“It might be exhausting just trying to keep up with Musk and he will get plenty wrong. And yet, all the criticism is hopelessly wide of the mark. Our political and economic culture sneers at and neglects men and women like him. But if Musk and his ilk ever chose to go on strike, like a seemingly endless number of workers in both the public and private sectors, the system could grind to a complete halt.”
– Matthew Lynn, Daily Telegraph. Lynn’s article (£) is spot on. Yes, Musk received public subsidies for Tesla and the SpaceX business gets deals from NASA, but the point is also that he has made, particularly in the spacefaring area, a tremendous go of massively reducing launch costs via the recoverability of the rockets. He did it when far more expensive ways of space flight failed to deliver. If he did nothing else, that puts him on my list of heroes.
The line about him ever going on strike makes me wonder if Lynn thinks of Musk as a sort of Ayn Rand hero. It’s almost uncanny. Of course, some people, including Musk himself, tend to think of him more as a bit of a Tony Stark.
Musk can be maddening to some, and vexatious even to his admirers. But overall, I am glad he is around.
On the subject of going on strike. I was surprised by how little effect the whole lockdown debacle has had in general. We have rising inflation which is an obvious outcome that you would expect giving half of the workforce a year off and paying them with leaves from the magic money tree. It does seem to show that many of those people given time off were not actually producing anything of value when they were working, so nobody missed them. I was surprised that there has not been mass unemployment caused by businesses realising that most of their workforce wasn’t actually needed. Which I suppose brings us back to Musk and his purchase of Twitter.
I think he is one of the most, perhaps the most, important humans of this century. I’m a bit of a fanboy. Did you know he also was one of the founders of OpenAI which produced ChatGPT? Oh, and saving free speech in America is one of his side hobbies.
If you haven’t watched the interview he did with Tucker Carlson (late of Fox News) last week, you should. He is a fascinating person.
And BTW, the only people who don’t make mistakes are people who aren’t trying hard enough.
Big fanboi here for Musk also, but I fear that we on the right keep putting our faith into single huge personalities without building a following system for them that can carry on their quests when they leave.
When Breitbart died, so too did his influence. When Trump flamed out, we really had nothing ready to step up. Perhaps DeSantis, but he’s also just one single personality, vulnerable to the investigative takedown that we know is going to be mounted when he starts a national-scope campaign.
Imagine EM having a stroke tomorrow. Twitter – our sole national outlet – is then lost, as is a huge fight for our freedoms. We are unprepared for such a thing. We need a movement, not an Olympus. Perhaps we need an invigorated MAGA.
Stonyground:
It does seem to show that many of those people given time off were not actually producing anything of value when they were working, so nobody missed them.
Bullseye.
@bobby b
Perhaps DeSantis, but he’s also just one single personality
FWIW, I think DeSantis is now unelectable as President. By signing that 6 week abortion bill he can never win enough of the middle to win. If it had been a 15 week bill he could have won, since most of the middle are not in favor, in general, of sucking brains out of almost born babies. But six weeks is too extreme for even fairly moderate Americans. All we have left on the Republican side is Trump, and he is almost guaranteed to lose. 2024 will be Biden vs Trump, and Trump will lose. Possibly if Biden becomes completely untenable it’ll be Harris vs Trump, and that maybe is winnable, but her craziness and utterly unappealing manner could easily be cancelled by her intersectional victim points which could improve her turnout dramatically. So I think Harris would beat Trump too. Nevertheless, they’ll run Biden unless he is actually dead, and maybe even then. No way Biden will get through four more years, so get used to President Hyena.
Imagine screachy Harris negotiating trade deals with China, or “standing up” to Putin. Think about that if you doubt that it is time to move to Galt’s Gulch. I suggest you google “Five Flags”.
Oh, and regarding Twitter, the one other bright spot in the media landscape is Fox. But no doubt recent news would make many nervous about their reliability for the next election. Hint, Paul Ryan is on their board of directors. And a billion dollar fine guarantees they will be very hesitant to investigate the inevitable electoral shenanigans.
@Stonyground
It does seem to show that many of those people given time off were not actually producing anything of value when they were working, so nobody missed them.
However, some of the most unproductive people in the US economy are middle managers. And guess who gets to decide if we can WfH?
+1 on the Elon fan club.
In the struggle between collectivists and individualists the collectivists will always win because they work together, just like it says on the tin.
Yeah, that’s my take also. Trump v. DeSantis is going to guarantee a Republican split. If one of the two died soon, that might obviate the split and give the GOP a chance in 2024, but that’s the minimum that it would take. We have about 25% “Trump or nothing!” voters, and about 20% “DeSantis or nothing!” voters. The remaining R vote is simply going to be too small to win.
(Unless they run Hillary. Then it’s a crapshoot.)
I’d be a fanboy too, but for one thing – tossler.
I can think of nothing that more threatens real and meaningful personal freedom – the ability to travel where and when you want – than the cult of the milk float. And in this, musk is its jesus.
I don’t think anybody was forced to buy Reardon metal. And in that world, Musk would be somebody taking massive government bungs, and benefiting from blatantly discriminatory laws, to peddle an inferior product worst than cast iron.
I do admire Musk’s drive, determination etc, but as long as tesla is around, his true motivations have to be questioned.
With Gates and the rest of the Wansee eugenisist fanatics, their motivations are clear. I’m still not sure if musk isn’t really one of them.
Elon Musk reminds me of Ptolemy.
After the death of Alexander the Great it was sadly clear that the independent city states, some with semi democratic governments, would not really return. But it was not clear who would rule where.
Of the Generals of Alexander – Ptolemy was “the nice one”, he could be just as ruthless as the other Generals – but he had a nice manner with it. Ptolemy would rather win people over rather than kill them – and he was sincerely interested in natural science and general learning. Ptolemy was also full of sympathy (perhaps sincere sympathy) for people who had been persecuted by despotism – “oh what happened to you and your family and friends was terrible” (subtext being – “you would be so much better off under my rule – I am a tolerant person”, and that was actually partly true).
For those who point to the flaws of Elon Musk (and of course, like all human beings, he has flaws) I would ask the following question.
Would you rather be ruled by Bill Gates, or some other World Economic Forum type, or by Elon Musk?
“I do not want to be ruled by any billionaire, I am going to stamp my foot and scream till things are the way I want them to be”.
Sorry, but that is not on offer.
Of the available choices, Elon Musk is the least bad – look, for example, at how censorship has vastly reduced on Twitter since Mr Musk took over.
Mr Musk spent about 40 Billion Dollars buying Twitter.
40 Billion Dollars – the ordinary human mind just can not really grasp a number that large (I know I can not really grasp the size of that number).
That is “putting your money where your mouth is” in a sense that no one in the history of the world has ever dome before.
No one in the history of the world has spent anything like this sum of money to reduce censorship in a means of communication.
“But Paul – he will still censor stuff that is a threat to his own personal interests”.
Perhaps he will – but I refer the reader to the start of what I have written. If you have a choice of powerful people (such as the Generals of Alexander at the dawn of the Hellenistic Age) then pick “the nice one” the least bad.
The perfect is the enemy of the good – Mr Elon Musk is most certainly not perfect, but he is the best (overwhelmingly the best) of the available options.
“How will the collapse of the fiat money and Credit Bubble finance system, influence all of the above – the general political situation?”
I am not sure. It will be interesting to see how the economic collapse (which is now inevitable) changes politics. But I am sure that Mr Musk, and the other truly rich and powerful men of the world, are preparing (as best they can) for the collapse. Preparing to keep their wealth, and their power, in whatever new world emerges.
There is some discussion of American elections in some of the comments – without grasping that the elections are systematically rigged in some States such discussion is empty.
So when the “controlled opposition”, such as the Wall Street Journal, pretend that mass mail-in ballots (and all the rest of it) are fine, and sneer at people who watched elections (for example the recent election for Governor of Arizona) rigged before their eyes (“sorry but you can not vote just now, we have a computer problem – you should have voted before election day”) – they reveal themselves (and Mr Murdoch) to be a waste-of-space.
Yes the courts and the arbiters are institutionally corrupt – they will ignore any evidence of election fraud and award X zillion in damages against people who even imply the truth, but one can find ways round the courts and arbiters. For example, look at the way Mr Musk writes – he writes nothing against the elections that can be taken to court, even saying that he was one of the people who really did vote for Mr Biden, but his meaning is fairly clear.
As for the American economy – the Economist magazine is filled with articles about how it is going from “strength to strength” and everything is wonderful.
This means SELL, SELL, SELL.
When the establishment tells you X, about elections, or about the economy, or about most other things, the opposite of X is normally true.
Bobby:
I am very skeptical about ‘movements’. Every movement needs a ruling class, and any ruling class is likely either to capture power for itself, or else to connive with the establishment which it was supposed to counteract.
If i had to make a suggestion, it would be with a modesty that is unusual for me 🙂
The suggestion would be to re-discover the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, in providing a system of checks+balances, the most important of which (apart from election integrity, which the Founders kind-of neglected) is perhaps federalism.
I believe that there is room for a de-nazified FBI, but apart from that, the federal government should probably be reduced to little more than national defense.
I would make similar suggestions for reform of the EU, UK, Italy, and Canada. Other countries that i feel entitled to comment about, even in all the modesty that i am able to muster, are much smaller, and therefore less likely to benefit from decentralization.
Gotta also admit to enjoying Mr. Musk’s antics. Not sure I’d go as far as describing myself as a fanboy, but he does put on a good show even if it’s just huge rockets being launched into the ether.
Watching those two side boosters land simultaneously after delivering a Falcon Heavy payload will never get old.
As for the Super Heavy / Starship combination, despite some delays, I think that will be a game changer for space launches, not just because of the stage 2 reusability, but because we’re developing the ability (for Artemis) of refuelling in Low Earth Orbit (LEO)
A 2012 NASA study suggested that LEO refuelling would save $54 billion in costs over 2 decades. While I don’t think that those cost savings are as high nowadays (given the massive price-to-LEO reductions of Falcon-9/Falcon Heavy), I do think there is the potential for massive cost reductions on pound-to-LEO / KG-to-LEO.
In addition, if we can refuel in orbit, we can put space probes to Jupiter and beyond on higher consumption (but faster routes) than the current multiple flyby jiggery-pokery.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – JUICE is having to do multiple flybys of Earth and Venus just to get enough velocity to reach Jupiter and complete the mission.
With the potential for refuelling in LEO we could probably cut years off such journey times.
Juice’s journey to Jupiter
On 2nd thought: nutrition might be more important than constitutionalism.
The US of A is a world leader in consumption of brain-damaging foods: seed oils and refined carbs.
The US is also a world leader in the adoption of brain-healthy diets.
Whatever trend prevails, is likely to determine the fate of the US, and perhaps of the rest of the world.
Snorri Godhi
The suggestion would be to re-discover the wisdom of the Founding Fathers,
Sounds nice. How are you going to make that happen? I’m afraid you are just yelling into the wind.
It used to be that such a thing wasn’t possible because the powerful elites are powerful enough to push back against such a thing which limits their power. But that is incidental now. The problem now is that a large majority of the population would push back against such reforms. Most people want the federal government to fix everything, and think checks and balances are something to be swept away (unless they are checking and balancing against something they don’t want.)
Again, the problem isn’t the politicians, not any more. It is the people.
You see this in Chicago. They just ditched Lori Lightfoot, perhaps the worst mayor in the history of Chicago, because the city was falling apart. But they replaced her with someone even further on the psycho nut job left. So if you are waiting for people to pay the price and learn the lessons from the manifest disaster of the left, you are going to wait a VERY long time.
The thing that crystalized it for me was the 2022 mid term election. Inflation was out of control, gas prices doubled, food prices up 50% and in some cases 200%, massive shortage, crime soaring, a new crazy war, closer to nuclear war than at any time in history, ffs people couldn’t even buy formula to feed their babies, and it ALL happened in the two years since Biden took office. And what happened? They basically had the people reaffirm their mandate. The worst? Pennsylvania when a man who was LITERALLY brain damaged, who could hardly string three words together, who was about as hard core left as you could imagine, who had a nasty potty mouth, who had never done anything in his life since he is a trust fund baby except be mayor of a tiny town which he drove into the grave. This guy, against a world renowned heart surgeon, who had invented several life saving devices, and who had gone on to create a media empire. Who was obviously brilliant, very moderate, charismatic and articulate and who didn’t at all take advantage of the idiocy of his opponent.
And they voted for the brain damaged guy. I mean how does a nation overcome this level of stupidity in its voters?
I’ll say again, if you are waiting for a Republican surge in 2024, or 2026 or 2028 to sweep in and return us to some semblance of sanity then you aren’t looking objectively at the facts. You are allowing hope to hide reality. You might as well buy a lottery ticket, that is far more likely to fix your life than some political solution.
Instead, for us Americans anyway, and probably for the rest of you in the west, we should be thinking soberly how we can arrange your affairs to live the best life we can in the very, very dark times that are heading our way. I don’t want to sound like doom and gloom Paul. I am arranging my affairs with that in mind and am very optimistic for my future. But if anyone is optimistic about the political future of the west they are not being a sober judge of the facts.
Certainly, but in our case – the US right – we’ve settled on having a ruling individual, with lots of support but no actual movement behind it. Then, when something happens to that one ruling personality, everyone is once again cast adrift. Remember the Tea Party? A very few actual leaders, who all either got co-opted out or drifted away, leaving nothing in their wake.
The “ruling class” you speak of would be better than “the ruler” we’ve all glommed onto. Continuity, a sense of a movement instead of merely support for that one personality . . .
We now have Trumpism, with no viable Trump. We have DeSantisism, but he won’t be viable in the face of that Trump. If those two disappear, who is left? No one. There is no organization, no movement, no mission left to carry on. If Trump and Desantis died tomorrow, we’d be in limbo for a year or more, because there is no structure to carry on what they drive.
I understand your disdain for movements, but it says something awful about what we have right now that I would consider a movement to be a step up.
(P.S. I consider the first American Revolution to have been a movement.)
Snorri – rolling back the Federal Government is indeed vital, if the United States is to survive.
As for the American diet – government regulations concentrating food processing in the hands of few corporations (just as government regulations and the fiat money of the Federal Reserve have concentrating most industries into the hands of a few corporations) have had unfortunate consequences.
bobby b – it does not matter who the candidate is, if elections in some States continue to be rigged.
As Nigel Farage said when looking at the “defeat” of Kari Lake in Arizona – whilst the mass mail-in ballots continue is there any point in a Republican even standing for election? True RINOs may make a deal with Democrats to get a few of their own elected – candidates that the corporations approve of, but th system is systematically corrupt, so a decent candidate might as well forget-about-it.
And it is not just Arizona.
Till the election system is straight, paper ballots cast on election day with proper I.D. and counted in public, talking about anything else is a waste of time.
Rule one of democracy – have honest elections, the United States does not have that now.
bobby b
Certainly, but in our case – the US right – we’ve settled on having a ruling individual, with lots of support but no actual movement behind it.
Trump is a perfect example of this. It is clear that his view is “select me as Republican candidate or I will burn it all down.”. If, for example, DeSantis won the Republican nomination (which is VERY unlikely) would Trump support him, or would he snipe at him from the sidelines, or maybe even run as a third party independent? I think the answer is self evident. Trump is the boss or no-one is the boss.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump did amazing things as president, especially given the implacable opposition, but Trump does what is best for Trump, and in 2016-2019 that was just coincidentally what was mostly the best available option for America.
Oh, and BTW, regarding Paul’s points, another thing to consider about the 2022 election which can only be described as a disaster for the Republicans, despite some great alternatives they re-elected Ronna McDaniel as head of the RNC. So all the dreadful mistakes we got in 2022 expect in 2024. Like everything in the world of politics, failure to deliver is far less important than connections or networking.
Bobby wrote in reply to me:
That is a very good point, and it occurred to me, while completing my comment, that what i was proposing would itself be a movement.
Let me revise my comment in this way: while skeptical about movements, i would support movements with goals and values spelled out with enough clarity that i feel that i can support them — provisionally.
–With apologies for neglecting other comments in reply to me (and the rest of bobby’s comment), i’d like instead to say that, in spite of my beliefs .about the effects of the American diet, i am probably more optimistic about MAGA voters than Fraser and Bobby seem to be. I believe that, if — IF — Trump continues to make unprovoked attacks on DeSantis, then voters will gradually come to the conclusion that he (Trump) is past his sell-by date.
The genius of Trump’s 2016 campaign was not to attack anybody who had not attacked him first. Not to tell them that their diet causes brain damage, for instance…
–I am also inclined to believe that, just possibly, if we take the long view, then the “election” of Biden was a good thing.
Had he been re-elected, Trump was not going to fight election fraud . He was also not going to investigate the Biden crime syndicate, just as he did not investigate the Clintons.
Now that Trump himself is being investigated, the corrupt tradition of holding former POTUSes above the Law is going to end; just as it has ended in France.
If the voters conclude that Trump is past his sell by date, then what? 20% of people will vote for Trump even if he isn’t running and even if he is in jail. They might even vote for him if he were dead. But let’s imagine that weren’t true. What then? DeSantis? DeSantis cannot win a presidential election in the United States because he just signed a 6 week abortion ban in Florida. The people who favor six week abortion bans would have voted republican anyway, but the middle and many, many moderate republicans think that that is an very extreme position, and many of those people are single issue voters. Plus it will massively drive the voter turn out on the left. The media will be flooded with stories of young girls who were raped and couldn’t get an abortion because they didn’t find out they were pregnant until six weeks and a day after the rape.
DeSantis cannot win the Presidential election for that reason alone. Who else is there on that side? Maybe Pompeo if he got Trump’s backing? All the rest have no chance.
So the situation is an almost guaranteed win for Biden or Harris if he doesn’t make it that long, and then probably at least four years of Harris. By that time any semblance of the USA will be gone and it won’t matter who wins after that.
This isn’t my preferred scenario, but a cold, sober look at the facts demands that we arrange our affairs to deal with this new reality.
Fraser: if you really think that any likely Republican candidate is doomed against Joe &/or Kamala, then all what i can say is that you have a much lower opinion of the median American voter than i have.
But then, somebody said something like:
Nobody ever lost money by under-estimating the intellect of the American public.
Which is why i would not bet against you … except at very favorable odds.
(Added in proof: this is assuming that voting fraud and media censorship are not going to be as important next year as in 2020.)
Snorri – the investigation of Donald John Trump is not an example of the rejection of corruption, it is in-its-self corruption.
Donald John Trump has not broken the law – and the people who are “investigating” him know that very well, they are trying to “fit him up”, fame him. Framing people is wrong, political persecution is wrong. And juries are part of this – in some parts of the United States no conservative (not just Mr Trump – no conservative) can get a fair trial, because the jury (made up of leftists) will convict them on the basis of who-they-are not what-they-have-done. That is a terrible situation.
As for elections – you are correct Snorri, Trump can easily defeat Biden. But he did in 2020 – and Mr Biden was declared the winner.
The election rigging is not just going to go away on its own – whilst the mass “mail-in ballots” (many of which are not from individual voters) continue we are going to get such things as “Governor Katie Hobbes” (the lady who did not really campaign in Arizona, did not even debate, because she did not have to – the “election” being a corrupt farce) and “Senator John Fetterman” from Pennsylvania – a massively brain damaged person.
Ignoring the election corruption does not mean the election corruption is not there – it is the elephant in the room.
Paul:
At the risk (nay, the certainty) of stating the obvious: I did not say anything to the contrary.
I said that the investigation of Trump sets a welcome precedent for the investigation of future POTUSes.
You can hold a respectful opinion of the median American voter individually, and still believe that the current state of information delivery – the media, the government – keeps people from truly understanding what is happening.
The American public is told, across all mass channels, repeatedly, every day, that rightists are bigots, haters, closed-minded, superstitious, selfish, and living in fear of their impending loss of control. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard the theme, from some lefty, that “you seem like a nice guy, how can you possibly be in favor of (some characteristic position of conservatism/libertarianism.)
That’s why they want the media. That’s why they want the movie industry, television, schools – every source of mass messaging.
We were too dumb and slow to pick up on and counter that takeover, and now we see the cost. Or, some of us see it. Others – quite a few others – simply sit back and assume that these messages are so prevalent that they must be true.
Problem is, he undoubtedly HAS broken laws. In this age when compulsory black-letter law and its attendant body of caselaw could fill several oil tankers, we have ALL broken laws. You can’t hardly avoid it. Thankfully, no one is aiming their prosecutorial arrow at me, or at you. But they are aiming them at Trump, and at every other person of note who displeases them.
And so these people are all looking at costly convictions for trivial offenses. First sign of the banana republic.
Read this eye-opening statement from Chicago Contrarian:
Good point Snorri – yes I stand corrected.
Bobby b – yes where there are endless laws there are endless “crimes”. This has been known since at least Cicero.
Tom Hunter.
Chicago has reached the stage where it is no longer necessary to rig elections – so many non “psychos” have already left the city. Indeed I was surprised that a relatively sane Democrat got almost half the votes – but the key word is “almost”.
Chicago is doomed – and the Democrats know it, and yet they are holding their Presidential Convention there in 2024.
But it is not “yet” – the left WANT to show people what they intend to do to all of the United States indeed all of what was once the Western world.
“We are going to reduce your civilisation to a Hell – and there is nothing you can to stop us” is the message of holding the Democrat National Convention in Chicago in 2024.
They control the education system and the media (even the token comfort blanket of Fox News has been revealed as nothing more than “Controlled Opposition”).
And thanks to the dependence of Big Business and the rich on fiat money and Credit Bubble finance – the left get to outspend conservatives twn to one (ten Dollars to one Dollar) in some races – for example some U.S. Senate elections and some elections for D.A. or certain judicial positions.
When the other side control the education system (the starting assumptions that people have) and the media, and they can outspend conservatives in elections by a vast margin…..
The time will soon come when they do not even need to rig elections – just as in Chicago they started off rigging elections (“in Chicago the dead vote”) and now no longer need to.
The only thing that might, possibly, break their power is economic collapse.
And they are preparing for that – they know economic collapse is coming, but they want to keep their power in spite of it.
Indeed they want to use economic and social collapse as an excuse to take even more power – to crush what is left of liberty.
Bobby:
I remember discussing this with a friend after lunch, back in 2019 or thereabout.
I still cannot understand why the deep state could not find a way to indict Trump, sooner AND more plausibly.
As for the rest of your reply: I hold my own insanities ultimately responsible for all my problems; therefore, you cannot expect me to accept excuses for Americans’ problems — however much i might have sympathies for individual Americans, and however much i continue to learn from Americans, and enjoy American movies.
Snorri – industry edicts are now in place that will make all future Hollywood films political, not just the actors but the writers and production staff must be selected on a racial and sexual quota basis. And, of course, conservative black people or conservative women (and so on) do-not-count, the DEI guidance means that only people from “underrepresented groups” who have certain opinions will count towards the quotas.
It is difficult to state just how corrupt (indeed despicable) this all is – so I will just say that you will not be enjoying any future American films (at least not Hollywood films – and independent films will get hit by the banks and other “Woke” financial entities in the Credit Money system).