@sama We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves.
After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple’s phone technology! Wow.
What do you plan for an encore? That’s tough to beat.
The amount of stuff we have is not fixed.
If a farmer works hard, they can produce more food. If they are lazy, less food will be produced.
In either case, the farmer probably makes more than enough to feed himself. But they work hard to maximize production because they know that if they feed others, the economy will reward them with the resources they need to improve their farm and produce even more. It will reward them with anything they want.
That’s the problem with communism. “Everyone should get an equal share” sounds fair in a world where there is only a fixed amount of stuff, but it breaks down when you realize that the people who work hard ensure there is more for everyone.
When they say “Everyone should get an equal share” what they really mean is “the guy who worked hard to feed everyone should get no reward for their outsized contribution”.
When there is no incentive to work hard to produce more food, goods, and services for everyone… people don’t. Suddenly there is less food for everyone. The goal was to take from the rich, but you actually ended up starving the poor.
That’s exactly what happened in the Great Chinese Famine. When the government took control of all the land, millions starved to death.
Reject communism and socialism the way you would oppose someone proposing a famine that would kill millions of your friends and neighbors. Because that’s what it is.
This is because the anti-capitalist left is not actually against people being crazy rich. They're against certain types of people being crazy rich.
Artists and athletes make sense to them because they've played music and sports and because their success can be explained by "luck" and "talent". Messi's wealth is not offensive to them because they understand Messi is much better at football than they are.
But when it comes to business, the anti-capitalist leftist has no framework for understanding why Jeff Bezos might be super rich since 99% of them have never ever created a product, business or service that was of value to other people. They've never taken entrepreneurial risk. They've never employed people and felt the burden of responsibility that comes with that. They've never pick up a business and given it a play in the way they've picked up a ball or a guitar.
They *literally* don't understand wealth creation. They think there is a fixed amount of money and the only thing a business does is split it unfairly.
It's why they rage at Elon and other successful business leaders. Because they genuinely don't understand why they're wealthy.
Also, and this is just as important, athletes and artists are disproportionately young, attractive, "diverse", left wing etc. Business leaders are "evil" middle aged white men whose success offends the average anti-capitalist leftist because they don't understand a) what it is they do and b) that Elon Musk has the same talent advantage on them as Messi does, it's just harder to measure.
@elonmusk@kylaschwaberow Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI will officially begin on June 25 on digital storefronts and at other select retailers.
Check out the official cover art, also available as downloadable artwork at https://t.co/XPwC8URCQ4
This idea from some people that the government should heavily tax @elonmusk - the world's best capital allocator - and transfer a significant portion of that wealth to the government, one of the worst capital allocators, makes little sense, especially since much of his earned wealth exists because the companies he built have become far more valuable by creating products and services people value and are willingly to pay for.
Elon may have a high net worth, but virtually all of it is tied up in company stock. He doesn't have tens of billions of dollars in cash. Taxing his wealth would likely force him to sell significant amounts of that stock, putting downward pressure on the share price and negatively affecting millions of people who themselves own shares in those companies directly or through ETFs, mutual funds, pension funds, and 401(k)s.
I think I saw somewhere that Elon's companies have paid over $100 billion in salaries. Those salaries are taxed. Beyond that, his companies have already generated enormous economic value for America and the other regions that his companies operate in.
You want Elon Musk to do good for the world? Great, he already is:
• Tesla: Accelerating the transition to sustainable energy and developing safety technologies like FSD that saves lives.
• SpaceX: Expanding internet access through Starlink in underserved and low-income regions, saving the U.S. government $40 billion (according to the Pentagon), and restored America's ability to launch astronauts from American soil again.
• Neuralink: Giving paralyzed individuals new levels of independence with brain chips. Next, they aim to give blind people the ability to literally see.
Taking capital away from someone who has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to turn it into productive businesses, jobs, innovation, and economic growth, and handing it to a government with a far less effective track record of capital allocation - doesn't strike me as a good trade. Elon's wealth isn't a bug in our system, it's a feature of living in a country where entrepreneurs have the opportunity to build companies that create enormous value for society.
Congratulations @ElonMusk.
Thanks to SpaceX's IPO, he's the first Trillionaire.
He didn't TAKE money from anyone. He CREATED wealth.
He launched satellites that connect even the poorest, most remote parts of the world.
Our world needs more MAKERS like Musk; fewer TAKERS like:
Set is ready @ElonMusk
We built it 25min from downtown Austin and can shoot anytime in the next 7 days on 1h notice.
Humanity is on the verge of becoming a multi-planet species and spacefaring civilization.
My goal with this interview is to help people viscerally feel what that future is going to look like and get everyone excited to help build it.
I have paid over $10B in taxes in a single year, more than anyone in history.
If I exercise and sell stock options, the combined federal and state income tax is ~45% (I still pay California taxes for every day I spend there).
Then there is another 40% tax paid on my estate when I die.
Overall, I will probably end up paying trillions in taxes.
LIVE TRIAL UPDATE: Brockman testifies Musk left OpenAI because he believed it had a "0% chance" of getting to AGI first, and wanted to build a competitor at Tesla to counter Google's DeepMind.
Brockman says Musk told him the Tesla AGI work would have to be done in secret because "the shareholders wouldn't like it."
ALS has gradually taken away Kenneth’s ability to speak. Through Neuralink’s VOICE clinical trial, he’s exploring how a brain-computer interface designed to translate thought to speech could help restore autonomy in his daily life.
Watch to learn more: