The penultimate scene in my Robin Hood book, the scene that inspired 111,800 words. Robin finally gets to Marian who is has been held hostage in the castle. It has been 15 years, do they still feel the same way about each other as they did.
Elon Musk just used a joke to perform an autopsy on the American economy.
Two economists go for a hike. They find a pile of shit. One pays the other $100 to eat it.
They keep walking. Find another pile. The second economist pays $100 back to eat that one.
They stop. Neither man gained a dollar. Both ate shit for nothing.
But on paper they just generated $200 in GDP.
Musk: “That basically would count as a job. This is to illustrate the absurdity of economics.”
That is not a punchline. That is the operating system of the federal government.
Every time a politician celebrates “record job creation” this is what they are describing. Not output. Not value. Not progress. Motion.
The entire bureaucratic machine exists to manufacture friction and then invoice for it.
Compliance layers built to justify the next compliance layer. Oversight committees that produce nothing but the need for more oversight. Consulting firms hired to audit the work of other consulting firms.
Trillions circulating through systems that have never produced a single thing you can hold in your hands. But the GDP number ticks up. So everyone applauds.
The shit gets eaten. The scoreboard moves. Nobody asks what actually got built.
This is why Washington treats AI like a five alarm fire.
AI does not play the friction game. It does not form a committee. It does not schedule a review. It does not file 400 pages of paperwork no one will ever read.
It just solves the problem.
And that is the one thing the machine cannot survive.
The government does not tax results. It taxes the process. The longer the process, the deeper the cut.
AI compresses a ten day workflow into seconds. There is nothing left to bill. Nothing left to tax. Nothing left to skim.
So they will spend the next decade warning you that AI threatens the economy.
What they will never say is what it actually threatens.
The illusion that activity equals progress.
The $200 economy where both men ate shit and called it a job.
The machines are not coming for your purpose.
They are coming to prove that half the economy never had one.
Larry Ellison just asked the one question no journalist on Earth can answer.
A Wall Street Journal writer told Ellison to his face that Elon Musk doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Ellison didn’t argue. Didn’t get emotional. He just asked a question.
Ellison: “This guy is landing rockets on robot drone rafts in the ocean, and you’re saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing. You ever land a rocket?”
One question. No recovery.
Ellison: “Who are you? Why should I believe you as opposed to my friend Elon?”
This is the question the entire media class has been dodging for a decade. Who are you to judge? What have you built? What have you shipped? What problem have you solved that didn’t involve a keyboard and a deadline?
Ellison: “You’re there in front of your Apple Macintosh typing up an article saying Elon’s an idiot.”
They sit behind a laptop they did not engineer. Using a network they did not build. Running on silicon they cannot explain. To tell the world that the man sending humans to space doesn’t know what he’s doing.
They have never built anything heavier than a Word document.
And they publish it with absolute certainty.
That’s the part that should disturb you. Not the criticism. The confidence behind it. The total absence of self-awareness it takes to judge disciplines you wouldn’t last a single semester in.
Musk does not operate in opinion. He operates in the physical layer of the universe where the math closes or the rocket does not come home.
His critics operate in a text editor.
He built the vehicle that carries NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. The satellite constellation delivering internet to active war zones. The EV that forced every automaker on Earth to abandon their combustion roadmap.
His loudest critics built a byline.
So why the coordinated hatred?
Because they lost the leash.
The attacks didn’t escalate because Musk got worse at engineering. They escalated because he bought X. He cracked open the algorithm. He handed the public square back to the people. And he shattered their ability to control what you’re allowed to think.
They don’t hate the engineer.
They hate that the engineer took their monopoly.
You cannot cancel a rocket. You cannot publish a hit piece on gravity. You cannot edit the laws of physics.
They own the syntax.
He owns the physics.
One of them is going to Mars.
@ksorbs The legend of Robin Hood will be retold frequently because we need to learn from the story. Check out my new book and Hugh Jackmans new movie The Death of Robin Hood
The upcoming novel that tells more of the dynamic relationship between Robin and Marian than has ever been told. I you have ever wondered why some legends co time to claim so much attention tune in to find out more.
@VigilantFox This isn’t far fetched but the conspiracy goes so much deeper. The rainbow can be translated as ‘God’s War Bow’. So when he told Noah he put his promise in the sky we can see it as, ‘He hung his weapon up’ Mankind is furiously working to master God’s weapons