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It's starting to feel like Musk is playing this political game to me. Pretending he is championing the little guy, that he/twitter/everyone is somehow being re

It's starting to feel like Musk is playing this political game to me. Pretending he is championing the little guy, that he/twitter/everyone is somehow being repressed and they/he is fighting against it. His recent tweet on how 'activists' are the cause of twitters recent revenue drop for example. Even with the blue check marks, he is framing it as it being open to all and the little guy taking the power back, all you have to do is pay him $8 a month for it. Viva la revolution indeed! It feels like social engineering to me and the same game that has been played very successfully in division politics.

mmustapic 4y ago
It is quite common for some kinds of politics (you can deduce which ones) to create an enemy of the common people from thin air, and use it to justify your actions.
- jcbrand 4y ago
  This happens on both sides of the spectrum. For the left the common enemy is often greedy exploitative capitalists. For the right it's often socialists and/or communists.
  - mmustapic 4y ago
    Yes, it's orthogonal. Lately, it's "the people" vs "the elites"
  - watwut 4y ago
    For right, it is libs and anyone who treats transsexuals well. Or people who want abortion. Or people who believe in democracy and voting lately.
yehCuz 4y ago
Elon is heavily dependent on politicians keeping taxes low for billionaires, and policy that pushes NASA and other government agencies to hire private companies. Crony capitalism it’s called colloquially. Marc Andreesen was tweeting a few months about the pressure from DC to curtail behavior that the politicians felt was undermining them. Around the time Powell began raising rates, memes in finance changed to “save”, banks raised rates on savings accounts to get people to park cash they can leverage rather than get free cash from Powell they can leverage. Pulling cash out of the economy means fewer lattes and avocado toasts; being a bit glib, but those are the workers most likely to be hurt long term. So yeah it’s basically division politics. The only reason it works like this is because of memory this is how it works. NPR reporter literally just said employers offering higher and higher wages is what’s creating inflation, and they want unemployment to go up to bring inflation down. Manufacturing consent by repeating “truth”. Behavioral economics runs the country. Politicians prefer behaviors like fealty to politically correct traditions. They are protecting the net worth class based system that keeps them from growing potatoes and determines which families thrive or die.
- yehCuz 4y ago
slg 4y ago
Or maybe he is just a dumb guy who believes his own bullshit but ultimately doesn't know what he is doing. How much do we have to hear about the chaos behind the scenes at his companies before people start to realize this whole thing possibly isn't a well orchestrated plan?
- runarberg 4y ago
  Distinction without a difference in this case. When you are as rich and powerful as Elon Musk, you usually get away with your own stupidity and it will ultimately turn to your benefits no matter what. The law of the accumulation of wealth also applies to social capital.
  - brookst 4y ago
    I think it's healthy to calibrate one's own beliefs to reality. So maybe you're right and there is no difference in outcome. But strictly for my own mental model, I think it is far more accurate to model this as "super rich guy makes shit up on the spot and has no master plan" rather than "this is part of a massively complex plot that relies on second- and third-order psychological effects planned years in advance."
    - runarberg 4y ago
      It is really human to over value intentions at the cost of the outcome. Even our legal system does this to a pretty large extent. However when looking and trying to grasp the amazing amount of share stupidity the rich folks do, we have to ask: „how does this much stupidity yield so high rewards?“ IMO it is way more damning to us as a society that people can be this stupid and still become so insanely rich, then if someone had an evil masterplan to manipulate others into making them more and more. But at the end of the day, this concern is dwarfed by the fact that in either case we let them get away with it and ultimately reward them with insane wealth. This is the true damning of our society that these people are given all this wealth and power in the first place, and after the fact, honestly they can do whatever they like. And what they do isn’t pretty at all.
_jal 4y ago
> Pretending he is championing the little guy Are you just noticing this? Step two is whining endlessly and loudly. Step three he figures out a way to game government subsidies while whining about government.
- lupire 4y ago
  SolarCity and Tesla did step 3 years ago.
mym1990 4y ago
I have never in my life thought that Musk would champion the little guy. If anything, Musk will run the little guy over 5 times in the quest for interplanetary domination.
- mcrad 4y ago
  To champion the little guy has nothing to do with rhetoric, right? In my exprerience it's the uneducated masses that pretend to champion the little guy but don't understand that their actions have unintended consequences that often produce the opposite result. I would think people are starting to understand the inverse correlation between words and actions, at least where power politics are at play (not to mention specifically in corporate entities that make their dough by brainwashing)

mmustapic 4y ago

It is quite common for some kinds of politics (you can deduce which ones) to create an enemy of the common people from thin air, and use it to justify your actions.

jcbrand 4y ago
This happens on both sides of the spectrum. For the left the common enemy is often greedy exploitative capitalists. For the right it's often socialists and/or communists.
- mmustapic 4y ago
  Yes, it's orthogonal. Lately, it's "the people" vs "the elites"
- watwut 4y ago
  For right, it is libs and anyone who treats transsexuals well. Or people who want abortion. Or people who believe in democracy and voting lately.

yehCuz 4y ago

Elon is heavily dependent on politicians keeping taxes low for billionaires, and policy that pushes NASA and other government agencies to hire private companies. Crony capitalism it’s called colloquially. Marc Andreesen was tweeting a few months about the pressure from DC to curtail behavior that the politicians felt was undermining them. Around the time Powell began raising rates, memes in finance changed to “save”, banks raised rates on savings accounts to get people to park cash they can leverage rather than get free cash from Powell they can leverage. Pulling cash out of the economy means fewer lattes and avocado toasts; being a bit glib, but those are the workers most likely to be hurt long term. So yeah it’s basically division politics. The only reason it works like this is because of memory this is how it works. NPR reporter literally just said employers offering higher and higher wages is what’s creating inflation, and they want unemployment to go up to bring inflation down. Manufacturing consent by repeating “truth”. Behavioral economics runs the country. Politicians prefer behaviors like fealty to politically correct traditions. They are protecting the net worth class based system that keeps them from growing potatoes and determines which families thrive or die.

yehCuz 4y ago

slg 4y ago

Or maybe he is just a dumb guy who believes his own bullshit but ultimately doesn't know what he is doing. How much do we have to hear about the chaos behind the scenes at his companies before people start to realize this whole thing possibly isn't a well orchestrated plan?

runarberg 4y ago
Distinction without a difference in this case. When you are as rich and powerful as Elon Musk, you usually get away with your own stupidity and it will ultimately turn to your benefits no matter what. The law of the accumulation of wealth also applies to social capital.
- brookst 4y ago
  I think it's healthy to calibrate one's own beliefs to reality. So maybe you're right and there is no difference in outcome. But strictly for my own mental model, I think it is far more accurate to model this as "super rich guy makes shit up on the spot and has no master plan" rather than "this is part of a massively complex plot that relies on second- and third-order psychological effects planned years in advance."
  - runarberg 4y ago
    It is really human to over value intentions at the cost of the outcome. Even our legal system does this to a pretty large extent. However when looking and trying to grasp the amazing amount of share stupidity the rich folks do, we have to ask: „how does this much stupidity yield so high rewards?“ IMO it is way more damning to us as a society that people can be this stupid and still become so insanely rich, then if someone had an evil masterplan to manipulate others into making them more and more. But at the end of the day, this concern is dwarfed by the fact that in either case we let them get away with it and ultimately reward them with insane wealth. This is the true damning of our society that these people are given all this wealth and power in the first place, and after the fact, honestly they can do whatever they like. And what they do isn’t pretty at all.

_jal 4y ago

> Pretending he is championing the little guy Are you just noticing this? Step two is whining endlessly and loudly. Step three he figures out a way to game government subsidies while whining about government.

lupire 4y ago
SolarCity and Tesla did step 3 years ago.

mym1990 4y ago

I have never in my life thought that Musk would champion the little guy. If anything, Musk will run the little guy over 5 times in the quest for interplanetary domination.

mcrad 4y ago
To champion the little guy has nothing to do with rhetoric, right? In my exprerience it's the uneducated masses that pretend to champion the little guy but don't understand that their actions have unintended consequences that often produce the opposite result. I would think people are starting to understand the inverse correlation between words and actions, at least where power politics are at play (not to mention specifically in corporate entities that make their dough by brainwashing)