Even though I'm not an elon fan, pretending to not notice for political reasons (not to mention the insane halving of launches at Vandenberg AFB) is completely insane and damaging to our country.
It's something I constantly wonder about, I strongly believe we should be taxing the absolute shit out of people and working hard to flatten society, but I also worry that we need insane people in power sometimes to get stuff done. Starship (hell, even F9) is an astonishing achievement and there's zero chance that innovation would be possible anywhere except SpaceX or another entity with very strong leadership (Valve or Steve Jobs' Apple if they made rockets)
We wouldn't have SpaceX or Tesla with that policy.
> I genuinely believe SpaceX wouldn't be achieving nearly what it is without him
It simply wouldn't have existed without him and the conventional wisdom would instead be that what he's accomplished is impossible.
> insane people
Musk is the sane one. It's the rest of us that are insane.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man," by George Bernard Shaw.
It isn't enough to have resources in the ground. They are worth zero until extracted and turned into products and services. And for that you need technology, companies and entrepreneurs.
When you tax "the shit out of rich people" that's what you lose. You can do it exactly one time - next time you won't have what to tax.
Elon Musk is a single man. There are a million "Elon Musks" on planet Earth crushed by the oppression of the system here, who weren't fed with a golden spoon of a rich family.
In a society that provided opportunities to people that are unconnected, we would have zero reliance on such personalities.
Simply because the general population lacks the vision to understand this and accepts these sort of hacks as extraordinary, does not make it true.
SpaceX and Tesla would thrive without such narcissistic leaders.
Many other socialist experiments happened in the world during the last 100 years. Take your pick - they all failed miserably compared to the amazing increase in prosperity of the USA.
> The USA wouldn't suddenly turn into Venezuela
I never said that, please re-read my post.
> Netherlands, Finland, Norway [...] haven't turned into Venezuela
They haven't turn into the economic power house the US is right now either. In fact, the whole EU is waking up to the fact that they're being left behind.
And they haven't "taxed the hell out of rich people", just slightly more. But coupled with just slightly more regulation, turns out the more socialism you impose on your economy, the less competitive it is.
And we're talking about much smaller countries, too - but not that flat actually. Sweden is ahead and Norway is just 3 spots behind USA in the billionaires-per-capita ranking, with Finland and Netherlands not that far behind.
> opiate addict
Indeed, we don’t have the technology to save people from themselves, yet. I am sure kings of old didn’t either and addicts of their time fared even worse.
And literally nobody else has in the history of the planet. There’s zero reason to ascribe 100% of this to our socioeconomic system, particularly given how much that system has changed and evolved over the years.
We also might have overall wealth but that doesn’t mean much when the life of the median person is demonstrably worse than that of one in many other wealthy nations. Further, we are getting crushed on happiness in life. And isn’t that the metric we should actually give a shit about?
Literally every single western country who embraced free markets in the last 100 years did. Conversely their growth slowed the more they adopted leftist measures.
> zero reason to ascribe 100% of this to our socioeconomic system
My favorite A/B test was when Eastern Europe switched from communism to capitalism: we went from starving to plenty literally overnight.
> life of the median person is demonstrably worse
Please demonstrate it then. Statistics tell us the opposite.
> happiness in life. And isn’t that the metric we should actually give a shit about?
That is probably one of the worst metrics I can think about. How do you define it? How do you measure it? When do you measure it? How do you account for fluctuations? Delayed gratification? How to you account for the long-term vs short-term discrepancies? How to you account for self-induced unhappiness? Or artificial happiness through pills and other drugs?
The only worse metric I can think of is pleasure. Pursuit of either is a highly debatable individual strategy but for a society - it's deadly.
> Indeed, we don’t have the technology to save people from themselves, yet.
The plight of the poorest in today’s societies is far more of a social and political issue than a technological one. An issue America is particularly bad on, despite all its affluence.