Robert J Frey

Applied math prof at Stony Brook University: quantitative finance, computational science, economics, public policy, space exploration. Co-founder RWRI.

[Robert J Frey @financequant]

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[Robert J Frey @financequant]

@Floridamarx No it's giving the power to a class of bureaucrats who lack the skill and inclination to do anything productive to it. It replaces choice with regulation with the concomitant loss of freedom. History is clear: It has never worked.

[Libertario 🟨⬛ @QuotesforGoal]

"El poder que un multimillonario posee sobre mí es muchísimo menor que el que posee el más insignificante funcionario, el cual maneja el poder coercitivo del Estado para decidir cómo podré vivir y trabajar"

Friedrich Hayek

[hamsters🌐🐹 @sigmahamster2]

Socialists be like: “Capitalism is a failure. Anyway, here’s how I’d distribute all the wealth it produced.”

[Estado Mínimo @xestadominimo]

Hitler, Mussolini y Stalin simplemente representaron tres variantes del socialismo. Subordinaban el individuo al Estado, concentraban el poder y fueron enemigos de la sociedad libre. La diferencia principal era si dividían a la gente por clase, nación o raza.

[Milton Friedman Daily @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman: “Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax.”

“If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or borrowing.”

[Destroyer of Bad Takes (Emeritus) @_Credible_Hulk]

If a capitalist builds apartments, socialists complain he's profiting off housing.

If he doesn't build them, they complain there's a housing shortage.

Their ideal developer is someone who builds unlimited apartments, charges nothing, and goes bankrupt.

That'll fix housing.

[Sam E. Antar @SamAntar]

.@SenSanders, you claimed Americans who paid $1 in federal income taxes last year paid more than the corporations on your list.

False.

Here’s a sample of their 2025 SEC filings showing federal income taxes paid in cash:

CVS: $1.583 billion
PayPal: $535 million
Kohl’s: $41 million
United Airlines: $33 million
Tesla: $28 million

Over $2.2 BILLION from just five companies.

And here’s what you left out:

United had $10.6 billion in federal tax-loss carryforwards. Tesla had $3.56 billion.

Prior-year tax losses can legally offset future taxable income.

You confused current federal income tax expense with cash taxes paid and ignored the prior-year losses.

Did you bother reading the SEC filings?

[Cyborg Pediatrician @CyborgPeds]

Just a reminder: in 1995, Chicago experienced a major heat wave. Almost 800 people died. Afterward, there was a concerted effort to provide air conditioners and cooling centers. In 2012 there was a worse heat wave but only 26 people died as a result.

Air conditioning works.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

For fourteen years, everyone thought U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant John Chapman died in the first two minutes on top of a freezing 10,000-foot mountain in Afghanistan.

Then modern image technology unlocked the thermal camera footage recorded by a Predator drone circling high in the clouds on March 4, 2002.

When Pentagon investigators watched the enhanced screen, hardened combat generals broke down in tears. Because the video proved that after everyone else had left the mountain peak, John Chapman woke up alone in the snow and fought an entire army by himself.

That night on the peak of Takur Ghar, thirty-six-year-old Chapman, a father of two little girls from Connecticut, had charged uphill through thigh-deep snow alone to silence an enemy bunker and save his pinned-down team. Hit from a second bunker, he fell motionless. Believing he was dead, the surviving team was forced to retreat down the ridge.

Chapman was not dead.

The drone footage showed him regaining consciousness in the pitch-black snow, surrounded on three sides by enemy fighters, with nine separate wounds in his body.

In total darkness, with no comrade beside him and nobody on earth watching except a silent camera in the sky, he refused to surrender. For more than an hour, he fought from inside the bunker, killing an enemy fighter in bare-handed close combat when they tried to rush him.

Then, at dawn, Chapman heard the heavy thump of rotor blades in the mist.

An American Chinook helicopter carrying twenty-three U.S. Army Rangers was flying straight toward the peak to rescue him, right into the sights of an enemy rocket launcher.

Chapman knew that if he stayed safe inside the rock bunker, those twenty-three young Americans in the helicopter would be blown out of the sky.

So on the thermal video, investigators watched John Chapman deliberately climb out of the bunker, stand up tall in the open snow, and fire into the enemy positions to draw every machine gun on the mountain onto his own chest.

He died in the snow as the sun rose, shielding the incoming helicopter with his life.

True bushido is what a warrior does when he thinks nobody will ever know his story. The sky was watching, John. And America will remember your name forever.

[Libertario 🟨⬛ @QuotesforGoal]

“Se empieza por la idea que el Estado debe dirigir todo; que es mejor que haya una corporación que dirija las cosas, y no que todo «quede abandonado al caos, o a circunstancias individuales»; y se llega al nazismo o al comunismo, claro”

Jorge Luis Borges

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Actions speak louder than words.

Hitler opposed Marxism, not state control of the economy. He abolished independent unions, suppressed economic freedom, subordinated private property to state dictates, and imposed central planning in pursuit of nationalist goals.

That he wanted to exterminate rival socialists doesn't make him a capitalist any more than Stalin's persecution of Trotskyists made Stalin an advocate of free enterprise.

Nazism and Marxism were competing forms of collectivist authoritarianism, not opposites on the fundamental question of individual liberty.

The relevant distinction isn't which collectivists hated which other collectivists. It's whether individuals are free or subordinate to the state.

[Robert J Frey @financequant]

You are an idiot. When the Government wanted to design its next generation heavy lift system, it resulted in a system that cost $1.5 billion per launch. In contrast the Falcon Heavy—using reusable components that nearly everyone in the field said was an impossible—costs around $100 to 180 million per launch, about 7% to 17% of the cost.

When Boeing and SpaceX received contracts to produce the next generation of transport to the ISS—which everyone thought was a waste of resources because there was no way SpaceX could compete with Boeing—SpaceX was given $2.6 billion and Boeing $4.2 billion. Boeing has yet to produce a viable capsule while SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has performed flawlessly.

There are several alternatives to Starlink. It’s just that Starlink is the cheapest and easiest to use. The same goes for AI. There are a lot of competitors to Grok.

Tesla successfully produced a line of electric vehicles—again despite many naysayers—and its Model Y is one of the best selling autos in the world. In contrast, many experienced auto companies have stumbled. GM has experienced many safety and production problems and had
a write-off of over $11 billion in 2025 related to their EV efforts.

So far I don’t see any monopolies. Just a very effective competitor in the marketplace.

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

How was Hitler a leftist?

Collectivism. Statism. Command economy. High government debt and spending. High confiscatory taxes on targeted groups. Identity politics. Anti free speech. Pro gun control. “Everything is political” - art, sport, journalism, education.

[Not the Bee @Not_the_Bee]

Millionaire who hates millionaires gives $1 million to another millionaire who hates millionaires so they can defeat third millionaire

https://t.co/CDe2D7zlwo

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

"Racial bean counters automatically attribute statistical differences between blacks and whites to racial discrimination. But they never attribute statistical differences between whites and Asian Americans to discrimination."

— Thomas Sowell

[House Republicans @HouseGOP]

Venezuela had the largest proven oil reserves on earth and still ended up with empty shelves.

That's not bad luck. That's COMMUNISM.

[Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut]

These statements are TRUE.