what continues to stun me is how tone-deaf his efforts are. Is he trying to be genuinely liked or is he trying to prove that he's funny" and "cool"? Popping up on stage unannounced at a comedy show of all places, to deliver a catchphrase from 2 decades ago was not going to end well.

There’s a clear pattern of Musk forcing himself into places he doesn’t belong and no one wants him, and it never ends well for anyone involved.

In a desperate scenario in which it was considered highly likely that all those kids would be unable to be rescued alive from the cave by any means at all, Musk said something to the effect of we have engineering and production resources at Tesla, we'll try and come up with a capsule in case it may be useful, and quickly built and delivered a device after close consultation with members of the rescue team on the ground, and also supplied various other forms of equipment and expertise.

Luckily the kids were rescued and the capsule wasn't needed.

That diver said Musk should 'stick his submarine where it hurts' - for no good reason.

As I said, Musk's reaction was inappropriate and he's paid a big price for it, but it was hardly without provocation.

They are the symptom of any society which allows unlimited private ownership of cooperations. Just by probability alone some companies will grow by billions and any major owner will become a billionaire.

>we should probably just tax net worth over a billion at 100%.

Which, in this case, is totally equivalent to the government seizing Tesla or SpaceX. Billionaires do not have billions in cash, they are billionaires because they own assets, likely not very liquid, worth billions.

I really hate to be shilling for rich people, but "disown them" is not the solution. The real problem with billionaires is that they are both extremely powerful and unaccountable. Both of which is the fault of the political class, which both shields the rich from accountability and gives them power. The informal power is the problem here.

There is also a qualitative difference here. The billionaire who became a billionaire, because he built up a long term productive company and the billionaire who won in the positive EV Casino (the stock market) are not the same. The former might even be deserving (although I do not really like that word in this context) of some influence, as a legitimate representative of corporate interests.

As ideally we could separate these two forms of power and achieve the removal of the unaccountable informal power… but the sort of large scale socioeconomic and sociopolitical reforms needed to do this honestly seem harder to achieve than just taxing the billionaires till they aren’t billionaires anymore. Maybe then we’ll be in a position to try and start the reforms and could have the sort of world where money doesn’t buy you unaccountable power… but I think that’s not something that would be achievable in my lifetime.

Why?

>legal bribery like funding opposition environmental studies to block competition or funding lawsuits to change laws they don’t like or anything else they can legally leverage that financial wealth for.

Make it illegal, you are literally listing the specific things which shouldn't happen. Where is the problem?

>but the sort of large scale socioeconomic and sociopolitical reforms needed to do this

You just gave a list of issues. Ban every billionaire from contributing to lawsuits. Ban them from "donating" to anything and actuslly punish them for violating the law.

>just taxing the billionaires till they aren’t billionaires anymore.

This is just seizing corporations by the government. And the problem is that you expect politicans to move against their benefactors.

The problem is that people who have the power to make it illegal are the same people who profit from it not being illegal.

EDIT: your username is so emo, lol. I love it.

If you can't even do the later the former is obviously impossible.

> He spent three days on life support in a hospital in Orange County before we made the decision to take him off it. I held him in my arms when he died.

The reason people put these high limits is they think it will never concern them. But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100%; or maybe forbid wealth altogether. Or at least we should discuss that, instead of billion limits that may only affect a few people -- people who will never be part of the discussion in the first place.

– roughly after Phil Zimmerman

Thanks, I don‘t like that future.

Don‘t get me wrong, I‘m all for progressive and _way_ higher taxes, but this extreme would do the opposite of what you want.

I'm not saying a hard cap on wealth is the best way to achieve this or that achieving any form of control of private power that doesn't turn authoritarian is possible, but in general, I'm against using these types of "you can't make the thing we do regulated, because then only criminals will do it" argument. Beer, recreational weed and medical services tightly regulated and we don't see massive crime rings build on top of them. If we regulate wealth to such a degree that most people feel like it's fair, it'll be difficult to establish proper crime syndicates around it - the question of how to keep a state that can do this effectively from being authoritarian is a much better question to raise

So regardless of what you consider the right answer to the question (it's pretty tough to support without major caveats in my opinion), they are not at all the same and it actually comes across as an subtle attempt to reduce any potential support by muddying the waters, regardless of what you were actually trying to do.

Day to day citizens won’t care and would probably get behind it because its easy to point at bad billionaires who only did bad stuff because they had billions to do those things with. And tax revenue would help their lives so great … tax the rich … easy sell.

The millionaires are basically just upper middle class these days, they might think differently but it’s not hard to construct arguments based on their real life and use things they care about to get them to agree.

The multimillionaires are the toughest sell, but i think it’s probably doable. They aren’t yet detached from reality, they have causes they care about they can’t single handily bankroll. they haven’t gotten rich enough the tenth generation of their families may never need to work, they can be reasoned with.

The hundred million plus will probably on average hate the idea as they are probably in general looking at the continuation of their net worth growth and considering themselves as likely be eventually billionaires themselves… on average. Some will be on board, maybe even a significant percentage but I think the majority wont. The thing is about critical mass. With even a modest percentage of these people and all the rest…

With that aggregate group you can use democracy to make things happen even with the billionaires trying to buy the system. There are rich people on board to pay for counter media propaganda and the voting class do matter to their elected representatives as those people worry about getting votes next time.

A wealth tax at say a hundred million is so much harder to sell than at a billion.

And that’s all before you’d get into how it was structured. It would be almost impossible for the world to stop billionaires hoarding wealth in some foxhole full of gold and diamonds and valuable art and so on… but even just capping personal wealth at a billion and forcing the rest of their wealth into trusts and companies would likely be a net good as the army of money managers and businessmen would spread that money further around the economy than a single billionaire ever could.

In coastal cities, sure. Beyond that, most people understand the cost of a Prohibition-style war on private wealth.

But don't you think it's a little too easy to select the number so that there are so few people impacted that their opinion on the matter won't count either way? And so that you personal won't be impacted either?

This isn’t about who’s allowed to marry or what religious beliefs you can have… it’s should you be entitled to make more money in interest than the average citizen can earn in their entire lifetime. At some point surely you think there’s enough money and they don’t need more? Perhaps you think it should be ten or a hundred billion?

For me I think it’s a billion in today’s money (roughly, since money is obviously fluctuating) and I say that even though I grew up with the hustle and grind startup mentality as my ideal and dreaming of striking it rich with a startup and becoming a billionaire based on some crazy smart idea and tons of hard work… I’ve wizened with age and I think a billion is more than enough. 20 year old me might not have but 20 year old me was also burning out my mind overworking myself trying to find a way to make myself rich… to be honest 20 year old me was an idiot for not seeing how the system of global finance works and thinking a tech startup was the path to riches. Should have gone for fame and smart financial management of the short term fame related income followed by careful fostering of a lifestyle brand focused on licensing out the perceived reputation.

For example, many (most? all?) farms are worth more than a million, who should own these?

If one wants to start a new venture that requires more than $1e6 to start (say a new factory), how would funding work?

Don't expect a cogent, sensible answer to that question.

It’s leg work, forensic accountants and laws that demand accountability. If the government thinks your cheating your taxes people are tasked to investigate… if the government suspects your cheating the 100% billionaire tax they would assign people to the task and investigate.

I don’t know why people pretend this has to be special… like billionaires are supervillains with unbelievable power to conceal their globe spanning networks and operations.

I meant how would ownership of companies work? If a company is worth 100 billion ($1e11), does that mean you need 100 000 people who together own that company (and nothing else)? If it has a good month and becomes worth more, you need to find more people?

Capping wealth at a billion has a couple of icky practicalities, but I can definitely understand why you would want to do this. There are less than a thousand billionaires in the USA right now, if we can radically improve wealth equality by affecting that many people it seems like a good trade, and those people are still filthy rich at the end of the process.

But if you cap it at a million, I start to see things that require millionaires. Starting large companies and family owned farms are two of them. I'm genuinely curious what alternatives to millionaires we have there.

Are you (or bambax) arguing for straight up communism, where everything is owned "communally" or by the state?

If it worked with strait income it wouldn’t be too hard but at the level of wealth we’re talking about most of the money isn’t income it’s just capital… a big pile of capital assets of value they have control over which they can leverage small portions off to take loans against for cash to do whatever they want at an interest rate lower than the rate of growth in the value of their capital assets… because they’re never a risky loan applicant and the whole system tilts towards them almost as if money had some weird form of financial gravity.

So while I’m no super genius economist and political wizard with all the answers to how it can be done, I just think it’s important we recognise that there’s a point where these people have so much money the system is broken for them and if we believe in the equality of all people, that all people are born equal, we should be trying to change the system in a way to rectify the problems their wealth causes.

There would be years of arguing all the details about trusts and percentages and inheritance and family control and super PACs and even if it’s constitutionally allowed since there’s precedent that money is speech and this could be argued to be an unreasonable restriction on the sort of speech (money) a person can have (not more than a billion dollars worth)… it’s a massively complicated question I’m just saying I think we can agree it’s well and truly kicked in by the time you have a billion dollars and maybe we can all get together and work out a way we agree on that stops people getting more power and money for free due to capital interest rate returns each day than many of us will ever have in a lifetime.

All people should have equal opportunity, free from prejudice, sexism, etc. But all people are not born equal.

Equality in rights, does not mean people are identical.

Where I live, taxes become crazy high if single, and with imcome over 100k. So I just work less.

And I get paid well, for I am exceptionally good at what I do. This means that by taking more of my money, simply because I choose to excel, the government has taken part of my labour, right off the market.

The skills they so very much desire, are diminished.

People blather on about billionaires, and how the wealth should be redistributed. I've done the math. Take all that wealth, and in 1 year it is gone, forever, never to return, and it barely makes a dent in anything.

Communism just doesn't work, because it removes that drive, that zen to compete, that desire to build from people.

It just smacks of jealousy to me.

As a reference point, a retirement account funded with $1,000,000, designed to support a $50,000 annual spend (inflation-adjusted), only has a 75% chance of lasting 30 years before the money runs out. (per default parameters on https://cfiresim.com)

A more realistic concern would be that if you set a 100% wealth tax for all wealth exceeding a million dollars, rich people would just structure their wealth so they don't exceed that cap. In most cases that wealth is primarily in companies (i.e. profiting off other people's labor). So if want to place a ceiling cap on "how much money you can have" (figuratively, let's not pretend this is ever about cash on hand) we'd also need better transparency for corporate ownership.

Personally I think a 100% wealth tax as a "maximum amount of money an individual can have" is a red herring and while wealth taxes are certainly a way to skim some of that surplus value siphoned off by people who own companies (speaking as a company owner myself to be clear), it's just a band aid for the underlying problem.

In my opinion the only logical solution is to abolish individual ownership of companies, effectively requiring all corporations to operate as cooperatives. This isn't an "easy answer" as there are clearly a lot of nuances to what the laws would need to specify in order to make this happen, and it's clearly in stark opposition to how company ownership works in most places today, but it's the only way to fix the problem of excessive wealth accumulation, if we view it as a real problem.

I suspect that the answer does not lie in an absolute number but more in a 99th or even 95th percentile sort of way.

Were you one of those defending him when he was calling random people on Twitter pedos to his 50 million followers?

Were you also one of those who believed his cars were gonna drive themselves?

Here's what Musk said about ElonJet six weeks ago (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456): "My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk"

Is he worried about his haters getting a hold of anti-air weaponry or something?

https://www.thewrap.com/yoel-roth-twitter-elon-musk-death-th...

And do you think that is consistent with an originalist view of the 2nd amendment?

If the current conservative justices believe any weapons at all should can be banned (which they said they do—of course they could always be lying) then you have to think they believe a MANPAD can.

I detect some irony.

But I will say I'm not trying to be clever here and ask some sort of leading questions - I really just wonder what limits there actually are now. I doubt any of the federal weapons laws of the 20th century could be passed and deemed constitutional here in the 21st. But if they make full-auto small arms as easy to buy as semi-auto, I'd definitely pick something up.

So my guess is no, not without a license that you aren’t going to get unless you have a legitimate business interest, e.g., manufacturing them to sell the the military.

Edit: I once saw people live firing WW2 anti-tank artillery somewhere in Nevada or some similar, desert-ish place. So, if a modern Gepard is out of the question, maybe a WW2 8.8 flak cannon would qualify as a historical collection piece?

There have been tens of recorded cases of this every day for decades in the US alone, but not a single recorded accident.

The idea that someone could meaningfully endanger Elon by pointing a laser pointer at his private jet is pants-on-head crazy. What next? Oil slicks on his driveway? Perhaps slowly poison him by idling a car in front of his house? Second hand smoking?

I'd extend that with:

- Anything that makes fun of Elon.

- Anything that calls out Elon or rebukes Elon's statements.

Being a billionaire is like ascending to a higher plane of financial being where the trivialities of normal day to day expenses no longer matter to you. Unless you do really stupid things with that money it’s almost impossible for a billionaire to get poorer.

It’s a limit break on the functionality of capitalist society which regardless of the ethics of capitalism itself requires some sort of nerf/patch to prevent the billionaires from exploiting the rest of us and preventing us from striving to be what we want, wether that be a broke artist or a multi millionaire real estate developer.

I don't think any business should be allowed to grow above a certain size. I believe it's a massive net negative for society. I'd support a taxation system that prevents such an occurrence or nationalisation where the service is vital and economies of scale are beneficial.

When they reach a certain size businesses begin to distort the functioning of the free market. At this scale their sudden downfall would destabilise large sections of the economy. Therefore profit is siphoned into private hands until such an event whereupon society foots the bill.

A network of smaller businesses precludes this from happening. Any failure that affects enough of them to cause the same level destabilisation is likely to be a societal issue rather than mismanagement and would therefore be more deserving of public funds.

Smaller businesses also have less influence over politics.

How does politicians profiting from them solve anything.

My comment that you replied to is calling out whywhywhywhy's comment as bad faith because it's conflating tax collection with corruption, but says nothing that's specific to taxing billionaires. Your comment also doesn't say anything regarding taxing billionaires specifically.

By building systems where teachers are not held accountable for output of their work you just have a broken system that doesn't help anyone.

Roads are a very small amount of tax money, not worth mentioning.

Without the tax funded school I, and the vast majority of my peers there, likely wouldn't be literate or numerate. I wouldn't have been in a position to win the lottery of a private school bursary.

The quality of the teachers at the the private school was certainly a little better but the worst were about as bad as any public school and the best not much better. The main difference was simply the level of funding.

> By building systems where teachers are not held accountable for output of their work you just have a broken system that doesn't help anyone.

I've found that teachers are the biggest critics of these systems. Rather it's the general public and administrators that have decided the role of the teacher is to do little more than act out a pre-defined curriculum with zero individual agency. In such an arrangement there's no individual output to judge.

Those choices aren't a feature of tax funded schooling. They're administrative/societal decisions to structure schooling in a particular way. It does not follow that schools must be structured this way if funded through taxes.

> Roads are a very small amount of tax money, not worth mentioning.

On a state level they're roughly ~6% of total expenditure. 3% greater than policing or prisons and only 3% lower than healthcare or education. Total expenditure >$200 billion total in 2019[0].

I don't think I've ever met a person who believes their roads to be particularly well maintained, which would point to a much larger figure being required to adequately maintain the infrastructure. It should also be noted that the $200b figure is pre-infrastructure bill.

[0] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

Then we're in agreement that taxes are a necessity. Can we also agree that taxes should be collected fairly (even if we might disagree on what a fair balance might be)?

"Really stupid things" like buying a social media company?

You’d think they would have risen up and stopped these new people from becoming rich. How hard could it have been?

[0] don’t righty know if anyone was a billionaire in the 70s

Just because you own a company doesn't mean you have instant access to its value in cash.

If Musk wants to spend $100M tomorrow on a frivolity, he can.

> use a brand new luxury car as a dinner table … every day

then you will have to find a way on how to repay that money back to the bank.

And Elon literally was able to leverage billions of dollars to buy out Twitter (and then saddle Twitter itself with most of that debt because leveraged buyouts are a thing). He wasn't able to leverage that kind of money because his creditors think he'd do a so much better job at running the company. He was able to do it because they figured he'll be able to make sure they'd gain more from giving him the money than holding onto it. It's not a meritocracy.

Heck, ultimately this is what political power boils down to: not how much you have but how much you can do. And billionaires can do a lot more than a single person with a net worth closer to the median. Framing that in terms of purchase power is just a visual shorthand that's easier to understand without unravelling how the entire system operates.

Everyone knew he was a thin skinned hypocrite who only ever meant free speech for things he agrees with. The news here is the proof.

Actually, the freedom is freedom from consequences (other than speech in return or being listened to or not).

If you're a dick, I need the freedom to say so, to encourage a boycott of your restaurant, to not invite you to parties, to protest your public appearances. All of those are consequences and important freedoms.

If you want to go down the everything has consequences route then there is no distinction between free speech and anything else in the universe so it's not really worth bothering with.

- it is not listened to

- it is listened to

- there is speech in return to the speaker

Boycotts are based on the freedom to buy what one wants, but when they are mandated then they're not. They can be used to try and stop someone speaking, then they're against free speech. If they're not used in that way then fine.

Being shunned is not being spoken to or listened to which is freedom of speech.

It's not like anyone has the money in cash you know.

You should rephrase your statement to "nobody needs more than a billion dollar stake in one or more companies". That is more realistic, and maybe a better discussion can come out of that one.

The literal opposite is true. If he has to sell his stocks it means he does not have it in cash. If you are using your house as collataral, you do it precisely because you lack the money in cash.

The only way to reduce his networth bellow a billion is seizing stock in his companies grom him. Him paying money is the exact same thing, just with an additional (likely devastating, for him and the company) step.

The real question is whether you want the government seizing corporations from individuals.

It’s important to note that the USA is one of the only countries that expects overseas citizens to file tax reporting paperwork. Normally this is perfunctory stuff. But the key is that it’s law that living full time outside the USA doesn’t mean you have any loopholes for skipping the paperwork… The IRS is uniquely positioned under current law to enforce a global jurisdiction wealth tax on US Citizens … and since the USA already requires a payment for processing the renouncing of citizenship, you could just as easily place a punitive sized fee or fine for obviously renouncing citizenship to avoid paying billionaire taxes.

But once one country moves toward this sort of law I think others would follow. We have international law organisations that are used for tracking financial criminals and if more countries had similar laws these international organisations would gradually be more and more useful in ensuring billionaires can’t just stash money in overseas banks markets trusts and assets.

And I think that is the main point that needs to be discussed.

WE

DON'T

NEED

BILLIONAIRES

Do you ever wonder how the people with your mentality cope with moving the goal posts? RE: "billionaires are a symptom of a broken society. No one needs more than 999 million"

Do you think that in the 1920s people said the same thing but changed it to millionaire and 999 thousand? How far back do you think we need to go in time before the same was said about a thousandaire? I would guess the 1200s.

He's just promoting geo-stalking/gps tracking Elon.

But he can still do it on Mastodon so his rights are not curtailed.

Nobody is saying that they are. They are saying, however, that this is a serious about-face from what Elon has claimed in the past. He rode into twitter on a high horse and has walked back pretty much everything he's said since.

Because it's public information that's literally broadcast to anyone listening by every aircraft above a certain size/speed. This isn't information that is considered secret or even that one needs to dig to expose, the aircraft is actively transmitting regular messages containing its location, heading, and speed to anyone within radio range which can be tens or hundreds of miles depending on altitude.

Rather like Keir Starmer and the UK Labour Party.

Starmer is leader of the opposition party in the UK, he was elected leader by Labour party members after making ten pledges, all quite socialist / left wing, but since becoming leader he's basically reversed every previous position he's claimed to have and is now taking centrist and even right of centre positions - upsetting many who voted for him (while others, though not me, say it's needed to attract more center/right votes in the next election).