Somebody sells a tesla and then buys something from you with that money... and now you're contributing to musk's empire. Our money is set up so that you're not in a position to consent to it or even be aware of it.

Sounds like I sold something and therefore made money! glad to hear my business is doing well.

Sure, but at what cost? Maybe you made $10, by doing so did you enable musk to do $9 of harm to you, or was it $11?

Almost certainly less than $1.

What kind of harm do you have in mind here?

Stuff like influencing the government to eliminate NIH funding for vaccine research so that that I have to worry about whether my niece will get measles and end up with brain damage.

I don't think I enable that in any meaningful amount by taking money from a person that used to have a tesla.

And if they only gave me $60 or so, and I made $10, I find it extremely unlikely the amount of harm tied back to musk is also in the range of $10.

Also sorry to be blunt but in the vaccine situation I almost entirely blame the person directly in charge of your niece's vaccinations.

You don't enable it by taking money from a person that used to have a Tesla. The point was that you have to do what musk says, and musk told you you have to sell stuff to people who used to have Teslas (that's what giving money is).

> The point was that you have to do what musk says

What?? Where did this come from??

> you have to sell stuff to people who

I'm selling pizzas or something. I'm already willing to sell to basically anyone. Why would he have to order me to sell the things I'm selling?

If I buy a twitter check I'm contributing meaningfully to musk. If I just participate in society then the amount my transactions enrich musk might not be 0 but it's pretty close to 0. Me doing an ordinary sale at my unrelated business where I make $10 is not enabling anywhere near $10 of harm to me from musk. Nor $10 of harm to people in general from musk.

You're not accounting for all of the government contracts that US taxpayers fund.

> Are y'all really buying Teslas and blue twitter checks? The fact that he has a bunch of money really has no bearing on me.

The lives of many people who have never given Elon Musk a dime have been materially worsened by the fact that he has a bunch of money, since that money bought political power and he used it in a way that was very destructive to a lot of people across the globe.

Happy for you that you weren't impacted, but a lot of people were and still will be.

The whole society is pandering to the people with the most money, you can't separate yourself from that. For instance more of your customers - no matter what you do - are Musk fans because that's what gives them money and makes them more likely to become a customer.

I don't care that my customers are Musk fans (or Taylor Swift fans or Yankees fans). That has no effect on me.

> not contributing to musk's empire

You are if you've got a 401(k), just not voluntarily.

The SpaceX IPO is basically a scam designed to force pension funds to buy in before the stock price falls to where it should be.

Not meaningfully, not yet, and pension funds are entirely capable, like the SP500, of choosing not to invest in SPCX if they don't want to.