When did America stop dreaming big? On colonizing/exploring Mars and hating on Musk

[StarSeeker]

I suspect that Musk would be more receptive to spending that kind of money on a plan that implements the latter.

Actually thinking about this, maybe not. Remember what happened when a skilled professional mentioned that his sub idea was dumb, and then the kids in question were saved using the methods the professionals suggested.

Like if Musk decides that the solution to world hunger is drilling a set of massive tunnels to grow mushrooms in, I shudder to think what names he'll call people that suggest other solutions to it that make more sense.

 

[Louis XVI]

This is such bullshit and I have not a single good thing to say about you for pushing it on us. Not everyone in a famine situation in one year is going to be in a famine situation in the next year. Disasters happen but we still rebuild and help people get through the tough times, because those don't last forever. Situations are fluid, not fixed in place for all time.

If you actually look at what the UN itself is listing as causes for the famine, you will see they are not temporary, at least not with one year timescales: local wars and violence, corrupt governments, man-made environmental changes like deforestation and of course the big, overreaching one: climate change. All of which will quite likely not be solved by one-year band-aids.

"Not everyone" is too wishy-washy - how many do you expect to save in a permanent way with that sum? Is it 1%, 10%, 50%, 90%?

Saving someone's life doesn't mean that same life is going to just give out again the moment you walk away. That's why we have paramedics and doctors and social safety nets. Your mindset is exactly the same as those who want to cut food stamps because they think it means whoever accepts them has to live on the government dole forever.

I get that you can't muster up enough giving-a-shit to think about these things and realize you're wrong but it'd be great if you could accept that maybe it's just better to not post them.

I understand that is easy to pretend that giving some money now is somehow solving things, but it isn't - it just the simple minded "thinking" that led to the current situation. You either commit to giving that kind of money every year for timescales that probably reach at the very least a couple of decades, if not longer (and hope along the way that mere survival will somehow change societies into becoming eventually self-sustaining ones), or you "invest" that money in more targeted programs, that actually help people grown their own food in a sustainable way, and actually "end world hunger".

I suspect that Musk would be more receptive to spending that kind of money on a plan that implements the latter.

Amyd, if you were given the choice between definitely starving now, or not starving now and maybe starving a year from now, which would you choose?

I'm willing to bet a lot of quatloos that you would leap at the first option. If that's the case, your argument is pretty clearly hollow excuse-making for Musk. There's a ton of value in preserving someone's life for a year, and possibly much longer.

 

[Amyd]

If we assume that money & resources are limited, then the preference of one individual or even the preferences of many individuals are not that relevant - of course everybody in that situation will choose to live to fight another day/year. The question is what is better for the overall good.

Because if the choice is, "here's some money to make sure you and your family build yourselves a sustainable mini farm, so that you can feed yourselves for ever. Oh and by the by, the village next door will have to starve, cause there isn't enough money to do the same there...", then I suspect that the choice of many would be slightly less clear cut.

The whole discussion would be of course moot, if the developed world would actually commit its more-or-less unlimited resources to solving world hunger. We don't need assholes like Musks giving anything away, compared to some of the shit we spend our money on, ending world hunger is eminently doable. Just not for 6 billion - I assume we need to put a couple of 0s after it, and probably it involves invading a country or three to pacify them. And there things get complicated again...

 

[Louis XVI]

The whole discussion would be of course moot, if the developed world would actually commit its more-or-less unlimited resources to solving world hunger. We don't need assholes like Musks giving anything away, compared to some of the shit we spend our money on, ending world hunger is eminently doable. Just not for 6 billion - I assume we need to put a couple of 0s after it, and probably it involves invading a country or three to pacify them. And there things get complicated again...

Sure, it'd be great if the developed world would do that.

But since it hasn't, and getting back to the core of this thread, Musk offering to help and then ghosting the UN is an example of spectacularly selfish assholery.

 

[Megalodon]

If we assume that money & resources are limited, then the preference of one individual or even the preferences of many individuals are not that relevant - of course everybody in that situation will choose to live to fight another day/year. The question is what is better for the overall good.

Thing is, it's not a resource constraint. It's a distribution constraint. Largely because we won't adequately tax people like Musk.

 

[Amyd]

Sure, it'd be great if the developed world would do that.

But since it hasn't, and getting back to the core of this thread, Musk offering to help and then ghosting the UN is an example of spectacularly selfish assholery.

Still don't see the assholery in this specific instance.

Musk read an article where he got tagged as being able to end world hunger with 2% of his wealth (a press misquote, as it turned out). He replied, show me the plan for ending world hunger and I'll do it. The UN replied with plan on how to postpone world hunger till next year. Musk (possibly) said (to himself), fuck that noise, not what I want to spend my money on.

Though I admit I have no idea how to actually read the Twitter thread where all this took place, to actually see if & when the obvious misunderstanding in the beginning got cleared or not. I could only find the first two replies. That's what I get for not being a twit (ter user).

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Still don't see the assholery in this specific instance.

"Keeping a million people alive for a year for a dollar... Hmmm, no, I think I'd be happier with the dollar."

 

[U-99]

There's assholery all around.

When you get up to $100B+ wealth, you can easily throw around $5B per year without materially affecting the standard of living of your heir's heirs. Splitting hairs on "solution" vs. "saving a boatload of lives" is obscene.

But when you work for the world government and can't convince your hyper-rich members to chip in a measly $6B/year to eliminate such a scourge, you've utterly failed.

Interestingly, the entire UN budget is slightly over $6B.

 

[Matisaro]

Eat the rich. (I'd settle for taxing them though).

 

[Ecmaster76]

Interestingly, the entire UN budget is slightly over $6B.

You left out a '0'

 

[Visigoth]

Seems to be this all assumes that Musk's offer was even in good faith to begin with. He could offer $6B to the first person to free dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench which has a similar level of chance of success as his offer to the UN. Money, or even food, isn't going to solve world hunger. The US has plenty of both and still has deaths due to malnutrition and starvation.

Likely the only way to fully solve all world hunger would be by a magical utopia like situation happening around the world or a dystopian one in which every part of life is controlled so if you go hungry it's because you were meant to go hungry. I guess the UN could have proposed using the money to help fund a massive military that would then conquer the world to create the later situation. It would certainly be in line with other conspiracies about the UN being the real shadow government of the world.

As such I feel like Musk knew that he'd never have to pay out since there was no realistic solution the UN could provide in response to his offer.

 

[Case]

Yep, the entire response was just being his usual troll bro self. He knew that nobody including the UN was going to be able to come up with a plan. He just wanted to give them a titty twister for them pointing out his wealth. The entire point was to tell them to fuck off, winning points with the type of troll bros that give him adulation.

There's a huge sample size to say, this is who the guy is. He's thin-skinned and vindictive. He's basically Trump with an actual working brain, which in some ways makes him even worse. He's smart enough not to act like a child bully, but chooses not to out of arrogance.

 

[StarSeeker]

Seems to be this all assumes that Musk's offer was even in good faith to begin with.

It seems his goal was as much to call out getting called out with something that wasn't true.

Like if somebody printed an article that said "Starseeker is so horrible, if he but spent 5 minutes helping cancer would be cured." A fair response from me would be "Show me how 5 minutes of my time will cure cancer and you can have it."

It doesn't matter what over good things you show me my 5 minutes of time would accomplish, the point was your original statement was a lie... which we know it was because they retracted it.

I say this as somebody who thinks Musk is a horrible person and vastly over hypes nearly everything he does to the point that the claims feel more like lies than general salesman ship.

Add on: It seems completely obvious that you can't solve world hunger for 6 Billions and any statement that you can is not one put forward in good faith.

 

[Matisaro]

Except that while 5 minutes in this case wont cure cancer it could save 10 million cancer victims this year.


Billionaires are obscene, any system which allows them to exist while millions starve is fundamentally broken imho.

 

[StarSeeker]

Except that while 5 minutes in this case wont cure cancer it could save 10 million cancer victims this year.


Billionaires are obscene, any system which allows them to exist while millions starve is fundamentally broken imho.

The first statement was still a lie.

I don't even disagree with your second part.

 

[Matisaro]

The first statement was still a lie.

Sure, an exaggeration for effect. Part of the moral stink of the system is how many victims of it are more supportive of his gotcha response than they are angry about the fact he could save so many without even noticing a change in his lifestyle and chooses not to.

Fuck the poors if we get some hilarious tweets out of it. ::sighs::

 

[U-99]

Interestingly, the entire UN budget is slightly over $6B.

You left out a '0'

2021 regular budget: $3.2B https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1081222
2021 peacekeeping budget: $6.4B https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/gaab4368.doc.htm

2020 Total budget: $63B https://unsceb.org/fs-revenue

What am I missing? Itemized budgets by program?

Edit: I see, the individual agencies have unique budgets.

(from https://qz.com/1396994/where-does-the-u ... ex-system/)

 

[TenaciousB]

Deleted

 

[Kevin Lantz]

Sure, it'd be great if the developed world would do that.

But since it hasn't, and getting back to the core of this thread, Musk offering to help and then ghosting the UN is an example of spectacularly selfish assholery.

Still don't see the assholery in this specific instance.

Musk read an article where he got tagged as being able to end world hunger with 2% of his wealth (a press misquote, as it turned out). He replied, show me the plan for ending world hunger and I'll do it. The UN replied with plan on how to postpone world hunger till next year. Musk (possibly) said (to himself), fuck that noise, not what I want to spend my money on.

Though I admit I have no idea how to actually read the Twitter thread where all this took place, to actually see if & when the obvious misunderstanding in the beginning got cleared or not. I could only find the first two replies. That's what I get for not being a twit (ter user).

I posted links to the original twitter and a news story that explained it well... I don't know how you're having problems.

 

[Amyd]

I posted links to the original twitter and a news story that explained it well... I don't know how you're having problems.

It really didn't unfortunately - your link to the story gives me "Access Denied You don't have permission to access the site" (geoblocking?) and Twitter only shows me the first three messages. I want to see who said what when.

 

[Amyd]

So Kevin sent me the article via PM, thanks for that - unfortunately it still doesn't actually really quote the entire exchange, gives just the "executive summary" of what that journalist thinks they read (we've already seen how bad that can go with the original UN misquote...). So if anybody has the patience & time to actually go through the Twitter thread and extract the actual exchanges, it would still be interesting.

However, one thing that article did mention, which I actually didn't know, and also haven't seen mentioned in this thread in the context of this discussion:

Late November 2021, after that UN exchange on Twitter Musk did actually donate (almost) 6 billion to one or more charities in form of Tesla stock. Nobody seems to know where the stock ended up, the WFP & UN don't seem to have been the target, but Musk did actually donate close to 2% of his wealth to a (presumably) charitable purpose.

Maybe it was just a tax break thing, maybe it just is donated to his foundation to park it away, maybe it's sitting in one of those donor managed fund construct thingamajigs, but maybe, just maybe, Musk also actually did a charitable thing. May have not been the one you wanted him to do, but this "Musk is an asshole because UN" thing seems to get thinner every day.

 

[Kevin Lantz]

With people like Musk it's most likely a donation to a charity they run (see prorepublica about wealthy people and taxes)

as to the exchanges, publicly it's not much beyond what you saw linked earlier (those three or so tweets) and the rest were dm's.

 

[Louis XVI]

Aaaaaand Musk now says that the Twitter acquisition is ”on hold,” under the pretext that Musk suspects there may be more fake accounts than Twitter has represented.

Maybe he’ll give the money to the UN to fight world hunger instead.

 

[Kevin Lantz]

naw he's had his excuse to sell his shares without tanking anything price wise =D

 

[arcite]

Aaaaaand Musk now says that the Twitter acquisition is ”on hold,” under the pretext that Musk suspects there may be more fake accounts than Twitter has represented.

Maybe he’ll give the money to the UN to fight world hunger instead.

Insert clown emoji.

 

[abj]

naw he's had his excuse to sell his shares without tanking anything price wise =D

My guess is this is going to decimate share prices, also isn't he on the hook for a billion dollar break up fee if he backs out?

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

naw he's had his excuse to sell his shares without tanking anything price wise =D

My guess is this is going to decimate share prices, also isn't he on the hook for a billion dollar break up fee if he backs out?

That's only a billion dollars. Would barely keep 7 million people from starving to death! Not worth trifling with, really.


(Also isn't it funny how Elon moved to Texas because they're so business-friendly? And then decided he would buy one of the biggest social media companies around, after Texas had already passed a law allowing millions of Texans to sue social media companies who moderate them? He sure knows what he's doing!)

 

[thekaj]

naw he's had his excuse to sell his shares without tanking anything price wise =D

My guess is this is going to decimate share prices, also isn't he on the hook for a billion dollar break up fee if he backs out?

It was down 15% after the tweet. And I’m guessing the billion dollar breakup fee would be waived if Twitter materially misled Musk on something. So this is 100% him trying to set that excuse up for the inevitable lawsuit.

 

[Megalodon]

naw he's had his excuse to sell his shares without tanking anything price wise =D

My guess is this is going to decimate share prices, also isn't he on the hook for a billion dollar break up fee if he backs out?

It was down 15% after the tweet. And I’m guessing the billion dollar breakup fee would be waived if Twitter materially misled Musk on something. So this is 100% him trying to set that excuse up for the inevitable lawsuit.

Or he's just exploiting it to manipulate the stock price.

 

[Shavano]

Aaaaaand Musk now says that the Twitter acquisition is ”on hold,” under the pretext that Musk suspects there may be more fake accounts than Twitter has represented.

Maybe he’ll give the money to the UN to fight world hunger instead.

There are definitely more fake accounts than Twitter has represented:
https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/ne ... ounts.html

 

[Shavano]

naw he's had his excuse to sell his shares without tanking anything price wise =D

My guess is this is going to decimate share prices, also isn't he on the hook for a billion dollar break up fee if he backs out?

That could be small change compared to what he stands to lose if he buys Twitter and never gets it back to profitability. Remember it wasn't profitable in 2020, the last year or Trump's Presidency, and he was constantly pumping it with outrage generation.

 

[papadage]

Aaaaaand Musk now says that the Twitter acquisition is ”on hold,” under the pretext that Musk suspects there may be more fake accounts than Twitter has represented.

Maybe he’ll give the money to the UN to fight world hunger instead.

There are definitely more fake accounts than Twitter has represented:
https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/ne ... ounts.html

They said that only 5% of monetizable accounts are fake.

That's the rough equivalent of active accounts, not all accounts.

 

[wco81]

He's worried about spammers but he wants to reinstate Trump?

Already a couple of execs say they will be leaving the company if the sale goes through.

 

[Lt_Storm]

Aaaaaand Musk now says that the Twitter acquisition is ”on hold,” under the pretext that Musk suspects there may be more fake accounts than Twitter has represented.

Maybe he’ll give the money to the UN to fight world hunger instead.

to think, Twitter's ability to moderate fascist content may be saved by, of all things, too many fake accounts...

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

The bots have saved all humans?

 

[Yagisama]

The bots are alright!

 

[The Aloof Alot]

Will there soon be a plot twist in which it is revealed that Musk ordered bots to be created so he could manipulate Twitter's stock by claiming there were more bots on Twitter than there are?

 

[Megalodon]

More likely it's because the Tesla stock price was below the level he agreed to with his financiers. https://twitter.com/steveniweiss/status ... 8073191424

 

[arcite]

Will there soon be a plot twist in which it is revealed that Musk ordered bots to be created so he could manipulate Twitter's stock by claiming there were more bots on Twitter than there are?

That is comic book super villain stuff right there. Does Musk have a secret volcano lair we don't know about? :bigdumbgrin:

 

[Kevin Lantz]

or is it because he utilized bots to manipulate tesla stock price for years so knows there's a ton out there?