#investing #elonmusk #uspolitics
Fatal mistake. There will be an inevitable falling out of the Trump / Musk marriage of convenience. Nobody can stand next to Trump without getting a knife in the back.
My investment advice: short #TSLA. Everything Trump touches turns to shit.
fortune.com/2024/10/26/elon-mu…
Musk gives at least $132 million to elect Trump, GOP allies
That level of giving has vaulted him into the upper echelon of political donors, making Musk one of the most prolific contributors of the 2024 cycle.Bill Allison (Fortune)
volkris
in reply to CheapPontoon • • •keep in mind that the reason Musk is supporting Trump is in part because he's already had a knife in the back.
The whole Trump thing is based on bringing down a system that people feel has betrayed them. It really is about tearing down, not building up. And so at this point Musk has felt so spurned by the status quo that he might as well join in the table flipping.
So inevitable falling out isn't much of a threat for him. Yeah, Trump's going to screw him over, and I bet he knows that very well, but the powers that be are already screwing him over, so he might as well try to be screwed over by someone different in case it leads to something better down the road.
Trump is a system of a failed system, not a cause. It was entirely foreseeable. We should have, and we should, focus on fixing the system so that people don't resort to folks like Trump.
HeavenlyPossum
in reply to volkris • • •@volkris
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man. He controls 2/3 of the satellites in orbit. He casually purchased one of the world’s most important social media networks. He extracts vast wealth from the workers he controls and from the publics of states with which he has signed parasitic service contracts. He violates immigration, labor, drug, and electoral laws without consequence.
The idea that “Musk has felt…spurned by the status quo” is so trivially absurd that it’s hard to believe you’re doing anything but churning out low-rent propaganda for some employer. Who would seriously and unironically believe this? The entire global status quo exists to service him and his reactionary preferences.
Dag
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •@HeavenlyPossum @volkris
Agree with much of what is said in this thread. The question is why Elon thinks the system is evil/broken because it sometimes creates some obstacles. In the end he he has created en enormous wealth within this system. As a very public CEO it would be wishful thinking to expect everyone will worship you. His current actions alienates a great part of his loyal supporters through a decade++.
HeavenlyPossum
in reply to Dag • • •Musk hasn’t created anything. He has captured revenue streams, but he does not actually make anything.
Dag
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •HeavenlyPossum
in reply to Dag • • •And Musk built neither of them. He simply owns them.
Dag
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •HeavenlyPossum
in reply to Dag • • •He did not make anything. He used wealth inherited from an apartheid emerald mine to purchase control of the labor of other people, lobby for regulatory capture, and con investors via an inflationary asset bubble. Musk has never built anything or usefully labored in his life.
Dag
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •HeavenlyPossum
in reply to Dag • • •@dagb @volkris
I have said nothing but the truth.
Declan
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •@HeavenlyPossum @dagb @volkris I think the disagreement is from the idea that ‘putting money into’ is equivalent to ‘actually making something’. Musk did NOT make anything, he put money in to stuff, and engineers made things.
Take SpaceX, which actually did some revolutionary engineering. Musk started it to try and live on mars. He’s a billionaire dipshit. It’s successful because he’s kept far the fuck away from ‘making things.’
volkris
in reply to Declan • • •Declan
in reply to volkris • • •HeavenlyPossum
in reply to Declan • • •Imagine thinking that Elon Musk is capable of building anything but an asset bubble.
volkris
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •@HeavenlyPossum I mean, the factual record shows that he did.
Imagine knowing history.
@dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
HeavenlyPossum
in reply to volkris • • •@True_Heresy @volkris @dagb
The factual record shows that Musk inherited apartheid emerald wealth which he used to purchase stakes in other people’s lucrative endeavors and, later, a series of scams, parasitic government contracts, asset bubbles, and regulatory capture.
volkris
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •@HeavenlyPossum so if you think about it none of that has anything to do with anything I said.
@True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @dagb
HeavenlyPossum
in reply to volkris • • •@dagb @True_Heresy @volkris
I thought about it and it turns out I’m still right
volkris
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •HeavenlyPossum
in reply to volkris • • •@True_Heresy @volkris @dagb
In the sense that Musk has literally not once in his life done anything productive or useful. Ownership is not productive.
volkris
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •@HeavenlyPossum thinking your mind of anything you consider productive.
Chances are it involved some resource that somebody owned.
YES ownership is productive. Ownership directs resources toward productive uses where otherwise they would be lost in the chaos of uncertainty as to where they would go.
It's just economically illiterate to say that ownership is not productive.
@True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @dagb
HeavenlyPossum
in reply to volkris • • •@dagb @True_Heresy @volkris
What productive role did a feudal landlord’s ownership of the manor play in the production of his serfs?
What productive role did a slavers ownership of enslaved people play in the productive of his slaves?
It’s trivially easy to see that the act of ownership plays no role in production.
What you’re mixing up are ownership and the act of making decisions about the allocation of scarce resources. The former is merely a social relationship of control; the latter is an act of productive labor. If Elon Musk were making decisions about scarce resources (and every account by his employees and former partners indicates he’s not), he’d be welcome to draw a wage like any other worker.
But instead he owns. You have the causal relationship backwards: capitalists don’t own because they’re decision-makers; capitalists performatively and unnecessarily insert themselves into the decision-making process to justify their ownership to marks like you.
John Abbe (aka Slow)
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •volkris
in reply to John Abbe (aka Slow) • • •@slowenough
Sounds like it's a semantic thing. An issue of definition.
What is ownership? I would say that ownership is defined as the ability to direct a resource. If you own an apple, that means that you can dictate whether that apple goes into apple cider or an apple pie. That is the definition of ownership that I think is the common understanding.
And so the definition of management has a strong overlap with it. The only difference might come down to the authority being delegated. Technically you might not be the owner but practically the owner has granted you effective ownership.
So anyway, sounds like you're getting lost in definition.
@HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb @True_Heresy
John Abbe (aka Slow)
in reply to volkris • • •@volkris @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy Not lost. Owners *can* take on 100% of management themselves. It's because that doesn't scale well that big companies distribute management across many people or teams.
Important issue, delegation of authority. Who we think "owns" something is determined by who you consider to have the authority to confer ownership. Whoever can materially enforce their idea of ownership has some extra oomph obviously, but moral power is real as well. 1/2
HeavenlyPossum
in reply to John Abbe (aka Slow) • • •@dagb @True_Heresy @volkris @slowenough
Capitalist owners often don’t take on any management role at all, because they can collect rents from their ownership without contributing anything at all.
Capitalists who own stocks in publicly traded firms are, generally, prohibited by law from playing a decision making role in the firms they own.
John Abbe (aka Slow)
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •@HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @volkris "Capitalists who own stocks in publicly traded firms are, generally, prohibited by law from playing a decision making role in the firms they own."
Really?
Other than by voting shares, I assume?
Oh, and they often ask for and get seats on the board, so, maybe I'm not clear what you're saying.
RD
in reply to John Abbe (aka Slow) • • •@slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @volkris
Shareholders own stock, which comes with some rights, but it is not really the same as owning a piece of the corporation. Here are a couple articles about that:
lpeproject.org/blog/privatizin…
currentaffairs.org/news/2021/1…
Who Actually Owns Corporations, Anyway?
Alex Park (Current Affairs Inc)volkris
in reply to RD • • •@RD4Anarchy by definition it is.
@slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
RD
in reply to volkris • • •@volkris @slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy
"...there is no meaningful sense in which this is true."
lpeproject.org/blog/privatizin…
"...shareholders’ rights have been clearly defined in more than 200 years of corporate law, and the right of ownership is not, and never was, one of them."
currentaffairs.org/news/2021/1…
Who Actually Owns Corporations, Anyway?
Alex Park (Current Affairs Inc)Mess around Marx
in reply to RD • • •i'm not an expert in american corporate law, but this essay seems rather inconsistent and erroneous to me. Of course, shareholders don't have individual property rights on the assets of the corp. However, as a community, they are the owners and also the authorizers, even if the state makes the rules. It's ridiculous to speak of a socialization here.
And not to forget the informal influence of large shareholders!
@volkris @slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
volkris
in reply to Mess around Marx • • •@messaroundmarx shareholders do have individual property rights!
@RD4Anarchy @slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
Fabio G.
in reply to volkris • • •@volkris
Resources being owned is not what makes them productive. Unowned resources are just as productive as owned ones. (Air is typically regarded as unowned, and it's productively irreplaceable because one can't produce without air to breathe.)
Ownership is the right to direct resources, but a resource can be directed to a productive or unproductive use. Productivity lies not in the right but the use.
@HeavenlyPossum @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @dagb @slowenough
HeavenlyPossum
in reply to Fabio G. • • •@slowenough @True_Heresy @volkris @magitweeter @dagb
To phrase this a little differently, ownership is a right to interfere with someone else. Capitalism is predicated on owners’ right to interfere with non-owner’s self-sustenance, guaranteed by state violence, which is the process by which capitalists extract rents.
We can see this most clearly when we consider non-tangible and non-rivalrous capitalist property, like trademarks and copyrights. In these cases, there is literally no substance that can be directed; all the capitalist can do is threaten to interfere with someone else to extract rents. It’s private ownership distilled to its purest essence—a person with a gun threatening you for enjoying a work of art of a piece of music unless you first pay rents.
volkris
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •@HeavenlyPossum Well that's not true at all.
It's the exact opposite.
Ownership is a right not to be interfered with. Ownership only comes up when somebody is trying to interfere with your dictate over some property. You're not interfering with them, they are interfering with you.
That is the fundamental aspect of ownership.
@CheapPontoon @slowenough @True_Heresy @magitweeter @dagb
volkris
in reply to Declan • • •@True_Heresy you are literally describing Musk making things.
What you describe is Musk making the environments that support those engineers. That's not nothing! Without workshops and funding and management the best engineers in the world are completely wasted.
It sounds like you really don't appreciate how the real world works when it comes to going from engineering talent to actual results.
The most capable machinist ever to have lived will get nothing done if he doesn't have tooling to operate. And that's what capitalism is all about, investing the resources to get the machinist what he needs.
@HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb
Declan
in reply to volkris • • •@volkris @HeavenlyPossum @dagb The level of assumption it takes to tell a stranger they ‘don’t know what the real world is like in terms of engineering’ is amazing.
I understand you believe talent and skill can’t exist or have results without capitalists, but that’s simply untrue. Also most of the money came from taxpayers via government contracts.
But, I have no intention of arguing with assumptive strangers, so good luck to you.
volkris
in reply to Declan • • •@True_Heresy Hi. Welcome to reality.
@HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb