That took long enough. Insane that the gov was entirely silent after this week's starship launch as well...
Even though I'm not an elon fan, pretending to not notice for political reasons (not to mention the insane halving of launches at Vandenberg AFB) is completely insane and damaging to our country.
To what end is the government obligated to "notice" Starship? It's not enough that its FAA works with SpaceX to get launches certified (and coordinate air/sea restrictions, etc.), its NASA has already agreed to fund part of Starship's development (and be its first customer with a historic crewed mission) / routinely flies Falcon missions like Europa Clipper this week, and its DOD is a huge customer? I see no reason for a government agency to do media for an event outside one of their missions.
I wish I had any idea on how to deal with the Elon situation. I genuinely believe SpaceX wouldn't be achieving nearly what it is without him, but he's obviously also going way off the deep end these days and it's uncomfortable to watch one man with that much power getting increasingly unhinged.
It's something I constantly wonder about, I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working hard to flatten society, but I also worry that we need insane people in power sometimes to get stuff done. Starship (hell, even F9) is an astonishing achievement and there's zero chance that innovation would be possible anywhere except SpaceX or another entity with very strong leadership (Valve or Steve Jobs' Apple if they made rockets)
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man," by George Bernard Shaw.
You can't seriously think that the incredible defensibility and natural resource wealth of the USA would suddenly go away if we taxed the shit out of rich people. Norway is rich and effective and much flatter than the USA so I think perhaps flatness isn't as rigidly tied to negative outcomes as you seem to think.
Venezuela is one of the most oil-rich countries on Earth - and they had gas shortages.
It isn't enough to have resources in the ground. They are worth zero until extracted and turned into products and services. And for that you need technology, companies and entrepreneurs.
When you tax "the shit out of rich people" that's what you lose. You can do it exactly one time - next time you won't have what to tax.
This is such a ridiculous argument. You can't equivocate the USA to Venezuela. The USA has SO SO much more going for it. The USA wouldn't suddenly turn into Venezuela if we taxed the hell out of rich people, don't be absurd. The GINI coefficient of Venezuela is WORSE than the USA, it is LESS flat. Venezuela is stupidly corrupt, has had like a million coups, has it's affairs constantly meddled with by other governments. The Netherlands, Finland, Norway etc are much flatter than the USA and weirdly they haven't turned into Venezuela.
Many other socialist experiments happened in the world during the last 100 years. Take your pick - they all failed miserably compared to the amazing increase in prosperity of the USA.
> The USA wouldn't suddenly turn into Venezuela
I never said that, please re-read my post.
> Netherlands, Finland, Norway [...] haven't turned into Venezuela
They haven't turn into the economic power house the US is right now either. In fact, the whole EU is waking up to the fact that they're being left behind.
And they haven't "taxed the hell out of rich people", just slightly more. But coupled with just slightly more regulation, turns out the more socialism you impose on your economy, the less competitive it is.
And we're talking about much smaller countries, too - but not that flat actually. Sweden is ahead and Norway is just 3 spots behind USA in the billionaires-per-capita ranking, with Finland and Netherlands not that far behind.
> They haven't turn into the economic power house the US is right now either.
And literally nobody else has in the history of the planet. There’s zero reason to ascribe 100% of this to our socioeconomic system, particularly given how much that system has changed and evolved over the years.
We also might have overall wealth but that doesn’t mean much when the life of the median person is demonstrably worse than that of one in many other wealthy nations. Further, we are getting crushed on happiness in life. And isn’t that the metric we should actually give a shit about?
> literally nobody else has in the history of the planet
Literally every single western country who embraced free markets in the last 100 years did. Conversely their growth slowed the more they adopted leftist measures.
> zero reason to ascribe 100% of this to our socioeconomic system
My favorite A/B test was when Eastern Europe switched from communism to capitalism: we went from starving to plenty literally overnight.
> life of the median person is demonstrably worse
Please demonstrate it then. Statistics tell us the opposite.
> happiness in life. And isn’t that the metric we should actually give a shit about?
That is probably one of the worst metrics I can think about. How do you define it? How do you measure it? When do you measure it? How do you account for fluctuations? Delayed gratification? How to you account for the long-term vs short-term discrepancies? How to you account for self-induced unhappiness? Or artificial happiness through pills and other drugs?
The only worse metric I can think of is pleasure. Pursuit of either is a highly debatable individual strategy but for a society - it's deadly.
The poorest people of today's developed countries are countless times richer than the kings of old - in terms of the products and services they have access to. Medicine, communication, transportation, entertainment - we can't even compare.
Yes. All he has to do is walk into a hospital or detox center and he’ll have access to medical care King Henry VIII could not buy with all his riches.
> opiate addict
Indeed, we don’t have the technology to save people from themselves, yet. I am sure kings of old didn’t either and addicts of their time fared even worse.
I understand your point but all the resources and material goods in the world don’t matter if you can’t access them.
> Indeed, we don’t have the technology to save people from themselves, yet.
The plight of the poorest in today’s societies is far more of a social and political issue than a technological one. An issue America is particularly bad on, despite all its affluence.
Elon Musk is a single man. There are a million "Elon Musks" on planet Earth crushed by the oppression of the system here, who weren't fed with a golden spoon of a rich family.
In a society that provided opportunities to people that are unconnected, we would have zero reliance on such personalities.
Simply because the general population lacks the vision to understand this and accepts these sort of hacks as extraordinary, does not make it true.
SpaceX and Tesla would thrive without such narcissistic leaders.
> I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working hard to flatten society.
I'm very curious about this mentality.. Do you beleive that meritocracy leads to better outcomes? Why do you think that the government is better positioned to allocate resources than the people who made the money?
If Elon would have been "Taxed the absolute shit out of" after his sell of Zip 2, he wouldn't have founded paypal. too much tax on the paypal sell, he couldn't invest in Tesla or start SpaceX.
> Why do you think that the government is better positioned to allocate resources than the people who made the money?
It might not be, mainly because it's corrupt. Secondarily, because popular causes are not always wise. On the flip side though, in theory, government works on consensus, and making money is not the same as merit. Oftentimes, making a lot of money means you took the low road and stole it from a worthy cause, like treating your employees or customers fairly and not swindling them.
It's just the time we live in, a time of relative peace and disinterest in matters of government. People are able to live without investing in politics, so what we have is full of zealots and wanna-be despots who have something to gain.
P.S. the citizens united ruling in the US opened the floodgates for political corruption on a scale not previously possible. It's been talked about but remains unresolved.
But if you want entities like SpaceX, all those other people have to be able to invest in them. That's not the case today.
I think we should loosen up those rules so they can, but that does mean some people who aren't rich or sophisticated will lose their money on ill-advised startup investments.
Wait, do you actually buy into the myth that billionaires are billionaires because of merit?
Hell, let’s do a true meritocracy. Zero inheritance, zero. High quality public schools for all, homeschooling and private schools made illegal. Public and free health insurance, no private options. Keep that line of thought and you might get close to an actual meritocracy.
Coming up with and executing a billion dollar innovation is hardly a myth. While there are plenty where the term merit doesn't even come close to fitting, your outlook on the world is pretty damn jaundiced.
Ya, so you don’t believe in merit. My view on the world is the truth. Wealth distribution is beyond fucked, pretending otherwise is choosing ignorance.
> do you actually buy into the myth that billionaires are billionaires because of merit?
Yes.
For example, I've missed at least 4 opportunities to become a billionaire, because I was too stupid to see the obvious in front of my face.
I am the son of a mid-level Air Force officer, and attended public schools. After he passed I sorted through his tax records, and discovered that I made more money my first job out of college than he was making at the time at the end of his career.
I mostly feel like you didn't read my comment since you're pointing out the exact conundrum I did, however yes obviously the government is better positioned to spend some of that money, there are a lot of things that have long term positive externalities that are not captured by capitalist incentives. The rest of it? Why don't we just take it from the rich and give it to the poor. We can have a progressive tax that approaches 100% as you get into the 100s of millions of dollars that's redistributed as UBI. Estate taxes that prevent the buildup of generational wealth etc.
The Marxists are downvoting you because they don't understand that there is no other place in history or the world where SpaceX/Tesla/etc. could exist other than the US now. But that door is rapidly closing.
In not too many years, the light of human ingenuity will be extinguished. Elon is just in a race against time.
There is another place but Americans don't like to hear it. The number of STEM graduates every year in China is equal to the entire STEM working population in the US. They realize the only way out for them is innovation.
>The number of STEM graduates every year in China is equal to the entire STEM working population in the US.
This is a problem statement not a solution. If the stat above is true, then there is obviously something very wrong with that system if they still can't out innovate us.
Yes they can. DJI drones, solar, battery tech, EVs they are world leaders. They also linked the entire country with a high speed rail network. The US is largely software focused and they are hardware focused, which is frankly the bigger problem. Eventually they are likely to match SpaceX as well.
Modern semiconductor manufacture requires tech from the entire world. China is aiming to replicate pretty much all of it because of sanctions.
While the US and Europe are killing themselves with regulation and DEI, China has been rapidly developing every year and eventually the US is going to get a rude awakening.
Please read more about the space race. Soviets were kicking our ass for a while until we got into high gear. And there was no rich billionaire, or entire govt institutions to help with technical debt
I think it's an organisational problem. The financial problem is an outcome, not a cause.
Society devolves to status hierarchies, and the people who climb those most successfully are narcissists and sociopaths.
So there's a default assumption that you have to be that kind of crazy, glib, abusive, exploitative, bullshitter/charlatan to do remarkable things.
Occasionally you get someone who is both narcissistic and exceptionally talented. They get shit done, but they leave a trail of human wreckage behind them.
Sometimes - often - it eventually turns out that it isn't even the right shit.
Meanwhile talent that lacks that narcissistic edge is overlooked and sidelined.
This is cripplingly inefficient, because so much ability is just wasted.
And it's very literally disastrous, because crazy people can't be trusted to have a sane relationship with the physical world or with other humans.
So the problem is engineering effective hierarchies which are reality-based, have enough incentive to reward drive and talent, but exclude - or at least strongly constrain - unhealthy and toxic Cluster B types.
> Do you beleive that meritocracy leads to better outcomes?
Do you believe that being rich implies merit? I would argue most exceptionally wealthy people are likely to be at or above average intelligence, but the unifying element is luck. Being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of money, and knowing the right people to bring it together.
Very few people have the means to even try to build SpaceX, so it’s hard to say how the average person measures up.
> Why do you think that the government is better positioned to allocate resources than the people who made the money?
I don’t, but I do think letting private citizens fling around “space program” quantities of money is going to end poorly. The state depends on the monopoly on violence to function, and every day we move closer to that monopoly only existing because rich private citizens choose to allow it.
Building a Rods From God platform is not out of Elons reach. I don’t think he would do it, but the potential is concerning to say the least. It would be better to reign that in before it becomes a problem than to wait until it is a problem.
To some degree, yes. You don't get rich by being incompetent, and even if you get a headstart with an inheritance or endowment you're still going to end up broke if you can't keep making money.
>the unifying element is luck. Being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of money, and knowing the right people to bring it together.
In Japan we say that luck is just another element of your abilities. We also like saying that you don't wait for miracles, you make them yourself.
Considering that Japanese society has a fairly unambitious culture, them saying that should tell you something.
>every day we move closer to that monopoly only existing because rich private citizens choose to allow it.
The US government exists at the pleasure of the people, the US military serves in our interests at our pleasure. Government of the people, by the people, for the people as President Abraham Lincoln once said.
Americans choosing to allow the US government is the system working exactly as intended.
He can't build Rods From God for his personal use because the government won't allow it. Or are you suggesting he builds it then uses it to perform a one-man military coup on the US and disables all their defenses? That's complete nonsense.
>SpaceX employees say they are relieved Elon Musk is focused on Twitter because there is a calmer work environment at the rocket company
He sounds like that kind of boss we have all had where you actively avoid interacting with him because his ideas will be stupid and get your project off track. I think SpaceX succeeds despite having to deal with current Elon.
Having read the Isaacson biography, Elon’s management style is essentially to be hands off then show up in “surges” of extreme work. It makes sense that most people would be happy when surges end.
There’s also essentially zero chance his organizations succeed in spite of him. This is just wishful ignorance.
What evidence do you offer that there is no chance of SpaceX succeeding in spite of Elon Musk? I really don't have enough detailed knowledge about his actual contributions to the various companies he runs.
But given the sheer number of projects at the companies he runs I don't find it hard to believe that he is largely not responsible for the technical successes. Again, I have no evidence for it, but it would not be hard to believe. Do you have anything other than faith for that statement?
The fact that none of the other space startups prior to SpaceX, which had access to more resources, succeeded? Same goes with Tesla. You have to really stretch believability to argue that the one factor in common between two companies which broke into extremely hard to break into industries and ushered in paradigm shifts, happened to do so for no reason related to that common factor, let alone arguing that they did so in-spite of that common factor.
We also have pretty detailed books on the history of SpaceX, written from employee interviews, which also indicate that Musk is fairly hands on. There's also this tweet from the designer of the Merlin rocket engine that is usually thrown around when these kinds of claims are made: https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXMasterrace/comments/15am9pl/t...
There are plenty of very respected people confirming that Elon is extremely hands on and key to Starship development. Also SpaceX engineers who worked directly with him on Reddit - take a look, it's interesting to read.
He's not doing the nitty gritty engineering day-to-day, but he understands enough to ask the right questions, give his teams permission to try ideas that seem crazy at first, and sometimes come up with those ideas himself (e.x. supposedly catching Starship with "chopsticks" was his idea).
Tesla in 2024 is certainly succeeding in spite of Elon. From firing the supercharging team because he had some kind of mental break to the tens of millions of dollars and engineering hours wasted on the cybertruck instead of another practical vehicle he clearly isn't contributing much to what is at this point a matured company that doesn't need a maniac (for better or worse) at the helm.
What you say makes sense, but this isn't the first time he's acted this way at any of his companies and they're all still going well. At some point you have to admit either his methods work or there's more to him than what you the general public see.
Elon was fired from Paypal. He didn't know the platform, didn't really bring much to the table, and just pissed off the board. He got rich because he got to keep his stock. So I'd say yes, Paypal succeeded in spite of him.
SpaceX is doing well because of Gwynne Shotwell the COO. She's been able to keep Elon out of the weeds and basically at arms length. Let's not forget Tom Mueller who basically created the entire propulsion platform.
When Elon gets involved he makes silly things like the Cybertruck. Completely useless, poorly engineered, and overpriced garbage.
One way to read the delay was that the technical teams were working against a deadline clock that started as soon as the vehicle landed, to analyze and propose remedies for the thruster failures and helium leaks. And now they've hit that deadline, having found no good fixes.
I suspect it's more at a program level. Boeing have lost a lot of money on Starliner, may lose a lot more, and already seem lukewarm on continuing with the project. It's actually NASA that's keener on keeping it running, so that they are not entirely dependent on SpaceX for human spaceflight.
That doesn't seem right. It's supposed to be up there through to 2030+, and the point of a 2nd supplier is just to ensure there aren't any blocker level problems if a single supplier has issues.
Yes, because they're an inferior option to supply launch services to the ISS.
Stop apologizing for a company that let their standards slip and endangered the lives of multiple astronauts not to mention wasting billions of tax payer dollars.
Our current administration is damaging to the country. This anti-Musk insanity started pretty early when Biden invited all EV companies to the EV summit, except Tesla. Which, at that time produced more EVs combined than the rest.
And now people are wondering why Musk doesn't like current administration. What a mystery.
We know that. The problem was the theater. Biden praising GM for "leading" in the EV space when they are so many years behind Tesla. Even now they sell a tiny fraction of the EVs.
UAW will be the reason why the big 3 are all bankrupt in 10 years.
That excuse was made up after the fact. They didn't even have their message straight. One of the links in the article is about Pete Buttigieg giving a totally different explanation as to why Tesla wasn't invited: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/08/05/u-s-secretary-of-transp...
If it was a UAW event, perhaps he should have called it that and not the "EV Summit". Elon Musk has every right to be annoyed that he was not invited to such an event, although he has taken it 100x too far. But Elon Musk isn't a public official and Biden is the president. He has public duties. He ought to have been smart enough not to snub the richest man in the world, who rightfully should have been invited, over a stupid PR event.
It's not just "the gov". Elon was a controversial figure just last year, but now the entire Internet is giving Musk-related everything a transparent child treatment. It's almost unsettling how fast the hype is going down.
Even though I'm not an elon fan, pretending to not notice for political reasons (not to mention the insane halving of launches at Vandenberg AFB) is completely insane and damaging to our country.