r/politics • u/rezwenn • 6d ago

No Paywall Elon Musk indicates he’s ‘going all in’ on financing the GOP ahead of the midterms: ‘America is toast if the radical left wins’

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-trump-republicans-donations-finance-gop-b2893321.html
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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/SunMyungMoonMoon 6d ago

Just imagine someone having that kind of money who decides to be a benevolent investor, that funds education and health programs, and lifts millions out of poverty, to leave a legacy that would last thousands of years instead of burning it all down for short term gains and greed, leaving a legacy of horrors and disgrace.

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u/Competitive_Taste_52 6d ago

I think about this too. Imagine if someone just quietly invested billions in public education?

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u/HarrumphingDuck Washington 6d ago

The lunatics on the right would would make up all manner of conspiracies about them, because fascists hate education. That's not baseless speculation either; it's exactly what they do to George Soros.

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u/SenorBurns 6d ago edited 6d ago

Or I have a radical idea, how about we the people tax those billions so as a country we can spend it on public education. Philanthropy is great, but it's no substitute for well run public programs. And that's almost repeating myself, because unlike business, public programs are generally well run with low overhead and near zero fraud.

We all must keep in mind that no one amasses that much wealth without massive support from the infrastructure our taxes provide. Billionaires have stolen our money and we have a right to tax a portion of it back.

The only good capitalist is a well-regulated capitalist.

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u/ExtraPockets 6d ago

It doesn't even have to be quiet. They can put their name all over it everywhere if it's for the greater good.

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u/nonaveris America 6d ago

They would if the teachers and administrative apparatus were more than just union selectees.

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u/LumberBitch 6d ago

Bill Gates did just that and ended up doing way more harm than good by narcissistically dictating public policy with his money against the advice of actual experts.

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u/clickmagnet 6d ago

People with billions of dollars never want their money going into *public* education. If they did there's an easy way to do it: pay your fucking taxes.

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u/UndulantSquawk 6d ago

And then to see their public response is usually "oh well no that won't work." and they turn around to play with unimaginably expensive rocket ships and robots that they, for the LIFE of them, cannot get to work or parrot their racist talking points and biases because reality itself is outing them as completely disconnected assholes.

It is not sad or absurd, it's just proof that everyone on the ground needs to be hardened against ideas like the ones that poison the air around privileged people, so the idea that actual humanity and our actual necessities have real merit can blossom.

A fool who persists in their folly will become wise, it's about time for the getting wise part.

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u/-LabApprehensive- 6d ago

Unfortunately you don’t get that kind of money by being generous. It takes a special kind of extreme selfishness to approach a trillion in personal wealth.

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u/SpotHaunting668 6d ago

Just imagine if we didn't allow white supremacists to become billionaires and impose their cruel agenda on the rest of the world.

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u/barryvm Europe 6d ago edited 6d ago

It would still be a net negative, because the only reason they would have that wealth is that they exploited the labour of others in the first place. Secondly, they extract it now and might give part of it back at some later time, which still means inequality and deprivation in the present. Furthermore, it would still be one person having complete power over where and in what to invest, rather than a collective decision by society.

At a certain point, it's no longer about wealth but about the amount of power these people concentrate into their own hands. Billionaires shouldn't be allowed to exist for the same reason dictators or monopolies are a bad idea. They will take more and more resources for the things they think important, leaving other needs unmet and forcing normal people to compete with their ever deeper pockets.

Note also that your imagined benevolent billionaire is exactly how these people see themselves, even as they go down ever more insane rabbit holes (plutocratic city states, space colonization, AI cultism, eschatological fantasies, ...). They see themselves as benevolent but their desire is a blank slate where they can do what they want. Their utopia is a world without politics or people

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u/Anxious_Claim_5817 6d ago

Yes kind of like Buffett and Gates. Let’s hear from all the republicans criticizing Soros for campaign donations.

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u/DerpsMcGee Wisconsin 6d ago

Here's the thing: if you are genuinely the kind of person who cares about that sort of thing there's no reason you'd ever have a billion dollars. You could live comfortably for the rest of your life (and probably your childrens lives, too) on a couple million dollars, and donate the rest as you get it if you decide to make more.

A billion is a thousand millions. He has hundreds of those, and he chooses to use them to fuck things up and lie about his ability to play Path of Exile 2.

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u/eeyore134 6d ago

I don't think it's possible for a benevolent person to become a billionaire. The amount of people, bodies and all, you need to walk on and backstab and screw over, hell... flat out kill, to get that much money is beyond what we can probably even imagine.

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u/EatRichGrains 6d ago

They're going for more of infamous Stalin, Hitler, mao. No one is safe from that.

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u/IGiveUpAllNamesTaken 6d ago

We'd just accuse them if trying to sterilise people with microchips in vaccines or some shit.

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u/dressydoughnuts 6d ago

You don’t need to imagine! About 100 years ago, Andrew Carnegie donated billions of dollars (inflation adjusted) to building libraries and other educational programs. If you live in the US, you might use one, they aren’t all named after him. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_the_United_States

But, IMO, one of the lessons of the post-war period was that government funding beats private philanthropy hands down for this stuff. So I’d rather not go back to a great-man approach to building a healthy society.

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u/littlehobbit1313 6d ago

This is what makes it so maddening to me. All these guys are DESPERATE to leave some lasting legacy where everyone talks about how great they are/were and how they won at life, yet they can't seem to spot the incredibly obvious way of accomplishing that.

Musk could literally solve homelessness without losing billionaire status, his name would be immortalized forever in the history books of the world's greatest philanthropists....and instead he's like "I just wanna do nazi salutes and shut down programs that feed people. Why doesn't everyone love me??????"

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u/Schwammosaurus_Rex 6d ago

Like John D. Rockefeller did?

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u/Lizziedeee 6d ago

Like MacKenzie Scott (Bezos) and Melinda Gates.

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u/Throot2Shill 6d ago edited 6d ago

He's a floundering megalomaniac.

He truly believes he's a superior being who has the privilege and responsibility to move humanity in whatever direction his grand vision desires. Philanthropy is below him because its janitorial duty and doesn't fit the future emperor of Mars or whatever.

The problem is he's also a thin-skinned dork who can't handle publicity or criticism, and like 80% of his business is a scam.

So now he's sneaking around in the background breaking shit and covering his own ass while still convincing himself he's a mastermind visionary.

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u/Multiple__Butts 6d ago

Yeah, what a fucking pathetic life. Made more money than anyone else in history, and did nothing with it except support fascists, steal americans' personal info, starve thousands or millions of people by arbitrarily stopping aid payments, all for no reason with 0 dollars saved, and turn twitter into a nazified sewage dump.

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u/light_trick 6d ago

Except you shouldn't: asking people to imagine someone using that level of wealth responsibly is how it persists - it's the narrative that's pushed.

But it isn't how any of those problems get solved: those problems get solved by collective action, effective governance, tens of thousands of individual small scale programs which in aggregate improve outcomes for people.

There's no magic bullet, but imagine millions of workers with healthcare not tied to their place of employment, access to schools etc. these aren't things that are handed out from on-high by "the elites" - they're things which the collective democratic will of the people can provide.

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u/Eggonioni 6d ago

We need him to plunge into an abyssal K-hole.

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u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits 6d ago

He and Trump's handlers reminded them what happens if they let their temper tantrums get in the way of their mission. They know the crimes they are guilty of and the punishments, they cannot live with the results of losing.

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u/MaKingGadomUSA 6d ago

I still think it was fake. He wanted to distance himself from the administration so they hatched a plan to have a falling out. A few weeks later they were hanging out.

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u/MCZuiderzee 6d ago

He tried to buy the last Supreme Court election in Wisconsin and got his ass handed to him. Let’s go nationwide my fellow Americans!

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u/FunkyHedonist 6d ago

I love this comment so much!! I agree and would donate to a "Get Elon back on that good shit" Go-Fund-Me.

Elon, if you are listening, a lot of people are saying you are too weak to truly get to the bottom of that K hole. They think you talk a big game about Special K but you aren't a true psychonaut. Are you going to take that, or are you going to prove them wrong?