@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.

@CheapPontoon @volkris

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++.

@volkris @dagb @CheapPontoon

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,

@volkris @dagb @CheapPontoon

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.

@dagb @volkris @CheapPontoon

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.

@CheapPontoon @dagb @volkris

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.

@dagb @True_Heresy @CheapPontoon

@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.

@True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @dagb

@dagb @CheapPontoon @True_Heresy @volkris

I thought about it and it turns out I’m still right

@HeavenlyPossum how so?@dagb @CheapPontoon @True_Heresy

@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.

@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.

@True_Heresy @CheapPontoon @dagb

@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.)

@slowenough

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.

@HeavenlyPossum @CheapPontoon @dagb @True_Heresy

@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://lpeproject.org/blog/privatizing-sovereignty-socializing-property-what-economics-doesnt-teach-you-about-the-corporation/

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."

https://lpeproject.org/blog/privatizing-sovereignty-socializing-property-what-economics-doesnt-teach-you-about-the-corporation/

"...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