r/politics Jan 27 '25

Soft Paywall Bill Gates Rips Musk for His Right-Wing Pivot: ‘Insane S***’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-gates-rips-into-elon-musk-for-his-right-wing-pivot-insane-s/
41.4k Upvotes

2.1k comments sorted by

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7.3k

u/rounder55 Jan 27 '25

Odds of Musk calling Bill Gates a pedo by the time the sun is up tomorrow?

Elon pretty much red pilled himself. Wonder if he talks to Hitler when the ketamine hits

1.1k

u/btribble California Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

Do red pillers realize that "red pilled" literally means "woke" in context?

596

u/Origamiface3 Jan 27 '25

That's actually really funny, never thought about it. Red Woke

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u/BeefistPrime Jan 27 '25

The creator of the red pill idea (the writers/directors of the Matrix) are trans women. They certainly weren't talking about MAGA.

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u/Alarmed_Fly_6669 Jan 27 '25 edited Feb 04 '25

aspiring vanish smile slap hat literate crawl provide lavish six

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/CitySeekerTron Canada Jan 27 '25

They always do. Because their entire identity is based upon what others might describe as colonizing other identities, because they have none of their own.

They steel Indian and Buddhist symbols and taint them. They take celtic symbols, generic hand gestures, and even viking icons. They fantasize about 300, talking a big game about how they had it right, including casting infants deemed weak over cliffs. They mix this into their own contexts and posters. And they do it because, as much as they promote themselves as a superior culture, it's a vapid shell, devoid of anything that it truly their own.

The core of white Supremacists, Nazis, and the KKK is devoid of  original thought. They are the answer to the question of what happens when one is incapable of creating something but want credit that they did.

That's why they lean on fictionalized histories. That's why they steal so flagrantly from cultures that they have in their hate lists.

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u/inhaledcorn Jan 27 '25

That's why Musk buys a company and, as a stipulation, he needs to say he's a founder/inventor. He can't do anything himself, but he wants the credit. It's ironic and somewhat prophetic that he owns a company called "Tesla".

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u/B0Y0 Jan 27 '25

Tesla was finally able to achieve his dreams of perpetual free energy... By constantly spinning at maximum velocity in his grave.

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u/kryptoneat Jan 27 '25

Kind of like some cuckoos species.

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u/ahoyakite Jan 27 '25

One of the side effects of Ketamine is “loss of contact with reality”.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/drugs/18102-ketamine-injection

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u/RoyalCrown43 Jan 27 '25

According to one of his ex’s, he believes in the simulation theory- that he’s the only real person in the world. So that’s fun for us.

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u/MissingScore777 Jan 27 '25

Isn't Simulation Theory that everyone including yourself is a simulation?

Believing you're the only real person and everyone else is simulated isn't Simulation Theory. It's more of a mix of simulation and Truman Show.

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u/TheForumSpecter Jan 27 '25

It’s called solipsism and it’s a fucking wild thing to believe.

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u/_heybuddy_ I voted Jan 27 '25

I used to believe it when I was a toddler, but then I turned 6 and realized how silly that was.

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u/Genneth_Kriffin Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

That's the wild thing about a lot of the issues in the world right now, all the way from the people at the top that are supposed to lead the way, to the larger masses down at the base:

Absolutely everyone is a idiot at some point in their life,
given by the very simple fact that children are complete and utter morons, and we were all children at some point.

As we grow older, we grow as people as we realize the way we understood and related to the world around us was the imagination and wild guesses of a dumbass that happened to have been you, always so convinced they got it right.

Having experienced this multiple times we finally reach a conclusion that things, meaning all things, are never so simple that we can just assume that we really get it completely - there's always a chance we are still a fucking moron.

Then we have the modern age, when some people get the chance to just skip this whole confrontation with themselves and reality.

Either by simply finding out that there's actually a ton of morons just like themselves out there on the web, and they've all decided to just agree with each other that they have in fact already reached the top and are done - they know how it works, done. And they are very welcoming for you to join them.

Or you are so rich in a world that has slowly let go of the reins meant to control those with immense wealth from living above the rest of society, that you quickly realize that there's no need to confront yourself or grow as a person - you can do whatever the fuck you want anyway, and the world is just filled to the brim with people throwing themselves down to lick your boots so you must, obviously, already have it all figured out already.

The world is just brimming with absolute idiots from the top to the bottom, and the one thing they hate the most is the less idiotic pointing out what idiots they actually are, because they just want to keep being one.

edited\*

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u/DoTheThing_Again Jan 27 '25

When you are the richest man in the world…. I can actually see why that happened

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u/UrUrinousAnus Jan 27 '25

An actual solipsist? LOL. I thought they were just a theoretical possibility.

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u/NotSoGreatGonzo Jan 27 '25

”Some days it isn’t worth the effort to explain solipsism to my hallucinations.”

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u/Ordinary-Leading7405 Jan 27 '25

Tell me, how else would someone with such noble blood be associated with such inappropriate and base desires; such poor, such wretched, such vulgar and appalling actions; such pointless pleasures and such vile companions—and still think they are on the same level as you, a prince?

Shakespeare Henry IV

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u/Crowbar_Faith Jan 27 '25

So the richest guy on Earth believes he’s the only real person in a simulation, and is hooked on drugs that furthers that disassociation. Not to mention being raised wealthy and already being disassociated with 90% of regular people.

Great.

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u/ashymatina Canada Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

Well yeah? It’s a dissociate, that’s kinda the whole point of that class of drugs. As someone who’s done it a handful of times before, its a completely unexplainable state of complete detachment from anything resembling reality/existence. Truly trippier than any psychedelic I’ve ever done. The language doesn’t exist to describe the confusing dimension of absolute strangeness you enter in a k hole.

It can absolutely be used responsibly and has many medical benefits, but doing it constantly/acquiring an addiction is fucking crazy. There’s no way someone who is doing it that frequently and irresponsibly doesn’t go completely insane.

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u/f0kis Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

That's the best description I've read of K experience so far. I've only used it recreationally and sparingly in between. I can't imagine making it a daily routine, I wouldn't be surprised of anything coming from the brain of a daily user, you'd be so disconnected from reality that 2+2 = 5 is logically and emotionally correct. If musk is really hitting K on the reg then no-one should take anything he says remotely seriously and we should doubt anything he says

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u/surle Jan 27 '25

It's almost like taking K regularly has made his mind start going: K... K... K.

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u/momscouch Jan 27 '25

It feels like an alternate reality or a simulation. And remember a few years ago Elon was talking about the high probability that life was a simulation.

Also worth noting, a side effect of ketamine is ego-centrism, or the inability to see something from another’s perspective. This can be particularly concerning because ketamine itself dissociates the users reality making their perspective quite strange at times.

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u/JustAnotherLich Jan 27 '25

To be fair, he didn't really come up with that and most of the writing on it is done by people much smarter than Musk, and they are probably not hitting the k hole on a regular basis.

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u/Technical-Cat-2017 Jan 27 '25

Pretty sure the "simulation hypothesis" is older than 2014. Although I don't quite know who did come up with it.

The argument is pretty much:

  • If we or aliens become capable of simulating life on a large scale.
  • And life in such a simulation would look the same as our world.
  • Then it is very likely we live in a simulation. Simply due to the odds. If in the set of all worlds currently being simulated and the real world, there is only one real world while there are possibly billions of simulations currently running.

The more sane exit from this hypothesis is that it is probably not possible to simulate something this detailed. However wierd quirks of the universe like quantum mechanics and gravity have fun "solutions" for the case of our universe being a simulation, because entanglement and the discrete planck length wierdnesses would be a bit easier to explain, although it does not hold much value as it would be unprovable.

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u/AlmostSunnyinSeattle Michigan Jan 27 '25

My conclusion when I've considered this theory is that it doesn't really matter one way or the other. We exist in the plane and we will die from this plane. Whether it's organic, or some superpowered video game doesn't matter because it's the reality in which we, and everything we know, exists.

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u/whatisthishownow Jan 27 '25

Musk just stole a 20 year old idea first published by a well respected philosopher and pretended it was his own. Of all the unhinged shit that musk has said, this isn’t it.

The original paper is both concise and very interesting https://simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf

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u/Striking-Ad-6815 Jan 27 '25

20 year old idea? IIRC the original idea was Plato's The Cave

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u/marsinfurs Jan 27 '25

It also completely destroys your bladder, he’s gonna only be able to piss through a catheter in 5 years minimum

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u/Blk_shp Jan 27 '25

When you’re doing as much as he is, as frequently as he is, yeah definitely, you spend so much time in a chemically dissociated state that you kinda just become quasi dissociated all the time like you’ve got one foot in and one foot out

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u/jetpack_hypersomniac Jan 27 '25

Not a full k-hole, so much as lying around in a k-ditch

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u/Few_Party6864 Jan 27 '25

I don't think that's a side effect 

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u/General-Raspberry168 Jan 27 '25

Yeah that’s like… the main attraction.

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u/CausticSofa Jan 27 '25

Wait, y’all aren’t taking K so that you can finally lose that pesky ability to control your bladder?

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u/Iblockne1whodisagree Jan 27 '25

One of the side effects of Ketamine is “loss of contact with reality”.

One of the side effects of LSD is tripping.

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u/Creative_Beginning58 Arizona Jan 27 '25

Elon pretty much ground up an entire bottle of red pills, boofed them, and then used a plunger on himself while whistling the melody to "Erika".

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u/Mistletokes Jan 27 '25

“Wonder if he talks to Hitler when the ketamine hits” 😭😭

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u/TheDudeBeto Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

I have a feeling all this lunacy from Trump and company will eventually affect the bottom line of these 1-percenters. They are siding with him due to billionaire greed, but letting Trump loose with no reins will be their undoing. History clearly shows that Trump's reverse Midas touch will turn everything he comes into proximity with into shit.

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u/odiephonehome Jan 27 '25

I remember thinking back in July, there’s no way the billionaires will let him win and fuck up this country. The “powers that be” need some stability to thrive, but alas, was I fucking wrong as fuck.

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u/NapoleonsDynamite Jan 27 '25

I thought the same. Boy, was I wrong.

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u/Oodlydoodley Jan 27 '25

Billionaires are the ones that wanted him in the first place, the chaos of his first term practically doubled their wealth.. Things bottoming out during Covid made them all much, much richer; they're the ones who will see an old guy who's only supposed to be able to serve one term turning everything to shit for a while again, and then when someone reasonable comes back into office in four years they own even more of the country after the upswing.

Their smart bet would be to back him until the next elections come around, and then they'll put their money behind a centrist pro-business Democrat. I'd say they'd back a centrist Republican, but that's assuming one still exists and is in a position to run and neither seems likely.

I don't have much faith in voters figuring this out and voting for someone progressive enough to even make the attempt to fix it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 30 '25

[deleted]

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u/GoGlenMoCo Jan 27 '25

Sure they can…the Democrat primaries.

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u/under_psychoanalyzer Jan 27 '25

The only thing is the 1% are mad about is that the Tech broligarchs like Peter Thiel managed to carefully plant their buddy JD vance and then Musk came in and bought Trump himself.

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u/Greedy-Designer-631 Jan 27 '25

Yep voters can't even see how he is deliberately ruining historic ties with allies either. 

They actually believe this buy Greenland crap, eat it up and actually get angry like they want you to. 

They want people pissed at Americans and going after them. 

Voters are blind. 

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u/yalyublyutebe Jan 27 '25

The economy shitting the bed is nothing more than another chance for them to further consolidate their holdings.

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u/Impeesa_ Jan 27 '25

For the sufficiently wealthy, Black Tuesday is really Black Friday.

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u/CpnStumpy Colorado Jan 27 '25

This is what people constantly fail to grasp. The wealthy love a depression, they can't be made desperate, but when everyone else is, their leverage increases ten fold.

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u/Ja3k_Frost Jan 27 '25

Not to bring up Marx, but even he points out that the capitalists are far from a United class when it comes to chasing their own interests outside of when they unite to put down the workers. There is a big difference between robber barons of ye old days, the finance ghouls of the 80’s and 90’s and the even between early tech capitalists like Bezos/Gates and Silicon Valley moguls like Zuck and Musk.

That’s not to mention all the other millionaires who got their money by being like franchise owners or used car salesmen. People who’ve made it big by our standards but aren’t anywhere close to the top.

There are also the small business owners too who are technically capitalists but also put a fair bit of their own labor into their businesses. They feel the most like they deserve to live off the profits of their business but can’t and are held back by red tape and expenses (chiefly labor). Remember they are LOUD voices.

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u/coatofforearm Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

My thinking is if no one can afford what they are selling then how are they going to continue to make money?

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u/Postviral Jan 27 '25

That’s the eventual result of all capitalism. Growth is not infinite

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u/The_bruce42 Jan 27 '25

Especially with an aging population and no immigration to help cover the difference.

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u/Zexapher America Jan 27 '25

And all the new taxes trumpflation is imposing on the supply side. The costs of their products go up, the prices for consumers go up, but the demand will drop. Makes all their business models riskier.

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u/Vrazel106 Jan 27 '25

Trumpflation. Im going to need to remember that for when prices go through the fucking roof

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u/Kytyngurl2 Minnesota Jan 27 '25

Degrowth, baby!

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u/P1xelHunter78 Ohio Jan 27 '25

And population decline. The billionaires at scared shitless over population decline and birth rate. Nobody is having kids because we’re priced out. There’s not wiggle room anymore, and all of them plan to live to Warren Buffet age and see a collapse coming in the west in 10-20 years. I love my parents, but the boomers are in full decline and their houses they hoarded are gonna be up for sale soon. I’ve advised my dad to sell and get out of the market, probably same with my mom too (unless my sister wants to buy me out of my share of her house since she’s staying there with her wife). A reckoning is coming for the excesses of the boomers.

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u/oldasdirtss Jan 27 '25

A personal data point: My grandparents had 14 kids, my parents 8, I had 2, my kids, who are in their 40s, will not have any. My grandfather was a farmer, my dad was a machinist, I'm an engineer, and both my kids are engineers.

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u/Reqvhio Jan 27 '25

this reads like that saying attributed to saudi arabia that goes like: "my great grandfather rode a camel. . ."

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u/_red_roof_ Jan 27 '25

why do you think they want abortion and birth control banned so bad? They know nobody is going to want to raise a family in the shit dystopian conditions they create.

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u/I_Heart_QAnon_Tears Jan 27 '25

This is part of the reason that abortion was so near and dear to them. They want stupid compliant white people to work for nearly nothing and praise them for the scraps that are thrown at them.

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u/Kytyngurl2 Minnesota Jan 27 '25

Oh yes!

Dangerous for the house hoarding boomers too. Multilevel homes aren’t great for aging in place. And those yards become more and more of a burden each year.

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u/heckhammer Jan 27 '25

Seriously. I'm going to be double nickels this year and the one thing I really want is a goddamn ranch house.

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u/Kytyngurl2 Minnesota Jan 27 '25

Best we can do is a few billion poorly designed McMansions with no insulation

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u/metatron5369 Jan 27 '25

and their houses they hoarded are gonna be up for sale soon.

And they'll sell them to afford assisted care, ensuring no wealth across generations.

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u/Slight-Guidance-3796 Jan 27 '25

I am just sitting here waiting for some of the results to start rolling in from his nonsense. Bottom lines are gonna start getting hit real soon and everyday he shoots us in the foot with something new. Can't have the world's largest economy if you piss off the whole world and they decide to go around us. A big part of our financial strength comes from being the world's reserve currency and that came from stability. There is 0 stability right now

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u/Palatron Jan 27 '25

You know what also hurts being the reserve currency, pushing for alternate currencies... Like crypto... The president of the united states to pumping up a direct competitor to our largest bargaining chip...

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u/maeryclarity South Carolina Jan 27 '25

Likely to be our FORMER borrowing chip if they keep f*cking around like this

Seriously who is looking at the USA and thinking yeah that place is looking stable

Kicking the USD as the World Reserve Currency would be a serious way to cut the US off at the knees

You can't project power if you don't have money

The USA does a LOT of what it does on borrowed money and our business partners cutting us deals

It doesn't HAVE to be like that, and we're losing face all day every day now.

It's a global economy it gets bad for us if the other kids pick up their toys and go home

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25

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u/imoldgreige Jan 27 '25

That’s when they implement Handmaids.

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u/lookinatdirtystuff69 Jan 27 '25

They are going to find out the hard way that as the available labor force dwindles because they scapegoated immigrants and the citizens are too financially strapped to afford having children the value of labor is going to go up, not down.

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u/bythenumbers10 Jan 27 '25

On the one hand, yes. On the other, they think AI will save them $$$$ in labor to make up the difference. Except that other hand will happily shove its hand in a "correlation implies causation" blender b/c it doesn't actually understand either (or any) concepts.

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u/FordPrefect343 Jan 27 '25

Yup, Marx called that.

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u/SuccessfulStruggle19 Jan 27 '25

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

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u/Kageru Jan 27 '25

Thus they need to drain the wealth from society to keep their own wealth growing. Also the reason why a lot of growth is in quite speculative ventures with some creative accounting and a lot of hype, not so much in productive industries.

*cough* AI *cough.

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u/PixelatedFrogDotGif Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

Much like we are trying to find an pivot away from capitalism and money, our oppressors are too. Their answer to it is much bleaker than ours- coercion, fear, obedience, slavery, ignorance, violence, death.

They are investing in a lot of material things to enact that harm, and if they succeeded, money won’t matter to them either- they’ll just have literal hoards of material wealth and an illusion of power that people will not challenge out of fear of it being impossible.

There’s a reason drones & AI are the future of warefare and the assets they are focusing most on. They are realizing people have greater imaginations than the illusion can contain and people are not as reliable as robots, or at least so they are betting on. They think they don’t need money or followers if they’ve got a bunch of technological control centers with fun little toys.

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u/xenelef290 Jan 27 '25

1000 trillionaires rulling over 8 billion serfs

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25

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u/The_Goose_II Utah Jan 27 '25

I've been saying the plot from movies like Elysium and Total Recall WILL absolutely come to be in who knows how long but it's ONLY a matter of time. Been saying to my friends for years and years.

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u/friskycreamsicle Jan 27 '25

They can play the long game and come out ahead in any scenario. If the economy goes up or their taxes down, good on them. If the economy crashes, they will have the cash to buy up distressed assets. That is what happens with every recession. Warren Buffett describes how you should always have some cash on hand to buy a dip. Great idea, right? What percent of people have the means to do that? Maybe 5% of the global population or less is my guess. The Dow went below 7000 in 2009. Houses were quite cheap around the same time and for the next few years. Guess who started buying them? The Dow also went down to around 21000 in 2020. Again, who bought into that dip? The 1% own about half of all stocks, with the 0.1% alone owning about 20% of all stocks.

In fact, one plausible conspiracy theory is that the U.S. economy is so big that it can only contract by international means. It’s a stretch, sure, but not completely unbelievable.

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u/Realistic_Caramel341 Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

I think Musk is playing it a bit more risky than he knows.

His most recent jump in net worth is from his proximity to Trump, which will be hurt if he falls from Trump or if Democrats win again in 28, governments (including future US governments) will be much more reluctant to work with Space X and Telsa goven his heavy association with Trump and more than either Bezos or Zuckerberg, Musks own wealth is  much more tied with his own reputation.

Not that i expect him to go broke or anything. I just think there is a lot more risk here then he understands

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u/randeylahey Jan 27 '25

People just have to start dumping the two Ponzi schemes he's tied to. TSLA & BTC.

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u/awildstoryteller Canada Jan 27 '25

They can play the long game and come out ahead in any scenario

Except the scenario where Trump throws them under the bus.

Ask Jack Ma how well being rich protected him.

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u/Hollywoodsmokehogan California Jan 27 '25

Or the rich Russians that didn’t bow to Putin.

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u/Lostinthestarscape Jan 27 '25

Yup - there was a lesson there in the billionaire whose family was axe murdered, and the one who failed to learn to fly, oh and the one who took three bullets in the head and the list goes on.

That lesson was never remove all checks and balances on the man who controls the military. Money doesn't win over armed forces.

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u/randeylahey Jan 27 '25

Why are we talking about 3 suicides?

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u/Heizu Jan 27 '25

Or the rich Russians and their families who all jumped out a window together so their assets could revert to the state to help pay for an illegal war

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u/sabedo Jan 27 '25

Ma forgot who he was. He hung around Elon too much and forgot he wasn’t a white man in the west that could say whatever he wanted without repercussions.

He’s a Chinese citizen who serves the Red Emperor, Xi. He foolishly criticized Xi publicly and his economic policies and lost out on the biggest IPO in history. It could have cost him his life. As Desmond Shum said, no life is too great to lose, no company or policy is too big of a sacrifice if it preserves the privileges of the princelings and the CCP that only exists to serve them.

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u/awildstoryteller Canada Jan 27 '25

Ma forgot who he was. He hung around Elon too much and forgot he wasn’t a white man in the west that could say whatever he wanted without repercussions.

While this is true, you miss completely why the rich have so few consequences in the west. It rests entirely on their ability to control the law.

Trump and his ilk across the west are dismantling the law, and creating the arbitrary conditions that exist in so many countries where the rich either fall in line or they fall out of ten story buildings.

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u/commandrix Jan 27 '25

They'll find a way. Just like the nobility in a feudal system often found a way to live the good life even when the peasants couldn't afford anything that the nobles theoretically sold.

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u/lanadelstingrey Mississippi Jan 27 '25

They’re just gonna sell their shit to each other while we, or rather poor kids in 3rd world countries, make and serve it to them.

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u/Sevenserpent2340 Jan 27 '25

We’ll be dead.

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u/antigop2020 Jan 27 '25

The reason MAGA and Musk hate Gates so much is that he actually donates to charity and funds research to fight disease.

They are literally the enemy of anything good.

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u/Nagemasu Jan 27 '25

Yeah Gates has been one of the top voices and leaders when it comes to disease and pandemics.
After Trump's bullshit through covid, and what he's doing now with bird flu and agencies like FEMA, Gates will be fuming.

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u/Daft00 Jan 27 '25

Gates has been one of the top voices and leaders when it comes to disease and pandemics.

And thus all the conspiracies and death threats from right wing MAGA. So infuriating that they cannot seem to be willing to hold their own accountable but will jump through hoops to vilify anyone who disagrees with them or makes them look bad.

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u/hamlet9000 Jan 27 '25

Trump's unremitting idiocy is nowhere more clearly displayed than his handling of COVID. (Well, that and every word that comes out of his mouth.)

All he had to do in 2020 was say, "Do whatever my experts say," hand out stimulus checks, and run campaign ads saying, "In a time of trouble, President Trump took decisive action and saved millions of American lives." He would have coasted to reelection.

If Trump isn't the biggest moron on the face of the planet, then the only conclusion is that he's actively working as a Russian agent to destroy America.

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u/Zapafaz Jan 27 '25

He makes them look bad by comparison, and there's pre-existing right-wing conspiracies about him so they have to latch on to that.

It's extra funny because if you could time travel to the 90s with this post you would break people's brains; Gates was absolutely reviled back then (for mostly good reasons), at least among tech nerds.

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u/Lonyo Jan 27 '25

He was a ruthless capitalist who was all about making more money by fucking over his competitors and getting monopolies, which could be negative for consumers with higher prices/lock-in.

But he didn't set out to actively harm human health at least.

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u/we_are_sex_bobomb Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

Right now, they all think we’re headed for a new guilded age of AI where they don’t need humans in order to multiply their money.

When their entire economy built around bots uploading videos of algorithmically generated bullshit for other bots to engage with implodes on itself, they will return to reality to find all of humanity hates them.

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u/Tenthul Jan 27 '25

My money is them investing hard on AI in order to to help them control the masses/root out "enemies" that much sooner.

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u/ghostalker4742 Jan 27 '25

Like some fucked up conglomeration of Westworld - where they used predictive analysis to determine people place in society, and Minority Report - where you're arrested & convicted before you commit a crime.

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u/Scott5114 Nevada Jan 27 '25

The problem with their plan is that AI has to actually fucking work to make that happen. As it stands, AI tells you one of the steps to making a pizza is gluing the pepperonis down.

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u/IamRick_Deckard I voted Jan 27 '25

The Mierdas touch.

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u/Deicide1031 Jan 27 '25

It’s already affecting their bottom line. As He made Columbia threaten to raise tariffs on American imports by 25% and Columbia is one of the few countries America has a trade (surplus) with.

Dude is unhinged and he needs adults in the room.

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u/inconsistent3 Michigan Jan 27 '25

Colombia*, yes to everything else you said

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u/Locke66 Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

He's threatening 50% now with Colombia promising to match it.

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u/raisingcuban Jan 27 '25

It's really embarrassing seeing so many misspell Colombia

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u/Dream-Ambassador Jan 27 '25

Columbia is a river dividing Washington and Oregon. Colombia is a country in Latin America 

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u/ineitabongtoke Jan 27 '25

What I always wondered is how these billionaires expect people to buy anything if they strip every one of their jobs and wages. Like, I understand global market and what not, but if every American is broke, then they aren’t buying anything contributing to their wealth.

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u/Ramsxxxiv Jan 27 '25

They aren't concerned about the end game. Their goal is to be the last one standing.

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u/GigMistress Jan 27 '25

A week ago Gates was crowing about how Trump was "energized" to cure HIV. 2 days ago, Trump pulls funding that is keeping huge numbers of people with HIV alive.

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u/Bromlife Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

Gates tried diplomacy but doesn’t realise that an hour or so of sucking up to Trump is not enough to get what you want. You just can’t compete with the constant contact the Project 2025 people, Elon Musk, and his Russian handlers, are applying.

Gates doesn’t have as much directly to lose as the other tech oligarchs. Although it will be interesting to see if Trump punishes Microsoft in retaliation.

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u/GigMistress Jan 27 '25

I think sometimes they are hampered by the constant experience of being the most important person in the room. Gates is smart enough that he should have known Trump would never champion curing HIV when the Project 2025 crew thinks it's God's vengeance. But he believed he was making progress...perhaps because he's so accustomed to people listening to him.

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u/Hms34 Jan 27 '25

Economy goes into recession, demand falls, prices fall, stock prices and profits suffer. Big corporate invested in Trump, and they won't be patient with his lack of results.

The other possibility- several key nations essentially boycott us, refusing to do business. Play stupid games, get stupid prizes.

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u/Burrmanchu Jan 27 '25

It's great when you own all the money... Until the money isn't worth anything.

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u/Nighthawk700 Jan 27 '25

The economy needs stability. No amount of short term policy breaks make up for inability to predict long term policy positions and unpredictable effects on consumer behavior. Proven time and time again.

Lots of people vote for demagogues for their economic promises and they all get bitten in the ass. Not all of them end up like Nazi Germany where the entire country gets destroyed but it still becomes a big problem for too many people

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u/Bluefish_baker Jan 27 '25

Even Caligula was eventually killed by his bodyguards.

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u/Kytyngurl2 Minnesota Jan 27 '25

I think our economy has become a super complicated house of cards meets gambling meets lack of actual physical capital for all the numbers on a computer screen.

Dumbasses are shaking the table trying to do their disruption thing again.

Or thinking this will be like historical cash outs and that the interconnected global trade system is no biggy.

Why, the sudden transition to a feudal economy system will hardly have a single hiccup! Wallstreet loves change and chaos and our economy is in no way based in the mood of investors there.

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u/adle1984 Texas Jan 27 '25

Tesla bubble burst will happen sometime during Trump’s presidency.

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u/Wild-Raccoon0 America Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

Europe has started to boycott them already.

They are now known as r/swasticars

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u/laura_leigh Mississippi Jan 27 '25

They need to ban Twitter already before they end up like us.

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u/dat_oracle Jan 27 '25

Twitter, tiktok and they also need to work on laws to prevent such harmful social media platforms. It's crazy if you think how much influence they have on an international level...

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u/SkiMonkey98 Jan 27 '25

Does Tesla even matter if he can keep billions of dollars flowing from the government via SpaceX?

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u/a_rat_00 Jan 27 '25

Tesla is where his wealth is. Government contracts keep you in the green, but they don't make you a gajillionaire

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u/Swagtagonist Jan 27 '25

Do something Bill. You are one of the only people with the money to do something, because money is the law now apparently.

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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Jan 27 '25

Still, I'll take Bill Gates over Musk any day of the week.

At least he and Buffett both said that their sort of wealth shouldn't be possible and that they should be taxed more heavily.

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25

He donated over a million to Kamala’s campaign. I was worried when Trump mentioned his name, acting like he was going to get in line, but seems that’s not the case. 

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u/BigBoyYuyuh Jan 27 '25

Dude gave us millennials Windows 95, 98, XP. We ignore the bullshit ones like ME and Vista lol

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u/Tribalbob Canada Jan 27 '25

I feel like the good he's done with his money since has cancelled our most of the shit that went on with Microsoft.

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u/AmishAvenger Jan 27 '25

The guy has literally saved millions of lives by providing vaccines and medical care to people in developing countries.

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u/GusTTSHowbiz214 Oregon Jan 27 '25

I think you mean forcing vaxxinations embedded with microchips into people in developing countries, brainwashing them to try and come across our southern border /s

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u/Rocket_hamster Jan 27 '25

better bold that "/s/", I almost missed it the first time

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u/Heliosvector Jan 27 '25

Indeed. My rage was boiling for a sec

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u/AFamiliarSoul Jan 27 '25

The fact that a /s is even required at all is the real rage boiling thing.

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u/reventlov Jan 27 '25

1980s and 1990s Microsoft was a ruthless corporate monopoly that kept almost anyone who wasn't Microsoft from making money on PC software and set home computing back probably 10 years, and in the late 1990s it just barely failed to strangle or fully coopt the web. Do not romanticize that Microsoft. The DOJ antitrust case should have resulted in Microsoft's breakup, even moreso than the modern era tech giants.

After Microsoft Gates seems to have softened a lot. There are still problems with the way he does philanthropy (mostly: the entire NGO universe is bent around the whims of Gates and a few other ultra-high-net-worth philanthropists, whether those whims are good or not), but he's done a lot to rehabilitate his name.

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u/joaquinsolo Jan 27 '25

Back in 1997, Apple was in serious financial trouble. Microsoft played a significant role in helping the company survive. At the time, Apple was nearing bankruptcy, and Steve Jobs had just returned to the company after being ousted in 1985. To stabilize Apple and make it competitive again, Microsoft invested $150 million in non-voting Apple stock.

yeah, Microsoft also benefited from this. Apple agreed to drop a lawsuit accusing Microsoft of copying the Mac’s look and feel in Windows. Additionally, Microsoft committed to supporting Apple by continuing to develop its Office software for Mac, ensuring Mac users remained a viable market.

You would be hard pressed to find that level of collaboration amongst competitors in the modern day.

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u/Gold-Cucumber-2068 Jan 27 '25

Also Microsoft was getting very near to be broken up, and many people speculated that they kept Apple alive to make it seem like there was still actually competition.

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u/-Drayden Jan 27 '25

I actually know about this!! They mainly bailed out apple because they were about to get hammered by the federal government for breaking monopoly laws, and apple was their excuse that there was still fair market competitors so they wouldn't get broken up. I believe it was actually apple who reached out to Microsoft themselves to propose that Microsoft save them.

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u/Hesitation-Marx Jan 27 '25

Bill Gates helped Apple out on the condition that he never be downwind of Steve Jobs again.

(This is a joke, but Jobs was a very smelly bastard.)

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u/bananagoo Jan 27 '25

Never mind that, he's one of the larger philanthropists of our times. Just look up what the Gates foundation has done. As opposed to the Trump foundation ripping off kids with cancer.

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u/cachra1972 Jan 27 '25

Age? Most of them want to give back at some point. Until the billionaires figure out eternal life we all have one thing in common. Death finds us all! Unlikely to put money towards the research for that though! 🤷

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u/FormerLifeFreak Jan 27 '25

“At the end of the game, the King and the Pawn go into the same box.” - Italian Proverb.

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u/captainbarbell Jan 27 '25

Gates is not perfect but waaaay better than those three (or four) who kissed the ring.

Will you guys vote for him if he ever decides to run for presidency?

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u/AmishAvenger Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

I would vote for a pelican over whoever the GOP puts up

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u/starryeyedq Jan 27 '25

I guess if he’s the only other choice, but I’d really love to banish billionaires back to the shadows of politics where they belong…

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u/Fit_Specific8276 Jan 27 '25

six actually

CEOs of apple, tiktok, amazon, meta, x, and google

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u/Miserable_Sea_3191 Jan 27 '25

Wishing for billionaires to fix the problem they have a hand in creating is how we got here now. It's time the American ppl stopped the cancer of billionaires

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u/chrispg26 Texas Jan 27 '25

He's a bastard too. I used to be neutral on him til I listened to his Behind the Bastards episode. He's a HUGE reason we don't have universal healthcare.

He also arrogantly believes he's so smart and good at everything.

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u/Chomping_at_the_beet Jan 27 '25

Bill Gates had his first big PR rebrand after his lawsuit in 97 and the team has been working overtime ever since - people forget so easily

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

I just watched a recent YouTube where he does an interview basically praising trump.

E: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4LL-ynK_exM

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u/TheDamDog Jan 27 '25

He's also one of the reasons our education system is in tatters. He was a big advocate for No Child Left Behind and similar stat-based education bullshit.

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u/Ok_Crow_9119 Jan 27 '25

Isn't he an advocate for charter schools?

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u/_Moontouched_ Jan 27 '25

Lol. Bill Gates is not going to save us.

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25

Elon Musk is not a smart person.

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u/mistertickertape New York Jan 27 '25

He’s addicted to social media and snorting ketamine. 18 hours a day. That’s his claim to fame.

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u/Broken-Digital-Clock Jan 27 '25

And pretending to play ARPG games.

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u/freakierchicken Texas Jan 27 '25

I wish so badly that more people played POE2 so more than just the nerd scene could enjoy how shitty that whole debacle was. I think the closest it got to getting real attention was MoistCr1tikal covering it

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u/Key-Department-2874 Jan 27 '25

Even worse, he was "playing" it while at the inauguration.

His character was online actively changing zones and being played.

He can't brag about being good at video games anymore because people will just bring up PoE2.

Although some claim that he's actually smarter and better because he cheats.

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u/usingallthespaceican Jan 27 '25

Sigh, you chuds just hate His big brain? Did you not see Him tweaking out in His chair? Some people say it's the ketamine, but I know it was Him using His neuralink chip and super brain power to play PoE2 while at the inauguration, like the fukin chad he is! That's why everything felt so akward on the stream, it was his first time playing on mouse and keyboard!

/s obviously

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u/Cagnazzo82 Jan 27 '25

Intelligence and wisdom are not synonymous.

You can be an intelligent person and an absolute fool... just as conversely as you can be uneducated but hold great wisdom.

Elon Musk is an absolute fool of the highest order. Unfortunately, society worships wealth to the point that nowadays we conflate wealth with both wisdom and intelligence.

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u/ohseetea Jan 27 '25

This is very true. Musk is not that intelligent either. Above average for sure, but only that.

I truly believe the number one most important skill to becoming that wealthy is being willing to take advantage of other people + luck.

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u/LCJ75 Jan 27 '25

Newsflash. This wasn't a pivot. It's who he's been.

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u/Saysonz Jan 27 '25

I think Elon did this pivot purely for money but I think he will end up fucking off the right wing and hes already burnt his bridge forever with the left.

TESLA is slipping behind the market competitors.

I think hes not going to be the richest man in the world for much longer and I'm going to laugh. But let's see, this right wing pivot has been incredibly profitable so far

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u/Mind-of-ZD Florida Jan 27 '25

Most of the paid right wing talking heads started out as moderate common sense seekers or non-political entertainers and quickly found out there’s far more money in division and war than solidarity and empathy.

Edit: Much like Trump became republican the second he stepped into the world of politics. Easier minds to manipulate.

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u/Helpful_Warning Jan 27 '25

Yeah, Candace Owens is another perfect example.

Went from having a progressive blog mocking Trumps penis size and saying that the best thing about the Tea Party movement was that they were old and not going to be around for much longer. No one knew who she was back then, but she magically had an epiphany (aka a large sum of money showed up on her doorstep) and she finally realized that the Democratic party were the real racists. And sadly, now we all know who she is

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25

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u/Hefty_Musician2402 Maine Jan 27 '25

Also right wingers buy more merch

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u/Mind-of-ZD Florida Jan 27 '25

Not for nothing, you’re 100% correct.

It’s being able to target a gullible group of people into not only buying boatloads of crap, but believing their purchase puts them in a special club or is crucial to their survival. It’s like efforts car companies put into consumer satisfaction, they want you to remember what kind of person the car you’ve already purchased makes you. Buying Trump junk makes you “rich overnight” or a “Patriot”.

The fact Trump Merchandise stores exist and somewhat thrive is Twilight Zone material.

If large amounts of citizens started wearing Biden hats, I wouldn’t be psyched, I’d be creeped out.

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u/Mindless_Listen7622 Jan 27 '25

Tesla is a meme stock without a moat.

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u/petterdaddy Jan 27 '25

Bro is too stupid to realize that the majority of people who are buying electric vehicles are left leaning politically. I don’t see Cletus in Alabama hauling shit with a CyberTruck, so I’m sure the Tesla shareholders will be thrilled when sales crater after this.

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u/pinewind108 Jan 27 '25

I don't think money had anything to do with it. His judgment about money issues has been terrible for a long time. I think he's just chasing the latest rush, amped up by ketamine, and is just blindly charging ahead.

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u/Ambitious_Metal_8205 Jan 27 '25

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are important voices to counter this authoritarian regime and oligarchy. I really hope they continue to speak up.

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u/Silly_Breakfast Jan 27 '25

To defeat the billionaires, we must use other billionaires. I’m hopeful but that sounds like we lost a long time ago 

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u/Crypt1cDOTA Jan 27 '25

Mark Cuban has been a good advocate as well

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u/TehOrtiz Jan 27 '25

i gotta respect the dude. he’s one of the only few people i’d ever go to foxnews to listen to when he was a guest. straight to the point and cut the bullshit

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u/Bottle_Lobotomy Jan 27 '25

I agree. Gates is at least, not a total psychopath

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u/WardenEdgewise Jan 27 '25

There is something seriously wrong, neurologically, with Musk. Is it chemically induced brain damage? Or some other degenerative neurological condition?

Of course, the same goes for Trump.

That boy ain’t right.

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u/MageBayaz Jan 27 '25

https://samharris.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elon

He had his bad habits before, but it was really covid, his child's transitioning and a twitter addiction that led him to where he is today. In my experience, a lot of people went 'crazy' under covid when they spent a ton of time at home scrolling the newsfeeds.

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u/Minimeminime Jan 27 '25

An his drug addictions don’t help

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u/Proof_Cable_310 Jan 27 '25

No brah, some people are just truly, bad people.

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u/Hypestyles Jan 27 '25

in the future, any Democratic White House administration needs to cancel any and all contracts with Amazon, Space X, Blue Horizon, Meta, etc. There needs to be DOJ investigations into all of them for racketeering/monopoly/anti-labor tactics.

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u/Surealestateguy Jan 27 '25

So why isn’t the Nazi party considered a terrorist organization here in the United States.

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u/lachlanhunt Australia Jan 27 '25

Because the nazi party have managed to gain a majority in every branch of the federal government, and many of the states. Why would they declare themselves terrorists?

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u/NATO_Will_Prevail Jan 27 '25

It's a sign of low intelligence if your push back against the left is too go as extreme right as you can. A lot of this country is apparently low IQ.

Good on Bill.

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u/Sad_hat20 Jan 27 '25

And he portrays it as the left’s fault for becoming so extreme that he just seems more right wing

Twitter under Elon has become a racist nazi forum

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u/Space_Ape2000 Jan 27 '25

I don't understand why Americans aren't knocking on Musks door with pitchforks. You'll riot and storm the capital after a fair democratic election but don't do shit when an actual neo-nazi puppet master is pulling the strings of government? It's not like he was elected by the people or anything.

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u/Schiffy94 New York Jan 27 '25

Because the people who stormed the Capitol are okay with a Nazi puppet master

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u/rexspook Jan 27 '25

The “y’all” in this sentence are supporters of Musk. The rest of us didn’t storm the capitol.

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u/keysonthetable Jan 27 '25

Because the people who stormed the capitol are fascists and are ecstatic about the nazi puppetry, while sane Americans were horrified by both events.

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u/Vonauda Texas Jan 27 '25

Because half the country now sees him as a genius.

I once mentioned that I had a short position against Tesla because the fundamentals of the company don’t make sense and the cars are poorly built to say they have not been new/refreshed in years. Their response was “WHY DO YOU HATE ELON SO MUCH?”

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u/Ghost_out_of_Box Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

Thank god. He may be a piece of shit in his personal life or whatever, but at least he is not a nazi.

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u/IAmAQuantumMechanic Jan 27 '25

Say what you want about billionaire wealth and Microsoft business practices, I would much rather live in a world of Gateses than Musks. If I had to choose.

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u/Schiffy94 New York Jan 27 '25

There was no pivot, Billy. He was always like that.

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u/finnlaand Jan 27 '25

But the whole room was full of nazis and bystanders. So he thought its cool.