| HN Mirror

> 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.

roenxi 427 days ago

> 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.

Government contracts where they buy something is not "funneling" money any more than you "funnel" money to Safeway when you buy tomatoes there. And if Musk had failed to deliver working rockets, NASA wouldn't have paid a dime. Musk bet his entire fortune on it.

Musk also sold those rockets to NASA for 10% of what NASA would otherwise have to pay.

> 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.

Tell us how that works.

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

Are you suggesting that Musk is doing what's right for the country rather than what's right for his fortune?

> 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.

overrun11 427 days ago

So every enterprise becomes state owned? Ilya Sutkever's new company is already worth 32B so 31/32 of it should be owned by the government in your world? Who makes the decisions for it?

I am alarmed by how quickly Americans leap from the suggestion that we tax the super-wealthy more, to this idea of full communism.

throwaway-blaze 427 days ago

Assume you think the government is in a better position to spend that billion than the billionaire is to figure out what to buy or invest their money in?

I know he's out of favor with a lot of people, but would Elon have created SpaceX or The Boring Co or Neuralink, or helped start OpenAI if he hadn't had the spare billions to do so?

I'd much rather have multi-billionaires investing in the economy, and in the future, than giving additional money to the government.

So you'd rather have someone unelected with that money. Don't y'all live in a democracy?

We live in a Constitutional republic, with a Bill of Rights and the right to own property.

So, no?

Correct. Look up "Constitutional republic".

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/lesson-pl...