Monday, December 4th, 2023 - TrickJarrett.com: Be excellent to each other.

"The end of Elon Musk" by Drew Magary

12/4/2023 10:27 pm | : 2 mins.

Years ago I read Drew Magary's The Postmortal and really enjoyed it for what it asked about the nature of life and death. Here's Drew discussing the pop-death of Elon Musk regarding his recent awful appearance at the NY Times book event:

Musk, who appeared both high and made of plywood, responded with a reality of his own:

"Actually, what this advertising boycott is going to do is, it's going to kill the company. And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail."

Here Musk looked out to the audience, expecting vehement agreement, perhaps even applause. He was greeted with dead silence instead. Sorkin, still residing in the correct reality, told Musk, "But those advertisers, I imagine they're going to say, 'WE didn't kill the company.'"

And here is where Musk revealed his delusion to all. "Oh yeah?" he shot back. "Tell it to Earth."

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| Tags: elon musk, twitter, social media

"Requiem for the American Dream" book review

12/4/2023 10:37 pm | : 3 mins.

I haven't read the book yet, it's on my virtual stack to get to eventually. I did enjoy this review of it though.

Ours Was the Shining Future, Leonhardt’s first book, is an attempt to explain what happened. His take, which I believe is correct, is that democratic capitalism (defined as “a system in which the government recognises its crucial role in guiding the economy”) has since the 1970s given way to a laissez-faire free-for-all in which corporations and short-termism rule. In this world, he writes, “there is no longer a mass movement focused on improving economic outcomes for most Americans. The country’s largest activist groups, on both the left and the right, are focused on other subjects.”

How did we get here? In Leonhardt’s analysis, changes to three things — political power, culture and investment — mean that average, working Americans have been left behind. Since the late 1960s, the “old labor” of the New Deal has been hijacked by a new and more entitled “Brahmin left”, increasingly made up of college-educated elites that talk down to workers rather than with them. In a country that fundamentally skews more socially conservative, the Democratic party has also become too radically progressive on social issues such as abortion, immigration and LGBTQ rights.

Because of this, they have lost the electoral votes needed to push through badly needed economic policies such as long-term public investment, as well as more progressive taxation, plus healthcare and educational reform, that would temper rising inequality. Add in a “greed is good” culture of self-interest and global market forces pushing only what’s good for the quarter, and you get a country in decline.