I’ve got to love that these two guys both have their own social media platform.
That’s actually fascinating! I didn’t consciously recognize that till I read this comment haha
Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
491–500 of 799 posts
Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#492It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president. If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it shoul…
They see it as the guy on their side having more power, therefore they, by extension, have more power.
Primate brain go brr.
Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Democratic Governor of California denounced them publicly and stopped the effort. Despite Musk raising millions and campaigning viciously against the Democrats the administration kept all of SpaceX contracts and Tesla ev subsidies. In fact the IRA benefited Tesla disproportionately. Both sides are NOT the same. One is fascist and the other is not
The Democratic White House chose to not invite Tesla to their EV Summit. That was not political? The Democratic DoJ and Democrat DAGs prosecuted dozens of former Trump administration officials and Trump allies, and even Trump himself: Trump Administration Officials: Michael Flynn – Former National Security Advisor Stephen K. Bannon – Former White House Chief Strategist & Campaign Advisor Mark Meadows – Former White H…
I think you mean convicted. Because they did crimes. If they would stop doing crime they wouldn’t get convicted.
Still waiting for someone to lock Hillary up. Oh wait…
Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#494Elon Musk has recently talked about forming a third party in the US. Does anyone have an idea of what such a party would look like? I imagine it would be significantly different than the Republican Party.
Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great example of the horseshoe theory of politics [0], which I believe in very strongly. I made a separate post if anyone cares to discuss it. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44214040
Horseshoe theory has always read like a Pythagorean epicycle to me, an attempt to redeem a broken model. For a reductive political model, I prefer the 2 dimensional Collectivist-Individualist, Authoritarian-Libertarian axes. No need to literally contort the outdated Left-Right spectrum. An added benefit is you get to avoid annoying semantic battles such as whether Nazis or Fascists are Right wing or Left wing. Plus y…
Agreed, the matrix expresses this idea more exactly.
Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#496It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president. If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it shoul…
Not American.
> ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
I'm definitely in agreement with the 60 percent. This should be unthinkable and political suicide. Openly speculating on if you can use the government as personal retaliation is absolutely undemocratic.
So why is it so hard for me to care in this case? Because Elon Musk has used the government in the exact same way. He just got done cancelling random contracts he didn't like. He just circumvented democracy to play his little doge game.
It is really hard to care about cheating when it happens to a cheater. Disgust at this move against SpaceX or Tesla has to start with consequences for Elon. If this is wrong, then Elon must be jailed.
Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#497Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
~40% of the country sees that as strength. Democracies only really work with an educated and altruistic population, and the US is only getting further away from that.
This sounds like an utopian take or a case of "the grass is greener on the other side". Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too. I am inclined to agree with Acemoglu that good institutions are more important than virtues of…
> Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
It seems like both of those can easily be true at the same time.
Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
One has to love this chameleon of a Republican "platform" where values and ideals are championed to browbeat support for a particular action, but then written off as irrelevant when they're awkward for analyzing other actions - while other values and ideals are dragged out in support. A week ago, "the debt" was really important. Now that Dear Leader has declared otherwise, apparently it's not. Right into the memory h…
There is a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform . No taxes on tips was on the platform (#6) as was no cuts to medicare or social security (#14). Balancing the budget was not on the platform. There are republicans who care about the debt, but the party as a whole doesn’t. The economic libertarians have been thoroughly marginalized in the modern GOP, because economic libertarianism is unpopular. To be clear,…
It looks like Trump has decided to approach deficit reduction like he approaches climate change: claim that it is a hoax that his policies will increase the deficit [1].
According to that document he actually is cutting the deficit by $1.407 trillion with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and with the tariffs and deregulation the deficit will be cut by least $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/mythbuster-the-o...
Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
The world is no longer a serious place. Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _ pretend to care _ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
This kind of stuff would not fly in Australia. Not to say that there is no corruption, but that it isn’t absolutely blatant and ignored.
Your government recently mandated technical capabilities for breaking encryption. Australians let that fly. There is nothing special about Australians, just as there is also nothing special about the British people who also did nothing when the UK mandated technical capabilities to break encryption.
One could even make the argument that the people of these two countries are even more pliant than Americans when they enable a key capability for totalitarian surveillance states without a blink.