<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"></div><div dir="ltr">And the folks who run it or any nation tend to be. Again, this is kind of an iron law of hierarchy. In fact, one commentator dubbed it the law (or principle) of hierarchical coherence. This is just that any contradiction between wealth and power will sort itself out — as I stated before. (And for those who believe it doesn’t apply to societies fancying themselves egalitarian, one need only consider that even in those societies the politically powerful control resources. Certainly, some societies might not abuse this as much as others, but it’s still there. And one party states proclaiming egalitarianism are not even close: party hierarchies control the wealth — control who gets what. Expecting them to somehow live up their rhetoric is like expecting the police and FBI to be above and to have always been above moral reproach. Surely, no one here is naive enough to believe any of that.)</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Regards,</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Dan</div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Dec 2, 2022, at 1:43 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">The men who created this country were rich. bill w</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 3:18 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"></div><div dir="ltr">A little problem. I agree it’s a private company and he can do whatever he wants on it with regard to who stays and who goes, what’s allowed, etc. But that was no what he and his fans said. They told us this was the public square of our time and that the First Amendment should be the guiding principle. So, Musk is just another rich hypocrite. (And pointing out his hypocrisy doesn’t mean I would take away his right to still pretend he’s a free of speech champion on Twitter as he bans or not as he pleases.)</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Also, money has always always been convertible into political power and vice versa. It’s the height of naïveté to believe it was ever any other way, especially in the long run. (In the short run, there are deviations but these correct in short order as either the more wealthy but less politically powerful figure out how to access political power — or they lose their wealth.)</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Regards,</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Dan </div></div></blockquote></div></div></blockquote></body></html>