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Comment by WalterBright

6 days ago

> Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two?

Sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687828

Not sure any of these companies have really appreciably made the lives of people better. Sure seem to have funnelled more money to Elon though.

  • No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.

    As for making lives better, Starlink was provided free to disaster victims in N Carolina and the LA fires. Something the government failed at. Enabled by cheap reusable SpaceX rockets, another thing the government failed at. Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.

    • > No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.

      Money was funnelled to Elon, he has a knack for getting government contracts. My memory is Tesla was powered by many grants for whoever was willing to work on electrification of society. The issue with that is that people want to put more money under the control of the government, despite it being the entity that funnelled money to Elon. I don't really understand that perspective, it seems a bit crazy - it'll end up with Elon getting more and more power and wealth. If we assume de-powering and de-wealthing Elon is a good, why push more money into the system that is wealthing and powering him? One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.

      Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.

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    • > No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.

      No he didn't.

      > Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.

      So is meth.