Wait until you find out who helped him buy Twitter.
Yah, the Saudis own the other half.
<Laughs in Kushner>
Isn’t he also an immigrant?
No, he’s rich
Apparently one who was here illegally as well
This should be its own post
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, to Maye (née Haldeman), a model, and Errol Musk, a businessman and engineer. Musk briefly attended the University of Pretoria before immigrating to Canada at the age of 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother.
Yep, and then he moved to the states I assume.
Canada says sorry, by the way.
Canada always says sorry.
Frankly, Canada, it’s starting to ring hollow.
Sorry
You must be confused - he’s white, so the proper term is “expat”.
The problem is not seeing a problem with any of that before the bit about talking to spooky foreigners.
The rich and powerful having this much control over our government, communications, and our economic lives in general is THE problem. Full stop. What they decide to do with that power is beside the point. There’s no such thing as a good king.
The state (as defined by Engles, Marx, Lenin, etc.) is the problem. Like this is exactly what it does by definition.
If the government forms an alliance with the market it becomes a slave to the market.
There are more homes than homeless, more food than starving kids. Life saving medicines can be extremely cheap to produce but are sold for fortunes. Everywhere you look, the bourgeoisie are literally holding people’s lives for ransom… and the government does nothing.
In fact the government does less than nothing. It is the government that facilitates the hoarding of these resources. It is the government that enforces patent laws that allow life saving medicines to be kept from those in need. It is the government that enables and legalizes this racketeering by the rich.
When you live in a society where politicians talk equally (or more) about how they’ll help the market as they talk about how they’ll help their citizens—which is what their job is supposed to be—are you really surprised?
Are you really surprised that a government which chooses to let its people go unhoused just to keep the real estate market up is a government in which wealth holds the power? Are you surprised that a government that shuts down worker strikes and forces compromise on the side of the exploited rather than solely on the side of exploitative corporations is a government that can be manipulated by the owner of multiple massive companies?
There is nothing surprising here. The system is working exactly as it is intended to. The problem is not a few members of the bourgeoisie colluding to manipulate the state because that’s how the state always works. The problem is the state.
If you would like to learn more about “the state” I suggest you read State and Revolution. That’s what made me switch from “oh we just need to tax the rich” to “the rich should not exist.” It also is just kind of impressive how Lenin describes many things that are very relevant today despite the fact he wrote this short book over a century ago.
To quote myself:
"Not so fun fact: The absolute richest dragons in all of fantasy, excluding Smaug, only have a net worth of several hundred million dollars. A Red Elder Wyrm will have, on average, around 2.5-3 million gold pieces of wealth, with an absolute maximum of 5 million gold pieces. That means that the absolute greediest, and richest type of dragon, by far, only has between 100,000 to 500,000 oz worth of gold.
Smaug being the absolute outlier because he had somewhere between 5 to 10 billion dollars worth of gold.
Now if you are wondering why I’m making a big deal about this, it is because 500,000 oz of gold is only worth about 1.1 billion US dollars. But that is the absolute outlier of the greediest type of dragon that there is. Still only looking at Chaotic Evil Red Elder Wyrms, the average would only be about 3.5 million gold pieces, or a mere 350,000 oz of gold. That’s only about $850,000,000 and that is just the most average of the absolute greediest manefestations of greed that our limited minds could imagine. Most dragons would be absolutely fine with between $1,000,000 to $10,000,000. The literal manefestations of greed don’t need more than $10,000,000 according to every treasure table.
Those people that have more than 100 million dollars have already passed the greed alignment chart into Chaotic Evil. They are damn near caricatures of dragons at this point."
Marx and Engles saw these “worse than dragons” manifested in their time in the form of Rockefeller and Carnegie. I’m certain that they believed that we would never allow ourselves to be subjegated and stolen to the extent that there would be thousands of individuals whos fortunes would make Rockefeller and Carnegie blush with shame at not being as exploitative as their contemporaries.
That’s a really good illustration but also I wanted to point out that it’s not merely some people choosing to be exploitative - though there is no doubt that the likes of Zuckerberg and Bezos and the Musk are that way, ofc - but rather the system being geared to allow or even encourage thus.
e.g. Donald Trump failed at everything he did in life, and according to one analysis would have “made” 8x more money 💰 if he had simply left it in the bank 🤑 untouched by all his various bankruptcies, including somehow casinos that are basically money printers 🖨️.
They played the game sure, but someone made the game, and we all choose to watch it happen and do next to nothing about it.
very well said
At this point … the problem is not the billionaire or the idiots that rise to power … the problem is everyone everywhere looking at all this and just accepting it all as normal.
I’m not saying we should have a revolution … everyone should just be more vocal and critical about how they don’t accept any of this.
Journalists whether they are under a corporation or not should also stand up more often to either say they don’t support this or just refuse to report on all this idiocy without a critical voice.
I’m saying we should have a revolution.
Same
The journalists that do don’t get the platform of big corporations. It’s a systemic issue there as well
Many of us see the problem, Mr. Reich. We just feel powerless to do anything about it.
Ya know, I DO see a problem with that.
Me, too! I’m not okay with that one bit!
remember back before elon was a outed as a sack of shit and he sent starlinks to ukraine?
turns out russia’s got more expertise in the turning people russian dept
Eh, he was already kind of a sack of shit even then…was a big SpaceX fan and I watched his decline over the past 10 years in real time.
At this point I think rather than a decline it was a slow reveal as he got more confidence to do and say whatever he wants.
you gotta admit its funny as fuck that the us is so greedy its selling itself to one of their biggest rivals rn
I guess I don’t see the humor in giving a genocidal dictator a military advantage while fighting an offensive war.
the us did sponsor genocides all over my continent. russia dont and cant go that far so, eh.
And because of that, Putin deserves to have an advantage in his genocide of Ukrainians?
That makes no sense to me at all.
nah, you are the one not deserving of keeping an iron grip over the rest of the world. russia is a tiny problem by comparison.
I’m pretty sure I don’t have an iron grip over anything.
Also, more genocide doesn’t somehow make up for genocide.
genocide you are causing. theres not a single war right now that wasnt provoked by the us.
i guess its easy to project your brutal empire onto others.
How am I causing genocide? Who do you think you’re even talking to? I’m not a politician or in any military.
The Circassian Genocide ring any bells?
camboja, anrgentina, chile, brazil, bolivia, cuba, dominican republic, haiti, nicaragua, panama, venezuela… i could go ON, but it probably aint ringing bells because you arent taught about anywhere else.
Oh I know the US government has done shitty stuff.
You said Russia hasn’t though. And I literally gave just one example. So you were wrong
I never defended the US though
can you point me to comparable russian intervention in south america?
Honestly, why would Russia want to go after South America. They have their own neighbors to genocide. Which they’ve done repeatedly.
Again, yes, the US has done genocide and supported countless other insurrection and what not. I’m not trying to argue that.
But to think Russia is better because they haven’t touched your land specifically is crazy. Look to any of their neighbors, especially the smaller ones, and see the havoc they’ve done. Just because they don’t (fortunately) have the means or will to also fuck you also doesn’t make them better lmao
Edit: You’re complaining black bears have destroyed your stuff and would rather have non-native brown bears cause they seem cool and have never caused any trouble in your area.
Elon Musk doesn’t represent the United States. He’s just some rich fuck with his fingers in too many pies.
Some of those pies literally being American pie though
Hey, if I was the dictator of the United States, he’d be standing trial for treason right about now, but I’m not.
You mean like Pu and mafia not representing Russia or like Prigozhin not representing Pu and mafia?
-conservatives
Yes the problem is Kamala Harris who once didn’t pass the California bar test (which then she passed in a second attempt). She is ineligible! /s
I heard she never even worked at McDonald’s! Scandal!
Oligarchy and democracy are incompatible
They are the same actually.
… and China and Russia solved all these problems and more with their not-communist flavors of communism, right?
What does that have to do with what I said?
Usually, the people here complaining about democracy are tankies. Sorry, I had you miscategorized.
Elon wants to hop into politics? I’ll vote for him. Elon for Prison 2024.
At most, 12 people would vote for him.
and the conspiracy tabloids say nothing.
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They can’t because Trump has threatened to do that to them and everyone who supports them. So it would look like revenge.
Of course, his accusing his opponents of being criminal traitors is pure projection. As usual.
They can’t do it because a wannabe dictator, who managed to get the supreme court to vote that the president can do whatever the fuck they want as long as its labelled “an official act”, whose violent & “enemy within” rhetoric as escalated exponentially in recent months, whose attempted coup failed the last time… They can’t do it because it’ll look like ‘revenge’?
Do you think Trump won’t abuse the power of office the moment he’s elected again, regardless how he’s perceived?
Of course he will
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