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Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

Few Americans have done more than musk to destroy state capacity and to enable corruption on a massive scale, all while enriching himself to an unprecedented degree. That's great for him and his cronies that he has gotten so wealthy doing it, but he's been a huge net-negative to most humans.

I get that rockets are cool and a lot of people in the tech bubble think that starlink is the greatest thing ever, but most people don't care about that nearly as much as they care about seeing their children die from preventable diseases he cut the funding for or getting violently ill because he drove thousands of food inspectors and researchers out of a job.

Handling the enormous federal debt that he continues to play a part in worsening is going to very painful in the long run.

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So where is the guy who is respectful to the government and compliant with regulations that is out there building millions of EVs, rockets, and massive satellite constellations? If he existed I could respect your argument. But in reality the only guy who seems to be able to build a modern mass manufacturing company in the US is the trillionaire who runs roughshod over all forms of government oversight that gets in his way. That should tell you something about where the problem lies here.

Elon Musk isn't the problem, he is the symptom. The problem is that it is basically required to be ruthless and corrupt to get anything done in this country at the scale, price, and timeline needed to be commercially viable. The solution is less regulation and bureaucracy, not more.

he's in china working on trains and renewable energy

rockets and wifi satellites are only solving problems because corporations have sucked public infrastructure dry for generations

ah yes the "wifi" satellites

yeah yeah you're being reductive because you want to dismiss it, but that's essentially what they are... it's not like the dude is solving world hunger (which he is uniquely resourced to actually do), he wants to be space AT&T and is capitalizing on the degradation of public infrastructure using the funding that should be building it

It's a bit naive if you think lack of money is the cause of "world hunger". There is plenty of money, and governments have far more than he does. On the other hand, connecting previously unconnected (and some unconnectable) regions is a huge boon to their population. Starlink is great.

I think the root of the problem is “vetocracy.” We’ve created a system where small minorities can hold everything up, sometimes for ideological reasons and sometimes for financial reasons. The classic case of the latter is homeowners opposing all home construction to raise their property values, but it happens in other areas too.

Vetocracy isn’t democracy. It’s a tiny minority having veto power.

So yes the only person who succeeds in such a system is a human battering ram who can just bash their way through it by being a manic asshole with insane force of will.

There should be tons of Elon Musks, including nicer ones, but nice people get vetoed.

Lol why is this downvoted? There is no dispute that he spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Trump and seat himself in government while his companies are financially dependent on government programs and contracts. This is an obvious conflict of interest, and also completely on par with all of the other corruption we're seeing from this administration.

Exactly. I actually laughed out loud at OP's comment. Elon Musk has never done anything to benefit the broader "us." The idea that "we" need people like Musk to "dig us out of this situation" --a situation that rich men like Musk put us into in the first place-- is absolutely ridiculous.

Billionaires don't "dig" anything except the foundations for things that are going to make them even more money.

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