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Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

Everyone that knows about Peter Thiel knows he's an outspoken libertarian, critic of the GOP and DNC, and that's he's homosexual. The surprise isn't that he's not a Democrat (everyone knew that) it's that Trump isn't exactly the libertarian on...any issue (at least not openly.) There is the assumption that Trump will be a major disruption to the establishment, that I have seen some libertarians and liberals both embrace.

I have a hard time believing Thiel actually embraces Trump, and it's more that he was going to be a delegate and will now be legally bound to cast his first ballot for Trump. I am frankly a fan of Thiel, a lot of people here at HN love Musk but I think Musk is a corporate welfare queen; and Thiel is not.

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Not a fan nor particularly informed on Thiel. But my brief impression is that he (also) considers himself some kind of realist. Trump is less conservative on many issues and presumably will push the republicans in that direction.

While I (unsurprisingly as a European) am far to the left in terms of what the government should do, I hate people who take advantage. But Musk mostly just had good timing (when both the space and car industry in the US was loosing momentum) and as long as you don't pretend he did it all by himself I don't see a problem with it. On the other hand you could claim that Palantir is part the military industrial complex.

> I think Musk is a corporate welfare queen

Can you elaborate on that?

People dislike that he's benefiting a lot, directly and indirectly, from government subsidies. I usually point out that oil&gas get a tremendously larger amount of subsidies, but some people counter that by saying Tesla is different because it wouldn't be feasible without the subsidies. I am not sure I see the logic in that, if anything it seems like an argument for it to have subsidies because it's creating value that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

> I usually point out that oil&gas get a tremendously larger amount of subsidie

Oil and Gas do not get direct subsidies, they get to write off capital expenses. That's completely different.

You can downvote me all you want, but writing off capital expenses is available to every business and this is always included in the "oil and gas subsidies" number people tout, because it fits an agenda of corporate welfare for everyone else. Corporate welfare should be abolished. The Oil & Gas sector did get a bailout in the early 90s, and it shouldn't have. The auto industry also shouldn't have been reaped rewards from government bailouts.

Not just oil and gas, the auto industry and aerospace (i.e. his direct competitors) have received tons of subsidies and bailouts over the years. To expect Musk to get by without any subsidies would be to hold him to a higher standard than anyone else in his industry.

All of the companies he's involved in receive government dollars, directly or indirectly through subsidies. Tesla, Space X, and SolarCity. That's 3 out of 3. Hence the moniker.

To be fair, all of those industries have had and will continue to have heavy government involvement. He didn't create the problem, although he seems to be attracted to industries which have those sorts of problems.

Only 3? What about Zip2 and PayPal?

> welfare queen

is a deeply offensive term, and even undermining to the point you are trying to make about Musk.

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