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Elon-types won't "dig us out" of our mess. Removing parasitic elements in government spending and policy will. This starts with politics. We first need a healt

Elon-types won't "dig us out" of our mess. Removing parasitic elements in government spending and policy will. This starts with politics. We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. These are all things Elon actively works against. You aren't part of his future.

ryandvm 22d ago
We just need more leeches.
- throwaway894345 22d ago
  Yep, it's crazy that people can correctly recognize that corruption is responsible for the current situation but fail to recognize that adding more corruption will not deliver us from it.
watwut 22d ago
They will try to dig us out of the hole they created by their previoua digging.
guywithahat 22d ago
[flagged]
- krapp 22d ago
  >Isn't that an Elon thing? He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending. It did nothing of the sort. Finding someone still pushing this line in 2026 is like seeing a thylacine in the wild. One can only stare in awe.
- teachrdan 22d ago
  > He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending. Elon wasn't just involved with DOGE, he was responsible for it. And Elon said he would cut $2 TRILLION in federal spending before ultimately claiming just $110 billion in savings -- which the GAO found he lied about. Considering out budget deficit is about $2 trillion, even his inflated claims are a rounding error. (To say nothing of the fact that a lot of it was NOT useless spending. For example, Elon ended a program to fund countries in Central America to stop the spread of screw worms. Now screw worms are projected to cost $1.8 billion in damage to Texas alone.) > while Elon encourages reporting on X Elon has a track record of banning journalists on Twitter / X, the everything app, when they criticize him. Literally the opposite of encouraging reporting on X. > We need more "Elons", people like him are actually helping dig us out of this mess. I would encourage you to start reading independent news sources and forming your own opinions, rather than uncritically believing everything people in power feed to you. Otherwise you end up saying things online that are trivially disprovable. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/09/gao-report-underscores-how-little-doge-cut/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/09/gao-repor... https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/flesh-eating-screw-worm-fight-plan-rcna348521 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/flesh-eating-scr... https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-musk-silencing-his-critics-as-journalists-are-suspended-by-x/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-mus...
- platevoltage 22d ago
  Conservative media even barely talks about DOGE because of how bad the optics are, and how much of an utter failure it was.
bko 22d ago
I don't know, government waste and most policy sucks. But there's no reason we can't do stuff or even try. For instance, take Tesla. It wasn't anything revolutionary. Any auto manufacturer could have invested in battery technology and building a compelling EV, but they didn't. Same with manufacturing in America. Every manufacturer took as given that they have to outsource manufacturing to oversees and components to third parties. But it didn't have to be that way. It takes someone naive and optimistic enough to try something different.
- boplicity 22d ago
  It's easy to forget that Tesla was made possible almost exclusively through government incentives. This is something that most people seem to have forgotten: Tesla exists because the government created incentive programs that paid in cold hard cash. Musk took advantage of those programs, and Tesla absolutely would not have been nearly as successful (and likely not existed) without it.
  - fastball 22d ago
    As much incentive as the oil & gas industry receives?
  - bko 22d ago
    This is incredibly overstated. There are "incentives" for all sorts of activities. These incentives were available to all manufacturers. We should have "incentives" to produce electric vehicles and manufacturing in America. Insane not to. And these incentives are often "you would normally have to pay us X million in taxes, but we'll let you pay less". When the alternative is something not being built and no tax revenue, it makes sense. And a lot of subsidies were to buyers of EVs
    - throwawayqqq11 22d ago
      > In 2019, the loss was $862 million, but for 2020 there is a huge profit of $721 million. > However: A closer look at the figures published last week shows that Tesla is still making losses with actual sales of electric cars - around $500,000 in 2020. > In 2020, carbon certificates brought in $1.6 billion, without this revenue the numbers would still be below red. https://www.electrichunter.com/ev-news/tesla-makes-money-co2-certificates https://www.electrichunter.com/ev-news/tesla-makes-money-co2... With a "profit" margin that jumpy and a history of unrentability, i think it's fair to say that Tesla only exists today because of subsidies. It's not just tax benefits, as you frame it, but in this case EU-CO2 certificates, a direct "revenue" stream.
WalterBright 22d ago
> We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. The requirement is economic freedom, from which everything follows.
- wyre 22d ago
  In what way? There is nothing inherent about economic freedom that leads to a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population, in the same way there is nothing inherent about a healthy, smart, and safe population that leads to economic freedom. The US is one of the most economically free places in the world, and always has been, yet obesity is at all time highs, gen Z is the first generation to score less on standardized tests than the generation before them, and civilians killed by law enforcement is at an all time high. Economic freedom is a very important pillar to a healthy and thriving society, but acting like it is a panacea is wrong. Economic freedom at it's extreme will only lead to a weakening of the middle class and consolidation of wealth among those holding the most wealth.
  - WalterBright 22d ago
    Free markets mean the only way to make money legally is to provide a product or service that other people want to buy. And people want to be healthy, educated, engaged and safe. In other words, it takes advantage of the inherently selfish nature of people to make others better off. > obesity is at all time highs Obesity is a choice. I know people won't like me writing that. I know it is very hard to lose weight. It's still a choice, though. I don't see how making people less free would change that. > gen Z is the first generation to score less on standardized tests than the generation before them The government is the primary institution that provides education, not the free market. > civilians killed by law enforcement is at an all time high I don't see how that is a result of economic freedom. > Economic freedom at it's extreme will only lead to a weakening of the middle class The US was much more economically free in the 1800s than now, and the middle class became the dominant class, by far. > consolidation of wealth among those holding the most wealth. Wealthy people get that way in a free market by creating products and services that other people want. In other words, they do not "consolidate" wealth, they create it.
Dig1t 22d ago
I don't know, I'm sure you'd say Europe is a far more healthy, educated, engaged and safe place (by typical metrics), but they are not building anything like this and probably never will be able to approach anything close to it. In fact they have technologically stagnated in basically every way and are completely reliant on China and the US for technology. SpaceX is 85% of all mass to orbit for the entire planet, then it's China, and Europe is <5%. The next people to set foot on the moon will likely be Americans, and they will be put there by SpaceX rockets.
tootie 22d ago
This is almost certainly false. The vast majority of government spending goes directly to people that need it or debt service. There is very little outright fraud as DOGE quickly learned. The only meaningful target for cuts is military. And the only solution to debt is higher taxes.
- nradov 22d ago
  The only solution to debt is growth.
  - _DeadFred_ 22d ago
    Any day now all those tax cuts are going to pay off and trickle down. Any day.
  - tootie 21d ago
    We cannot grow our way out of 6% deficits. Deficits need to be 2% max.
01100011 22d ago
This is toxic logic. We need many things. There is no single fix for our diverse set of problems.
remarkEon 22d ago
All true but the kind of alignment problem you're talking about is only possible when the core of a society is directed at inspiring, bold, massive projects. There's not much on offer as an alternative to Muskism. It's worth remembering how insane everyone thought he was for claiming you could land the rocket upright and reuse it. And even more so, that you could catch one with chopsticks.
dyauspitr 22d ago
No these are two separate things. You need big billionaires to pull off huge projects, no one else can take those risks. It’s basically how America was built. What you’re talking about is improving people’s quality of life which we desperately need but it takes money and that comes from the first capitalist part. Don’t get too sucked into any of the nonsense on the far right (obviously) but also don’t get too sucked into what the progressives are saying. They don’t have a plan for how to fund their socialism.

ryandvm 22d ago

We just need more leeches.

throwaway894345 22d ago
Yep, it's crazy that people can correctly recognize that corruption is responsible for the current situation but fail to recognize that adding more corruption will not deliver us from it.

watwut 22d ago

They will try to dig us out of the hole they created by their previoua digging.

guywithahat 22d ago

[flagged]

krapp 22d ago
>Isn't that an Elon thing? He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending. It did nothing of the sort. Finding someone still pushing this line in 2026 is like seeing a thylacine in the wild. One can only stare in awe.
teachrdan 22d ago
> He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending. Elon wasn't just involved with DOGE, he was responsible for it. And Elon said he would cut $2 TRILLION in federal spending before ultimately claiming just $110 billion in savings -- which the GAO found he lied about. Considering out budget deficit is about $2 trillion, even his inflated claims are a rounding error. (To say nothing of the fact that a lot of it was NOT useless spending. For example, Elon ended a program to fund countries in Central America to stop the spread of screw worms. Now screw worms are projected to cost $1.8 billion in damage to Texas alone.) > while Elon encourages reporting on X Elon has a track record of banning journalists on Twitter / X, the everything app, when they criticize him. Literally the opposite of encouraging reporting on X. > We need more "Elons", people like him are actually helping dig us out of this mess. I would encourage you to start reading independent news sources and forming your own opinions, rather than uncritically believing everything people in power feed to you. Otherwise you end up saying things online that are trivially disprovable. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/09/gao-report-underscores-how-little-doge-cut/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/09/gao-repor... https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/flesh-eating-screw-worm-fight-plan-rcna348521 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/flesh-eating-scr... https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-musk-silencing-his-critics-as-journalists-are-suspended-by-x/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-mus...
platevoltage 22d ago
Conservative media even barely talks about DOGE because of how bad the optics are, and how much of an utter failure it was.

bko 22d ago

I don't know, government waste and most policy sucks. But there's no reason we can't do stuff or even try. For instance, take Tesla. It wasn't anything revolutionary. Any auto manufacturer could have invested in battery technology and building a compelling EV, but they didn't. Same with manufacturing in America. Every manufacturer took as given that they have to outsource manufacturing to oversees and components to third parties. But it didn't have to be that way. It takes someone naive and optimistic enough to try something different.

boplicity 22d ago
It's easy to forget that Tesla was made possible almost exclusively through government incentives. This is something that most people seem to have forgotten: Tesla exists because the government created incentive programs that paid in cold hard cash. Musk took advantage of those programs, and Tesla absolutely would not have been nearly as successful (and likely not existed) without it.
- fastball 22d ago
  As much incentive as the oil & gas industry receives?
- bko 22d ago
  This is incredibly overstated. There are "incentives" for all sorts of activities. These incentives were available to all manufacturers. We should have "incentives" to produce electric vehicles and manufacturing in America. Insane not to. And these incentives are often "you would normally have to pay us X million in taxes, but we'll let you pay less". When the alternative is something not being built and no tax revenue, it makes sense. And a lot of subsidies were to buyers of EVs
  - throwawayqqq11 22d ago
    > In 2019, the loss was $862 million, but for 2020 there is a huge profit of $721 million. > However: A closer look at the figures published last week shows that Tesla is still making losses with actual sales of electric cars - around $500,000 in 2020. > In 2020, carbon certificates brought in $1.6 billion, without this revenue the numbers would still be below red. https://www.electrichunter.com/ev-news/tesla-makes-money-co2-certificates https://www.electrichunter.com/ev-news/tesla-makes-money-co2... With a "profit" margin that jumpy and a history of unrentability, i think it's fair to say that Tesla only exists today because of subsidies. It's not just tax benefits, as you frame it, but in this case EU-CO2 certificates, a direct "revenue" stream.

WalterBright 22d ago

> We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. The requirement is economic freedom, from which everything follows.

wyre 22d ago
In what way? There is nothing inherent about economic freedom that leads to a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population, in the same way there is nothing inherent about a healthy, smart, and safe population that leads to economic freedom. The US is one of the most economically free places in the world, and always has been, yet obesity is at all time highs, gen Z is the first generation to score less on standardized tests than the generation before them, and civilians killed by law enforcement is at an all time high. Economic freedom is a very important pillar to a healthy and thriving society, but acting like it is a panacea is wrong. Economic freedom at it's extreme will only lead to a weakening of the middle class and consolidation of wealth among those holding the most wealth.
- WalterBright 22d ago
  Free markets mean the only way to make money legally is to provide a product or service that other people want to buy. And people want to be healthy, educated, engaged and safe. In other words, it takes advantage of the inherently selfish nature of people to make others better off. > obesity is at all time highs Obesity is a choice. I know people won't like me writing that. I know it is very hard to lose weight. It's still a choice, though. I don't see how making people less free would change that. > gen Z is the first generation to score less on standardized tests than the generation before them The government is the primary institution that provides education, not the free market. > civilians killed by law enforcement is at an all time high I don't see how that is a result of economic freedom. > Economic freedom at it's extreme will only lead to a weakening of the middle class The US was much more economically free in the 1800s than now, and the middle class became the dominant class, by far. > consolidation of wealth among those holding the most wealth. Wealthy people get that way in a free market by creating products and services that other people want. In other words, they do not "consolidate" wealth, they create it.

Dig1t 22d ago

I don't know, I'm sure you'd say Europe is a far more healthy, educated, engaged and safe place (by typical metrics), but they are not building anything like this and probably never will be able to approach anything close to it. In fact they have technologically stagnated in basically every way and are completely reliant on China and the US for technology. SpaceX is 85% of all mass to orbit for the entire planet, then it's China, and Europe is <5%. The next people to set foot on the moon will likely be Americans, and they will be put there by SpaceX rockets.

tootie 22d ago

This is almost certainly false. The vast majority of government spending goes directly to people that need it or debt service. There is very little outright fraud as DOGE quickly learned. The only meaningful target for cuts is military. And the only solution to debt is higher taxes.

nradov 22d ago
The only solution to debt is growth.
- _DeadFred_ 22d ago
  Any day now all those tax cuts are going to pay off and trickle down. Any day.
- tootie 21d ago
  We cannot grow our way out of 6% deficits. Deficits need to be 2% max.

01100011 22d ago

This is toxic logic. We need many things. There is no single fix for our diverse set of problems.

remarkEon 22d ago

All true but the kind of alignment problem you're talking about is only possible when the core of a society is directed at inspiring, bold, massive projects. There's not much on offer as an alternative to Muskism. It's worth remembering how insane everyone thought he was for claiming you could land the rocket upright and reuse it. And even more so, that you could catch one with chopsticks.

dyauspitr 22d ago

No these are two separate things. You need big billionaires to pull off huge projects, no one else can take those risks. It’s basically how America was built. What you’re talking about is improving people’s quality of life which we desperately need but it takes money and that comes from the first capitalist part. Don’t get too sucked into any of the nonsense on the far right (obviously) but also don’t get too sucked into what the progressives are saying. They don’t have a plan for how to fund their socialism.