[ExI] I salute Elon Musk, Captain of Spaceship Earth!

Dan TheBookMan danust2012 at gmail.com
Fri Apr 29 23:53:29 UTC 2022


On Apr 27, 2022, at 12:24 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 1:22 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> On Apr 26, 2022, at 9:53 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 4:01 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>> On Apr 26, 2022, at 8:25 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>> > Ja.  But there are more than two sides.  Musk is African American and a libertarian (oh what a fine example of a libertarian is he, the modern John Galt.)
>>>> 
>>>> Recall how in Rand’s novel John Galt got all those government contracts? Remember how Galt was the scion of a wealthy family? You don’t recall those things? Well, that’s because Galt wasn’t born into wealth and didn’t step his way up the financial ladder via dipping into the tax fund. (Yeah, Galt is a fictional character, but his fictional biography is of someone born into a lower middle class family, leaving home at 12, and working his way up from there.)
>>>> 
>>>> This isn’t to belittle Musk’s achievements in the area of space technology, cars, and batteries. Hes shaken up those industries. But he’s hardly a John Galt. 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> ### Is Musk a "scion of a wealthy family"? Did he step his way up the financial ladder via dipping into the tax fund?
>> 
>> Yes and yes. Do you know his biography? Do you know about his father’s wealth?
> 
> ### Are you claiming Errol Musk was rich? How rich exactly?
> ----------------------------------

That’s hard to tell, but I don’t many poor people who have their kids emeralds to sell to jewelers. Do you?

>> Do you know how his business have actively pursued and gotten federal and state subsidies?
> 
> ### Are you claiming Elon Musk made his money from state subsidies? What fraction?
> 
> Do look things up in reputable sources. Daily Kos and Gizmodo don't count.

See https://reason.com/podcast/2021/03/03/elon-musk-welfare-king/

It seems like it’d be hard to untangle all this, but federal and state subsidies to his businesses were and something he actively pursues. It can be argued that Tesla cara would’ve been prohibitively expensive early on without the federal subsidies. This is, by the way, how many rich people benefit from the tax base: they get the subsidies, protections, and such. This doesn’t mean they never ever produce or that they don’t do some good. (One can easily imagine someone having Musk’s many lucky breaks ending up broke or just making an initial bump in wealth and resting on that. For instance, he could’ve sold his portion of PayPal and simply retired.)

Regards,

Dan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20220429/b3c1f8f5/attachment.htm>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list