Thanks for this clear presentation of where things stand economically (and more) in the world and the US. So clear that Democrats need to win the trifecta in 2024. Musk is a total threat to peace and stability---in his domination of satellites and in his own instability. Thank you again, HCR.
Thanks for this clear presentation of where things stand economically (and more) in the world and the US. So clear that Democrats need to win the trifecta in 2024. Musk is a total threat to peace and stability---in his domination of satellites and in his own instability. Thank you again, HCR.
Musk is a narcissistic, misogynistic tech bro with a Messiah complex. He is also himself a dictator, which explains his growing admiration for Putin. He basically handed off Twitter on a silver platter to Putin and his cyberwarfare army of trolls to spew as much disinformation as they please about democracy in general and the American elections in particular. “X” has become a short-hand for “Xtreme right-wing”… Musk will, in this way, very willingly, skew the election of 2024 in Trump’s favour. And everybody knows that Trump will end American democracy once and for all. All the better for Musk: he hates rules - at least, rules _he_ didn’t establish. The sooner democracy is gone, the easier he can make the rules: he is more than rich enough for that.
I am definitely no fan of Musk for sure. However, neither would I arrest anyone for going against American "foreign policy" given America's past foreign policy folly.
If more people with real power had gone against, say, Vietnam, we might not still be blowing up kids in Cambodia with remaining unexploded bombs that were dropped illegally and in secret.
But perhaps, we should parse what interfering in government comes down to. Peaceful protests are different than interfering with the government directly. What Musk was doing was aiding Russia and undermining an ally we are spending billions to support.
I thought Vietnam was a mistake of historic proportions. Someone of Musk's stature back then could have refused to manufacture napalm. Refused to sell mines to the army. Refused to provide M-16s to the Marines. Would that have been the equivalent? I don't think so. Musk now has the power to literally control the communications for billions of people. And actually determine the course of a genocidal war. That can't stand.
So maybe not arrest him. I stand corrected. But take his power to be a shadow form of government now before he does much more damage. He is a megalomaniac. A frenetic unpredictable danger to the world.
Most of our “public” utilities have become for-profit enterprises over the years---not the best strategy if your objective is robust, resilient infrastructure.
Just another example of the private sector eating our national treasure. IMO, every aspect of public service utilities should be under the control of the people for the common good. Why should there be profits in electricity, water, internet, education, health care or prisons?! Why? Millions more could be better served by that skim of the Oligarchs.
Like many of his ilk, Musk is intelligent, but not wise, not even close. I don't understand why a private individual has the right to pepper nearby space with satellites, however good or bad they might be. It's our space, not his ("our" meaning humanity's). So nationalize or internationalize Starlink, yes. To have Meta and X under the DOD, NSA, CIA, FBI, no thanks. Meta and X need to be strictly supervised, preferably (in my view) shut down. But not by NSA, CIA, etc. There's already a whole literature on the "surveillance society" (by Zuboff, Schneier, Landau, ...). We don't want to go further in that direction. These technology barons always talk about "changing the world", and they have, but nobody consulted us hoi polloi. It's everybody's world, not theirs.
Along with many other of our Billionaires, e.g., Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who worked knowingly, or not, with Yevgeny Prigozhin and his IRA troll farm via Cambridge Analytica for tRUmp's escalator ride in 2016. I have heard that they switched gangs in 2024.
“And everybody knows that Trump will end democracy once and for all.”
Actually, democracy as we knew it and wish it to be is declining rapidly, Trump or no Trump. Behind the scenes there is a legion of brilliant individuals with no scruples working overtime for the benefit of the super wealthy such as Elon Musk, Rupert Murdock and the vast multinational corporations. This decline began in the 80s with the Presidency of Reagan, and “trickle-down economics” is effectively shifting wealth and power to the elite few. Those elite few are finding every weakness they can in political democracy to further disempower and manipulate voters. The Citizens United Decision and the far-right Supreme Court Is the long-term threat. We need to start discussing long-term solutions. Sooner or later, we will have to reboot our current form of Democracy and now is the time to start planning for the long-term solution to a democracy crippled by the capitalistic system gone haywire. “Economic Democracy” I believe is the next evolutionary step beyond our current political democracy. Wikipedia has a tremendous amount of information about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Economic_democracy&oldid=1170220382
Thank you, Marc. Good synopsis of democracy crippled by the capitalist system gone haywire. The immorality of those who have found and exploited every weakness for their own enrichment is appalling. I picture these billionaires like evil spiders sitting in their throne rooms weaving webs to ensnare every freaking dollar on the planet. Wrapping us all in their silk and feeding upon us so they can grow fatter and fatter. (And I hate spiders more than anything!)
I think of the ultra wealthy in this nation, as PARASITES, sucking the lifeblood from their hosts but rendering no benefit in return for their siphoning of ever more wealth from the labor of the ordinary tax-paying citizen and the infrastructure of the country.
Thank you for this link. I found this reference under the Reform Agendas section: "In his book, Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes likens a "National Dividend" to the game of Monopoly, where all players start with a fair distribution of financial opportunity to succeed, and try to privatize as much as they can as they move around "the commons". Distinguishing the board game from real-world business, Barnes claims that "the top 5 percent of the population owns more property than the remaining 95 percent", providing the smaller minority with an unfair advantage of approximately "$5-trillion" annually, at the beginning of the game." Great explanation for us "common folk" known as "We the People".
Hi Marc, you're absolutely right. Trump isn't doing this job alone. What I meant was that Trump will give an already crippled democracy its final blow...
That’s why I believe that the best and brightest of us should begin to collectively work on a new and improved form of democracy, such as the one that is already proposed called economic democracy. A group of foresighted people should be willing to visualize an ideal democracy, a utopian government and refine it. Then we will have a goal to work towards rather than to throw up or hands in despair While the current democracy gets further weekend, and the government becomes totally authoritarian.
It is not an impossible task, but it is a challenging one and I am convinced we can do it.
Oh, P.S.: I would like to add "Zelda-style taxes": in the game "Legend of Zelda", you cannot hold more money than 999 rupees. When you find more, you cannot pick them up, and they are left lying there - for someone else to pick them up. In the same sense, you could establish a treshold of, say, 100 million dollars. You cannot have any more money than that as a single person: above that threshhold, the wealth tax simply becomes 100%. No more "sky is the limit" there, because nobody really "earns" that much money, nobody should be insanely rich.
I don't know that they are "dupes." The study by Profs. David Norman Smith and Eric Hanley at the Univ. of Kansas published in Critical Sociology in Feb. 2018 entitled "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" [google it] identified their reasons primarily because they share some traits: racist, misogynistic and xenophobic (hating immigrants.) MAGA is simply the KKK without the white sheets and conical hats - white Protestant supremacy now, white Protestant supremacy forever.
Wow. I love the way all of you talk. Seriously. (Although I grew up in the US, I don't get to speak much English. Not like you folks.... Thanks, all of you....
This is not a complement to the GOP, but it is so many things- a kakistocracy, kleptocracy, Fasicst party, corporatocracy, autocracy and terrorist party. We've all heard other labels as well.
Is the GOP a monolith that can be described with one set of labels like RICO or Terrorist Organization?
Heather spoke of the implications of of "the parties different visions of government." I think, if we want to save our democracy from authoritarianism/Trumpism, it's important to distinguish between the cynical power grabbers at the top, and the rest of everyday people they have learned how to manipulate to their ends:
1) The cynical power grabbers have the power and/or position to shape and implement the GOP agenda as donors or politicians. They can do this because they are so wealthy that they don't need the government programs funded by the taxes they are avoiding.
2) The people they manipulate are already "fed up" about their government and are ripe for skillful manipulation of their anger, disillusionment and, in many cases, despair. Anger feels better than depression.
Here's more food for thought about this from one of my heroes, Robert Reich.
Why Have So Many Americans Succumbed to Trumpism?
Chapter 6 of The Common Good
SEP 8
"But what if their willingness to believe and support Trump is understandable, given what has happened to them? I’m not suggesting it’s justifiable, only that it may be explicable.
As we have seen, many of the key political and economic institutions of our society have abandoned their commitments to the common good — and along the way, abandoned the bottom half of the adult population, especially those without college degrees."
The MAGA problem is our problem too. One person, One vote, or at least it should be so; and Big Lies and divide and conquer works. We've seen it all before. We've been snoozing and loosing while the plutocrats took over the narrative.
Definitely an "enterprise" that's starving the IRS of significant revenue. Meanwhile an 8/30/23 WAPO Editorial states Musk intends to expand Starlink "10 fold" in the years ahead, that's 45,000 'Musklinks' or is that Must Links?
Monay 9/11 Update: See RONAN FARROW's piece in the 8/21/23 The New Yorker, "Elon Musk Shadow Rule". Bottom Line: we have a private American Citizen supporting Putin's War Against Ukraine by disrupting Ukrain's Starlike connections.
Also,MONDAY, 9/11, Walter Isaccson's Musk biography is out with a Musk admission that he spoke to the Russian Ambassador before his disruptions of Ukraine's Starlink access.
Certainly Jen & an expanding monopoly. But, I need to take a close look at Elon Musk's contact with Putin/Russian communications to see if ELON is functionally acting as an "Foreign Agent" under Section 612a of FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
Thx, Bryan. With so much power, money, and tech advantage, he’s another narcissistic megalomaniac who terrifies the bejeezus out of me with all of the chaos he can create. Sheesh…can he be held accountable?
And why the hell not? The idea that you can do whatever the hell you want, even if it robs others of their money and choices, so long as it delivers profit, sound like the creed of the Mafia; but plutocrats and their toady politicians have made it the law of the land. Money is a form of power and power tends to corrupt, at least historically, no?
Are we entering an era where traditional defined land mass, boundaries and nations of citizens are obsolete and that a single man’s inconceivable wealth can carve out a position as global super-power? Musk appears to have staked out our upper stratospheres. We and democracy are in dangerous times.
That is so true, Rob... Ian Fleming created a rich, criminal techno-warlord like Dr. No before there was anyone like Elon Musk. Now, 70 years later, we see it was not just fantasy, it was a prediction. This puts Fleming in the ranks of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.
Artists are prophets. No surprise here. Questions is how did we let an apartheidist get so much control? My answer would be that we haven’t gotten over our worship of money and the thieves who amass it at the expense of the starving, threatened, or dying.
Grover Zinn -- It sounds like Elon Musk has turned himself into a war criminal. Is he naïve? Quite a scary guy to be meddling in war games about which he knows nothing. Turning off world communications? Beyond terrifying.
I admit that my fears about the emerging AI technology exceed my knowledge of that field, but AI coupled with Starlink, in the hands of someone with Musk's money, power and ability/wish to control events for ill purposes, is bone-chilling. I'm not saying Musk is necessarily Dr. No, but imagine it nonetheless: using satellite technology to transmit false scenarios to effect real-world responses in real-time, with military, economic, political, social or other consequences.
Perhaps my worries are unfounded, but I learned long ago that if something can be imagined, it may one day come to pass (who thought I could type this on a handheld computer that can send and receive sound, words and images around the world instantly, and in many cases, use Starlink to do so?)
Doug, I totally agree with you. This is the inevitable consequence of capitalism without rails. We saw it start during the Reagan era. Infrastructure was delegated to the private sector, with many disastrous results.
Atlanta contracted with a private company for the water supply - and the taps spewed filthy water or no water. It turned out that the low bid was just a “foot-in-the-door” proposal; once they won the contract they claimed that they had no idea how bad the water system was and would need many millions more to bring clean, reliable water to the citizens (I’ve worked with local government contracts and I know the tricks).
The truth is that public services are not profitable - unless you degrade the quality or raise the price.
The idea that the greedy billionaires should control public utilities (as Musk is doing) or security infrastructure (as Musk is doing) is a recipe for disaster.
Doug Gagne -- I've just finished listening to Walter Isaacson on (recorded earlier) "CBS News Sunday Morning," who is just publishing a biography of Elon Musk. Fascinating interview, including a correction/ adjustment to the "Starlink" and Crimea story. It's far more complex than I'd thought, and Isaacson (who spent two solid years with Musk) explains briefly what it was about. He says, "Starlink wasn't running in that region (along the Crimean coast. But when Ukraine asked Starlink for service there, Musk did decline to activate it." Musk felt that the Russians activities were leading leading to WW III. I couldn't find a link, but there's lots about Isaacson and Musk on YouTube. He is a very complex guy, not to be taken superficially.
Doug, yes AI coupled with Starlink is exponentially more terrifying. And yes that if something can be imagined it is possible, relatively quickly. How short the "modern age" has been (when did it start?) -- and what has happened in what? ... The past 100-120 years? Personally, it will be only 11.25 years until I turn 100, and what is possible in that short length of time is mind boggling.
Criticism, it seems, offends Musk’s ego and that is dangerous. When he usesd his power to affect the war in Ukraine, he is acting independently of our government. He cannot have his own foreign policy, just because the government has 'farmed out' part of our space program to him. There may be a loose analogy there to Russia having 'farmed out' part of its military operations to the Wagner Group, which eventually got 'too big for its britches,' resulting in its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, coincidentally dying in an 'accidental' plane crash.
Pressure needs to be put on SpaceX's Board of Directors (don't know if Spacelink, as a division of SpaceX, has a separate Board). It is absolutely ridiculous that one unelected man has so much power.
What an interesting contrast. A vision pursued for societal and economic benefits for emerging nations (and peaceful partners) by Biden and the self-agrandizing of a technology empirealist, Musk, interfering with international defense policy of democratic nations based strictly on his Ann Rand grasp of the brilliant entrepreneur role in directing events that affect nations.
Absolutely spot on Grover! Musk is now in control of critical communications and can act as the US military. It is the exact reason why the Chinese and others put in place a second GPS network out of this fear.
I would rather have the US military making decisions then Elon. We are heading back to a Monarchy with folks like Elon, Donald, Vladimir, Xi, and Kim Jong that not only want to be the richest but also the most powerful.
We need a check and balance, world wide. Maybe Artificial Intelligence controlling everything might not be bad. Algorithms that determined there are way too many innocent people dying at the hands of that Russian Navy. And that is why Elon fears it. AI would have released and guided those Ukrainian drones.
As HCR points out, the degradation of America's infrastructure was by design. Schools that need replacing, bridges that are close to collapse, fresh water systems and waste water treatment long past replacement, overcrowded airports, railroads out of date, refineries spewing pollution, and more. Private ownership only maximizes profit. "Free markets" are not free, they are controlled by the major economic powers.
Thanks for this clear presentation of where things stand economically (and more) in the world and the US. So clear that Democrats need to win the trifecta in 2024. Musk is a total threat to peace and stability---in his domination of satellites and in his own instability. Thank you again, HCR.
Musk is a narcissistic, misogynistic tech bro with a Messiah complex. He is also himself a dictator, which explains his growing admiration for Putin. He basically handed off Twitter on a silver platter to Putin and his cyberwarfare army of trolls to spew as much disinformation as they please about democracy in general and the American elections in particular. “X” has become a short-hand for “Xtreme right-wing”… Musk will, in this way, very willingly, skew the election of 2024 in Trump’s favour. And everybody knows that Trump will end American democracy once and for all. All the better for Musk: he hates rules - at least, rules _he_ didn’t establish. The sooner democracy is gone, the easier he can make the rules: he is more than rich enough for that.
Arrest Musk for undermining American foreign policy.
Nationalize Starlink. Put it under the direct supervision of a board consisting of the FCC and DOD.
Put "X" and Meta under the direct supervision of an independent government board consisting of representatives of the FCC, DOD, NSA, CIA and FBI.
Starlink, Meta and X have exceeded their status as "private enterprises". They are now public utilities and should be protected and guided as such.
Bill,
I am definitely no fan of Musk for sure. However, neither would I arrest anyone for going against American "foreign policy" given America's past foreign policy folly.
If more people with real power had gone against, say, Vietnam, we might not still be blowing up kids in Cambodia with remaining unexploded bombs that were dropped illegally and in secret.
I get your point. Thanks.
But perhaps, we should parse what interfering in government comes down to. Peaceful protests are different than interfering with the government directly. What Musk was doing was aiding Russia and undermining an ally we are spending billions to support.
I thought Vietnam was a mistake of historic proportions. Someone of Musk's stature back then could have refused to manufacture napalm. Refused to sell mines to the army. Refused to provide M-16s to the Marines. Would that have been the equivalent? I don't think so. Musk now has the power to literally control the communications for billions of people. And actually determine the course of a genocidal war. That can't stand.
So maybe not arrest him. I stand corrected. But take his power to be a shadow form of government now before he does much more damage. He is a megalomaniac. A frenetic unpredictable danger to the world.
I agree, Bill. This horrible individual has way too much power that should belong to the government.
There is Constitutional langue around “aiding and abetting”. DOJ should apply it.
I think Musk's acts are traitorous.
A single emotionally stunted billionaire with an excessive affection for Nazis should not have enough power to dictate national policy.
Hear, hear!
Tax the rich!
Most of our “public” utilities have become for-profit enterprises over the years---not the best strategy if your objective is robust, resilient infrastructure.
Just another example of the private sector eating our national treasure. IMO, every aspect of public service utilities should be under the control of the people for the common good. Why should there be profits in electricity, water, internet, education, health care or prisons?! Why? Millions more could be better served by that skim of the Oligarchs.
It’s ‘end stage’ Capitalism…pure greed.
Like many of his ilk, Musk is intelligent, but not wise, not even close. I don't understand why a private individual has the right to pepper nearby space with satellites, however good or bad they might be. It's our space, not his ("our" meaning humanity's). So nationalize or internationalize Starlink, yes. To have Meta and X under the DOD, NSA, CIA, FBI, no thanks. Meta and X need to be strictly supervised, preferably (in my view) shut down. But not by NSA, CIA, etc. There's already a whole literature on the "surveillance society" (by Zuboff, Schneier, Landau, ...). We don't want to go further in that direction. These technology barons always talk about "changing the world", and they have, but nobody consulted us hoi polloi. It's everybody's world, not theirs.
Isn't what you're describing "Brave New World"?
I don't totally agree, but I do feel that there's something like War Crimes or SOMETHING!
Interesting idea, except you've got a Fifth Amendment problem: "...[Nor] shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
You wanna try buying out Elon Musk? My mind reels at imagining what the condemnation proceeding would look like.
My understanding is Starlink was developed with government funding, so in effect, the public should own a piece of it.
He is a clear and present danger to the United States.
Along with many other of our Billionaires, e.g., Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who worked knowingly, or not, with Yevgeny Prigozhin and his IRA troll farm via Cambridge Analytica for tRUmp's escalator ride in 2016. I have heard that they switched gangs in 2024.
“And everybody knows that Trump will end democracy once and for all.”
Actually, democracy as we knew it and wish it to be is declining rapidly, Trump or no Trump. Behind the scenes there is a legion of brilliant individuals with no scruples working overtime for the benefit of the super wealthy such as Elon Musk, Rupert Murdock and the vast multinational corporations. This decline began in the 80s with the Presidency of Reagan, and “trickle-down economics” is effectively shifting wealth and power to the elite few. Those elite few are finding every weakness they can in political democracy to further disempower and manipulate voters. The Citizens United Decision and the far-right Supreme Court Is the long-term threat. We need to start discussing long-term solutions. Sooner or later, we will have to reboot our current form of Democracy and now is the time to start planning for the long-term solution to a democracy crippled by the capitalistic system gone haywire. “Economic Democracy” I believe is the next evolutionary step beyond our current political democracy. Wikipedia has a tremendous amount of information about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Economic_democracy&oldid=1170220382
For a short explanation here is a concise article on Economic Democracy https://www.proutinstitute.org/policy-solutions/economic-democracy-the-alternative-to-corporate-rule
Thank you, Marc. Good synopsis of democracy crippled by the capitalist system gone haywire. The immorality of those who have found and exploited every weakness for their own enrichment is appalling. I picture these billionaires like evil spiders sitting in their throne rooms weaving webs to ensnare every freaking dollar on the planet. Wrapping us all in their silk and feeding upon us so they can grow fatter and fatter. (And I hate spiders more than anything!)
I think of the ultra wealthy in this nation, as PARASITES, sucking the lifeblood from their hosts but rendering no benefit in return for their siphoning of ever more wealth from the labor of the ordinary tax-paying citizen and the infrastructure of the country.
Thank you for this link. I found this reference under the Reform Agendas section: "In his book, Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes likens a "National Dividend" to the game of Monopoly, where all players start with a fair distribution of financial opportunity to succeed, and try to privatize as much as they can as they move around "the commons". Distinguishing the board game from real-world business, Barnes claims that "the top 5 percent of the population owns more property than the remaining 95 percent", providing the smaller minority with an unfair advantage of approximately "$5-trillion" annually, at the beginning of the game." Great explanation for us "common folk" known as "We the People".
Hi Marc, you're absolutely right. Trump isn't doing this job alone. What I meant was that Trump will give an already crippled democracy its final blow...
That’s why I believe that the best and brightest of us should begin to collectively work on a new and improved form of democracy, such as the one that is already proposed called economic democracy. A group of foresighted people should be willing to visualize an ideal democracy, a utopian government and refine it. Then we will have a goal to work towards rather than to throw up or hands in despair While the current democracy gets further weekend, and the government becomes totally authoritarian.
It is not an impossible task, but it is a challenging one and I am convinced we can do it.
That is definitely a challenging task! I really hope you can pull this through :)
Check out “Economic Democracy” on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy
and the book “After Capitalism, Economic Democracy”https://www.amazon.com/After-Capitalism-Economic-Democracy-Action/dp/1881717143/ref=sr_1_4?crid=QFESJ7OQE9SF&keywords=after+capitalism&qid=1694529890&s=books&sprefix=after+capitalism+%2Cstripbooks%2C178&sr=1-4 (Sorry I have to refer you to another capitalistic monopoly to get the book:)
Oh, P.S.: I would like to add "Zelda-style taxes": in the game "Legend of Zelda", you cannot hold more money than 999 rupees. When you find more, you cannot pick them up, and they are left lying there - for someone else to pick them up. In the same sense, you could establish a treshold of, say, 100 million dollars. You cannot have any more money than that as a single person: above that threshhold, the wealth tax simply becomes 100%. No more "sky is the limit" there, because nobody really "earns" that much money, nobody should be insanely rich.
Thank you for the links as well.
GOP is now RICO.
The gop and their allies; the US Chamber of Commerce, Christian taliban, proud boys, KKK, etc.
Yes, I feel immediate unease when the shards of what once was the GOP are referred to as a political party.
Old joke, adapted from long-forgotten US prosecutions
of the 1980s:
"What do they call a Republican voter
in the United States"?
"Unindicted Co-Conspirator."
(ba-da-bum.)
Sorry, but that’s not fair. Most of them are dupes.
I don't know that they are "dupes." The study by Profs. David Norman Smith and Eric Hanley at the Univ. of Kansas published in Critical Sociology in Feb. 2018 entitled "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" [google it] identified their reasons primarily because they share some traits: racist, misogynistic and xenophobic (hating immigrants.) MAGA is simply the KKK without the white sheets and conical hats - white Protestant supremacy now, white Protestant supremacy forever.
But isn’t being a dupe a matter of personal responsibility in most cases?
Wow. I love the way all of you talk. Seriously. (Although I grew up in the US, I don't get to speak much English. Not like you folks.... Thanks, all of you....
The Repugnant Party is a Terrorist Organization.
This is not a complement to the GOP, but it is so many things- a kakistocracy, kleptocracy, Fasicst party, corporatocracy, autocracy and terrorist party. We've all heard other labels as well.
Is the GOP a monolith that can be described with one set of labels like RICO or Terrorist Organization?
Heather spoke of the implications of of "the parties different visions of government." I think, if we want to save our democracy from authoritarianism/Trumpism, it's important to distinguish between the cynical power grabbers at the top, and the rest of everyday people they have learned how to manipulate to their ends:
1) The cynical power grabbers have the power and/or position to shape and implement the GOP agenda as donors or politicians. They can do this because they are so wealthy that they don't need the government programs funded by the taxes they are avoiding.
2) The people they manipulate are already "fed up" about their government and are ripe for skillful manipulation of their anger, disillusionment and, in many cases, despair. Anger feels better than depression.
Here's more food for thought about this from one of my heroes, Robert Reich.
Why Have So Many Americans Succumbed to Trumpism?
Chapter 6 of The Common Good
SEP 8
"But what if their willingness to believe and support Trump is understandable, given what has happened to them? I’m not suggesting it’s justifiable, only that it may be explicable.
As we have seen, many of the key political and economic institutions of our society have abandoned their commitments to the common good — and along the way, abandoned the bottom half of the adult population, especially those without college degrees."
Here's the link to his complete substack edition. https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/the-common-good-chapter-6-the-decline?r=eznl2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I read chapter 6 before I read LFAA today and it is informative. RR is my hero also.
The MAGA problem is our problem too. One person, One vote, or at least it should be so; and Big Lies and divide and conquer works. We've seen it all before. We've been snoozing and loosing while the plutocrats took over the narrative.
Definitely an "enterprise" that's starving the IRS of significant revenue. Meanwhile an 8/30/23 WAPO Editorial states Musk intends to expand Starlink "10 fold" in the years ahead, that's 45,000 'Musklinks' or is that Must Links?
Monay 9/11 Update: See RONAN FARROW's piece in the 8/21/23 The New Yorker, "Elon Musk Shadow Rule". Bottom Line: we have a private American Citizen supporting Putin's War Against Ukraine by disrupting Ukrain's Starlike connections.
Also,MONDAY, 9/11, Walter Isaccson's Musk biography is out with a Musk admission that he spoke to the Russian Ambassador before his disruptions of Ukraine's Starlink access.
Monopoly?
Certainly Jen & an expanding monopoly. But, I need to take a close look at Elon Musk's contact with Putin/Russian communications to see if ELON is functionally acting as an "Foreign Agent" under Section 612a of FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
Thx, Bryan. With so much power, money, and tech advantage, he’s another narcissistic megalomaniac who terrifies the bejeezus out of me with all of the chaos he can create. Sheesh…can he be held accountable?
More than 1 institution is working on it.
And why the hell not? The idea that you can do whatever the hell you want, even if it robs others of their money and choices, so long as it delivers profit, sound like the creed of the Mafia; but plutocrats and their toady politicians have made it the law of the land. Money is a form of power and power tends to corrupt, at least historically, no?
And I think we will find that he is. Not that he will have any loyalty to them either.
Perfect description! Thank you and thank Fani Willis and GA!
Are we entering an era where traditional defined land mass, boundaries and nations of citizens are obsolete and that a single man’s inconceivable wealth can carve out a position as global super-power? Musk appears to have staked out our upper stratospheres. We and democracy are in dangerous times.
We're living in a 1960s James Bond World.
That is so true, Rob... Ian Fleming created a rich, criminal techno-warlord like Dr. No before there was anyone like Elon Musk. Now, 70 years later, we see it was not just fantasy, it was a prediction. This puts Fleming in the ranks of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.
And Margaret Atwood.
Artists are prophets. No surprise here. Questions is how did we let an apartheidist get so much control? My answer would be that we haven’t gotten over our worship of money and the thieves who amass it at the expense of the starving, threatened, or dying.
Rob Boyte, that's a bullseye.
The Mad Scientist of pulp fiction is alive... and out to control us all... yet seems utterly unable to control himself or his own urges.
Why oh why are we not investing in straitjackets?
“Unable?” No. Unwilling? Absolutely.
Both, I suspect, unable AND, above all, unwilling to rein in his impulses.
Descartes' "I think therefore I am" becomes "I have tantrums, therefore I am".
It’s the game of Risk, but for real.
Certainly looks that way to me.
Grover Zinn -- It sounds like Elon Musk has turned himself into a war criminal. Is he naïve? Quite a scary guy to be meddling in war games about which he knows nothing. Turning off world communications? Beyond terrifying.
I admit that my fears about the emerging AI technology exceed my knowledge of that field, but AI coupled with Starlink, in the hands of someone with Musk's money, power and ability/wish to control events for ill purposes, is bone-chilling. I'm not saying Musk is necessarily Dr. No, but imagine it nonetheless: using satellite technology to transmit false scenarios to effect real-world responses in real-time, with military, economic, political, social or other consequences.
Perhaps my worries are unfounded, but I learned long ago that if something can be imagined, it may one day come to pass (who thought I could type this on a handheld computer that can send and receive sound, words and images around the world instantly, and in many cases, use Starlink to do so?)
Doug, I totally agree with you. This is the inevitable consequence of capitalism without rails. We saw it start during the Reagan era. Infrastructure was delegated to the private sector, with many disastrous results.
Atlanta contracted with a private company for the water supply - and the taps spewed filthy water or no water. It turned out that the low bid was just a “foot-in-the-door” proposal; once they won the contract they claimed that they had no idea how bad the water system was and would need many millions more to bring clean, reliable water to the citizens (I’ve worked with local government contracts and I know the tricks).
The truth is that public services are not profitable - unless you degrade the quality or raise the price.
The idea that the greedy billionaires should control public utilities (as Musk is doing) or security infrastructure (as Musk is doing) is a recipe for disaster.
Well said. This needs more attention. Too many water systems of cities are in venture capital hands (like real estate in say Nashville TN)
Doug Gagne -- I've just finished listening to Walter Isaacson on (recorded earlier) "CBS News Sunday Morning," who is just publishing a biography of Elon Musk. Fascinating interview, including a correction/ adjustment to the "Starlink" and Crimea story. It's far more complex than I'd thought, and Isaacson (who spent two solid years with Musk) explains briefly what it was about. He says, "Starlink wasn't running in that region (along the Crimean coast. But when Ukraine asked Starlink for service there, Musk did decline to activate it." Musk felt that the Russians activities were leading leading to WW III. I couldn't find a link, but there's lots about Isaacson and Musk on YouTube. He is a very complex guy, not to be taken superficially.
Doug, yes AI coupled with Starlink is exponentially more terrifying. And yes that if something can be imagined it is possible, relatively quickly. How short the "modern age" has been (when did it start?) -- and what has happened in what? ... The past 100-120 years? Personally, it will be only 11.25 years until I turn 100, and what is possible in that short length of time is mind boggling.
Criticism, it seems, offends Musk’s ego and that is dangerous. When he usesd his power to affect the war in Ukraine, he is acting independently of our government. He cannot have his own foreign policy, just because the government has 'farmed out' part of our space program to him. There may be a loose analogy there to Russia having 'farmed out' part of its military operations to the Wagner Group, which eventually got 'too big for its britches,' resulting in its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, coincidentally dying in an 'accidental' plane crash.
Pressure needs to be put on SpaceX's Board of Directors (don't know if Spacelink, as a division of SpaceX, has a separate Board). It is absolutely ridiculous that one unelected man has so much power.
What an interesting contrast. A vision pursued for societal and economic benefits for emerging nations (and peaceful partners) by Biden and the self-agrandizing of a technology empirealist, Musk, interfering with international defense policy of democratic nations based strictly on his Ann Rand grasp of the brilliant entrepreneur role in directing events that affect nations.
Ayn not Ann
Yup. C9gnitive decline with age has a real party with spellchecker. Thanks.
I couldn’t agree more. Musk is “public enemy #1” and, I’m afraid, not very stable mentally.
Absolutely spot on Grover! Musk is now in control of critical communications and can act as the US military. It is the exact reason why the Chinese and others put in place a second GPS network out of this fear.
I would rather have the US military making decisions then Elon. We are heading back to a Monarchy with folks like Elon, Donald, Vladimir, Xi, and Kim Jong that not only want to be the richest but also the most powerful.
We need a check and balance, world wide. Maybe Artificial Intelligence controlling everything might not be bad. Algorithms that determined there are way too many innocent people dying at the hands of that Russian Navy. And that is why Elon fears it. AI would have released and guided those Ukrainian drones.
JB
As HCR points out, the degradation of America's infrastructure was by design. Schools that need replacing, bridges that are close to collapse, fresh water systems and waste water treatment long past replacement, overcrowded airports, railroads out of date, refineries spewing pollution, and more. Private ownership only maximizes profit. "Free markets" are not free, they are controlled by the major economic powers.
Has Musk registered as a foreign agent? Seems DOJ should be in top of that.