Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

I hope it's possible. Everyone not horrible should absolutely divest from Tesla. Holding it is basically equivalent to holding $TRUMP. 1/

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

If there is a meaningful transition of power in the US, I don't see how an Democratic administration doesn't require more diversified ownership of SpaceX if it will continue to be an important government contractor. Or else, subsidize development of alternatives. 2/

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

The stakes are really high. Musk belongs in prison for violating a thousand procedures about handling government private and confidential data. Trump can pardon him, maybe, though if things go badly he may choose not to. 3/

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

Regardless, a sane administration, if one returns, would not want to truck with him. He has put his wealth if not his life fully on the line for all this. 4/

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

I hate to wish ill on another human, but this destruction he's wrought is a thing he's gone out of his way to wreak, and I hope he loses his dangerous bet. /fin

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i for one am very excited to see what a wired-up @nathantankus.bsky.social cyborg warrior might get up to.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

"We are in the middle of an attempted autogolpe. It hasn’t succeeded so far. …I'd say tentatively…the autogolpistas are having a harder time than they expected. America’s oligarchs may mostly have preemptively surrendered… but many of the rest of us have not." paulkrugman.substack.com/p/autogolpe

Link Preview: 
Autogolpe: What’s really happening beneath the Musk/Trump chaos

Autogolpe

Link Preview: Autogolpe: What’s really happening beneath the Musk/Trump chaos
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

look, if we defund NASA, this percentage will stop growing.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

Tesla is a memecoin. It’s price is levered to Musk, not Tesla as a source of discounted cash flow. The biggest possible tragedy for Tesla shareholders is that it fall to conventional DCF valuations. That’s how they lose billions. 1/

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

Tesla can be very volatile, but the only way Tesla shareholders concede Musk has durably lost them billions is if he has lost his mystique. And if he has lost his mystique, he is no one, he is out of government, he’s the new Adam Neumann. 2/

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

But governments (not just the US, I suspect) will prop him up while SpaceX remains in his hands, because it is critical infrastructure to them. 3/

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

Tesla’s valuation and Musk’s wealth is protected in part by SpaceX’s moat, in part by the time it might take for his wealth to deflate and the damage he could do (eg electorally) in the meantime to those who cross him. (If you come for the king, you best not miss!) /fin

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

he’s beyond the point where that works. SpaceX is top of class, but too small a share of his wealth. Tesla is a laggard in the EV industry, cannot thrive without tariff protection. even under some broad “Western” protection from Chinese EVs, Tesla’s valuation is crazy.

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i think a pretty good, pretty accurate, way of explaining to less news-obsessed people what’s going on is Trump and Musk are turning the US into a “shithole country”, as the man himself once put it.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

yes! of course! but the assumption should be there are common causes and cross-influences, that every experiment is contaminated. the danger is when comparison assumes the opposite. why didn’t Africa prosper? must be superior European institutions (or worse), right?

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

Yes. Romanian media, for example, is pretty clearly shot through by Putin financed information ops. “Free speech” regimes that make money speech in a world with plutocrats and/as adversarial states ensure engineered discohesion.

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

they don’t clip the top, and they don’t protect informational borders, so they have plutocrats relentlessly financing division among people with objectively common interests. 1/

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

you can have plutocrats and hierarchy enforced and sustained by social division, or democratic governance by something like a broad consensus. but the two regimes are oil and water. 2/

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

(it’s often a bad idea to reason from international experience as though nations are independent experiments.) /fin

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

a common good can exist when people are commonly situated. when inequality of material circumstance grows great, the emergence of a common good is relentlessly sabotaged by those who have resources and little in common.

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

a thing i didn’t know.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

we have to build institutions that can survive attacks like this, though. someday, when we, um, build back better.

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i’ve never seen government processes so opaque in my life as what DOGE is doing. i have lots more visibility into how state secrets, classified docs, black budgets, work than i have into DOGE.

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

everyone should be in favor of a democratic people’s republic. seems obvious. from xcancel.com/lexfridman/s...

Screenshot of tweet from Lex Fridman:

Everyone should be in favor of transparent, efficient government. Seems obvious. Screenshot of tweet from Lex Fridman: Everyone should be in favor of transparent, efficient government. Seems obvious.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

we should have understood there’s no real moat around LLMs when Musk was able to stand up a near-frontier model so quickly. only the myth of Musk’s specialness allowed us to ignore homegrown evidence.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i mean, “Department of Energy”. it’s gotta be, like, radical left-wing windmills and stuff. surely there can’t be anything secret, anything dangerous, there, right?

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i guess what the election decided is before we rise from the ashes, we will be ashes.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

it doesn’t matter what the law says if the executive charged with enforcing it means instead to sabotage even the possibility of any enforcement. ht @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

mastodon.social/@RealJournal...

RealJournalism (@RealJournalism@mastodon.social)