David Smith

Back after a very long and peaceful sebatical. Back because Elon forced me to log in, and to be followed by lots of female bot accounts, it seems

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@NHSMillion Just over £192bn in funding in 21-22. That’s around £3.5bn a week or around £525m a day. Per taxpayer that’s about £16 PER DAY/£500 PER MONTH/£6,000 PER YEAR!

As useless as lib/lab/con have been. Look inward too. The #NHS is a disaster and a rip off.

Health insurance <£100pm

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@EBL2017 5 home games in 17 days and there’s no punishment for non-attendance of season ticket holders, unlike other clubs. Forgive people for picking and choosing which games they can afford to go to.

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@jeremycorbyn 😂🤣

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@AdrianRamsay We will continue to need gas during the transition to renewables. Do you think it’s better for the planet to use energy intensive processes to liquify & deliquify gas to get it on and off diesel guzzling boats to import it here or to just get it from our shores? No brainer mate

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@donmcgowan We need gas during our transition to renewables so… do the maths:

Do we need the gas? Yes
Is it good for the planet to import it using energy extensive techniques to liquify it then deliquify it and then transport it on diesel guzzling ships? No
Conclusion? It’s lower emissions

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@DannyVet No counter to his claims of criminality, just ad hominem attacks. If you watched the video he said he welcomed scrutiny

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@bencsmoke We still need gas as we transition to renewables, so we will be burning gas anyway. Opening jackdaw and using its gas will be better for the planet than importing it on giant diesel guzzling ships, not to mention the cost reduction

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@ZackPolanski Do we currently still need gas whilst we transition to renewables? Yes!

Is importing gas from other countries on diesel guzzling ships better for the environment? No!

So it’s not climate vandalism. Shut ye trap

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@GOVUK Work another hour to cover my heating bills

[Sunday Sport @thesundaysport]

We've all been there.
You crimp off a shit and realise there's no bog paper left.
I won't accept that there's nothing I can do to help.
My government will add six more sheets to every roll of bog paper.
It's a small change, but it's a practical way to help people

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@GBNEWS @PatrickChristys Remain voters clearly love exploiting foreign labour on low incomes

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@JeremyVineOn5 @bonsuman @StormHuntley Believe it or not, slaves aren’t very motivated workers. Slavery wasn’t a huge success, our country was not built on it.

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@pippaisright Every victim of illegal migrant crime is COMPLETELY AVOIDABLE. Politicians and civil servants who refuse to sort the problem, have blood on their hands

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@MikeTappTweets 🚨🚨 PROJECTION ALERT!! 🚨🚨

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@valuball City’s fault

[Sean Hanson @SeanHans777]

Christopher Hitchens: ”In 1786, when the United States was barely a country, it was having its sailors taken as slaves by the Barbary states, the states of the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Tripoli, shores of Tripoli. Ships stopped, its crews carried off into slavery. We estimate 1.5 million European and American slaves taken between 1750 and 1815.

Jefferson and Adams went to their ambassador in London and said, why do you do this to us? The United States has never had a quarrel with the Muslim world of any kind. We weren't in the crusades. We weren't at war with Spain. Why do you do this to our people and our ships? Why do you plunder and enslave our people? The ambassador said very plainly, Mr. Abdul Rahman said, because the Quran gives us permission to do so, because you are infidels, and that's our answer. Jefferson said, well, in that case, I will send a navy which will crush your state, which he did.

Islamic fundamentalism is not created by American democracy. It's a lie to say so. It's a masochistic lie, and it excuses those who are the real criminals, and blames us for the attacks made upon us.”

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

In 2021, the head of the UN World Food Programme said $6 billion from Elon Musk could solve world hunger.

Elon replied: publish the plan, right here, publicly, and I'll sell Tesla stock on the spot.

The plan came out. And when you read it, it wasn't a plan to solve hunger. It was one year of food for 42 million people. A twelve-month subscription. And the year after? Start over.

A few months later, Elon summed up his view: if you care about the reality of goodness rather than the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult.

"Reality of goodness over perception of goodness."

That line stuck with me for weeks. Does philanthropy actually work?

Gates-style philanthropy is first and foremost institutional capture. Foundations funding NGOs, funding governments, funding programs, producing reports, producing photos. Everyone's happy, and the aid machine keeps itself alive. Sixty years and hundreds of billions later, much of Africa is still dependent on aid. Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo laid it out in Dead Aid: aid breeds dependency, feeds corruption, and short-circuits the only mechanism that has ever lifted a country out of poverty.

So what actually works?

It's been tested. In Kenya, Berkeley researchers working with GiveDirectly randomly selected villages and gave every poor household about $1,000 in cash. No program. No training. No conditions. Just cash.

The result: people bought metal roofs, livestock, started small businesses. Barely any inflation. And every dollar injected generated around $2.50 of economic activity locally, including for neighbors who received nothing.

Why? Because you didn't give them charity. You gave them capital. You primed the pump.

And that's where everything hinges: ownership. Hernando de Soto showed that the world's poor hold trillions of dollars in assets, but without recognized property titles, it's dead capital. You can't borrow against it, pass it on, or grow it. Where property rights are respected, the system starts running. Where they aren't, no amount of aid will ever be enough.

Now reread Elon's post.

"Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many."

That's not a meal. That's not a handout. That's a property title. A piece of the company building the infrastructure of a multiplanetary civilization, owned directly by millions of kids.

A kid who gets a handout depends on the state. A kid who owns a share of SpaceX owns a piece of the future. He learns what an asset is, he has a stake in the economy working, and one day he'll vote as an owner, not as a client of the state.

Gates buys perception. Musk distributes ownership.

The reality of goodness versus its perception. And it's absolutely brilliant.

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@Dominic2306 Another problem is how much every qualified UK worker competes with the third world for every application. Speak to HR and recruiters and there are hundreds of applications for every role within 24hrs. CVs and cover letters are now written to stand out to an AI bot, not a human

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@piersmorgan I’m not having it either Piers. It’s unfair to just call out Saka, most of the team are at it. Even your fucking goalkeeper

[David Smith @DaveSmith850]

@NorthBankNadim Yes, I remember them signing Van Persie and Sanchez, you fucking donut.

Every player city signed we were told wasn’t needed and had done their time. Had only gone for the money as they’d win more at Arsenal. Stop rewriting history

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

“Now put it together. The state funds demand and blocks supply, so prices explode. The young suffer. The state then funds the NGOs, universities, culture and media that explain to them why they suffer. Those institutions point at the market. The young vote for more state. More state funds more NGOs, and the loop closes.”