Enough Musk Spam

I can’t speak for Elon (and will not defend him) but Kyle (from Secular Talk) is dramatically underestimating the problem by tossing out the $20 billion figure. You can’t just throw a bunch of money at a person with severe mental illnesses and addictions and just expect them to be okay.

The state of California has spent over $24 billion on homelessness since 2019 yet the number of homeless people in the state has grown by 20%. Obviously they aren’t spending the money wisely in a manner that would maximize reduction of homelessness, but Kyle didn’t specify how the money should be spent either. Perhaps that’s actually the hard problem: how do you spend the money in the way that would be most effective?

He is a literal NAZI! So he wants mentaly ill to suffer for losing the gene lottery!

I wonder what we should call a violent drug addict, convicted of inciting insurrection, living in housing paid for by the public ?

He is so fucking incoherent from all the ketamine it isn't funny.

tax the rich!

Which is wildly ironic because billionaires don’t actually work.

Several times in the US I've been told that people flying a sign are actually rich from all the money they are given. Totally absurd but people believe it. Mansions they don't live in is on another level though

Hahaha that's gold. It's kind of hard for me to accept anybody really believes that. Feels like some disingenuous conviction there or deliberately not examining the statement because they know on at least one level it's too completely illogical to be true but then again there are some people who've had such serious distortions to their reasoning over time that they're not even lying anymore when they claim to believe this stuff.

I'd say destroying USAID is the one good thing they did. Long term mind you. I won't deny the short term effects of such an instant cutoff to these programs.

But USAID is primarily used to disrupt the economic systems of nations that the US exploits for cheap labor.

I'd quote the revolutionary Thomas Sankara

Those who come with wheat, millet, corn or milk, they are not helping us. Those who really want to help us can give us ploughs, tractors, fertilizers, insecticides, watering cans, drills and dams. That is how we would define food aid.

The US primarily uses its food aid to disrupt these nations from being self sustainable and force their industry into a single crop that is most beneficial for US capitalist to export.

So, while the shorterm is bad. The disconnection of these exploitative relationships are good.

Obviously it would be better if these programs were slowly removed. But continuing them for the next 4 years would be worse then ending them drastically.

Also, mind you, I don't think Trump even realizes why these programs exist to benefit the US exploitation of the third world. I think he sees them simply as "foreign aid". So his own ignorance of them actually ends up destroying an important part of US Imperialism by mistake.

Removing the exploitative relationships that the US has with third world countries in the form of "foreign aid" is good. It's just that (1) Trump actually thinks these benefit these nations. Which they do not. And (2) the well intentioned liberals thinks the same as Trump does. So we end up with this weird state where both are wrong but the policy is actually good long term.

Again, there will absolutely be problems as these dependencies are cut of so quickly. But no more than the continued exploitation in the long term would result in.

At Thomas Sankara said. These direct food injections are not helpful. They are a way that capitalist use to direct the economy of third world nations towards dependency on America Imperialism. Ending them is good for these nations. Even if there are struggles when they end.

Self determination and self sustainability have been robbed from these nations by USAID for decades.

Not unusual for addicts to displace blame onto the people around them in order to justify their addictions.

The difference between Musk, Thiel, et al and your average American junkie is simply their line of credit. They can keep taking experimental intoxicants, safe in the knowledge their friends will loan them another $2M the next time they wrap their McLauren around a stop sign.