“… Nobody lowered the standards for me.
…
I didn’t want a different standard.
I wanted the same standard.
…”
@WesleyHuntTX
This is the song we should all be singing. People who promote access based on anything other than merit are the racists. They’re the ones willing to live off other people’s sacrifices.
They’re the ones who have actually had all the privileges because no-one who struggles and earns their purpose has ever wanted to belittle and rob others of their dignity.
Hey Jasmine…
Black pilot here.
I think you missed the plot.
Then again, that’s becoming a pattern.
I graduated from West Point.
I went through Army flight school.
I learned to fly the AH-64 Apache.
I deployed to combat and flew 55 combat missions over Baghdad.
Nobody handed me a cockpit because of my skin color.
Nobody lowered the standards for me.
Nobody looked at me and said, “Let’s check a diversity box.”
That’s what people like you don’t seem to understand.
Suggesting that Black pilots, Black engineers, Black doctors, or Black leaders need special preferences to succeed is not empowering, it’s insulting.
I didn’t want a different standard.
I wanted the same standard.
And when you’re flying into combat, the American people don’t care what race the pilot is.
They care whether the pilot is qualified.
Merit isn’t racist.
Excellence isn’t discriminatory.
And reducing every achievement to skin color says far more about your worldview than it does about mine.
It remains interesting to me that reporters always ask for opinion on the very day that they plan to publish. This, after they have likely had days or weeks to prepare, interview, review, but they want your feedback in less than 24 hours. Reporters like this are clearly unbiased. 😒
Modern education has taught our young what to think and not how to think. This is a mind crisis and the people being pushed through that system are sadly non the wiser. They’re being moulded into Dunning-Kruger’s.
Doctors and diabetes
1797: "Feed the diabetic patient meat and fat. The symptoms vanish."
1860s: "Remove starch and sugar. Prescribe meat, eggs, and butter. The disease retreats."
1920s: "The diet is the medicine. Without it the child dies."
1923: "Insulin will help. The diet is still essential."
1950s: "Manage with diet first. Drugs are a last resort."
1977: "Eat more carbohydrate. Eat less fat."
1990s: "Diabetics should derive 55 to 60% of calories from carbohydrate."
2000s: "Take this drug to manage the blood sugar caused by the diet we recommended."
2010s: "Diabetes is a chronic, progressive disease. Lifelong management is required."
2026: "Reversal is not a real medical concept. Please collect your repeat prescription."
You: noticing that the disease was curable in 1797 and only became a lifelong subscription service after the food industry got a seat at the table.
Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.
Cette phrase change tout.
L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?
Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.
Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.
Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.
Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.
L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.
Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.
Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.
Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.
Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.
La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.
Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.
Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.
La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.
SPLC was one of the most powerful censorship forces in the country for decades. Lavishly supported by many big American companies for many years. This is astonishing, and deeply concerning.
The year is 1950. Your doctor lights a cigarette and tells you smoking is fine. He read it in a study. He is telling the truth about having read it. He does not know, or is not saying, that the study was funded by the tobacco industry.
The year is 1958. Your doctor tells you to eat less fat. The evidence is contested. The contestation is not in the public messaging. The food industry has been helpful in clarifying which findings deserve attention. Some researchers who published contradictory data have been quietly defunded. Ancel Keys is on the cover of Time magazine.
The year is 1962. Your doctor prescribes thalidomide to your pregnant wife for morning sickness. It has been approved. The FDA gave it the green light in Europe. Twelve thousand children will be born with severe limb malformations before anyone in an official capacity acknowledges the problem. The families are told the drug was safe. The drug was approved. Both of these things remain true.
The year is 1972. Your doctor prescribes Valium. Britain is in the grip of a benzodiazepine wave that will last two decades. The dependency risk is known internally. It is not shared. Your doctor is not lying to you. He was not told either.
The year is 1999. Your doctor prescribes Vioxx for your arthritis. It is newer than ibuprofen, well-tolerated, and Merck has a study showing it works. Merck also has internal data suggesting it roughly doubles the risk of heart attack. This data will not reach your doctor for four more years. Fifty thousand people are estimated to have died in the interim. Merck eventually settles for 4.85 billion dollars. No criminal charges are brought.
The year is 2002. Your doctor prescribes OxyContin. Purdue Pharma trained its sales representatives to tell doctors the addiction risk was less than one percent. That figure came from a letter, not a study. The letter was about patients with terminal cancer on short-term doses in hospital settings. Your doctor is a GP with a patient who has a bad back. Nobody draws a distinction. Nobody is required to.
The year is 2008. Your doctor checks your cholesterol. Your LDL is elevated. You are prescribed a statin. Nobody mentions that the number needed to treat for primary prevention is approximately 250. Nobody mentions that the muscle deterioration you'll notice over the next two years is listed as a rare side effect rather than a documented pattern affecting a meaningful percentage of patients. The trial that informed the prescription was funded by the manufacturer.
Now it is today.
Your doctor has new guidelines. New studies. New consensus.
He is confident.
He has always been confident.
The confidence has never been the problem.
The confidence is, in fact, precisely the problem.
I couldn’t agree more and would add this parents need to take a direct role in their children’s education. Send them to school if you must but get involved. Review the work. Engage.
Elon Musk thinks the entire education system is built on a broken assumption.
That every student should learn the same thing. At the same speed. In the same order. At the same time.
Musk: “Everyone goes through from like 5th grade to 6th grade to 7th grade like it’s an assembly line. But people are not objects on an assembly line.”
The model was designed for a factory economy. Standardized inputs. Predictable outputs.
That economy is gone. The assembly line is gone.
But the education system still runs on its logic.
A student who masters algebra in two weeks sits through eight more weeks because the calendar says so. A student who struggles gets dragged forward because the schedule doesn’t wait.
Neither is being served. Both are being processed.
Musk: “Allow people to progress at the fastest pace that they can or are interested in, in each subject.”
AI doesn’t teach a classroom. It teaches a student.
One at a time. Every time.
It skips what a student already knows. It finds where they’re stuck and approaches it from a different angle.
It adjusts in real time. Not at the end of a semester when the damage is already done.
A student obsessed with basketball learns fractions through shooting percentages. A student who builds in Minecraft learns geometry through architecture.
The subject doesn’t change. The entry point does.
No teacher with thirty students can do this. Not because they lack skill.
Because the math doesn’t work.
AI doesn’t have that constraint.
Musk: “You do not need to tell your kid to play video games. They will play video games on autopilot all day. So if you can make it interactive and engaging, then you can make education far more compelling.”
The brain isn’t broken. The format is.
Kids learn complex systems and strategic thinking for hours voluntarily. Then walk into a classroom and can’t focus for twenty minutes.
That’s not a discipline problem. That’s a design problem.
Musk: “A university education is often unnecessary. You probably learn the vast majority of what you’re going to learn there in the first two years. And most of it is from your classmates.”
Four years. Six figures of debt.
And the real value comes from the people sitting next to you. Not the institution charging you.
The degree doesn’t certify knowledge. It certifies endurance.
Musk: “If the goal is to start a company, I would say no point in finishing college.”
The system was built to train employees. If you’re not trying to be one, it has nothing left to offer you.
Every lecture. Every textbook. Every curriculum. Now available instantly. Personalized to any learner. Adapted to any pace.
The question isn’t whether the old model survives.
It’s how long we keep forcing students through it while the replacement already exists.
Elon Musk thinks the entire education system is built on a broken assumption.
That every student should learn the same thing. At the same speed. In the same order. At the same time.
Musk: “Everyone goes through from like 5th grade to 6th grade to 7th grade like it’s an assembly line. But people are not objects on an assembly line.”
The model was designed for a factory economy. Standardized inputs. Predictable outputs.
That economy is gone. The assembly line is gone.
But the education system still runs on its logic.
A student who masters algebra in two weeks sits through eight more weeks because the calendar says so. A student who struggles gets dragged forward because the schedule doesn��t wait.
Neither is being served. Both are being processed.
Musk: “Allow people to progress at the fastest pace that they can or are interested in, in each subject.”
AI doesn’t teach a classroom. It teaches a student.
One at a time. Every time.
It skips what a student already knows. It finds where they’re stuck and approaches it from a different angle.
It adjusts in real time. Not at the end of a semester when the damage is already done.
A student obsessed with basketball learns fractions through shooting percentages. A student who builds in Minecraft learns geometry through architecture.
The subject doesn’t change. The entry point does.
No teacher with thirty students can do this. Not because they lack skill.
Because the math doesn’t work.
AI doesn’t have that constraint.
Musk: “You do not need to tell your kid to play video games. They will play video games on autopilot all day. So if you can make it interactive and engaging, then you can make education far more compelling.”
The brain isn’t broken. The format is.
Kids learn complex systems and strategic thinking for hours voluntarily. Then walk into a classroom and can’t focus for twenty minutes.
That’s not a discipline problem. That’s a design problem.
Musk: “A university education is often unnecessary. You probably learn the vast majority of what you’re going to learn there in the first two years. And most of it is from your classmates.”
Four years. Six figures of debt.
And the real value comes from the people sitting next to you. Not the institution charging you.
The degree doesn’t certify knowledge. It certifies endurance.
Musk: “If the goal is to start a company, I would say no point in finishing college.”
The system was built to train employees. If you’re not trying to be one, it has nothing left to offer you.
Every lecture. Every textbook. Every curriculum. Now available instantly. Personalized to any learner. Adapted to any pace.
The question isn’t whether the old model survives.
It’s how long we keep forcing students through it while the replacement already exists.