Thomas #Edison was a Musk-style capitalist who financially screwed over Nikola #Tesla while he was alive.
Edison was just as egotistical and headstrong as Musk, while being dead wrong about using direct current for power distribution. Yet public utilities are named after Edison, not Tesla.
The AC power grid we now have wouldn't be possible without Tesla's technology.
Elon Musk is once again dragging Nikola Tesla's name through the mud by destroying the brand he built on the stolen name of a technical genius.
The lesson is that in #capitalism hucksters get the rewards, while the people doing the real work get peanuts.
"Winning" at capitalism means making enough money, and gaining enough power to insulate yourself from accountability.
Which inevitably produces monsters.
It's hard to overstate the irony of two so-called giants of American industry, Edison and Musk, shitting all over Nikola Tesla--a century apart.
@sean liked your thoughts on billionaires from yesterday. You make a billion, get a participation trophy and a gold watch, then you go sit down.
A lot of these guys will push back saying "well, billionaire wealth is not liquid and it's tied up in companies." And they will also discuss the importance of capital formation.
That's all well and good. I think we can all put our heads together and figure out a way to amass capital to fund innovation, without allowing the innovators to become little Hitlers in the process.
No part of society should be winner take all.
So called libertarians will die on the hill of the idea that there should be no *no limit* to anyone's personal wealth or power. The very idea of a wealth cap, or salary cap is anathema.
But we actually had something very much like this when federal tax rates were 91%. It was almost pointless for anyone to make more than $300,000 a year at the time, which is equivalent to about 3 million a year in current dollars.
Those high tax rates kept a lid on executive compensation, as well as keeping the 'upper class' much closer to the 'middle class' in terms of valuing shared public services.
Highest to lowest pay ratio really does make a difference. In the 1950s, the ratio was something like 20 to 1 between the CEO and the janitor. Now it's 350 to 1.
There's no way you can tell me any human being is 350 times more valuable than any other human being.
Everyone should be able to answer the question, how much money is enough? If they can't, they are admitting they support feudalism and dictatorship. Because at a certain point, when you have enough money you become a dictator and a control freak.
There's no way around it.
You have, for example, reporters like this, writing in journals that should know better, about "disruptive" innovation and the "Tesla syndrome" while glorifying Edison's "business acuity" and "hard work":
"Both were keen to promote themselves as singular men of invention, uniquely gifted and fitted for innovation. But where Tesla and his promoters showed him off as a man apart, living inside his own head and obsessed with invention, Edison’s story was of the self-made man, pursuing — and achieving — his inventions through sheer grit and determination (1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, as he famously suggested). Here was the business inventor, grounded in the world of commerce rather than forever dreaming about the stars."🙄
https://www.noemamag.com/the-resurgence-of-tesla-syndrome/
Most people will be scared by unconventional individuals that are venturing into the #exploration of the unknown. They are much more comfortable with people concerned with the #exploitation of known, already established ideas, not understanding that both "disruptive" exploration and exploitation "grit" are necessary for a sane society.
