At some point, accumulated wealth becomes power, and that power can be used to pull energy, attention, labor, and public resources out of the system for one person’s agenda.

And in Tesla’s case, the stock value creation story is insanely unorthodox, to be charitable. A lot of that valuation was supercharged by years of market-moving hype done personally by Elon: 10+ years of FSD timelines that never happened, the more recent “buy a Tesla, it’s an appreciating asset!” super-lie, the mission gradually being abandoned, GOP craps on EVs and it’s crickets from Elon, etc.

Now we have the ultimate example of wealth gravity distortion: Musk helped put Trump back in power, and the relationship looks openly transactional. But Elon is not just benefiting from Trump’s transactional nature. He is also benefiting from an administration where white collar crime and regulatory accountability seem to have basically stopped being real things.

So with all that, the kind of shady behavior Elon pulled that might normally trigger government scrutiny or enforcement is now being smothered by political influence.

Even today, Tesla appears to be the highest P/E outlier in the S&P 500 among profitable companies. So the market is not just valuing the current business. It is valuing the story, the hype, and increasingly Musk’s ability to buy influence to stay outta trouble.

And to be clear, I’m not trying to pretend nothing real was built. SpaceX is impressive. Tesla really did help kickstart the EV market. But that does not make up for the harm, distortion, and unaccountable power being exercised now.

So yes, maybe the wealth was “created” in an accounting sense. But the concern is what happens when that created value becomes an unaccountable force acting on everything else.

Even if you agree with some of DOGE projects’s goals, the way it operated was wildly thoughtless about consequences beyond Musk’s personal wishes, and almost completely unaccountable.

I’m honestly sick that my personal Model Y purchase helped add to that power.

And I say that as someone who was a huge Musk fan for years, despite the warning signs — the Thai “pedo” comments, and his very public turn during COVID.

I run Resolve under CachyOS using the project I mentioned -- everything works afaict.

It helps you build and run Resolve in a Docker or Podman container. I’ve personally used it on Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch-based setups (well, CachyOS), and it’s worked great for me.

Right now it supports Nvidia very well. I’m also personally working on adapting it for AMD GPUs so I can run Resolve on my Strix Halo workstation.

One especially nice thing about this setup is that I can run multiple versions of Resolve on the same computer. If a new beta comes out, no problem — I can build a new container and try it out while keeping my stable version as my daily workhorse.

https://x.com/Cowmix/status/1597636735688900608

Gah!

Even back then, though, it was always under attack by spammers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...

Then in 2014, Google Fiber announced they were expanding here and, all of a sudden, the local telco and cable companies (Centurylink and Cox) started rolling out fiber all over the place -- like pretty much overnight. Then Google backed off, and the incumbents slowed their roll too.

It was a on-the-nose reminder that these companies can move fast when they think a real competitor might show up.

And when the bills started coming in, it helped there too. Hard to say if we actually saved anything — but it certainly didn’t hurt.

https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-t...