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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Not run by people like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Thiel-acolytes.

Yes, run by people like them too. Megalomania is not a trait in short supply among businessmen.

And let's not forget that Tesla is below NVidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta in market cap (and also has a tiny revenue compared to these companies).

Do you think those companies are also run like monarchies? Trust me, I can tell you from personal experience that they aren't.

On top of that, Jobs died 14 years ago and Apple has continued to prosper despite a decidedly non-monarchial government structure. Tim Cook is not running the company like Jobs did, not even close.

I won't even touch Trump because his firm makes just $600M in revenue which is way, way down the leaderboard of American companies (the 100th highest revenue company is fucking best buy at $43 billion with a B). I don't think any of the biggest companies are run by Thiel acolytes at all.

You're repeating a just-so story that explains one success without considering the other successes that work differently or the failures that work the same way. On top of that, you're under the impression that all companies run like this are the most successful in the country, which really isn't even close to true. Even Best Buy can out-earn one of your central examples of monarchical companies. Or should the country be run by Corie Barry?