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PaperclipPerfector  21d ago (text post)   26710 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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Two things:

  1. A big part of why Elon turned to the right was that liberals used to adore him. Then they all woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, decided he was the devil, and that he needed to be socially and economically lynched. I still have no idea why, it’s like Joe Rogan, they just seem to have caught some kind of mind virus and they all hate him now. So a lot of Elon’s move to the right is survival instinct and not necessarily agreement with policy.
  2. I’m pretty sure Elon likes hiring H1-B Indians because they are reasonably competent but much cheaper than domestic workers. He dresses it up in a lot of pretty language to cover that up, but that’s the truth. Like a lot of business titans through the years, he ruthlessly optimizes costs wherever possible. Don’t use six dots of glue on the barrel when five could suffice. I doubt Indians have affected his plans to get off the rock, since H1-B visa holders can’t work at Space-X. It’s a government and military contractor so there are heavy security restrictions on foreign nationals from any country working there. The Indians mostly work at Tesla.

Elon also has a child who went trans and I'm sure that helped his turn to the right.

I’m pretty sure Elon likes hiring H1-B Indians because they are reasonably competent but much cheaper than domestic workers. He dresses it up in a lot of pretty language to cover that up, but that’s the truth. Like a lot of business titans through the years, he ruthlessly optimizes costs wherever possible. Don’t use six dots of glue on the barrel when five could suffice. I doubt Indians have affected his plans to get off the rock, since H1-B visa holders can’t work at Space-X. It’s a government and military contractor so there are heavy security restrictions on foreign nationals from any country working there. The Indians mostly work at Tesla.

One thing that is ignored in this debate is the petrodollar. The US prints money like crazy but keeps the dollar high by pretty much forcing the world to buy American dollars. Don't participate in the American racket and end up like Iran. This means that there are too many dollars and the prices in the US have shot through the moon. The US has become an excessively expensive country with an economy based on finance, insurance and real estate.

This kind of worked when the US was technologically vastly superior to the rest of the world and could force people in other countries to trade bananas and oil for Ford cars. As the rest of the world has been catching up in terms of tech, it is harder for the US to compete when housing prices are multiple times higher in Seattle compared to China or Poland.

American engineers with 100k of student debt, living in mediocre million dollar Seattle homes with 2000 dollar a month medical insurance for their family and who need two cars for their house hold simply can't compete on a global market. There aren't that many technologies that the US is that far ahead that the American company can charge an absurd premium.

The US doesn't seem to want to give up on the empire business so the result is to not lower costs but to press living standards down. Silicon valley real estate has to keep being at an inflated price but US companies can't pay 150 dollars an hour for mediocre web developers for their website when companies in other parts of the world pay 20.

He's at least theoretically a software dev at heart -- which means I'd be pretty surprised if he hadn't Noticed (tm) that some people contribute less than zero to a group project and developed a dislike for these guys. Particularly considering his (apparently) ruthless behaviour at companies that he owns.

I'm kinda skeptical that he actually wants to hire a bunch of H1-Bs at his current companies -- he seems to be notoriously competence focused, and surely industry savvy?

IDK what to predict, but wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing just kind of goes away?

Elon got out of the coding business before the first great bulk of outsourcing and insourcing. So he probably hasn't personally dealt with the "best and the brightest". I'd be all for Elon bringing in any engineer he had to supervise, PERSONALLY. I doubt he could stand these bozos any more than I can.

However, I reject anything that stinks of "if only Comrade Stalin knew". While I am tempted to make an exception for Elon, I won't. He knows. He's probably fired some of these people who were taking up space at Twitter. If he wants more of them it's because he sees some advantage in having them here.

Elon got out of the coding business before the first great bulk of outsourcing and insourcing.

Meh, even if all he ever did was a group project at Waterloo, he's surely familiar with the phenomenon -- IDK if he has some secret plan where cheap shitty devs are useful to him personally, but it seems kind of counter to my impression of how he runs his businesses.

So a lot of Elon’s move to the right is survival instinct and not necessarily agreement with policy.

This makes his recent move very baffling. If he alienates the MAGA base enough to piss off Trump he is going to be left in the wind with no real allies and a lot of enemies.

Then they all woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, decided he was the devil, and that he needed to be socially and economically lynched.

It wasn't this sudden.

There was always a considerable amount of resentment against Elon Musk on the far-left because of his South African background. But the first brick in the anti-Elon wall was his intense opposition to COVID lockdowns -- this allied him with the right almost immediately on an issue of intense salience. Then, he bought Twitter, with the intent of reducing its censorship of conservatives. In other words, he conquered territory the left considered neutral and made it conservative (because opposing conservatism is "about human rights, which aren't political"). This instantly made him a pariah.

Him actually allying with Trump was just the last brick -- but those two issues massively turned the left against him.

Eh, I thought the real backlash always started with those kids trapped in the cave and him calling that ex-pat diver a pedophile over being told that his submersible idea was bad. It wasn't exactly partisan, but I think that was the beginning of the polarization.

Plus, also, I think people were looking for anything to make Elon and Tesla's fanboys shut up, and it just escalated from there.

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