It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president.
If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on merit and based on nepotism instead.
This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough, they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on promises, and it shoots the country in the head.
It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
> It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
In history textbooks, it's known as the spoils system.
Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in the US, especially at the local and state level. The main difference is a significant portion of governance was temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root.
The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive, leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing the power of checks and balances.
There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku in Japan, and François Mitterrand in France tried to decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
> It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
Agreed, and I was born here. I was taught we expressly want to reject those things, and now it's all the fashion. It feels like a temper tantrum from a third of the electorate, a rejection of adulthood and reason.
>It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
So how could one design a political system so this behavior doesn't emerge / is not incentivized?
I see it as a continuation of the American Civil War in politics. There was always this attitude but now people are more redicalized, so it's more obvious.
>>I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
+1
As an Indian, classic definition of corruption here is something that other people do. When our own do it, its not really called corruption, its more intelligent work done to make our people win.
Similar term is appeasement. It kind of means if people I hate are winning, they must be doing bad things or cheating. It is impossible that people I hate should do well in life.
This is a very important rule stated by the War Nerd: 'Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.'
A small human group is compatible with this tribal behavior because the bulk of actions (or at worst their effects) are quickly perceptible to everyone. The larger the group, the less each person understands what is happening, even the effects of what he does.
Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _pretend to care_ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
This is what a fascist dictatorship looks like. You have a leader who adheres to the persona of a strong man perpetually fighting against enemies who are both too weak and too strong, and at the drop of a hat their enemies change. Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law, so he is supported in arbitrarily abusing and corrupting the state for his own personal benefit because his personal victories are sold as a show of stength.
The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are now living under a totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the world is already well aware.
It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the election campaign and a major advisor to the president now declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes of his supporters, what does this say about Musk?
(Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant; what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to know is a pedophile).
That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting influence of power.
Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults could come in and run the country / companies.
I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first sentence.
Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child rape is resolved this way).
theoretically he might have discovered this after he had paid for Trump's win.
I despise the guy but it's entirely possible that he was blind to the publicly available evidence before seeing the secret evidence.
Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that. However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has actually been public information for a long time. It's known that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no evidence he went to the island or did something wrong.
It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult, rather than a serious accusation.
It is also interesting, that many people here somehow have no issues with trump cancelling federal contracts with Harvard, prohibiting student visas for harvard, firing entire sections of NSF, NIH, NOAA, but when it comes to contracts with spacex, they react.
There's plenty of threads about all of those issues here on Hacker News - why do you think the people reacting to SpaceX didn't also react to the rest?
"Not commenting" does not necessarily translate into "having no issues".
Too much stuff is happening, not everyone comments on everything, and frankly your comment is only helpful to the administration by dividing its opponents.
If you want to see any efficient pushback at all, don't apply purity litmus tests to your potential allies.
6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are Supreme Court justices.
All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity".
Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of its way to say you can't even examine the communications between the president and the DoJ.
This contract dispute has nothing to do with Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Cancelling SpaceX contracts for political reasons would be wrong but not criminal.
It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for government ministers.
This sounds like an utopian take or a case of "the grass is greener on the other side".
Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
I am inclined to agree with Acemoglu that good institutions are more important than virtues of the population.
The new reality. Every corporate decision made today now must involve an analysis of the local and national government authority, thier political leanings and thier tendancy towards vindictivness.
Does anyone not think that every major corporation is not commissioning psychological reports on certain US leaders? They have public affairs and social media consultants to gauge public reactions. Now they need head shrinks to tell them if and how the guy in the big office might react, be that a state governor, the president, or any number of politically-minded media owners.
Why pay shrinks when you can pay baksheesh to political underlings who claim to be connected? Sure, most of them aren’t, but corruption is a statistics game. You spend $100k on that one guy who really does sleep with the masseuse of the astrologist for dear leader, and it can be a 10,000% return in days.
That said I think SpaceX is the only service even in the running for said contracts. Nasa doesnt have the capability, and Boeing is quite a way behind. There was already speculation that SpaceX would have to take on Boeings commitments for Artemis.
Likewise that Elon can say Trump is “ungrateful” that be received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew the nomination for Elon’s NASA administrator. It’s just open bribery.
American democracy died on the day the supreme court overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US politics is a mere playground for billionaires and corporations.
On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.)
I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
> but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin.
The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was:
a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight, with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the country at the mercy of international creditors looking for deals heavily tilted in their favour
c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of confidence in the country's currency and ability to service its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.
That’s the key right? It’s world as content. Nothing means anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of ”politics”. But that’s not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what happens next!
> So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.)
But Musk initiated it, by going against Trump's bill. The new conclusion is "to get contract, you must kiss ass so much and you can't say anything bad, ever"
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it to a person he just decided that he didn't like?
Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting him with accusations of pedophilia.
* those who were concerned about it happening to others have seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms, etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts
* there is a subset that is just super cult of personality around the current president and will bend over backwards to justify actions
If Musk is engaging in corruption with respect to the US government, then what could be done to stop it. Whatever the answer, almost certainly Musk's ties to the government would need to be broken, including contracts and funding.
It's not like the previous party in charge didn't threaten the exact same thing. People still aren't seeing that both parties are descending into the sort of third world mindset while accusing the other of being the sole cause. This is a doom spiral in the making.
That's a hard argument to hold in the context of recent history. Maybe for the better, maybe for worse, merit has taken a back seat in many cases as we prioritized other factors.
What's interesting to me here is that the executive branch has authority to change these contracts. I do understand that's how it has worked for a while, and you could argue that these contracts are part of executing on congress's mandate, but I personally would prefer the executive branch not have this power.
If it were up to me congressional committees would be responsible for this as part of budgeting responsibilities, and the executive branch would be much weaker than it is today.
As with so many other things the executive branch is doing right now, it doesn’t have exclusive power to do this. Congress sets the rules for how procurement works.
This is what Trump is doing to Harvard right now. He even is pushing legislation to tax their endowment and also has an executive order to deny them and on them foreign students.
...and to law firms before then, US government contractors (worldwide[1]). If OP thinks thinks this is a nee Trump play, they haven't been paying attention.
2. The US embassy tried to get a Swedish city to agree to some anti-DEI clause in a vendor agreement. Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin.
At this point I'm just happy these two are turning on each other - the more they hurt each other, the less time they have to focus on the rest of us. 6 months was a long time to wait, but I suppose dismantling the machinery of state that was trying to force his companies to follow the law wasn't going to be a quick job.
Everything about the current US government is wild. Yes, cancelling government contracts because of this stupid fight is corruption, but so is everything else. There's not much that either Trump or Musk do that's not corrupt.
I'd like to see both of them lose their power, because they only abuse it.
More like fascist brain, those who haven't bought into the decades of propaganda recognize this benefits no one. Fascism is not a natural state of mind.
That is true. But the dubiousness of the whole thing starts a long way before that. Why is Musk there at all? Because we are sliding into neo-feudalistic conditions in which a court of the richest people steer the affairs of state and shape them in their own favor. And we've known what Trump is like all along. We didn't have to deduce that from the fact that he is now quarrelling with Musk.
I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon. Graft has been a part of governance in every era. Typically, pandering to special interests is proportional to the government's slice of the economic pie. As the state interventions increase, so does the ability for bureaus to grant favors.
What is somewhat unique here, is the brazen and flippant nature of the funding cut. I'm sure if we looked, we could find similar cases in US history.
Author Patrick Newman has written on the topic of cronyism in US history. It is interesting to read the historical narrative framed from the perspective of who was lobbying and looting.
I think there has always been this type of corruption. The interesting thing this time is how open it is, and how clearly visible it is in the stock market, where who is president results in swings of hundreds of billions of dollars. This includes both Trumps corruption for (and now against Tesla/SpaceX) and Bidens lawfare against his them.
So far this is all talk, in effect non of the contracts got created because of that and so far non have been canceled because of that. This is all just media whoring around.
“President Trump said on Saturday that he believed his relationship with Elon Musk was over after the two sparred publicly on social media this week, and he warned there would be “serious consequences” if Mr. Musk financed candidates to run against Republicans who voted in favor of the president’s domestic policy bill.”
Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.
Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.
Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.
> by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins
If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?
GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years?
Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies?
Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies?
Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)?
Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days?
Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually?
I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.
I think this was always true, it’s just that most presidents add a few extra clauses to the requirements instead of blatantly saying they’re going to cancel contracts.
This whole article is speculation about a war of words on social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any citation.
>One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the exchanges as “bluster” that neither Musk nor Trump would actually implement
> ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
I'm definitely in agreement with the 60 percent. This should be unthinkable and political suicide. Openly speculating on if you can use the government as personal retaliation is absolutely undemocratic.
So why is it so hard for me to care in this case? Because Elon Musk has used the government in the exact same way. He just got done cancelling random contracts he didn't like. He just circumvented democracy to play his little doge game.
It is really hard to care about cheating when it happens to a cheater. Disgust at this move against SpaceX or Tesla has to start with consequences for Elon. If this is wrong, then Elon must be jailed.
Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm unaware of.
This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around. Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
In 2016, that would have been the case due to popular vote and electoral college vote not matching. However, 2024’s popular and electoral college match show the cracks are in the racist and sexist and apathetic voter base.
It's been going on a long time. Democrats and Republicans, especially in the Pentagon, have bought influence of politicians to get billions of tax dollars.
So you should change the comment to say "most Democrat and Republican voters in the primaries apparently wont vote out those who give or take bribes." That would be correct.
Jethro's advice to Moses in God's Word is still good advice for voters today. If a politician ever meets this criteria, then we'll see amazing things happen. That's below with verse 21 highlighted:
"19 Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, 20 and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. 21 Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. 22 And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:19-23) (ESV)
At least Berlusconi didn't have access to nuclear warheads.
Seriously, I visited the US few times between 2005 and 2010 and each time people were raising the topic of Berlusconi. How can you have a president like that, who voted for him, bunga bunga etc etc.
Now you know how you can have such personality in power too. With even more power.
Prime ministers in Italy are also called Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri, therefore technically yes. He was holding the executive power, and although Italy is a parliamentary republic, most of the laws are driven by the Government.
I remember thinking this same thing during the first trump term as an American, with Berlusconi I used to be like "how the fuck can people accept this from their leaders" and then it came home. Obviously the string of war criminals we had prior weren't great either but Trump hits different.
This reads like pretty classic infighting between a dictator and one of his more powerful cronies.
I am surprised at how fast it happened, though. Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship. Maybe our dear leader is just as incompetent at being a dictator as he is everything else.
I was not as surprised. It is a lot like the pattern in his previous term with people that he brought on and then had a fallout with and they became the enemy like cabinet members, VP, etc. This second term is markedly different in that he appointed only due hard yes men. I think the only difference is that Musk was very useful for his money and independent sway.
> Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship.
It doesn't seem that way to me, e.g. Putin arrested Khodorkovsky (the richest man in Russia) in 2003. The way I see it, the politician needs the oligarch's money to gain political power, but then he has actual state power, including guns and the judicial system. At that point the oligarch has no purpose -- after all, the politician can just make new ones -- so it makes sense to cast him out or destroy him.
Trump could bankrupt SpaceX with the stroke of a pen and bleed Tesla dry by revoking EV credits. He could even try to revoke Musk's citizenship over (real or fake) issues with his immigration status in the past. If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
> If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
This is the funniest part to me, in the context of THIS president. The guy that demands fully loyalty but gives none?
I can't imagine being the richest guy in the world, and embarrassing myself to such a degree all for.. what? He paid maybe $300M to help elect the guy, wore all the stupid hates, lavished orange man with praise.. and for what. What was ever the upside? The possible downside was obviously asymmetric to any clear eyed viewer.
At the very least, an arrest by ICE is a real possibility. His brother has admitted on camera that they were illegal at one point, and there is now a lot of precedent for "arrest first - ask questions later" even if you're a natural born citizen.
We have moved so past the "government is expected to be impartial" and now at "if musk backs a dem I will destroy him" stage. No one bats an eye. This is going to be the norm at least on the Republican Party. I worry every one expects presidents to weaponize everything against their perceived opponents.
In Europe, media and politicians are openly stating how you got to watch what you say to Mr Trump, be nice to him to get favored in deals.
Like the trade tax, if you’re nice to trump he may decrease your country tax.
It was made very clear in France that we invited him to 14 juillet, notre dame ceremony and other ceremony only to get favor from him.
People of the United States pay the price for his favors, he gets the benefits.
That’s just one step before handling him bags of money.
Of course all of that matters with previous presidents, they are humans before all, but it was marginal. With him, that’s the first time it’s openly spoken about on national tv and by politicians like it’s nothing, like what we did with dictator from middle eastern except it’s the president of the USA.
A lot of eyes are being batted. But really, him punishing Musk is barely in the top 100 things we're worried about right now. We're barely a few months into his term. The chances of seeing full on Martial Law before 4 years is terrifyingly high.
That stood out to me, too. Even in the current environment, that's messed up. No, the sitting president does not get to threaten peoples' ability to make campaign contributions to the opposing party.
YouGov made a survey on June 5, asking "If you had to choose, who would you side with more between the following?" with Musk and Trump to choose. For Republicans, it's 71% Trump, 6% Musk, 12% neither, 11% not sure.
Musk is popular amongst republicans because Trump has championed him. The pro-Musk Republicans are also pro-Trump republicans and their loyalty to Trump will beat out whatever respect they have for Musk. Musk is not a threat to Trump, because Trump’s entire platform is built on Trump-or-bust. Musk was a useful idiot to Trump. Musk thinking that Trump’s Epstein connection was somehow going to hurt Trump shows just how impotent Musk is. Trump fans couldn’t care one iota about that.
It's really that simple. If you want to know what MAGA supporters believe about any topic, just look up what Trump last said about it. He could change his mind three times in a single day, and they would also change their mind (and talking points) in lock step three times.
Yep. In 2016 all of Trump's scandals were already exposed. It didn't do anything. Trump can easily walk away from Musk right now with no problems. Tesla is probably not going to last at high valuation much longer anyways
So, the government would do what, lean on Russia with whom the USA is currently engaged in a proxy war? Also, for Boeing or Blue Origin, the cost would currently be higher per launch, and as far as I know, no one has the kind of satellite network that SpaceX does.
Of course, those are sane considerations. I suppose I shouldn’t accuse the Donald of any kind of rational thinking.
SpaceX is critical infrastructure to the US at this point and its continued availability and operation is of national security interest.
That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
Less nuclear: the US has a lot of control over what SpaceX does. The FAA (and to a lesser extent the NOAA) has to approve every launch. They could simply gorund SpaceX.
If you think SpaceX could simply move operations elsewhere, think again, The US prohibits ASML, a Dutch company, from selling EUV lithography machines to China.
Apart from all of that, SpaceX is absolutely dependant on US government funding and contracts. Withdrawing those, or even the threat of such, allows the US to wield a lot of power over SpaceX.
What's rather surprising about this feud is that Trump is currently the adult and has been uncharacteristically restrained in his response thus far. Of course, all that could change. It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
> nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
This isn't at all clear. It's clear that they could easily compel them to prioritize and fulfill government contracts. Far less clear that they could just take it. It is clear that the current administration could "try" but such an effort might result in a lawsuit that lasts longer than the administration does and thereby become moot.
> That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
A public-private partnership is the dream for any shareholder. Guaranteed revenue and profits funded by taxes, investment capital from the government on great terms, becoming "too big to fail", etc.
> It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
How is it insane to repeat what everyone already knows? The only novelty here is Musk himself saying it to his legions of followers, who would have been otherwise inclined to downplay the significance of it.
Yes, it's quite disingenuous to say that USA is engaged a proxy war. Ukraine has military support from other countries but they are the ones making decisions at the end of day.
For example Ukraine just carried out a complex drone attack on Russia's bomber fleet, this was careful planned by Ukrainian miliary without any involvement of the US and US was not informed of this ahead of time. And after the fact USA got upset with Ukraine for doing that.
The DoD would certainly just take care of Elon if they had to. Who are we kidding. The DoD are the actual owners of Space X. Hes a figure head / civilian face.
They are literally just running the Howard Hughes playbook over again. Hes a front guys.
Readit News
Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president.
If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on merit and based on nepotism instead.
This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough, they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on promises, and it shoots the country in the head.
I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
I think the end goal is domination. From https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267 :
It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/hypocrisy-and-fascism-2018-0...
In history textbooks, it's known as the spoils system.
The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive, leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing the power of checks and balances.
There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku in Japan, and François Mitterrand in France tried to decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
Agreed, and I was born here. I was taught we expressly want to reject those things, and now it's all the fashion. It feels like a temper tantrum from a third of the electorate, a rejection of adulthood and reason.
So how could one design a political system so this behavior doesn't emerge / is not incentivized?
+1
As an Indian, classic definition of corruption here is something that other people do. When our own do it, its not really called corruption, its more intelligent work done to make our people win.
Similar term is appeasement. It kind of means if people I hate are winning, they must be doing bad things or cheating. It is impossible that people I hate should do well in life.
This is a very important rule stated by the War Nerd: 'Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.'
A small human group is compatible with this tribal behavior because the bulk of actions (or at worst their effects) are quickly perceptible to everyone. The larger the group, the less each person understands what is happening, even the effects of what he does.
Dead Comment
People stopped giving a shit about anything. This is just one of dozens of things that would have been totally unacceptable a few years ago.
Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _pretend to care_ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
This is what a fascist dictatorship looks like. You have a leader who adheres to the persona of a strong man perpetually fighting against enemies who are both too weak and too strong, and at the drop of a hat their enemies change. Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law, so he is supported in arbitrarily abusing and corrupting the state for his own personal benefit because his personal victories are sold as a show of stength.
The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are now living under a totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the world is already well aware.
Is it any accident that JD and Elon keep calling for "rule of the people" instead of "rule of law".
It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the election campaign and a major advisor to the president now declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes of his supporters, what does this say about Musk?
(Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant; what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to know is a pedophile).
Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults could come in and run the country / companies.
I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first sentence.
Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that. However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has actually been public information for a long time. It's known that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no evidence he went to the island or did something wrong.
It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult, rather than a serious accusation.
Too much stuff is happening, not everyone comments on everything, and frankly your comment is only helpful to the administration by dividing its opponents.
If you want to see any efficient pushback at all, don't apply purity litmus tests to your potential allies.
All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity".
Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of its way to say you can't even examine the communications between the president and the DoJ.
Democracies only really work with an educated and altruistic population, and the US is only getting further away from that.
Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
I am inclined to agree with Acemoglu that good institutions are more important than virtues of the population.
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Does anyone not think that every major corporation is not commissioning psychological reports on certain US leaders? They have public affairs and social media consultants to gauge public reactions. Now they need head shrinks to tell them if and how the guy in the big office might react, be that a state governor, the president, or any number of politically-minded media owners.
That said I think SpaceX is the only service even in the running for said contracts. Nasa doesnt have the capability, and Boeing is quite a way behind. There was already speculation that SpaceX would have to take on Boeings commitments for Artemis.
At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and NASA technology become a reason to fold into a national asset.
China didn't achieve its Great Leap Forward by pandering to wealthy celebrities who cosplay as geniuses.
I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was:
a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight, with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the country at the mercy of international creditors looking for deals heavily tilted in their favour
c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of confidence in the country's currency and ability to service its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.
did people expect any different when they elected a reality TV star to be president?
one that's such an incredible businessman he managed to bankrupt not one, but two casinos
TACO, as the saying goes.
The revolution wouldn't have been televised but the polycrisis will be live streamed.
But Musk initiated it, by going against Trump's bill. The new conclusion is "to get contract, you must kiss ass so much and you can't say anything bad, ever"
They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it to a person he just decided that he didn't like?
Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting him with accusations of pedophilia.
So far, all of this is quite normal.
* those who were concerned about it happening to others have seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms, etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts
* there is a subset that is just super cult of personality around the current president and will bend over backwards to justify actions
https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/130_days_of_elon...
https://cepr.net/publications/corrupt-control-of-the-trump-a...
If Musk is engaging in corruption with respect to the US government, then what could be done to stop it. Whatever the answer, almost certainly Musk's ties to the government would need to be broken, including contracts and funding.
That's a hard argument to hold in the context of recent history. Maybe for the better, maybe for worse, merit has taken a back seat in many cases as we prioritized other factors.
What's interesting to me here is that the executive branch has authority to change these contracts. I do understand that's how it has worked for a while, and you could argue that these contracts are part of executing on congress's mandate, but I personally would prefer the executive branch not have this power.
If it were up to me congressional committees would be responsible for this as part of budgeting responsibilities, and the executive branch would be much weaker than it is today.
2. The US embassy tried to get a Swedish city to agree to some anti-DEI clause in a vendor agreement. Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin.
I'd like to see both of them lose their power, because they only abuse it.
Primate brain go brr.
What is somewhat unique here, is the brazen and flippant nature of the funding cut. I'm sure if we looked, we could find similar cases in US history.
Author Patrick Newman has written on the topic of cronyism in US history. It is interesting to read the historical narrative framed from the perspective of who was lobbying and looting.
Here's a recent lecture on the Marshall Plan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBGo2WbAoPI
“President Trump said on Saturday that he believed his relationship with Elon Musk was over after the two sparred publicly on social media this week, and he warned there would be “serious consequences” if Mr. Musk financed candidates to run against Republicans who voted in favor of the president’s domestic policy bill.”
So the president can decide who someone supports?
Two truly awful humans fighting it out.
Elon helped Trump get elected. Now Trump has to help Elon get the Trump stink off so people stop calling it the swasticar.
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Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.
Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.
Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.
If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?
GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years? Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies? Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies? Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)? Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days? Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually?
I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.
>One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the exchanges as “bluster” that neither Musk nor Trump would actually implement
> ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
I'm definitely in agreement with the 60 percent. This should be unthinkable and political suicide. Openly speculating on if you can use the government as personal retaliation is absolutely undemocratic.
So why is it so hard for me to care in this case? Because Elon Musk has used the government in the exact same way. He just got done cancelling random contracts he didn't like. He just circumvented democracy to play his little doge game.
It is really hard to care about cheating when it happens to a cheater. Disgust at this move against SpaceX or Tesla has to start with consequences for Elon. If this is wrong, then Elon must be jailed.
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This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around. Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
Or China to current-day prosperity. It’s hard to admit but it’s a double edged sword and there are winners and losers.
Choose your poison wisely.
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So you should change the comment to say "most Democrat and Republican voters in the primaries apparently wont vote out those who give or take bribes." That would be correct.
Jethro's advice to Moses in God's Word is still good advice for voters today. If a politician ever meets this criteria, then we'll see amazing things happen. That's below with verse 21 highlighted:
"19 Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, 20 and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. 21 Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. 22 And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:19-23) (ESV)
Seriously, I visited the US few times between 2005 and 2010 and each time people were raising the topic of Berlusconi. How can you have a president like that, who voted for him, bunga bunga etc etc.
Now you know how you can have such personality in power too. With even more power.
Oh, and before Berlusconi there was Menem. He's the original clown turned president.
Did people really think that Berlusconi was the president of Italy?
Unless you mean president !== primer minister, but that would be such a futile remark in this context.
I am surprised at how fast it happened, though. Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship. Maybe our dear leader is just as incompetent at being a dictator as he is everything else.
It doesn't seem that way to me, e.g. Putin arrested Khodorkovsky (the richest man in Russia) in 2003. The way I see it, the politician needs the oligarch's money to gain political power, but then he has actual state power, including guns and the judicial system. At that point the oligarch has no purpose -- after all, the politician can just make new ones -- so it makes sense to cast him out or destroy him.
Trump could bankrupt SpaceX with the stroke of a pen and bleed Tesla dry by revoking EV credits. He could even try to revoke Musk's citizenship over (real or fake) issues with his immigration status in the past. If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
This is the funniest part to me, in the context of THIS president. The guy that demands fully loyalty but gives none?
I can't imagine being the richest guy in the world, and embarrassing myself to such a degree all for.. what? He paid maybe $300M to help elect the guy, wore all the stupid hates, lavished orange man with praise.. and for what. What was ever the upside? The possible downside was obviously asymmetric to any clear eyed viewer.
And so that asymmetric downside now begins.
At the very least, an arrest by ICE is a real possibility. His brother has admitted on camera that they were illegal at one point, and there is now a lot of precedent for "arrest first - ask questions later" even if you're a natural born citizen.
Like the trade tax, if you’re nice to trump he may decrease your country tax.
It was made very clear in France that we invited him to 14 juillet, notre dame ceremony and other ceremony only to get favor from him.
People of the United States pay the price for his favors, he gets the benefits.
That’s just one step before handling him bags of money.
Of course all of that matters with previous presidents, they are humans before all, but it was marginal. With him, that’s the first time it’s openly spoken about on national tv and by politicians like it’s nothing, like what we did with dictator from middle eastern except it’s the president of the USA.
Like I don’t know, how we used to do things with blogs, MySpace and so on ! The future is great.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/survey-results/daily...
Of course, those are sane considerations. I suppose I shouldn’t accuse the Donald of any kind of rational thinking.
That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
Less nuclear: the US has a lot of control over what SpaceX does. The FAA (and to a lesser extent the NOAA) has to approve every launch. They could simply gorund SpaceX.
If you think SpaceX could simply move operations elsewhere, think again, The US prohibits ASML, a Dutch company, from selling EUV lithography machines to China.
Apart from all of that, SpaceX is absolutely dependant on US government funding and contracts. Withdrawing those, or even the threat of such, allows the US to wield a lot of power over SpaceX.
What's rather surprising about this feud is that Trump is currently the adult and has been uncharacteristically restrained in his response thus far. Of course, all that could change. It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
This isn't at all clear. It's clear that they could easily compel them to prioritize and fulfill government contracts. Far less clear that they could just take it. It is clear that the current administration could "try" but such an effort might result in a lawsuit that lasts longer than the administration does and thereby become moot.
A public-private partnership is the dream for any shareholder. Guaranteed revenue and profits funded by taxes, investment capital from the government on great terms, becoming "too big to fail", etc.
How is it insane to repeat what everyone already knows? The only novelty here is Musk himself saying it to his legions of followers, who would have been otherwise inclined to downplay the significance of it.
Nationalization can't work for a company working at the bleeding edge of tech. Everyone would leave, their stock options now worthless or paid out.
Name one single time in history nationization has worked? I can name 100 counter examples.
Is it?
The statement itself doesn't seem to imply anything other than Musk seems to think he is in those files.
Trump is in some of the JE "files" that were already released (flight logs).
I think the cultural obsession with the unknown surrounding Jeffery Epstein informs what people infer from statements like that.
There are many less-than-flattering ways that Trump could be associated with JE that do not include pedophilia.
Are they though? Trump is on Putins side. Who disputes that?
For example Ukraine just carried out a complex drone attack on Russia's bomber fleet, this was careful planned by Ukrainian miliary without any involvement of the US and US was not informed of this ahead of time. And after the fact USA got upset with Ukraine for doing that.
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They are literally just running the Howard Hughes playbook over again. Hes a front guys.
USA isn't currently engaged a proxy war with Russia