Chris Nerbonne

@danmet @charlescwcooke You're correct. We've done that before. The technocracy of the early 20th century was a failure. It was tried again in the 60s and 70s, failed again. Why do we insist on relearning this lesson every 50 years or so?

@charlescwcooke I’d rather slower people to act in their own interests, rather than give that authority to the “smart elites.”

This is only true if you think the government is less scary than entrepreneurs and private investors, which I very much do not.

@CoreyLeander @charlescwcooke You have events out of order. Also, if money is the determinative factor, President Harris would be in the White House. Tom Steyer would have made the runoff and Mike Bloomberg wouldn't have bombed in 2016 after spending $1B of his own money.

@charlescwcooke Isn’t the government democratically elected? Musk spent like $200M or more last cycle to elect Trump, then got tens of billions in loans to hostile takeover Twitter. That’s a lot of power. My solution isn’t wealth taxes or confiscatory taxes generally, but it *is* a problem

@ChiTownPanthera Sorry, there is no black version of self defense where if someone "touches" you, you can kill them. Also, Anthony wasn't bullied. He was the armed trespasser. He was told to leave. He did not. He was told again and he stabbed and killed an unarmed boy. That's murder.

Why don’t we just say it out loud. Karmelo was guilty the moment he came to the track. He really could have sat anywhere and gotten treated like he was treated. Anywhere. He could have crossed paths by walking next to or close to the twins and would have gotten bullied. This is the conclusion though. It is against the law for black people to be anywhere and defend themselves when someone touches them. When we are spat on we are expected to turn the other cheek. When we are beaten down we are expected to curl up in a fetal position and cry. When we are berated we are expected to shut up and let it happen. No justice.

@MikeNellis This will just have to be repeated until it sinks on - flyovers do not increase costs. The flight hours needed to be logged. The precision timing and formations are good practice. Plus, they're fun.

Your tax dollars at work, folks

@RandyEBarnett Even doing the brakes on my wife's 2020 SUV is a pain. It has an electronic parking brake and there's a special procedure to follow to deal with it. To replace the rotors and pads I have to convince this computer that it still understands its relative position to the rotor.

Hot take: cars are way better today than they used to be—except for not being able to fix them yourself.

@orcawhale SpaceX provides a service to the government. It bid on contracts and was awarded same. Now you want the money back? That's rather despicable. Not allowed to compete? Excuse. Forced to work? That's just a lie.

Accumulation of wealth is not unethical. Unethical accumulation of wealth is unethical. Elon Musk's entire career has been hugely on the back of the government. Everything Musk has done has used government levers to give himself advantages that most folks cannot ever touch, all the way back to the LLC he and Kimbal created for Zip2. He was also using the government services for location that most folks could not. PayPal was something impossible for most people because of the lawyers needed to get through the legal landmine for online payments. Those two got him the $180M that led to founding SpaceX and Tesla (yes, I know the arguments that he didn't found them, that's irrelevant). Both of those have LIVED off of government investments and interference. Elon Musk became the first "trillionaire" off of tax dollars. Yes, the products have been popular in the market, but even the products have been primarily things that most of us aren't ALLOWED to build in markets we aren't ALLOWED to compete in. To get a share of that pie, people have been forced to use their knowledge and expertise for Musk. Musk has been allowed to profit from those things at a much higher proportion, thereby. When the government has chosen the winners and losers, including giving your money to someone, the person receiving the wealth has ill-gotten gains. Musk's played the system that we're all in, but has been given a different set of rules than most of us. That doesn't mean I think we should tax him into the ground. That doesn't solve anything. I do think the government should be removed from our markets and money so that we can all create the future and pay each other to do so without Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden giving all of our money to Elon Musk.

@waxaxe1 @DigitalSamIAm @charlescwcooke You could short it. I wouldn't (also not a financial advisor, YMMV). I've seen posts calling SpaceX mostly an AI company. That's short sighted. If Sam Alrman is correct and AI's future is as a utility, it sure looks massively overvalued. FWIW, I think those analysts are wrong

@DigitalSamIAm @charlescwcooke Good post. The person you’re responding to is conflating the service Space X provides to the US (seems great) with the market’s valuation of the the overall business and Elon’s stewardship thereof (debatable, but that’s what free markets are for)

Can we debunk this nonsense? Elon Musk was awarded (note: not given) cost-per-result contracts to perform a service for the US government. The total of those for SpaceX specifically is ~$22B, which includes repaid loans, state tax incentives, etc. The deal was simple: put stuff into LEO at or below a set cost. If SpaceX does it below the set cost, SpaceX keeps the difference. If it doesn’t, the company is responsible for the overrun. End result? SpaceX & Elon lowered the cost of getting 1 kg into LEO by 95-97% vs what NASA was paying previously. And for the record, every other company around at the time was offered the same opportunity to bid on the contract - Musk/SpaceX just took it. The handout narrative implies the taxpayer is the patron and SpaceX the dependent. The cost data shows the opposite: before SpaceX, NASA paid Russia’s Soyuz $80-86M per seat; SpaceX delivered at ~$55 million. SpaceX saved the US taxpayer $300M-$465M each year on that alone (the US sends 12-15 astronauts to space each year) On the lunar lander, NASA estimated SpaceX’s fixed-price bid saved $20B-$30B vs the Boeing-preferred cost-plus approach. So: SpaceX saved the US taxpayer more than the total value of contracts it earned on a single project, PLUS provided the US government with the requested services (put stuff in LEO) at the best possible price.

@casbeataol How much more? Musk had the crazy ideas, put up his money, talked other people into funding his crazy ideas, provided the direction, located the talent, etc. If it failed, he would take the blame, possibly lose everything. The engineer moves on to engineer elsewhere.

A single individual can start a company, but it takes the efforts of far more individuals to grow that company, especially to grow it into a multi billion dollar company. In our current capitalist society, the owner takes most of that wealth. I think Employees deserve far more.

@KevinCastley You went to one of the most socialist, leftist cities in America and found 30 homeless people sleeping on a covered sidewalk. Ask Brandon Johnson what the problem is. If he says he needs more resources you could follow up by asking what happened to the billions he spent already

Riddle me this, conservative! If capitalism is righteous, Why does Chicago look this degen?

@GenX_ReplyGuy @charlescwcooke Truth. 5/8 of the population (more depending on your source) is one standard deviation above average or below. This also means about 3/8 are one standard deviation below or lower. They're all on this platform and they get to vote.

@charlescwcooke You have to remember that much of the population is either literally below average intelligence or has been so poorly educated as to act as if they were. TL;DR: Most people are dumb.

That isn’t the claim. Why do all these people sound like they’re six years old?

@genx_rooster @YourAnonNews Not primarily - that's what causes it. There is plenty of food.

That was for ONE YEAR. Hardly solving "World Hunger". That's the problem with Libtards, they think throwing OTHER PEOPLE'S money at the SYMPTOMS of a problem, will solve the problem. World hunger stems primarily from conflict, governance failures, and corruption rather than true food shortages.

Elon vowed to cure world hunger if the World Food Program could outline a plan to do so for 6 billion. They did, and Elon did absolutely nothing, and has become the world's first trillionaire. This man also systematically dismantled the US' foreign aid programs after this time. So not only did he not fulfil his promise, he actually deprived millions more of food, emergency healthcare and other life saving supports. With less than .5% of his net worth he could save 10s of millions, real human lives. He spends his days shitposting on Twitter and he was even stupid enough to tank his companies in valuation by literal 100s of billions just to call some guy a pedo, and people applaud him. We shouldn't live in a world where millions die of hunger while others have more money than most countries. Humans have their priorities screwed up.

@UhOhSusan @jhwurleriii @YourAnonNews Norman Borlaug didn't plant billions of acres of wheat, but his idea solved world hunger (ongoing world hunger is a political problem, not a resource problem - there's plenty of food).

@UhOhSusan @jhwurleriii @YourAnonNews Who is suffering for "needless billionaire gains" and who appointed you to be in charge of how much is too much? No one did. Henry Ford didn't build shit either, but he changed the world. Edison wasn't the inventor of all the things his company patented, but here we are.

@UhOhSusan @YourAnonNews Rockets flying backwards. This platform you likely claim to hate. Self driving cars and trucks. Neuralink. Starlink. Space gas stations. The Boring Company (will it work? Physics is sound if you can solve the heat problem). That's what he's been up to. How about you?

@YourAnonNews I don’t understand the people who attack other people who have as little or less than they do, but defend billionaires without asking how they got that much money over the past 10 yrs.

@truHonestTakes @4TaxFairness What is the problem? If you can't define the problem, you can't create a solution to the problem. The SpaceX contracts are a red herring. Those are competitively awarded. SpaceX is the lowest cost, most reliable provider.

Gotcha so you see no problem. Fair enough. I'll just say taxes are already banditry (in your words) and taking money from us to give to somebody else (and Elon has taken a lot of those sweet government contracts and loans from our taxed money, btw) . The idea though is it's for the net good of society. That said, I think our government is corrupt, so I don't trust them with taxes anyway. However, taxes is already a principle, adding to it isn't any more banditry than it already is. Does it have a limiting principle? That ultimately should be up to the society and people who live in it. But again, I don't think taxing unrealized gains is the answer, but I do think wealth inequality is a real and obvious problem as it's clearly a growing gap and clearly most people are struggling while others have more than ever before.

Well. Elon Musk is the first trillionaire. There is no amount of taxes America could reasonably levy that wouldn’t leave him insanely rich. But even a 1% wealth tax could make a difference for millions of folks in our healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Will we do it?

@truHonestTakes @4TaxFairness "Handling" wealth inequality is taking from those who have built something valuable and giving it to those who have not. What's the justification? What's the limiting principle? Where does the power come from? It's not anywhere in the constitution. It's banditry.

Yea houses and cars and hard assets are different in principle I think that’s stocks. I would argue against those things you mentioned also my idea is more a sentiment than fleshed out rules so of course it couldn’t work. What’s your idea for handling the vast wealth inequality? Just keep doing what we are doing?

@truHonestTakes @4TaxFairness You're drawing a distinction that really makes no sense. A house and a car and a stock are all things that are worth what someone else will pay for them. If your position is stock shouldn't back up a loan because it isn't real enough, then how does taxing it make sense?

@pez1963 @extremearturo Truth. Even the defense witnesses said Anthony was in the wrong and confirmed all of the relevant facts. There is no evidence that Anthony was ever in danger of physical harm, but his feelings may have gotten hurt.

@extremearturo Oh please Rittenhouse was clearly defending himself and on video…. There is no evidence that supports a Self defense in the Anthony case. Every witness said Anthony was the aggressor

I'm blocking any racist who rationalizes what Kyle Rittenhouse did while villainizing what Karmelo Anthony did. The duplicity of this moronic position isn't worth debating.

@extremearturo Did you think Rittenhouse was correct in his use of force? If not, why are you comparing him to Anthony? Reasoning seems inconsistent.

@truHonestTakes @4TaxFairness Apparently not. Your idea can't work at all. You want to ban collateralized loans. That's dumb. It's not a loophole. A home equity loan is not a loophole. Financing your car purchase is not a loophole. Not for nothing, but the constitution does not allow for a wealth tax.

I understand how it works. But it’s used by people as a loophole because they don’t pay taxes on their vast wealth and continue to leverage up against it gaining more real assets and wealth. Maybe my idea isn’t perfect or couldn’t work in practice but it feels like something should be done. The wealth inequality is real and “how things work” probably had to change at some level to ever have a chance at addressing it.