#investing #elonmusk #uspolitics
Fatal mistake. There will be an inevitable falling out of the Trump / Musk marriage of convenience. Nobody can stand next to Trump without getting a knife in the back.
My investment advice: short #TSLA. Everything Trump touches turns to shit.
@CheapPontoon keep in mind that the reason Musk is supporting Trump is in part because he's already had a knife in the back.
The whole Trump thing is based on bringing down a system that people feel has betrayed them. It really is about tearing down, not building up. And so at this point Musk has felt so spurned by the status quo that he might as well join in the table flipping.
So inevitable falling out isn't much of a threat for him. Yeah, Trump's going to screw him over, and I bet he knows that very well, but the powers that be are already screwing him over, so he might as well try to be screwed over by someone different in case it leads to something better down the road.
Trump is a system of a failed system, not a cause. It was entirely foreseeable. We should have, and we should, focus on fixing the system so that people don't resort to folks like Trump.
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man. He controls 2/3 of the satellites in orbit. He casually purchased one of the world’s most important social media networks. He extracts vast wealth from the workers he controls and from the publics of states with which he has signed parasitic service contracts. He violates immigration, labor, drug, and electoral laws without consequence.
The idea that “Musk has felt…spurned by the status quo” is so trivially absurd that it’s hard to believe you’re doing anything but churning out low-rent propaganda for some employer. Who would seriously and unironically believe this? The entire global status quo exists to service him and his reactionary preferences.
@HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @volkris
Agree with much of what is said in this thread. The question is why Elon thinks the system is evil/broken because it sometimes creates some obstacles. In the end he he has created en enormous wealth within this system. As a very public CEO it would be wishful thinking to expect everyone will worship you. His current actions alienates a great part of his loyal supporters through a decade++.
Musk hasn’t created anything. He has captured revenue streams, but he does not actually make anything.
@HeavenlyPossum @volkris @CheapPontoon Any way you look at it, both SpaceX and Tesla was high risk companies. Both are now industry leading, which are both impressing and frightening at the same time,
And Musk built neither of them. He simply owns them.
@HeavenlyPossum @volkris @CheapPontoon This is abvoiusly not true. He did not found Tesla, but the achievement of making an EV maker a success is quite astonishing. Every new car manufacturer for almost 100 years have failed before that.
He did not make anything. He used wealth inherited from an apartheid emerald mine to purchase control of the labor of other people, lobby for regulatory capture, and con investors via an inflationary asset bubble. Musk has never built anything or usefully labored in his life.
@HeavenlyPossum @volkris @CheapPontoon This is an outright lie. Please stop it. It feeds the disinformation machine.
I have said nothing but the truth.
@HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb @volkris I think the disagreement is from the idea that ‘putting money into’ is equivalent to ‘actually making something’. Musk did NOT make anything, he put money in to stuff, and engineers made things.
Take SpaceX, which actually did some revolutionary engineering. Musk started it to try and live on mars. He’s a billionaire dipshit. It’s successful because he’s kept far the fuck away from ‘making things.’
@True_Heresy I mean the history shows that's factually incorrect. @HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb
@volkris @HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb Great point. Apart from the part where what I said were literally facts from history.
@dagb @True_Heresy @volkris @CheapPontoon
Imagine thinking that Elon Musk is capable of building anything but an asset bubble.
@HeavenlyPossum I mean, the factual record shows that he did.
Imagine knowing history.
@True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @volkris @dagb
The factual record shows that Musk inherited apartheid emerald wealth which he used to purchase stakes in other people’s lucrative endeavors and, later, a series of scams, parasitic government contracts, asset bubbles, and regulatory capture.
@HeavenlyPossum so if you think about it none of that has anything to do with anything I said.
@dagb @CheapPontoon @True_Heresy @volkris
I thought about it and it turns out I’m still right
@HeavenlyPossum thinking your mind of anything you consider productive.
Chances are it involved some resource that somebody owned.
YES ownership is productive. Ownership directs resources toward productive uses where otherwise they would be lost in the chaos of uncertainty as to where they would go.
It's just economically illiterate to say that ownership is not productive.
@CheapPontoon @dagb @True_Heresy @volkris
What productive role did a feudal landlord’s ownership of the manor play in the production of his serfs?
What productive role did a slavers ownership of enslaved people play in the productive of his slaves?
It’s trivially easy to see that the act of ownership plays no role in production.
What you’re mixing up are ownership and the act of making decisions about the allocation of scarce resources. The former is merely a social relationship of control; the latter is an act of productive labor. If Elon Musk were making decisions about scarce resources (and every account by his employees and former partners indicates he’s not), he’d be welcome to draw a wage like any other worker.
But instead he owns. You have the causal relationship backwards: capitalists don’t own because they’re decision-makers; capitalists performatively and unnecessarily insert themselves into the decision-making process to justify their ownership to marks like you.
@HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb @True_Heresy @volkris I've gotten into nitty-gritty about this with so-called 'anarcho-capitalists' and they all end up going on about management. I value good management, and can talk all about how & why, so then they get confused when I explain how that's different from ownership. (Despite all efforts to conflate the two.)
Sounds like it's a semantic thing. An issue of definition.
What is ownership? I would say that ownership is defined as the ability to direct a resource. If you own an apple, that means that you can dictate whether that apple goes into apple cider or an apple pie. That is the definition of ownership that I think is the common understanding.
And so the definition of management has a strong overlap with it. The only difference might come down to the authority being delegated. Technically you might not be the owner but practically the owner has granted you effective ownership.
So anyway, sounds like you're getting lost in definition.
@CheapPontoon @slowenough @dagb @True_Heresy @volkris
“Having the coercive authority to do something” is not the same as “doing that thing” or “being necessary for doing that thing.”
That's a bit of a reach, but did you know that a lot of punk music from 1970s and 1980s is owned by Warner Bros? Does that mean Warner Bros was responsible for producing them in the past? No. They just bought record companies with their humongous piles of money in the 2010s and now hold exclusive rights to a shit ton of music they're not interested in distributing because of no profit incentive.
Like The Gits, for example.
Apply that logic to Elon Musk and the absurdity of situation becomes clearer.
Please stop vouching for billionaires, thank you.
@volkris @HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb @True_Heresy Not lost. Owners *can* take on 100% of management themselves. It's because that doesn't scale well that big companies distribute management across many people or teams.
Important issue, delegation of authority. Who we think "owns" something is determined by who you consider to have the authority to confer ownership. Whoever can materially enforce their idea of ownership has some extra oomph obviously, but moral power is real as well. 1/2
@dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @volkris @slowenough
Capitalist owners often don’t take on any management role at all, because they can collect rents from their ownership without contributing anything at all.
Capitalists who own stocks in publicly traded firms are, generally, prohibited by law from playing a decision making role in the firms they own.
@HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @volkris "Capitalists who own stocks in publicly traded firms are, generally, prohibited by law from playing a decision making role in the firms they own."
Really?
Other than by voting shares, I assume?
Oh, and they often ask for and get seats on the board, so, maybe I'm not clear what you're saying.
@slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @volkris
Shareholders own stock, which comes with some rights, but it is not really the same as owning a piece of the corporation. Here are a couple articles about that:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/12/who-actually-owns-corporations-anyway
@RD4Anarchy by definition it is.
@slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
@volkris @slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
"...there is no meaningful sense in which this is true."
"...shareholders’ rights have been clearly defined in more than 200 years of corporate law, and the right of ownership is not, and never was, one of them."
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/12/who-actually-owns-corporations-anyway
@slowenough @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @RD4Anarchy @True_Heresy
That was precisely the essay I was thinking of
@HeavenlyPossum @slowenough @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @True_Heresy
Thanks for sharing it once upon a time 👍
@HeavenlyPossum @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @RD4Anarchy @True_Heresy Important distinctions teased apart in that article, thanks! With this understanding, the only owner of a corporation is the corporation - it owns itself. (Most obvious with trusts, I suppose.)
Still confused on original point above, "Capitalists who own stocks..."
Owners of stock seem free to become board members, make public statements about what they think the company should do, etc.
@slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @True_Heresy
None of that equates to ownership, expressing opinions is not decision-making and no, owners of stock are not free to join the board, that's not how that works.
@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @True_Heresy I'm not contesting the point about ownership of stock being different from ownership of the corporation.
There are countless examples of stockholders sitting on boards of US companies, such as many CEO founders. So you'll have to explain what you mean when you say they are not free to do that. My understanding is that laws vary by country, could we be running into that?
@slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @True_Heresy
How many shareholders might a corporation have? Millions?
How many people are on a corporate board of directors?
Obviously millions of shareholders are not all free to become board members.
@RD4Anarchy @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @True_Heresy It seems that somewhere along the line, the thread was lost.
All of this was in response to @HeavenlyPossum's assertion that, "Capitalists who own stocks in publicly traded firms are, generally, prohibited by law from playing a decision making role in the firms they own."
All I've been saying is that there are counterexamples to this, and thus apparently there is no such law.
I'd rather HP address this, but I did not read that as there being a specific law prohibiting decision-making specifically but rather that the general legal structure of shareholding does not include that function except in very limited "token" ways like voting and some other very exceptional situations.
The original point wasn't about stocks but about how capitalists often take no management role at all, and don't need to because the legal structure of capitalism allows them to collect rents from their ownership without doing anything. I think shareholders were brought up as sort of an extreme example in that it's not just their choice not to be involved in management, it's built-in to that form of ownership.
The nit-picky specifics of shareholding don't really change the overall argument about capitalist ownership.
@dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @True_Heresy @HeavenlyPossum @messaroundmarx
@RD4Anarchy @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @True_Heresy @HeavenlyPossum @messaroundmarx@zirk.us It's built into that form of ownership that someone with enough money can buy an ownership stake *and* real decision-making power.
So I posted, to check mutual understandings. And to clarify for other people, who may have interpreted differently.
Together we've clarified law does not "[prohibit stockholders] playing a decision making role in the firms they own." But does restrict it for most, in several ways.
@RD4Anarchy @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @True_Heresy @HeavenlyPossum @messaroundmarx@zirk.us "The nit-picky specifics of shareholding don't really change the overall argument about capitalist ownership."
I was responding specifically to the assertion that shareholders were prohibited from decision-making.
Details are likely to keep changing, becoming more complex, and important, before any revolution. (Just learned BlackRock et al pushed vote back to owners. No one wants to look responsible.)
@RD4Anarchy
i'm not an expert in american corporate law, but this essay seems rather inconsistent and erroneous to me. Of course, shareholders don't have individual property rights on the assets of the corp. However, as a community, they are the owners and also the authorizers, even if the state makes the rules. It's ridiculous to speak of a socialization here.
And not to forget the informal influence of large shareholders!
@volkris @slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
@messaroundmarx shareholders do have individual property rights!
@RD4Anarchy @slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
@HeavenlyPossum
exactly, and all shareholders together are common proprietors. Under certain conditions, according to the statutes and respective laws, they can even dissolve the corp. and share the balance after liquidation. (i don't know the US laws, but i'd be surprised, if this was precluded) But, and in this point the essay is right, they don't have direct access to the assets of the corp., but only to a share of its value.
@slowenough @RD4Anarchy @volkris @CheapPontoon @dagb @True_Heresy
@volkris @HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb @True_Heresy To make any sense of "ownership," of land, say, *I* start from the land owning itself & the people & other life on it. When I say "my land" that's how I try to hold it.
Even if you think of it as the people of the land 'owning' it, it is not free for us to do completely as we like, our responsibility is to raise/choose stewards and craft methods to manage land incl people's use of it, in ways that serve people & the rest of life. 2/2
@dagb @slowenough @volkris @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon
Stephen Marglin has this great essay titled “What Do Bosses Do?” in which he traces the insertion of capitalists into the production process as “managers” in what had previously been self-managed labor.
He notes that in industries in which property rights were more easily policed, such as mining, early capitalists were perfectly content to let workers continue managing themselves, because they could dispense with the fiction.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/marglin/publications/what-do-bosses-do
@HeavenlyPossum @dagb @volkris @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon When the IETF realized they had beaten OSI and that some among they themselves were inevitably becoming a new 'establishment' (1992) they reworked their self-governance, raising mutual accountability to a high art to keep any group from dominating the system.
Just one small part of this excellent, forthcoming paper. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tgZ86ugijXPUOo_lD3kLfQBPbneecUNzZim1GOgkC1M/edit
@slowenough @HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb @volkris FWIW I’m not an anarcho-capitalist and I appreciate good managers.
There’s owners who’ve actually made things and managed developments (nowhere close to justify obscene income inequality, but I digress). But, ownership alone is pure rent-seeking.
Musk is a terrible manager, and has never made anything. He owns things that have good managers & engineers which have achieved in spite of him.
@True_Heresy @HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb @volkris Musk hired Gwynne Shotwell, which was clearly great hiring, and hiring is an important corner of management skills I've heard stories from people about Musk's management helping, and about it hurting. Whatever. The point is, ownership by itself confers no value, it's good management that brings value.
No one objects to managers getting fair pay for their labor like anyone else. The skyrocketing executive pay of recent decades is gross.
Resources being owned is not what makes them productive. Unowned resources are just as productive as owned ones. (Air is typically regarded as unowned, and it's productively irreplaceable because one can't produce without air to breathe.)
Ownership is the right to direct resources, but a resource can be directed to a productive or unproductive use. Productivity lies not in the right but the use.
@HeavenlyPossum @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @dagb @slowenough
@CheapPontoon @slowenough @True_Heresy @volkris @magitweeter @dagb
To phrase this a little differently, ownership is a right to interfere with someone else. Capitalism is predicated on owners’ right to interfere with non-owner’s self-sustenance, guaranteed by state violence, which is the process by which capitalists extract rents.
We can see this most clearly when we consider non-tangible and non-rivalrous capitalist property, like trademarks and copyrights. In these cases, there is literally no substance that can be directed; all the capitalist can do is threaten to interfere with someone else to extract rents. It’s private ownership distilled to its purest essence—a person with a gun threatening you for enjoying a work of art of a piece of music unless you first pay rents.
@HeavenlyPossum Well that's not true at all.
It's the exact opposite.
Ownership is a right not to be interfered with. Ownership only comes up when somebody is trying to interfere with your dictate over some property. You're not interfering with them, they are interfering with you.
That is the fundamental aspect of ownership.
@magitweeter @dagb @CheapPontoon @volkris @slowenough @True_Heresy
Nope! You’ve got it backwards. See for example: the slave owner’s claim to a right to interfere with the departure of an enslaved person, or the feudal lord’s claim to a right to interfere with the homesteading by a peasant of the manor’s fields.
There is no intrinsic, metaphysical relationship between you and something—some matter, some idea, whatever—that you claim as your property, only a social relationship that entails your claim or right to interference with anyone else’s use of the object of the property claim.
@HeavenlyPossum fuckin QOTO lmao
they question others so they can learn--but what have they learned???
@CheapPontoon @slowenough @True_Heresy @volkris@qoto.org @magitweeter @dagb
@magitweeter @volkris @HeavenlyPossum @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @dagb Mmm, air.
Another favorite of mine is sunlight. The so-called world economy runs on a much larger, gift economy. Understanding and acting on this is a big part of the climate opportunity.
@HeavenlyPossum @True_Heresy @volkris @CheapPontoon @dagb Sometimes people who own things also do actual work and create value but the owning part isn’t productive. It’s like saying owing a lot of fine art is the same thing as being an artist. And if a patron says “well, without my investment this wouldn’t exist” — is that really true? Perhaps, without the investment, something else, something better, might take its place.
@dagb @futurebird @True_Heresy @volkris @CheapPontoon
It also presumes that people are unable to make investments themselves without some coordinator who earns the right to own the entire effort by virtue of playing that role.
ie, the only reason the engineers, et al, of a firm like SpaceX couldn’t organize themselves to build reusable rockets is because people like Musk have already hoarded so many resources and enclosed the generation of credit.
@HeavenlyPossum @dagb @True_Heresy @volkris @CheapPontoon
If you can’t hire someone to do something for you it might not be work. *might* one may hire a creative director or a CFO, a portfolio manager or a hedge fund manager— and these are jobs that require skill and work. Although their close proximity to ownership distorts the perceived value IMO. Because there is this kind of magical thinking around ownership—
@True_Heresy @volkris @CheapPontoon @dagb
In the sense that Musk has literally not once in his life done anything productive or useful. Ownership is not productive.