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I wonder what people like Elizabeth Warren and AOC would say if they had to explain away the example of this startup (or 1000 others). That you can keep growing at 93% a month for a few months, but not too many, or you'll become so rich that you must have done something bad?

A friend's startup is growing at 93% a month. I pointed out that her net worth is also growing at 93% a month, and that she can thus feel, in her own life, the falsity of politicians' claim that you have to do bad things to get rich. They're just focusing on making users happy.

The US federal budget is $7 trillion. There are 535 in the Senate and Congress. They collectively allocate that money. Specifically: 7000/535 = 13 billion per official. Which means AOC is a political billionaire. She allocates far more than any market billionaire. Indeed she allocates ten billion liquid, per year. A market billionaire has one billion, illiquid, per life. So: AOC spends 10-100X what a market billionaire has. It's not even close. She's right about one thing, though. AOC didn't earn the tens of billions she spends. The state taxed that money, by force.

AOC vient d'expliquer qu'on ne peut pas "gagner" un milliard de dollars. Que c'est mathématiquement impossible. Que tout milliardaire est forcément un voleur, un abuseur de lois du travail, un payeur sous-évalué. Ce niveau d'ignorance économique de la part d'une élue qui légifère sur l'économie devrait nous faire hurler. Reprenons depuis le début, parce qu'apparemment c'est nécessaire. Un milliardaire n'est pas quelqu'un qui a un milliard de dollars en cash sur son compte. Un milliardaire est quelqu'un dont le marché évalue les actifs (principalement des parts d'entreprise) à un milliard ou plus. Elon Musk n'a pas "pris" 800 milliards à quelqu'un. Il a créé Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Le marché évalue ces entreprises à plusieurs trillions cumulés. Il en détient une fraction. C'est ça, sa "fortune". La question fondamentale qu'AOC ne se pose jamais : d'où vient la valeur ? La valeur n'est pas un gâteau fixe qu'on se partage. La valeur est créée. Quand SpaceX divise par 10 le coût du lancement orbital, ce n'est pas du vol, c'est de la création pure. Avant Musk, lancer un kilo en orbite coûtait 50K$. Aujourd'hui 1.5K$. Cette création de valeur est mesurable, vérifiable, et bénéficie à toute l'humanité. L'internet par satellite couvre des zones que les États ont été incapables de connecter en 50 ans. Les voitures électriques ont forcé toute l'industrie auto à se réinventer. Maintenant, la question centrale qu'AOC évite soigneusement : qui devrait allouer les ressources dans une société ? Parce que l'argent, fondamentalement, c'est ça. Un signal d'allocation. Décider où va le capital, le travail, l'énergie, le temps humain. Trois options historiques : L'État (bureaucrates élus ou nommés) Les comités citoyens (démocratie directe) Les entrepreneurs qui ont prouvé leur capacité d'allocation par leurs résultats L'option 1 a été testée massivement au 20ème siècle. URSS, Chine maoïste, Venezuela, Cuba, Corée du Nord. Résultat : famines, pénuries, effondrement. Des dizaines de millions de morts. L'allocation étatique est un désastre empirique total. L'option 2 n'a jamais existé à grande échelle pour des raisons mathématiques. Le calcul économique nécessaire pour allouer les ressources d'une économie moderne dépasse les capacités cognitives d'une assemblée. Hayek l'avait démontré dès 1945 (The Use of Knowledge in Society). L'option 3, c'est le marché. Et le marché récompense ceux qui allouent bien. Ceux qui allouent mal font faillite, perdent leur capital, sortent du jeu. Les survivants sont par sélection darwinienne les meilleurs allocateurs disponibles. Elon Musk est riche parce qu'il a prouvé, sur 25 ans, qu'il alloue mieux le capital que 99.9999% de l'humanité. PayPal. Tesla. SpaceX. Starlink. Chaque fois, il a pris du capital et l'a transformé en infrastructure civilisationnelle. La vraie question n'est pas "pourquoi Musk a tant", c'est : "pourquoi n'a-t-il pas plus ?" Sérieusement. Si on veut maximiser la création de valeur pour l'humanité, on devrait vouloir que les meilleurs allocateurs aient accès à plus de capital, pas moins. Donner 100 milliards à AOC pour qu'elle les redistribue selon sa vision morale, c'est garantir leur destruction. Donner 100 milliards à Musk, c'est probablement obtenir des bases martiennes, de l'énergie quasi-gratuite, et une révolution robotique. Le préjugé d'AOC, c'est que la richesse est un péché moral. C'est une vision théologique, pas économique. Elle traite le capital comme un stock à confisquer, pas comme un flux à orienter vers les usages les plus productifs. Et c'est là que sa thèse devient grotesque : "vous payez les gens moins que ce qu'ils valent." Définition de "ce qu'ils valent" selon AOC : ce qu'AOC pense qu'ils devraient toucher. Définition selon le marché : ce qu'un autre employeur est prêt à leur offrir. Si Tesla payait ses ingénieurs en dessous de leur valeur, ces ingénieurs partiraient chez Google, Apple, Meta. Ils restent. Donc la rémunération est compétitive. Mécanisme de base que tout étudiant en L1 d'éco comprend. Le pattern fondamental : AOC, et toute la classe politique qui pense comme elle, n'a jamais alloué une seule ressource productive de sa vie. Jamais embauché en assumant le risque salarial. Jamais investi son capital dans un projet incertain. Jamais créé une entreprise qui survit. Et pourtant elle veut décider qui peut posséder quoi. C'est l'équivalent de quelqu'un qui n'a jamais joué aux échecs voulant arbitrer un tournoi de grands maîtres en réécrivant les règles à mi-partie. Ce qui est triste, c'est que cette vision a un coût massif. Chaque fois qu'on taxe les meilleurs allocateurs, on détourne du capital de ses usages productifs vers des usages politiques (subventions, clientélisme, projets vanity étatiques). La France en sait quelque chose. 50 ans de redistribution, ISF, exit tax, taxe à 75%. Résultat : zéro géant tech, fuite des cerveaux, dette à 113% du PIB, croissance atone. AOC veut nous vendre le même poison en plus grand format. La conclusion est inconfortable mais nécessaire : nous avons besoin de plus de milliardaires, pas moins. Plus d'allocateurs prouvés. Plus de capital concentré entre les mains de ceux qui ont démontré qu'ils savent le faire fructifier pour l'humanité. Et nous avons besoin de moins d'AOC. Moins de gens qui n'ont rien construit, qui n'ont rien risqué, qui n'ont rien créé, mais qui veulent décider à la place de ceux qui font. Le mythe ce n'est pas "le mythe d'avoir mérité son milliard". Le mythe c'est qu'une députée de 36 ans qui n'a jamais géré un budget supérieur à son staff parlementaire ait la moindre légitimité à théoriser sur l'allocation du capital mondial.

Sure you can earn a billion dollars. I've been teaching people how to do it for 20 years. The way you do it is to start a company that grows fast. You don't have to do anything bad to make a company grow fast. You just have to make something people want. paulgraham.com/ace.html

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: You can't earn a billion dollars. Ilana Glazer: That's right. AOC: You just can't earn that. Glazer: That's exactly correct. AOC: You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. Glazer: Yup. AOC: You can pay people less than what they're worth. Glazer: Yup. AOC: But you can't earn that, right? Glazer: That's right. AOC: And so you have to create a myth that -- since you didn't earn that, you have to create a myth of earning it.

@SawyerMerritt Better to buy FSD or spend that money on Tesla stock instead?

Tesla is ending one-time FSD purchases across Europe on May 21, 2026. This includes the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and others. You have two weeks to buy FSD outright before it's gone forever and switches to a subscription model. One-time FSD purchases end in the Netherlands on May 15, 2026.

Thank you Germany and Britain!

@TomSteyer In other words you will kill people to protect jobs. Great policy. Not.

this trial is wild. elon: they stole a non profit to make themselves billionaires. openai founder: no way. openai founders journal: man i can’t believe we are stealing this non profit. feels unethical but at least i’ll be a billionaire.

I often hear it argued that there shouldn’t be any billionaires. I have a very different view. That our society enables ordinary people who have demonstrated competence to allocate resources efficiently serves the public interest. To create a multi billion dollar company, you had to create something of enormous value. You had to lead people to work together to do something useful for society. And you had to commit and continue to demonstrate competence every day consistently. If not, the business could deteriorate or be beaten by a competitor. That stock is just a piece of paper if the company isn’t surviving and thriving. They weren’t born into it like royalty. They didn’t make empty promises that sound great like the government. They got the authority to make decisions by demonstrating competence and winning the confidence of customers and investors who have many choices on what to do with their money. The idea that anyone can build a billion dollar enterprise is beautifully meritocratic, and what makes America great. We should stop treating the formation of successful multi billion dollar companies as a problem to solve and start asking what we can do to enable more people to become billionaires and start multi-billion dollar companies.

Purpose-built for autonomy Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas

You gotta love community notes.

This is my Tesla Model Y in the UK. It already has all the hardware and software needed to drive itself under my supervision - making it dramatically safer than any regular car on our roads. Yet @transportgovuk, @Heidi_Alexander and the Vehicle Certification Agency have still not approved it for use here. It’s like having seatbelts fitted in the car… but the government won’t let you use them. This technology is already working safely in other countries around the world. Why are UK drivers and other road users being held back from a safer future? Enough with the delays already - follow the @RDWnl lead and get this approved. #Tesla #ModelY #FSD #FullSelfDriving #UKAutonomous @elonmusk

93 years & 231 days old Ann Esselstyn dead hangs for 2 min 52 seconds! To set new WR. (Maybe we call it live hangs instead now?) Distal strength reflects many things.

This is what economic suicide looks like;

@mikefutia SEO

I just built a Claude Code SEO agent that replaces your $200/mo. Ahrefs subscription 🤯 One prompt → keyword gaps found, competitors mapped, content written in your brand voice, rankings tracked on autopilot. All inside Claude Code. Perfect for DTC brands and agencies who know SEO matters but never have the bandwidth to actually do it consistently. If you're paying $200/month for Ahrefs & SEMRush, opening it once to export a CSV, then closing it until next month... This agent runs the entire loop for you: → Connects to Google Search Console and pulls your real ranking data → Finds your "gap zone" — keywords at positions 5–20, one article away from page 1 → Uses Apify to scrape who's outranking you and exactly why they're winning → Interviews you once about your brand, customers, and positioning → Writes content in your voice — not generic AI output that tanks after 90 days → Tracks rankings weekly and feeds what's working back into the next cycle No $200/month tools you barely open. No freelancers writing content that sounds like everyone else. No manually checking rankings and forgetting to act on it. What you get: → Keyword cards with a specific action recommendation for each gap zone opportunity → A competitive breakdown — who's beating you and the exact fix for each keyword → A weekly content plan generated from your real GSC data → A brand voice profile Claude uses for every article it writes Built 100% in Claude Code with Google Search Console. Full playbook is on GitHub — skill files, brand interview, and the exact weekly workflow. Want it for free? > Like this post > Comment "SEO" And I'll send it over (must be following so I can DM)

Ford CEO Jim Farley, in a new interview, says he realized Ford had been doing EVs all wrong after his team ripped apart a Tesla: “When we ripped apart a Tesla, I was just absolutely flabbergasted. The Mach-E's wiring harness was 70 pounds heavier and 1.6 kilometers longer. We didn't know what was going on in [Tesla engineers' ] minds. But now we understand. They had no prejudice. We had prejudice. We'd gone to our supply-chain person and said, "Buy another wiring harness." [Tesla] said, "Let's design the vehicle for the lowest, smallest battery." Totally different approach.”

@mikefutia Claw

AI animated videos are going super viral right now. And my OpenClaw just fully automated the entire process 🤯 One message in Telegram. That's it. The agent writes a first-person narrative, generates 3D Pixar-style characters with Nano Banana Pro, animates the transformation with Veo 3, and Veo handles the voiceover natively. No manual prompting between tools. No editing. No copying and pasting. I type "make a video about food rotting in a fridge" and walk away. It comes back with animated ginger roots crying on a shelf, garlic sprouting tentacles, rice growing mold — each one speaking in first person while they decay. "I'm ginger... please stop leaving me in the fridge..." These are the exact videos faceless content pages are using to build $45k-$120k/month education funnels. Health content, product demos, explainers — anything. The difference is they're doing it manually. 3-4 tools, multiple steps per video. This runs as a single OpenClaw skill: → Give it a topic → It writes the story → Generates the characters → Animates with voice → Delivers the final cut Perfect for DTC brands and agencies producing volume creative without a production team. I put this skill + a complete setup guide into a Google Drive folder. Want access for free? > Like this post > Comment "CLAW" And I'll send it over (must be following so I can DM)

@bryan_johnson Decaf?

2-3 cups of coffee per day associated with an 18% lower dementia risk and better cognition in a 40-year study of 130,000 participants. Even with these benefits, I can't do it; caffeine creates a physiological roller coaster and enslaves me.