disregard that.
| iamleppert wrote:
| I was waiting for this comment! What innovations have come
| about in the last 20 years of the human space program?
| Everyone always makes this claim but never can name a single
| one, or brings up unrelated things like the heat tiles on the
| space shuttle. What kinds of developments could not have been
| done with autonomous payloads?
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _What kinds of developments could not have been done with
| autonomous payloads?_
|
| This is very much the wrong question to ask. The question
| isn't whether something can be done with different
| payloads. The question is whether something would have been
| done if not for the drive to send people into constrained
| environments. Closed loop osmotic water filtration systems
| would not be so developed without the driving motivation of
| sustaining life in a box. Sending payloads at all is
| actually extremely tangential except insofar as if you
| officially terminate the actual sending of people then the
| motivation to develop technologies that make it easier to
| send people vanishes.
|
| It's not super clear from your wording, but it sounds kinda
| like you want to hear about research within the past 20
| years that has made it to already being commercialized, but
| that would be ignoring the fact that taking decades for
| research and development done for human spaceflight to get
| applied to other uses, which it often does, doesn't negate
| the facts that it often does take longer than that for
| ventures to reach the public and that the research and
| development was done for human spaceflight. It seems
| unlikely that you're looking for older developments that
| have only been commercialized recently, though I can point
| you to several, and developments done more recently but not
| yet commercialized for other uses have no success record
| yet. It makes your request sound a bit disingenuous.
| x0WoobRi wrote:
| > This isn't some new frontier that needs exploring, its well
| understood at this point
|
| This is where I started to think this was trolling and that it
| would soon devolve into overly satirical commentary to prove
| the opposite point. I was surprised it didn't do this. I'm very
| interested in this defeatist mentality, welp we know it's
| impractical we should stop trying. It's not only ignoring the
| advancements that manned space exploration has brought but
| seemingly ignores how advancements are done in general for all
| of human existence. This mindset would have us living in caves
| after a few hardships.
|
| You could argue we know enough now but this overestimates how
| much humans know especially with respect to space
| CjHuber wrote:
| To me it sounds like more like hyperbolic pragmatism than
| defeatism.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > but this overestimates how much humans know especially with
| respect to space
|
| Does it? We can't know how many secrets there are out there,
| maybe there's infinite and maybe there's nothing. It's hard
| for us to know the opportunity cost until we understand what
| we're bartering for.
|
| Like, humanity could pool their resources to comprehensively
| explore the Mariana Trench if we wanted. That's fairly
| unknown, entirely feasible, and could yield scientific
| advancement. But it's also expensive, and doesn't guarantee
| any lucrative returns for us. Maybe there's gold deposits at
| the bottom of the floor, maybe it's all silt and sand. Maybe
| we harvest the gold, and discover that humanity has upset a
| delicate balance that has only survived by us ignoring it.
|
| Iunno, if I was an alien civilization somewhere, I'd be
| praying to whatever higher powers exist to ensure humanity
| stays far, far away from me.
| Veedrac wrote:
| Most of the benefits of manned space exploration are fake, yes.
| The incentives of the people doing it though aren't to be
| honest about it. NASA talks about how critical a constant human
| presence on the ISS is for 'science'; never once have I heard
| them even try to justify $100B spend as more than a keyword.
|
| There are a few real things a manned space program does:
| showing force in rocket technologies, serving as inspiration in
| STEM fields, and taking an early step to humans flourishing
| throughout the universe. There are also real but bad reasons,
| like NASA bloat is seen as a way to buy voters.
| robomartin wrote:
| Hacker News has become a left wing echo chamber, promoting and
| elevating some of the dumbest thoughts and conspiracy theories.
| Bravo.
|
| Reason and critical thinking are not visible in certain
| discussions. Hatred dominate them, with contrasting opinions
| punished, massively downvoted and flagged.
|
| Yeah, that's the path to enlightenment. Again, bravo.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Please, spare us. The most powerful men in the world are having
| a spat over social media like a pair of tweens, and you have
| the gall of calling out the left, as if the "left" (whatever
| the hell that means in the US, since you have no left, but I
| digress) was the one that voted them. Take a look in the mirror
| if you want to cry about dumb thoughts.
| beefnugs wrote:
| Isn't there specific laws that allows the government to take over
| businesses for war time production? Hasn't he already used
| harsher laws for less already?
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > Trump said that Isaacman was a Democrat, although Isaacman has
| donated to both Republican and Democratic candidates and
| organizations over the year.
|
| Beside the polemic over two toddler arguing in public, what grab
| my attention is the fact that someone who is considered to be
| appointed to NASA leadership use to give money to both opposite
| political side during election.
|
| That's messed up, someone like that has obviously absolutely no
| standing, honor,.. whatever you call it. Someone you can't rely
| on, that will betray you.
|
| I would consider it to be about the same level as a crackhead,
| you know he is going to betray you and all its responsibilities
| at some point, you just don't know when.
|
| Seriously, you don't lead the NASA with people like that.
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