R/ElonJetTracker

The argument you just used is called "whataboutism" and it's a logical fallacy in and of itself [1].

It's also a logical fallacy to imply that you can only have empathy for homeless people or for rich people, but not both.

So yes, I have empathy for homeless people. I also have empathy for rich people.

But apparently, not many people have empathy for the latter.

Mind you, I'm not saying that I'm perfect or extremely virtuous -- I have my own demons as well. But I don't have a grudge against rich people just because they're rich, in fact I admire these people because the wealth with which society has rewarded them implies that they have been doing a great service to their fellow humans (otherwise why would people give them money?).

I only have a grudge against people whose wealth was obtained by immoral/forced means (rich or otherwise).

I also think Elon Musk has made many mistakes with his Twitter acquisition and subsequent management, but since Twitter is his company, I also think he had the legitimate right to make those mistakes and to disagree with our opinion.

> I guarantee you if Elon gives me $1B I will never use security.

I guarantee you, if a billion people in the world knew you had $1B, you would need to be extremely careful with your physical security, in many ways that you wouldn't like. Unless, of course, you lived as a complete hermit in some undisclosed off-the-grid location.

It's easy to make grandiose claims in an Internet forum while sitting in your chair and not fearing for your life, but if you followed through with your claims while being very famous, it's very likely that reality would sooner or later punch you right in your face, as many have eventually discovered, unfortunately [2].

These things even happen because of your own family members (including spouses) and friends, not to mention the billion other complete strangers who would know you are very wealthy.

Mind you, I'm not saying that there aren't people with a billion dollars who are able to live normal lives without too many security precautions, but usually these people either are very strict about not advertising that they are very wealthy, or else, it is likely that they eventually learn the hard way the real security risks that they are under [2].

Regarding the list of kidnappings in [2], which also includes many murders of celebrities and/or their family members, keep in mind the following points:

1. It includes celebrities/famous people who already had reasonable security. Yet, they weren't able to prevent the kidnapping.

2. It doesn't include many publicly known cases of wealthy people that were kidnapped and tortured or murdered just because they were wealthy (I know of a few cases like these just in recent years, which are not included in the list).

3. Even worse, doesn't even include the vast majority of kidnappings, because for security reasons they are usually kept private, whenever possible/feasible.

4. Not to mention, it also doesn't include the many failed attempts, as these are not part of the list by definition.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kidnappings

But the risk that famous, very wealthy people have is not the same as other people have.

As an average Joe, you can publish your real-time coordinates on the Internet and usually, nobody will care.

Extremely famous and wealthy people simply cannot do that (unless they take many other security precautions which would greatly interfere with their lives).

They are under a much higher risk of being kidnapped, tortured and murdered than other people. And this risk is also applicable to their family members.

And yes, you can hire security, but you'd still be at a much greater risk, completely unnecessarily.

> And for that matter, considering that everyone else is also getting spied on real time coordinates-wise based on mobile phone, but no one seems to muster the will to care it weakens his case substantially with the additional ATC interest.

I agree that everyone else should not be getting spied on. But even when they are, this information is not getting publicly broadcasted.

And even if those mobile phone coordinates were publicly broadcasted in real-time, not only would it be illegal and there'd be a lot of outrage (in certain countries, at least), the physical security risk for ordinary people simply would not be the same as for famous high-net worth individuals and their families.

Joking isn't the problem; the problem is lazy internet snark/trope/flamebait style comments. Users here are generally quick to flag those because we all know from experience what sort of low-quality threads they lead to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html