The US has spent at least 80 Billion dollars arming and supporting Ukraine in it’s defense against Russian genocidal aggression and Western expansion that puts the entire NATO block in jepordy, why is Elon fucking Musk allowed to put his thumb on the scale in favor of the enemy? Why isn’t anyone in the Biden administration tearing him a new asshole form stem to stern, why isn’t anyone in the Biden administration publicly discussing nationalizing Starlink. We’re literally throwing money into conflict (for absolutely necessary, vital, and justified reason) that one man is deciding the outcomes of, and the United States government is just … what … ok with this?
I’m just some dumbfuck but,…money?
Pretty much - Muskrat most likely privately funds (read: bribes) enough government officials to either stand by and do nothing or actively interfere.
This advisor should also consider the lack of response from the US itself as part of the problem - Muskrat is helping out an enemy, but uhhh… what the fuck did the government do to curb that shit from happening in the first place?
Friendly reminder to everyone that all politicians are corrupt pieces of shit that will sell you out in a heartbeat. I don’t know what the solution is but anyone who isn’t rich is getting absolutely fucked by our own governments.
Money from the guy who moves his companies to dodge taxes?
Oh, ha ha, not tax money, bribes to the right politicians, silly…
One thing that seems to be the case with Biden’s administration - there’s a lot going on behinds the scenes that we’re not aware of.
You’re right, there should be some life changing repercussions for Musk. Hopefully we’ll find out those are in the works.
That would require holding a billionaire accountable in some way though?
If we’ve learned anything from the Trump indictments, it takes many years to build a watertight case against somebody with lots of legal resources.
Do we need to hold Musk accountable? Yes. But also we need to do it in a way that he can’t wriggle out of, and that means years of legal work first.
It’s insane to me that the CEO of a private company can directly engage to change the outcome of a battle without the whole population completely losing their shit over it. This asshole turned off his product to intentionally prevent our ally from succeeding in a battle against our enemy. And his reason is that he was trying to prevent escalation. How the fuck is that his call to make?
concentrating wealth and power on individuals is literally the point of private property 😅
Yes. Because a lot of powerful people stand to make a shitload of money off this conflict. The longer it goes, the more weapons it requires. The more weapons it requires, the more money they make.
Isn’t most of that $80 billion in the form of weaponry ordered from US manufacturers? Or maybe I’ve misunderstood. I thought much of the cash hasn’t really left America.
But yeah, musk needs to be stopped. No one person should have so much power, it makes a joke of democracy.
Most of it is actually old equipment they’re taking out of storage. Of course the US likes to have stuff like that around for various contingencies, one of which is the exact thing it’s being used for now. So new equipment will be bought for the US military and existing equipment will be placed into a storage a little sooner than usual.
But a big chunk of that price tag is ordinance, and yeah that needs to be re-ordered right away.
But at any rate, yeah nearly all of it is from US manufacturers, though there may be a few parts and things from allies like Canada.
Spoiler: they dont want the war to end.
Why with all those billions are we relying on a private company for military communications? I’m not excusing Musk AT ALL, but communications are insanely important in a conflict. Why are these governments spending all of this money and not just doing it themselves? If the military ordered supplies from Walmart and Walmart didn’t deliver them, wouldn’t we be asking the government instead “why the hell did you do that?”
I don’t feel like nationalizing Starlink for the USA is best for everyone. It is a world-wide network, I feel like it would be better as something that isn’t controlled by any single country (but, obviously I agree it should not be controlled by a single billionaire fuck-boy either…).
Go check out who runs GPS. Starling being nationalized isn’t happening, but if it did the service would likely keep on keeping on.
GPS is quite a bit different. The satellites just orbit and send the same information out. The user device doesn’t have to send anything back - the “communication” is only 1-way. Also, GPS is significantly further out from the planet and involves a lot less satellites, so it is not really feasible to turn them off specifically targeting a small area or an individual target - you’d have to black out a huge chunk of the planet to reliably block “an enemy” from using it.
Another “liberal” who hates democracy…
Why isn’t Biden just confiscating a private company??? Are you serious?
How are these things in any way related?
Democracy - the people voting on laws; representative democracy - the people voting for representatives to vote on laws
Nationalizing a company that provides a fundamental, necessary world wide service because one man decided he could determine the outcome of a battle.
Hmm… not really sure how these two things are related.
Sure. 😉
Billionaires are not democratic.
And what do you think calling for the state to take control of a business that disagrees with it’s policy goals is?
Nationalization? That’s not a new concept.
So you’d be okay with trump nationalizing a company because it disagrees with his foreign policy?
I wouldn’t be okay with trump in the first place, so I don’t see how that’s much of a gotcha.
Of course your don’t. You’re a partisan.
It’s not so hard to understand why, have fun doing simple math…
No. The real question is why does one man, because of his wealth, have so much power over the life and death of other people he has no interest in.
Wealth and capitalism is anti-democratic. And this is a prime example.
Not directly and not necessarily.
Being a little rich isn’t a problem. Being very to insanely to disturbingly rich, that is a big problem and should be removed as a possibility by governments. Tax the shit out of people until their riches reach acceptable levels
Capitalism is only anti democratic if left unchecked. It needs to be much MUCH more limited than it currently is. But you don’t want to remove it, capitalism is -unfortunately- the most successful way of running societies. Again, you want to limit the crap out of it and right now it’s just running in stampede mode which indeed will destroy democracies
Disagree. The more disparity in wealth there is, the more anti-democratic. There are many small towns in the U.S. that are captured by a single large employer (who I guess is a “little rich”) through threats to move or lay-off workers, campaigning, “donations,” or just straight-up kickbacks to judges and law enforcement.
Capitalism is inherently anti-democratic. It creates an owner class and a worker class, and the owner class has a very large amount of power over the worker class. Something like a worker cooperative is inherently democratic (workers own and control their workplace/means-of-production, democratically).
As for “successful,” I suppose that depends on what metrics you use. I’d bet there have been other societies that were on a whole happier than capitalist industrial societies. I think we can do better than capitalism, and I think the survival of the human species depends on it. Capitalism requires unending growth to function, and I don’t think that’s sustainable on a planet with finite resources and a finite atmosphere that can only take so much greenhouse gasses being dumped in it before it causes a reduction in other resources, such as arable land.
Capitalism is inherently anti-democratic
No its not. At its core, capitalism is about allowing people to directly trade and find the most efficient solutions. This has led to the success of the west.
It creates an owner class and a worker class
Does it? I’ve been a worker. I’ve been a company owner (well, technically still am). So?! If you want to own something, you buy it.
As for “successful,” I suppose that depends on what metrics you use.
How about the metric of the largest super power in the world? How about the most advanced power in the world? How about the richest country in the world? Trust me, I’m not trying to woo the USA, it is VERY flawed with a shit tonne of problems, but it is BY FAR the most successful country in the world coming up with “yeah what metric” is bullshit. Ask a poor homeless person in the USA if they would perfer to extrange their lives with somebody in say, Niger, and I think I can be pretty sure they will say “HELLS NO” because as shitty as their lives are, its still a mile better than the alternative. The USA does not have famines.
I’d bet there have been other societies that were on a whole happier than capitalist industrial societies.
Yeah this is just plain naive. This is looking at the problems that our current societies have, and without knowing anything about the alternatives, saying “well the alternatives must be SO MUCH BETTER!” Yes, our capitalist system needs MUCH more checks and balances, we need to tax the shit out of the rich, we need less focus on material things and money and more focus on just being happy, we need universal and free healthcare, we need free education… So many problems we need to resolve…
But its NOTHING compared to how life was only a hundred years ago where people still got 12 kids because they knew that on average, 4 of them would not even reach adulthood because of diseases, famines, war and whatnot.
Say what you want about the US, and it has done some fucked up shit, but its been a pretty stabilizing force in the world. Without the US, the communist USSR would have overrun Europe and we’d all be enjoying the funs of famines, state terror (read about the chekists!) and just general misery.
There are no other countries that match the successes of capitalism, period…
Now, you want to talk on really how to improve societies?
Try north European countries. Socialist countries that use their capitalist systems to fund their socialist ways. THAT, I believe, is the solution. Control wealth with taxes, but let people free to do what they want. Educate people, have a shared political power system (and not the winner-takes-all shit like everywhere in the Americas) so that you have political stability, use the power from limited and capped capitalism to fund things like free healthcare, free education, a strong army for defense (unfortunately still required)… That will make hte world a better place.
No its not. At its core, capitalism is about allowing people to directly trade and find the most efficient solutions.
No, that’s the idea of free-markets. You can have free-markets without capitalism, and you can have capitalism without free-markets (such as State Capitalism). Capitalism is about using wealth (capital) to acquire the means-of-production (capital assets), and hiring and paying workers less than the value of their labor to make profit. It is inherently anti-democratic because the workers have little-to-no say on what labor they do within the company, how their labor should be used, who should manage the various parts of the company, etc.
This has led to the success of the west.
The West has been very “successful” before capitalism. I’m more in favor of the hypotheses from Guns, Germs, and Steel (for the most part, geography, climate, and natural resources has determined the fate of the nations). There are many very poor capitalist nations after all. Most the wealth of those nations seems to be funneled into the hands of the owning class in rich nations.
Does it? I’ve been a worker. I’ve been a company owner (well, technically still am). So?! If you want to own something, you buy it.
Yes, it does. When you make money from the labor of others, you are in the owning class. I am also, personally, in the owning class. I suppose there is some gray area with 401ks and stock options, but those amounts of ownership are often very low compared to outside investors, founders, executives, so they have virtually no voting power.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Social Democracy, which northern European nations are close to, is preferable to the extremely weak regulatory and welfare state the U.S. has; but Democratic Socialism would further reduce exploitation, IMO.
I’m also no fan of the USSR or China, and do not even consider them to be leftist governments (the State owns much of the means of production, not the workers, which is antithetical to leftism). I consider them to be authoritarian State Capitalist nations.
The academic model of capitalism has safeguards in place to prevent the shitshow we’re living in now. Leave it to us Americans to knock off those safeguards because we’re greedy as hell.
Yes, so is individual freedom.
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Not without grassroots movements and uprisings. Especially when it comes to stuff like labour laws and slavery. If factory owners got their way, we would still have worked 12 hour workdays 7 days a week. The wealth was not shared with the people, anything gained was taken by force in the form of unrest and movements. In many ways the French Revolution was the subtle threat to every nation unless they gave the people what they wanted.
Then not to mention stuff like women’s rights and civil rights, which were not given thanks to wealth, but again due to grassroot movements and civil unrest. In many ways we still are facing tons of inequality today, due to the profit incentive of the people with wealth. See rising wealth inequality for example. If wealth and capitalism is what gave regular people political power, why do we not see this trend continue today?
If anything, I’d argue we got democracy and political power in spite of capitalism and concentration of wealth. Maybe it has more to do with the developed technology than with the economic system. Stuff like the printing press and easier access to knowledge. Requiring an educated populace to operate factories and producing more complex technological items. These kinds of stuff paving the way towards people getting “funny ideas” and thinking back on their position in the world, no longer accepting what was the status quo, but instead striving for something better.
I’d even argue that today’s capitalism is a compromise, because the people in power tried their hardest to stay in power, but not the ideal that we could have had.
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Rulers also knew that if they ended up behind other countries they would end up crushed by economics or times of war. Technology was vital long before democracy got its hold in the modern age. The industrial revolution happened under the British monarchy, after all. Did they block that development? The printing press was also created under the holy Roman empire, long before capitalism, and we can see how well that went with many monarchies trying to suppress it. Maybe they tried, but they failed.
Don’t look at the answer starting from capitalism and working backwards. History is much more nuanced than “the system we have right now is the best and is what caused good things”. It very well could be that the system itself is mostly coincidental, or due to parallell historical factors.
And technology would have been developed no matter the economic or political system. As it did, and as it does. As long as people researching new things get sufficient time and resources to do so. And they do, and did, because being more technologically advanced makes you stronger compared to others.
I mean, hell, saying capitalism is what solely incentivized development is completely ignoring how many resources state actors are pouring into science even today. From the US military to the global academic network. It wasn’t very different back then, at the start of capitalism. Philosophy traces back to ancient Greece, after all, and exists everywhere in between.
My whole point is that saying that “capitalism gave us political power” is the too simple answer. And I argue against it, because it posits capitalism as this objective good that should stay when that is not certain. And it may well be what is actually standing in the way of democracy. Maybe political power would have been spread to the people quicker if it were not for capitalism, hard to say, because capitalism quickly entrenched itself in the whole world. But history can give us clues.
In the end, it’s important to not necessarily attribute too much to capitalism, because, well, we live in, and have been, surrounded by capitalism our whole lives. With no part of the world really escaping it. We don’t have anything else to compare to, as we only have one world. We are always looking from a capitalistic point of view by default. But maybe there is more to everything than just capitalism.
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It wasn’t capitalism. The Soviets had science, technology and progress without it. That doesn’t excuse all the bad, oppressive, authoritarian things. Just blows holes in your claims.
The same could be said for China, ignoring their atrocities. And yeah you could even say that about the US too if you ignore their copious atrocities. So it isn’t something endemic to capitalism
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The hole is yours. I’m afraid I understand the reason perfectly well. It’s largely the same reason that the United States is falling right now. And the fall China is cruising towards as well.
Let’s pretend you were right about the Soviet Union. You’d still be wrong regardless. Social and scientific progress were everywhere even before capitalism was a twinkle in the eye of the fool that coined the term. It was happening in the renesance, under any number of monarchs and even the church. Capitalism accelerated and encouraged none of it realistically.
Capitalism didn’t industrialize the United States either. The whole world was industrializing. It just happened in America DESPITE capitalism. Americas success in the 20th century has nothing to do with capitalism. It’s more a function of being as far as geographically possible from 2 of the worst wars in human history so far. Combined with untold stolen natural resources.
Wealth and capitalism replaced one group of antidemocratic oligarchs with another. Nothing more nothing less.
They all do, this action is just more obvious.
Wait, are you saying Elon Musk’s actions directly resulted in innocent women and children being murdered?
It would be terrible if more people started saying that Elon Musk murdered innocent women and children.
The murder is kinda still Putin’s doing but he supported it.
These stories about how much of a piece of shit Musk is have been piling up for years now. I think people driving around in Teslas are going to get some damage done to their cars soon.
Needless violence against cars will affect Musk in no way whatsoever. Please direct your anger in a more productive direction
If say the Proud Boys opened up a car manufacturing plant and started producing cars, would it also be wrong to do “violence” (lmao) against people driving their cars? Where do you draw the line? Musk is much more damaging to society with his mainstreaming of fascist, machismo, white supremacist takes than the Proud Boys are, but I bet you’d have no problem with that.
And do you really think making people second guess buying a Tesla wouldn’t hurt Musk whatsoever?
I think it would behoove you to stop with this kind of negative thinking. Yes, Musk is bad. Yes, he owns Tesla. But promoting acts of violence like that will not make the world a better place, nor will it discourage people from buying Teslas
You just keep saying violence, no matter what, is bad, which I know you and no one else believes. You’re lying to defend Musk and people supporting Musk. What reasoning do you have that acts of violence against Tesla and Tesla owners won’t make the world a better place? You seem to be relying heavily on the childish idea that violence is bad no matter what, which again you don’t believe. And of course if violence is directed to people who drive Tesla’s or their cars, people would absolutely be discouraged from buying Tesla and in return hurting Musk. We all know this, but here you are lying again.
You’re arguing in bad faith because you have nothing to counter anything I’m saying.
A lot of Teslas are old enough that some of the people driving them probably bought them used. Also while id be perfectly fine with people for example smashing the screens on tesla charging stations cause I find it funny, it is rather counter productive to attack car owners. I drive a Jeep, Jeep is owned by GM and GM is a shit company would you damage my car even though its old enough to drink and GM saw none of the money from me buying it.
Irregardless if you wanted to damage Tesla park a faulty model S near their factory, its libel to explode and that would be a PR fuckfest.
Honestly there are enough non-critical thinking reactionaries these days that would rush out to buy Teslas the moment they heard they could upset someone on the other side for doing it that the impact to sapes might not be as high as you would hope and the increase to service requests for Teslas would probably generate a lot of revenue as paint and tire replacements tend to be way higher on lrofit margins than you think
There aren’t even close to enough of them. They’re not going to trade in their Ford F-900 for a “wimpy, girly” Tesla no matter what Musk does. They’d much rather be seen as manly and tough than backing Musk. He doesn’t have the cult leader following like Trump does.
Mmmm maybe… I know that honestly his right wing pushes in policy have impacted sales but I wonder if it would be enough to actually tip any scale or just be a rounding error that gets people fired and jobs compressed to save more money
I’d rather not phrase it this way because it’s true. The point of this structure is that it was always bullshit.
It’s not straight up murder. I might have some (limited) sympathy for Elon in this case. But he should be able to see past the first action in that series of events. I believe he was dumb enough to not think of more than the surface (more on that later). If he’s not that dumb, then he truly is evil. Those submarines are not defensive.
I think he’s managed to surround himself with alt-right grifters* who have him truly believing most of the absolute bullshit they spout. This doesn’t excuse him for what he’s doing to the world on their behalf.
*These grifters don’t necessarily go after money directly. They also grift to direct his influence and money to their causes.
Elon Musk is afraid of Putin’s revenge. Crucial infrastructure like Starlink should be handled by the government, not a corp. Otherwise the corp will prioritize shareholders and profit rather than human’s life
Putin 100 percent has kompromat on Musk. Likely the pedophile shit he did with Trump and Epstein.
I’m so tired of these literal cartoon villains having power I stg
I think he’s basically gullible. His companies have given him so much money, he just assumes he’s right. However he doesn’t understand diplomacy and Putin played him. He should have deferred to the state department, who deal with that BS all the time
A couple of years ago, Musk stated that Putin is substantially richer than he is.
Add to that Putin’s bloodthirsty lunacy. Musk may actually fear his wrath.
But then comes the issue, which government? As Starlink is global infrastructure.
Pretty sure he’s talking about the government of the country the company is registered in. As the is the only one that can realistically nationalise it.
Starlink is only ‘global’ as long as Elon approves of the GPS coordinates. With that in mind, ‘global’ is about a joke, it’s at Elon’s whim…
So, explain to me how Elon should not be considered a strategic target now? He is materially supporting the Ruzzians by killing innocent civilians. He cannot be ignored at this point.
It seems he should be considered an obvious target by anyone who wishes to support the Ukranian defense. Maybe someone close enough to him supports Ukraine and will see a moral obligation (and opportunity) to defend Ukraine.
Russia is a sanctioned nation with a public history of cyber attacks and false flag attacks on Americans. They also openly meddled in the 2016 and 2020 elections (thank fuck they didn’t pull 2020 successfully).
Providing aid and comfort to Russian military and political figures is explicitly treason.
I think I recall the punishment for treason is pretty stiff. The day he is held accountable will be a day for celebration.
I’m amazed US DOD hasn’t torn him a new asshole considering they’re now paying to use Starlink in Ukraine. Musks ability to decide how Starlink should be used is a clear security risk.
If he’d have just been smart and quietly sucked the government teat, he’d be set with DoD contracts.
Agreed! At this point, the DoD would be ignorant to not prioritize their own development of an LEO network. Once in place, they could dislodge or remove any of Elon’s floating shitballs to prioritize the safe operation of their own, citing national security. Fuck Elon.
Ha. You can make the R and L smaller.
(And he’s not a communist, exact opposite of it.)
Musk is everything but a communist
The US should nationalize Starlink. If private business decisions are going to undermine world stability then those decisions are antithetical to any kind of peace and need to be treated as the threat that they are. A single person picking sides shouldn’t result in a casual body count that Elon never is punished for but it now does and he looks to be getting away with actual manslaughter.
The response we’ll see is the DoD making their own Starlink, but with $500 toilet seats and $100 hammers. Aw, forget the Starlink, we’ll just do those.
God damn that was so well said. All I could come up with was “Fuck Elon Musk”.
Yeah, “cocktail of ignorance and big ego” is a perfect description of Musk.
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He’s a saboteur. Detain the mother fucker and try him for treason. At the very least, his removal from his companies is paramount to national security at this point.
No, no, you don’t understand…he’s rich.
Its interesting that he’s poking the marshmallow here, because Musk can still turn off Starlink, or make it unusable for Ukraine as much as his contract with DoD allows. This implies that Ukraine screamed bloody murder about this months ago, and DoD has given them gear to be able to bypass Starlink.
I think DoD also doesn’t like Elon having this kind of power, and allowed him to be a stopgap now that they never plan to use again. It’s interesting from a geopolitical and financial perspective for Starlink; they blew it and they’re not a future reliable partner for taking Russia’s side.
A lot of people are missing the big picture here. Look up Starshield. SpaceX is aggressively hiring for the Starlink DoD edition essentially. I suspect the US govt is not as worried about this as you think
I’d say at least that’s a black eye. Good observation about the Starshield stuff.
Ukraine should make sure he doesn’t do that again
I’ve been trying to find the source but I’m certain Ukraine have developed their own… Technologies now? That their drones rely on. If I dig it up ill edit this post.
Edit, found it was a video I’d heard it from. A combination of technology.
Reporting from Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNhc8beBdD0
Meaning?
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Why are we getting him high first?
So we can drop Joe Rogan off with him at the same time.
So he’s less capable of surviving?
Whether or not any of this bullshit is true, I’m just glad that there’s growing distain for billionaires.
“But wait, there’s more!”
Seems to be the to not only be a famous line from the late Billy Mayes, but also the correct response when someone is disgusted by what a shit person Musk is…
Didn’t think “Child Murderer” was going to wind up on his sin list.
At least we have a public confession, try him.
Starlink is a great system. The problem is its idiot owner, Musk, who is more worried how the use of Starlink in the Ukraine is going to affect his company stock. You’re in the big leagues now, Elmo. You cant “sort of” commit to a war unless you’re a rich Saudi dilettante, who wants to try his hand at international shiat-stirring.
