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

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Apr 29, 2022, at 6:37 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>> 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 I too was living in this household?

Again, no exact figures, but everything points to wealth and not poverty and certainly not like Galt’s auto mechanic father (admittedly fictional). It’s not like he grew up in Appalachia and live in a shotgun shack until was old enough to get a job in the coal mine.

>>>> 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.

The article talks about subsidies — not selling services. And I specified subsidies. Tesla received subsidies for each car sold. SpaceX got subsidies before it even launched a rocket or had anything to sell. Etc.

The thing that starting my entry into this thread was Spike over-praising Musk as John Galt. Again, granted, Galt is fictional, but we do have people more like Galt than Musk, such as Andrew Carnegie. (Carnegie isn’t a perfect case either, but he’s much closer to the rags to riches story than Musk is. One way Carnegie and Musk are alike though is they both became the richest men in their time. Galt, in his fictional world, is not the richest man.)

Regards,

Dan
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