Elliott

⛳️

[tobi lutke @tobi]

* Correct quote is “politically left” not socialist. Point stands. Entrepreneurs take potential and turn it into value that’s added to the global GDP. They capture a small amount of that value in the process which is a big part of the incentive. The rest goes to others, employees, shareholders, government, suppliers etc.

You can always criticize them. You can always criticize the redistribution efforts. But you should always remember that without them, there is very little new value enters society and that locks everyone in zero sum competition, sometimes war.

Entrepreneurs are load bearing for human thriving. It’s a glorious act to put yourself out there and build a company that provides good and services to everyone. And Elon is the best entrepreneur that ever was. You don’t have to like him, and sure he’s crazy, but otherwise he wouldn’t do crazy things. Same coin, two sides.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

"... the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it."

— Thomas Sowell

[Graham Linehan @Glinner]

This is the way.

[Will Manidis @WillManidis]

we live in age of great moral panics about things that don’t matter and zero moral outrage over some of the most egregious societal sins we’ve ever seen

[Rush @exRAF_Al]

The same Lewis Hamilton who used a corporate leasing structure to save money on taxes (around £3.3 million in VAT) when acquiring his Bombardier Challenger 605 private jet in 2013? The same Lewis Hamilton who bought the £16.5 million jet through his British Virgin Islands company (Stealth Aviation Ltd) and who then set up an Isle of Man leasing company (Stealth (IOM) Ltd, to import it into the EU and sub-leased it to a UK jet management firm (TAG Aviation), which in turn provided it back to Hamilton and his Guernsey company under charter agreements? *That* Lewis Hamilton?

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

Under capitalism, socialists are free to build socialism.

Under socialism, capitalists aren’t free to build anything.

Nothing stops a group of socialists pooling their money, forming a company, and splitting every wage and every pound of profit perfectly equally.... Or to donate all profit to the government.

It’s legal. It’s easy. Owning the means of production is as simple as setting up a company.

Marx wrote his manifesto before the invention of limited liability companies. Back then “seize the factory” meant seizing it from the handful of families who could afford one.

That argument expired the day anyone could start a company with limited liability, raise investment and hire who they want.

Socialists are free to lead by example and demonstrate their system works. They can out-recruit, out-motivate, out-build and out innovate based on their ideas if they like. It would prove the philosophy works. Capitalism will happily host their experiment.

The fact that nobody does this tells you a lot.

[Elliott @ehawk90]

Hmmmm

[Ben @EllroyLove]

We’re arrived at this turning point where people en masse are noticing the state is taxing almost every aspect of our lives, and in return we get mass 3rd world immigration, a burger costs £18, Ukraine gets infinite money, Islam dominates the news and our towns become shitholes

[Zynx @ZynxBTC]

The Blair family are looting the British people with the help of the government.

This is a tale of how your taxes flow into the pockets of those connected to power in a closed loop.

The UK government is handing £500 million of taxpayers money to a Sovereign AI fund to be led by Suzanne Ashman, daughter-in-law of Tony Blair.

That same government has already been funnelling tens of millions into Multiverse, an AI training company founded by Euan Blair, Tony Blair's son.

Yes, Euan Blair is married to Suzanne Ashman.

Multiverse receives up to £18,000 per person. Cohorts of 100. Multiple rounds. You do the maths.

They generated £79.6 million in revenue last year, largely from government contracts and taxpayers money. This is despite falling below the targets for the service they are supposed to be providing.

They don't need to compete for customers in any meaningful market sense. They need to maintain proximity to the people who control the budget. That is a completely different incentive structure.

No price signal exists to tell anyone whether £18,000 per head for an AI business analysis course represents value for money. No profit and loss mechanism. No competitive pressure. No consequences for overpaying.

The bureaucrat who signed off on this contract will never feel the cost. The taxpayer who funded it will never know the counterfactual.

Now look at Multiverse's AI Advisory Board.

Doug Gurr, former Chair of the Alan Turing Institute, the body that directly advises government on AI strategy, also sits on Multiverse's advisory board.

The same Multiverse being paid by the government whose strategy he helped shape.

Kersti Kaljulaid, former President of Estonia and member of Microsoft's AI advisory board, is also advising Multiverse.

Professor Michael Wooldridge, Head of Computer Science at Oxford.

Dame Wendy Hall, one of the most connected figures in UK technology policy.

Think about the circularity. The Alan Turing Institute advises government on AI strategy. Its Chair advises Multiverse. Multiverse receives government funding.

The people shaping the policy are advising the company that benefits from it.

It is a closed loop.

This is the Cantillon effect in its purest form. Money does not flow equally across the economy. It flows first and most generously to those closest to the people who control the budget.

This has received zero coverage from the mainstream media.

This should be a national scandal.

[Elliott @ehawk90]

@RupertLowe10 which they've miraculously made not-paywalled....

[Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306]

No, it stands for English civilisation winning.

You stand for putting treacherous lawyers who collaborate with criminals in charge of lawfare against the SAS.

A future regime will jail your mate Hermer and RICO through your network

RETWEET IF AGREE

[Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman]

On this day in 2008: production starts for Tesla’s first vehicle, the Roadster.

[DHH @dhh]

The proposed Danish wealth tax is (supremely optimistically) estimated to bring in 7 billion DKK. That just happens to be almost exactly what the Danes spend every year to host the 35,000 Syrians who haven't returned to their home country yet. https://t.co/RQ96rBcjGu

[signüll @signulll]

the internet created global liquidity in everything. this includes talent markets, jobs, dating, attention, & status among many other things. this is the single most under realized structural change of the last 20 years. almost no one understands this well.

what this means practically is that whatever you're pursuing, you're now competing in a pool that's orders of magnitude larger than any previous generation faced. the distribution of outcomes gets fatter on both tails & the middle hollows out. you either benefit from the expanded opportunity set or you get crushed by it.

the people who thrive in liquid markets are the ones who figure out which game is still inefficiently priced & get there first. but these windows close faster than ever before.

[staysaasy @staysaasy]

My new favorite insult is calling someone’s job a Claude skill.

[Elliott @ehawk90]

It's not long before Amazon will be the physical incarnation of AI slop

[Elliott @ehawk90]

The entire British property industry is made up of fully grown adults just sending each other documents that have already been sent to each other and charging a fortune for the process

[Elliott @ehawk90]

2026 and this is still the hardest question you get asked if you're in the ecommerce business...