President Elon Musk
He probably deserves his own thread at this point, discuss accordingly
I've been spreading the anti musk word since "appreciating asset robo taxis by the end of 2018". This is largely documented in the BFI Tesla thread
sure so you must have predicted the abject failure of the twitter acquisition as well I presume, as many other musk detractors at the time did.
how did it feel to be proven completely wrong, to realize musk just changed the game of politics in democracy alone among the many people who always had the resources to do so but never did it that way, by legally buying the tools to win an election and the access that comes with it?
how did it feel when he utterly and devastatingly outplayed your own team and all the billionaires and experts on it, after you repeatedly for a documented number of years defended the idea he wasn't smart at all?
I think most people who criticize Musk now simply do because he is equivalent to trump so orange man bad, everything around him bad.
some people might have known musk before and liked him, some might have thought he was bizzarre but tesla was good and so on
I don't remember hearing many people say anything positive about Musk until he came out in support of Trump. I don't think many rank and file Trump voters previously thought positively of a multi-billionaire maker of very expensive electric cars. Trump himself railed against electric cars before that.
It would be interesting to know what people here thought of Musk before he did the switcheroo. I have always thought very negatively of him, and he has always been the US billionaire I would least want in charge of anything important.
In the sense of thinking it is fine for him to be in charge of deciding which federal government employees to fire, which programs to defund, etc.
I'm a more worried that the world's richest man would be in charge of these things, motivated by his own self interest, than just about anyone else.
I think everything he is doing with DOGE is being done in order to make himself even more rich and powerful.
It sounds like you do as well, so how can you support what he is doing?
Is it just because Musk see
well this isn't about trust this is about how aligned with Musk interests you perceive your interest to be.
given I want government to be weaker (as in 50x weaker at least) in general I am more aligned with Musk than with anyone who actually cares about government existed as a powerful force of good or anything of the sort.
but that's not about "trust" in abilities, it's about random slash and burning through government with a focus against pockets of gvmnt more used by leftists is perfectly aligned with my preferences
sure so you must have predicted the abject failure of the twitter acquisition as well I presume, as many other musk detractors at the time did.
how did it feel to be proven completely wrong, to realize musk just changed the game of politics in democracy alone among the many people who always had the resources to do so but never did it that way, by legally buying the tools to win an election and the access that comes with it?
how did it feel when he utterly and devastatingly outplayed your own team
Seeing someone we always hated manage to buy the presidency doesn't make me feel like I was wrong about anything.
Musk only bought Twitter because he was mad at it one day so offered to buy it. He tried to back out of the purchase but then a judge made him follow through, which he was very upset about at the time.
What a stable genius. I don't think anyone ever claimed that Lex Luthor "wasn't smart at all", just that he was evil.
I don't remember hearing many people say anything positive about Musk until he came out in support of Trump. I don't think many rank and file Trump voters previously thought positively of a multi-billionaire maker of very expensive electric cars. Trump himself railed against electric cars before that.
It would be interesting to know what people here thought of Musk before he did the switcheroo. I have always thought very negatively of him, and he has always been the US billionaire I would least
people in cripto tended to like musk in general as an innovator and someone who tried to mainstream criptos.
today, basically everyone in cripto ispro trump.
I liked teslas and the push toward autonomous driving and the typical muskesque disregard for regulations (SEC, DoT, all of them). I saw him as the very typical techno bro gvmnt hating libertarian who has to make deals with the devil because of the sectors he is in.
many people made money with Tesla stock also, that usually makes you liked .
but ofc I am talking tech savvy men with good disposable income and savings, millennials or x gen.
"rank and file" paycheck to paycheck people I have to idea what they thought of him.
but the bottom 50% of income distribution matters so little politically: many don't vote, and those who do , do very predictably depending on specific other elements of their lives.
Seeing someone we always hated manage to buy the presidency doesn't make me feel like I was wrong about anything.
Musk only bought Twitter because he was mad at it one day so offered to buy it. He tried to back out of the purchase but then a judge made him follow through, which he was very upset about at the time.
What a stable genius. I don't think anyone ever claimed that Lex Luthor "wasn't smart at all", just that he was evil.
well maybe you didn't but plenty dectrators here and elsewhere claim musk is a modest IQ person who stole all ideas and so on and on, well he just outplayed the world top billionaires and experts at one of the highest stakes game in human life
well this isn't about trust this is about how aligned with Musk interests you perceive your interest to be.
given I want government to be weaker (as in 50x weaker at least) in general I am more aligned with Musk than with anyone who actually cares about government existed as a powerful force of good or anything of the sort.
but that's not about "trust" in abilities, it's about random slash and burning through government with a focus against pockets of gvmnt more used by leftists is perfectly align
Don't you have to trust that someone who seems very mentally unstable and who voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016 will continue to be aligned with your desires?
Also, if the federal government ends up having 50% fewer employees and a 50% lower budget, but is controlled by a solitary dictator who allows no free speech (or any of the protections of bill of rights), would that be an improvement in your mind?
people in cripto tended to like musk in general as an innovator and someone who tried to mainstream criptos.
today, basically everyone in cripto ispro trump.
I liked teslas and the push toward autonomous driving and the typical muskesque disregard for regulations (SEC, DoT, all of them). I saw him as the very typical techno bro gvmnt hating libertarian who has to make deals with the devil because of the sectors he is in.
many people made money with Tesla stock also, that usually makes you liked .
bu
So you're a crypto bro? If so, I have to take back my previous beliefs that you actually understand economics.
Everyone in crypto who supports Trump does so because they care for nothing other than their own personal short-term economic interests. I thought that you at least cared about the long-term interests of western free market economies.
Btw, I don't think Musk was ever libertarian, at least not ever in a real world sense. Again, he supported the democratic party in the past.
Don't you have to trust that someone who seems very mentally unstable and who voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016 will continue to be aligned with your desires?
Also, if the federal government ends up having 50% fewer employees and a 50% lower budget, but is controlled by a solitary dictator who allows no free speech (or any of the protections of bill of rights), would that be an improvement in your mind?
I don't have to trust him, I have to trust my sense of understanding of people.
my sense of understanding is that musk helds the left guilty of "worse than killing" his firstborn son with gender theory.
that radicalized him. and I don't think there is a coming back from that.
as for the collapse of the rule of law no o don't think that would be better, but I don't have any reason to believe the rule of law is more in jeopardy currently than it was in the previous admin
well maybe you didn't but plenty dectrators here and elsewhere claim musk is a modest IQ person who stole all ideas and so on and on, well he just outplayed the world top billionaires and experts at one of the highest stakes game in human life
I think he has a somewhat above average IQ, but lower than that of the important people at Tesla and SpaceX, and that his success is mostly due to him being born rich, cheating the system, and being very lucky (pretty much just like Trump).
I don't think that most other top billionaires were trying to play his game.
So you're a crypto bro? If so, I have to take back my previous beliefs that you actually understand economics.
Everyone in crypto who supports Trump does so because they care for nothing other than their own personal short-term economic interests. I thought that you at least cared about the long-term interests of western free market economies.
Btw, I don't think Musk was ever libertarian, at least not ever in a real world sense. Again, he supported the democratic party in the past.
I am not a cripto bro but i don't see how making a shitton of money in cripto (as many early entrants did) would determine you understand economics badly.
as with all religions, the zealots are a joke, but as with all religions, those exploiting the zealots for their own personal gain are winners in the game of life
I think he has a somewhat above average IQ, but lower than that of the important people at Tesla and SpaceX, and that his success is mostly due to him being born rich, cheating the system, and being very lucky (pretty much just like Trump).
I don't think that most other top billionaires were trying to play his game.
because they didn't even think that was one of the possible games.
they played the "we donate, we slightly push favourable media toward our candidate".
yet at the end more billionaires donated more more to democrats than to republicans yet they lost
I don't have to trust him, I have to trust my sense of understanding of people.
my sense of understanding is that musk helds the left guilty of "worse than killing" his firstborn son with gender theory.
that radicalized him. and I don't think there is a coming back from that.
as for the collapse of the rule of law no o don't think that would be better, but I don't have any reason to believe the rule of law is more in jeopardy currently than it was in the previous admin
You may be correct about the first thing here, though Musk seems to me to have a completely unstable personality, and I think it is more likely than not for him to become completely unhinged within the next few years.
It's tough for me to believe you really think the second part. No previous administration (at least in the last 80 years) has attempted to evade the rule of law as much as this one has in a single month. And no previous congress and supreme court have seemed as willing to allow a president to do whatever he wants, not feeling I to be a part of the previous system of checks and balances.
I am not a cripto bro but i don't see how making a shitton of money in cripto (as many early entrants did) would determine you understand economics badly.
as with all religions, the zealots are a joke, but as with all religions, those exploiting the zealots for their own personal gain are winners in the game of life
As I said, I think those people only care about their short-term economic interests, without knowing or caring that it will be bad for the continued functioning of the system.
I haven't met anyone who profited from crypto while not being a zealot, simply knowing they were exploiting the zealots, so that's not to whom I was referring, though I'm sure people like that do exist. I would still not call them winners in the game of life, just as I would not say that about those who make a lot of money through things like drug dealing and slave trading.
It's tough for me to believe you really think the second part. No previous administration (at least in the last 80 years) has attempted to evade the rule of law as much as this one has in a single month. And no previous congress and supreme court have seemed as willing to allow a president to do whatever he wants, not feeling I to be a part of the previous system of checks and balances.
I strongly disagree with the notion that they are "attempting to evade the rule of law".
they are conscientiously attempting to force SCOTUS to answer on a plethora of longstanding republican constitutional theories of executive power.
and this SCOTUS might very well agree with them at least in part and if they do, mind, that is not at all a collapse of the rule of law and no unalienable right of citizens gets touched.
and it's the first time in 80+ years this is being attempted because this is the first actually right-wing SCOTUS since the lochner era so the first time it makes sense to ask those questions (instead of creating negative precedents).
POTUS being allowed to rule all executive agencies as his fiefdom doesn't dent any constitutional right of citizens. it actually enhances their right to vote, which actually gets more value, vs a system where you vote for POTUS but a decent number of policies are forever decid d by leftists anyway.
because they didn't even think that was one of the possible games.
they played the "we donate, we slightly push favourable media toward our candidate".
yet at the end more billionaires donated more more to democrats than to republicans yet they lost
Well, I think that most US billionaires didn't desire to completely subvert the system which made them rich, even if they had believed it to be possible.
Most seem to not particularly care about having personal political power, and several use quite a bit of their money in attempts to improve the lives of the poorest people in the world.
As Musk didn't even grow up in the US, but in a country where he was part of a privileged minority who asserted absolute control over the oppressed majority, he has quite a different value system than most Americans.
sure so you must have predicted the abject failure of the twitter acquisition as well I presume, as many other musk detractors at the time did.
how did it feel to be proven completely wrong, to realize musk just changed the game of politics in democracy alone among the many people who always had the resources to do so but never did it that way, by legally buying the tools to win an election and the access that comes with it?
how did it feel when he utterly and devastatingly outplayed your own team
Musk tried to do everything he could to back out of buying Twitter lol. I had no opinion other than he clearly didn’t want to buy it and clearly owned himself in that moment.
Turned out pretty good for him in the long run
I strongly disagree with the notion that they are "attempting to evade the rule of law".
they are conscientiously attempting to force SCOTUS to answer on a plethora of longstanding republican constitutional theories of executive power.
and this SCOTUS might very well agree with them at least in part and if they do, mind, that is not at all a collapse of the rule of law and no unalienable right of citizens gets touched.
and it's the first time in 80+ years this is being attempted because this is the
Well, I disagree with your idea that giving the president more personal political power gives more power to average citizens, but I also don't think Trump (or Musk) plan to stop at that.
Musk obviously wants more power and money for himself, not for the average voter, and Trump has literally just called himself a king and published a picture of himself wearing a crown. He has also backed away from the promises he made about the economy, which gained him the most support from rank and file voters.
I expect he will continue to push until he has at least as much personal power as does his buddy Putin, or of course until he is prevented from doing so. His goal is not giving less power to the federal government, but installing more of it in himself.
Musk tried to do everything he could to back out of buying Twitter lol. I had no opinion other than he clearly didn’t want to buy it and clearly owned himself in that moment.
Turned out pretty good for him in the long run
I answer here but chillrob made the same objection ("that actually musk didn't want to buy twitter at all") but I disagree.
yes he tried to back out for the amount *because there was a downturn of tech at the time* so he fair value was drastically reduced by market conditions vs when he made the offer and ofc 44 bln was too much given the downturn. we might have forgot already but 2022 was blood in the water for tech.
activist judge as usual ruled against, but idea was to buy but at a lower price, not to flee away
real photo
I think most people who criticize Musk now simply do because he is equivalent to trump so orange man bad, everything around him bad.
some people might have known musk before and liked him, some might have thought he was bizzarre but tesla was good and so on
I thought he was a jerk off long before he started fluffing Trump.
Eventually Elon and Trump will hate each other, and when that happens, I will still think Elon is a jerk off.
Michael Cohen didn't become a good guy by virtue of putting Trump on blast.
He should be. Perusing various statements from insiders coupling it with media sources for a layman's independent verification seem to tell a pretty alarming story.
A lot of the firing seem arbitrary and reflexive, glaring errors are routinely made, critical talent is lost, the team doing this lacks basic knowledge of the data they are pulling and querying and they have no expertise in the fields they are laying people off in. There is no oversight, nor is there any accountability. When this que
Maga will never blame what they like when it kills people aka guns .
So if policies they like end up killing people they will find other excuses to explain it , 100% .
Equivocating hating Leon to partisan lean is the laziest shitpost in a plethora of them which is why it’s no surprise to me Lucy the absentee dad CUZ SOMEONE IS A LEFTIST ON THE INTERNET is the one who made it. This guy was notoriously a fraud and dogshit person when he was sucking at obama’s tit
Also shoutout guy who has a breeding fetish and is a notoriously horrible scumbag being a terrible dad and a notoriously horrible scumbag (I’m for whatever reason unable to get pics up, so just google grimes elon for today’s tripe)
Yep, right after his ex-gf, the one who bore the child he paraded in the oval office, posted to X (lol) to get Musk's attention.
He hadn't been responding to her texts, calls, and emails regarding a "medical crisis" that one of their children is currently going through.
But, hey he's a busy guy! It's tough to keep up with 12 children while tearing down the biggest bureaucracy in the world.
