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

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Sat Apr 30 01:35:40 UTC 2022


On Fri, Apr 29, 2022 at 7:55 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> 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?
>

### If you think vague innuendo will cut it in a reasonable discussion, you
are wrong. How rich exactly do you think Errol Musk was when Elon was
living in this household?

------------------------------------


>
> 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.)
>
>
### Elon Musk is an American entrepreneur who sold services to the US
government. Nothing wrong with that.

Rafal
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