Elon Musk and Twitter

Rick Saunders wrote:

NumbersDude wrote:

Every industrial activity brings a certain cost. Musks industries bring more benefit to more people. Jobs, technology, less energy dependence on fossil fuels.
He invest and creates jobs in America. In my opinion the benefits outweigh the cost.

Musk and others like him deserve to be wealthy. I think that wealth/income should be an asymptote to taxation.

The problem I have with Musk and many other people and corporations like him is that they start out as net contributors and job creators mostly from their own work and ideas and partly because of the "free market" system that makes it possible. They "won" at competition. Then once they are ahead they use the power they have gained with their wealth to quell that competition that is against them. Our current political environment and rhetoric makes that easier than it was at various points in the past. It isn't necessarily the fault of those individuals. It is up to us as a society to understand that free markets aren't free when it is the wealthy we protect and not those for whom getting ahead by hard work is more difficult.

Giant corporations and wealthy entrepreneurs who suppress wages and the competition they benefitted from are not job creators but rather job destroyers.

We are best off as a nation with both capitalist and socialist elements in our mixed economy. We've had fluctuations on that balance, some rather severe (early 20th century).

I'm in favor of capitalism because competition is the driver. I'm in favor of socialism too because it recognizes that capitalism alone results in its own destruction and devolution to a plutocracy. Are we there yet?

No one “deserves” to be that wealthy. I think people struggle with understanding how much money a billion dollars is, much less 260 billion or whatever the fuck. No one deserves that, and really, no one should desire that.

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

Rick Saunders wrote:

Musk and others like him deserve to be wealthy.  I think that wealth/income should be an asymptote to taxation.

No one “deserves” to be that wealthy. I think people struggle with understanding how much money a billion dollars is, much less 260 billion or whatever the fuck. No one deserves that, and really, no one should desire that.

I accept that everyone struggles with the scale of numbers but I am, in fact, quite familiar with scales much larger than 10^9 (and much smaller than 10^-9).  I agree with your premise of "deserve" except that I think it should be "technically possible."  Note the highlighted text:

Rick Saunders wrote:

wealth/income should be an asymptote to taxation.

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

Rick Saunders wrote:

Musk and others like him deserve to be wealthy. I think that wealth/income should be an asymptote to taxation.

The problem I have with Musk and many other people and corporations like him is that they start out as net contributors and job creators mostly from their own work and ideas and partly because of the "free market" system that makes it possible. They "won" at competition. Then once they are ahead they use the power they have gained with their wealth to quell that competition that is against them. Our current political environment and rhetoric makes that easier than it was at various points in the past. It isn't necessarily the fault of those individuals. It is up to us as a society to understand that free markets aren't free when it is the wealthy we protect and not those for whom getting ahead by hard work is more difficult.

Giant corporations and wealthy entrepreneurs who suppress wages and the competition they benefitted from are not job creators but rather job destroyers.

We are best off as a nation with both capitalist and socialist elements in our mixed economy. We've had fluctuations on that balance, some rather severe (early 20th century).

I'm in favor of capitalism because competition is the driver. I'm in favor of socialism too because it recognizes that capitalism alone results in its own destruction and devolution to a plutocracy. Are we there yet?

No one “deserves” to be that wealthy. I think people struggle with understanding how much money a billion dollars is, much less 260 billion or whatever the fuck. No one deserves that, and really, no one should desire that.

So how wealthy should someone be "allowed" to be in your view point? How much is too much? What would be the limit of wealth in Travis World?

Cameron wrote:I don't wanna speak for Travis, but I, personally, am extremely comfortable with the idea of eliminating billionaires. You could draw the line significantly below a billion and I'd still be cool with it.

So a $1,000,000,000 cap on net worth?  And your proposal is what?  Just confiscate anything above that?  And how are we calculating net worth?  Actual, realized gains in the bank, or just a theoretical worth based on the current market price of holdings?

Edit - Another question: What do you want to do with this confiscated worth? Is it getting applied to specific things, or just thrown in to the general pot to fund random government "things?"

NumbersDude wrote:
Why do people want more moderation? Over moderation equals censorship.

People should be allowed to decide for themselves about content not a moderator.

Leftists think differently.

They think they belong to a class of people that is smarter and wiser than others and hence should be the arbiter of what is allowed to be said, or published or Tweeted.

Leftists are fine with a billionaire owning the WP but not Twitter. Why is that?

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

Cameron wrote:I don't wanna speak for Travis, but I, personally, am extremely comfortable with the idea of eliminating billionaires. You could draw the line significantly below a billion and I'd still be cool with it.

So a $1,000,000,000 cap on net worth?  And your proposal is what?  Just confiscate anything above that?  And how are we calculating net worth?  Actual, realized gains in the bank, or just a theoretical worth based on the current market price of holdings?

Edit - Another question: What do you want to do with this confiscated worth? Is it getting applied to specific things, or just thrown in to the general pot to fund random government "things?"

Transfer it to the people who actually created the value, the workers.

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

So a $1,000,000,000 cap on net worth?  And your proposal is what?  Just confiscate anything above that?  And how are we calculating net worth?  

As always these numbers are always above whatever the leftist proposing it actually has.

Rick Saunders wrote: it recognizes that capitalism alone results in its own destruction and devolution to a plutocracy.

Sad that you actually think that.

Capitalism can only devolve into plutocracy with the assistance of the government.

RQA wrote:

Rick Saunders wrote: it recognizes that capitalism alone results in its own destruction and devolution to a plutocracy.

Sad that you actually think that.

Capitalism can only devolve into plutocracy with the assistance of the government.

Pretty much a circular statement as Capitalism can only exist with the assisrance of government.

Sort of like saying humans can only exist with the assistance of oxygen.

[quote="RQA"]

NumbersDude wrote:
Why do people want more moderation? Over moderation equals censorship.

People should be allowed to decide for themselves about content not a moderator.

RQA wrote:

Leftists think differently.

They think they belong to a class of people that is smarter and wiser than others and hence should be the arbiter of what is allowed to be said, or published or Tweeted.  

Leftists are fine with a billionaire owning the WP but not Twitter.   Why is that?  

Why are fine with overturning a legitimate election to install the loser as president? You're the most authoritarian poster here. Deal with it.

NigelUno wrote:

RQA wrote:I've been hearing about this leftist meltdown regarding Elon Musk potentially buying Twitter and opening it up as a free speech platform.

Based on Swill comments, looks like it's true.  

Weird how you ignore his actions in the past to shut down free speech on social media platforms.  

Bump.  

rQa?

The Founders knew the evils of capitalisum which is why they were totally against the formation of corporations.

The major hitch in understanding that makes people sympathetic to billionaires is they mistake them for anything resembling real people. They are lizards. They live a life that doesn’t look like anything you can fathom. They have systems within systems to separate you from them. They are parasites sucking the life out of the planet.

Cameron wrote:

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

So a $1,000,000,000 cap on net worth?  And your proposal is what?  Just confiscate anything above that?  And how are we calculating net worth?  Actual, realized gains in the bank, or just a theoretical worth based on the current market price of holdings?

Edit - Another question: What do you want to do with this confiscated worth? Is it getting applied to specific things, or just thrown in to the general pot to fund random government "things?"

Well, I'll start by saying that I have not taken the effort to painstakingly design my own system of taxation, so all I have are generalities.

Net worth would be something like liquid cash + fair market value of all assets - liabilities. Whatever number these cocksuckers pull out of their ass when they're applying for the loans that finance their lavish lifestyles, that's what we're going to tax/confiscate. If they have to liquidate to meet their obligations, that's their problem.

Start by putting it all towards universal healthcare. If there's anything left, education is next, then infrastructure. Finding a way to spend this money will not be a problem.

So this isn't your solution to a particular problem, this is more of an emotional rant then?

Rocinante wrote:The major hitch in understanding that makes people sympathetic to billionaires is they mistake them for anything resembling real people. They are lizards. They live a life that doesn’t look like anything you can fathom. They have systems within systems to separate you from them. They are parasites sucking the life out of the planet.

How many billionaires do you personally know and/or interact with on a daily basis so as to have formed this opinion?

Cameron wrote:

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

So this isn't your solution to a particular problem, this is more of an emotional rant then?

Sounds more like Column B masquerading as Column A to me.

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

Rocinante wrote:The major hitch in understanding that makes people sympathetic to billionaires is they mistake them for anything resembling real people. They are lizards. They live a life that doesn’t look like anything you can fathom. They have systems within systems to separate you from them. They are parasites sucking the life out of the planet.

How many billionaires do you personally know and/or interact with on a daily basis so as to have formed this opinion?

I know all the billionaires. I know them to their rotten lizard cores.

Rocinante wrote:

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

How many billionaires do you personally know and/or interact with on a daily basis so as to have formed this opinion?

I know all the billionaires. I know them to their rotten lizard cores.

Well bless your heart, aren't you special?

Cameron wrote:The specific problem I'm trying to solve is the existence of billionaires.

Can you tell me how the existence of billionaires is a problem?

Cameron wrote:

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

Can you tell me how the existence of billionaires is a problem?

Sure. Start here. The problem is that billionaires are pieces of shit. Their unbridled greed is matched only by their delusional egos which tell them they deserve every bit of it as they hoover up more wealth than a hundred generations could ever use.

So a newspaper decided it was easier to pay someone according to their contract than fight them in court for being a dirt ball, and that's somehow proof there's class warfare and that all billionaires are lizard based pieces of shit?!?

I can't even know how to respond to such allegations.

Cameron wrote:I wasn't really talking specifically about the first post in the thread, I was indicating that the thread as a whole gives pretty good context to a lot of my thoughts on the matter.

My bad. You were the OP and posted the article. I would have assumed that was your point.

Cameron wrote:

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

So a $1,000,000,000 cap on net worth?  And your proposal is what?  Just confiscate anything above that?  And how are we calculating net worth?  Actual, realized gains in the bank, or just a theoretical worth based on the current market price of holdings?

Edit - Another question: What do you want to do with this confiscated worth? Is it getting applied to specific things, or just thrown in to the general pot to fund random government "things?"

Well, I'll start by saying that I have not taken the effort to painstakingly design my own system of taxation, so all I have are generalities.

Net worth would be something like liquid cash + fair market value of all assets - liabilities. Whatever number these cocksuckers pull out of their ass when they're applying for the loans that finance their lavish lifestyles, that's what we're going to tax/confiscate. If they have to liquidate to meet their obligations, that's their problem.

Start by putting it all towards universal healthcare. If there's anything left, education is next, then infrastructure. Finding a way to spend this money will not be a problem.

A healthcare, education and infrastructure liquidity pool sounds good to me.

#teamcameron

Cameron wrote:I wasn't really talking specifically about the first post in the thread, I was indicating that the thread as a whole gives pretty good context to a lot of my thoughts on the matter.

I went back and read through all of that thread. I forgot all about that one. LOL!

That was interesting.

I think there are some direct parallels between my stance on gun violence and wealth inequality. Guns aren't the problem, the violence and crime guns enable are the problems. Wealth isn't the problem, the power wealth buys is the problem.

Rick Saunders wrote:

NumbersDude wrote:

Every industrial activity brings a certain cost. Musks industries bring more benefit to more people. Jobs, technology, less energy dependence on fossil fuels.
He invest and creates jobs in America. In my opinion the benefits outweigh the cost.

Musk and others like him deserve to be wealthy. I think that wealth/income should be an asymptote to taxation.

The problem I have with Musk and many other people and corporations like him is that they start out as net contributors and job creators mostly from their own work and ideas and partly because of the "free market" system that makes it possible. They "won" at competition. Then once they are ahead they use the power they have gained with their wealth to quell that competition that is against them. Our current political environment and rhetoric makes that easier than it was at various points in the past. It isn't necessarily the fault of those individuals. It is up to us as a society to understand that free markets aren't free when it is the wealthy we protect and not those for whom getting ahead by hard work is more difficult.

Giant corporations and wealthy entrepreneurs who suppress wages and the competition they benefitted from are not job creators but rather job destroyers.

We are best off as a nation with both capitalist and socialist elements in our mixed economy. We've had fluctuations on that balance, some rather severe (early 20th century).

I'm in favor of capitalism because competition is the driver. I'm in favor of socialism too because it recognizes that capitalism alone results in its own destruction and devolution to a plutocracy. Are we there yet?

How does Musk squash the competition?
Telsa? He forced other automakers to develop EVs
Solar? There are more solar battery companies out there?
Starlink? He is driving ISPs to expand underserved areas.
Space Travel? He has spawned completion with Bezos.

RQA wrote:

Rick Saunders wrote: it recognizes that capitalism alone results in its own destruction and devolution to a plutocracy.

Sad that you actually think that.

Capitalism can only devolve into plutocracy with the assistance of the government.

I'm just going with what the man said (Adam Smith).

e.g.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24809527.pdf

https://www.ft.com/content/6795a1a0-7476-11e8-b6ad-3823e4384287

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

Cameron wrote:I wasn't really talking specifically about the first post in the thread, I was indicating that the thread as a whole gives pretty good context to a lot of my thoughts on the matter.

I went back and read through all of that thread. I forgot all about that one. LOL!

That was interesting.

I think there are some direct parallels between my stance on gun violence and wealth inequality. Guns aren't the problem, the violence and crime guns enable are the problems. Wealth isn't the problem, the power wealth buys is the problem.

In both cases the underlying issues (anger & the desire to kill or a lust for power) are ones that are mostly impossible to remove from existance whereas the tools used in persuit of of the issues, huge wealth or guns, are things which can be controlled so they are not used as tools for those underlying issues.

Trapper Gus wrote:

Bredo Morstoel wrote:

I went back and read through all of that thread. I forgot all about that one. LOL!

That was interesting.

I think there are some direct parallels between my stance on gun violence and wealth inequality. Guns aren't the problem, the violence and crime guns enable are the problems. Wealth isn't the problem, the power wealth buys is the problem.

In both cases the underlying issues (anger & the desire to kill or a lust for power) are ones that are mostly impossible to remove from existance whereas the tools used in persuit of of the issues, huge wealth or guns, are things which can be controlled so they are not used as tools for those underlying issues.

Correct. However, you can't remove those tools without negatively impacting the innocent. That's a big stumbling block.

NumbersDude wrote:

Rick Saunders wrote:

Musk and others like him deserve to be wealthy.  I think that wealth/income should be an asymptote to taxation.

The problem I have with Musk and many other people and corporations like him is that they start out as net contributors and job creators mostly from their own work and ideas and partly because of the "free market" system that makes it possible.  They "won" at competition.  Then once they are ahead they use the power they have gained with their wealth to quell that competition that is against them.  Our current political environment and rhetoric makes that easier than it was at various points in the past.  It isn't necessarily the fault of those individuals.  It is up to us as a society to understand that free markets aren't free when it is the wealthy we protect and not those for whom getting ahead by hard work is more difficult.

How does Musk squash the competition?
Telsa? He forced other automakers to develop EVs
Solar? There are more solar battery companies out there?
Starlink? He is driving ISPs to expand underserved areas.
Space Travel? He has spawned completion with Bezos.

In the context of my statement I am not blaming Musk or others per se.  And I acknowledge Musk's contributions and the fact that he deserves to be rich.  He's certainly a genius.  So here's the issue; manipulation to your advantage, not with ideas and contribution and work but rather with money and power alone is anticompetitive.  Hero-worship is a form of power that has unfortunately become central to modern American society's economy.

I am not claiming to be smart and certainly not as smart as Elon Musk or even Bob.  But if I were, I still wouldn't be able to tweet out that Saunderscoin was a thing, accept it for payment at my store, then stop accepting it when it went up, and then start accepting it when it went down again, and then reap the real rewards from fake-ish commodity.  I wouldn't be able to buy up stock in a company exceeding 5% of shares without disclosing I had done so to shareholders from whom I continued to buy such stock (that's illegal by the way).  And I certainly couldn't afford to have twitterbots extolling all my virtues (true or not) to try to keep up and continue to manipulate.

Has Musk done some good?  I repeat yes.  But many of his actions are anticompetitive and I don't really blame him.  That doesn't mean that our society has to enable it.  That's the point.  It takes money to make money shouldn't be the altar at which we worship.  Whether or not Bezos and Musk are jackasses isn't the point to me.

Here's what I am really interested in digging into your expertise about though.  Which do you think is more "veiny" New Shepard or Falcon 9?

I don’t give a fuck about him being anticompetitive in this context because that’s an issue for the justice department. I just want these fuckers to pay taxes on their actual wealth. For instance, Elon Musk says he paid 11 billion in tax for stock he was required to sell last year and then demands everyone bow to his benevolent generosity. If he paid income tax on his actual increase in worth last year, he would pay nearly 45 billion in taxes. And he’d have 76 billion left. That’s the whole fucking problem right there.

Rocinante wrote:I don’t give a fuck about him being anticompetitive in this context because that’s an issue for the justice department. I just want these fuckers to pay taxes on their actual wealth. For instance, Elon Musk says he paid 11 billion in tax for stock he was required to sell last year and then demands everyone bow to his benevolent generosity. If he paid income tax on his actual increase in worth last year, he would pay nearly 45 billion in taxes. And he’d have 76 billion left. That’s the whole fucking problem right there.

It's not like ol' Elon is sitting in a room on a throne, surrounded by bricks of gold a la Scrooge McDuck. His net worth is basically theoretical based upon the assets he owns. Interestingly, if he sold those assets, the value of those assets would likely plummet.

It would be like taxing you on your 401K. Yes, you have a 401K (I'm assuming...) and it has a value, but it's not like you have rolls of that cash sitting in your safe.

Rocinante wrote:I don’t give a fuck about him being anticompetitive in this context because that’s an issue for the justice department. I just want these fuckers to pay taxes on their actual wealth. For instance, Elon Musk says he paid 11 billion in tax for stock he was required to sell last year and  then demands everyone bow to his benevolent generosity. If he paid income tax on his actual increase in worth last year, he would pay nearly 45 billion in taxes. And he’d have 76 billion left. That’s the whole fucking problem right there.

Hey I'm not against that either although Bredo makes a perfectly valid point. It isn't like these are simple things or else they would have been solved by now.

Rick Saunders wrote:

 I think that wealth/income should be an asymptote to taxation.