[FRIAM] Mars and Trump

[glen]

Well, OK. But it sounds to me like "the Democrats" (whatever that means) could easily dovetail into or completely seize the rhetorical status by leaning into these infrastructure projects. Musk's obsession with electric cars, hyperloops, boring, mars, etc. are all infrastructure projects. And it's not that the projects aren't there. It's "the Democrats" emphasis on teamwork and social systems, as opposed to unitary champions, that makes it seem like there's something missing.

E.g. repairing the nations bridges would also occupy welders, construction workers, etc. But when I see them working on the side of the road, they don't have the fevered insane stare I get from tech bros advocating for Bitcoin. Instead I get expressions more like "I hate this job. Can't wait to get home and watch football with some cold beer." What we need is a way to instill some insane fever into our plumbers and concrete pourers. Some of that can be done interpersonally, by a) engaging them, thanking them, etc. and b) showing how they contribute to the larger system/purpose much the same way Elno jumps up and down when pushing some fake artist rendition of whatever nonsense he imagines.

On 11/7/24 09:19, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The difference with large scale production of Starship, remote fueling stations, and so on is that there is a large component of work that can be delegated to the kind of people that might otherwise be doing welding, construction, etc.   Gates or the Biden Moonshot, in contrast, give money to people that might otherwise be putting in NIH grants – white color workers.   For the non-research charitable work of the Gates foundation, the recipients aren’t usually going to be U.S. voters.
> 
> My hypothesis is that the Twitter acquisition was intended to be part of a propaganda machine to develop Space X at the trillion-dollar scale with help from the U.S. government.   (Meanwhile, Bezos knows he’s has nearly lost in this sector and so he was backpedaling with the Washington Post non-endorsement.)
> 
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of glen <gepropella at gmail.com>
> *Date: *Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 9:03 AM
> *To: *friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Mars and Trump
> 
> I feel like we're making some kind of category error, here. Populating space isn't a righty issue. It just happens to be championed by people who prioritize that over, say, feeding the poor, which makes it sound righty. If we hearken back to old sci-fi, many of them posited socialist societies (e.g. Star Trek). So it can be righty or lefty. (Same goes for Seasteading and AI in art, imnsho.)
> 
> That implies that what you're really asking is where are the lefty champions for any vision, be the vision lefty or neutral? I mean, Gates champions things like eliminating various diseases and poor living conditions ... and has large projects to effect them. There exist things like the constitutional rewriting group, with quite a bit of effort in analyzing and fixing the flaws in the rule of law. In healthcare, despite what the population thinks, everything I've been involved with targets personalized medicine and huge sums of money are thrown at that every year. Similarly, we had the cancer and brain "moonshots". Etc. And directly targeting your question, we have the various STEAM efforts to get young people into those fields (albeit not particular to men).
> 
> So we don't lack for the public works projects. What we lack are the charismatic (lunatic, billionaire) champions for them. It seems like yet more Great Man prejudice. It's difficult to think that, say, the Calculus or Quantum Mechanics emerged naturally from the zeitgeist. It's easier to attribute it to 1 Great Man, even if that's mostly false.
> 
> On 11/7/24 07:55, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Oops, dog stepped on the keyboard.  Restarting..
>> 
>> I haven’t seen an article on this hypothesis, so I thought I’d jot it down.
>> 
>> Elon Musk wants make humanity multiplanetary.   Maybe he really cares about that, maybe he wants to do mining or something else.  In any case, he has poured a lot of money into Starship and is close to having that platform working.   There’s this famous photo of early construction:
>> 
>> Here’s the photo https://www.livescience.com/spacex-starship-sn20-photo-history.html <https://www.livescience.com/spacex-starship-sn20-photo-history.html> <https://www.livescience.com/spacex-starship-sn20-photo-history.html <https://www.livescience.com/spacex-starship-sn20-photo-history.html>>
>> https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/with-a-single-photo-spacex-sent-a-not-so-subtle-message-to-faa-regulators/ <https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/with-a-single-photo-spacex-sent-a-not-so-subtle-message-to-faa-regulators/> <https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/with-a-single-photo-spacex-sent-a-not-so-subtle-message-to-faa-regulators/ <https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/with-a-single-photo-spacex-sent-a-not-so-subtle-message-to-faa-regulators/>>
>> 
>> 
>> As the Arstechnica article explains, it was probably provided as a form of propaganda.
>> 
>> Since then, Musk bought Twitter and uses it as a platform to agitate right wing topics, especially among young men.  Most recently, he spent millions getting Trump elected.
>> 
>> Blue collar jobs in the places like the Rust Belt have been on the decline for years, being displaced by cheaper labor and automation.
>> 
>> So, there’s a significant pool of available workers for building rockets, but scaling this all up is limited by regulatory oversight.   One could see how Musk would want to engage these frustrated young men to displace such a government and replace it one with one that was easier to manipulate.   Further, he can then employ them on a large government funded project where he is the sole contractor.
>> 
>> In this scenario, Trump (or Vance, etc.) can (opportunistically) claim to be forward looking and concerned with the financial health of the working class.
>> 
>> My question is:  Where’s the Democrat’s answer to this kind public works project for young men with limited education?   I suppose the IRA could do that, but the money hasn’t really started to be spent.
>> 
>> Marcus
>> 
>> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
>> *Date: *Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 7:33 AM
>> *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
>> *Subject: *[FRIAM] Mars and Trump
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I haven’t seen an article on this hypothesis, so I thought I’d jot it down.
>> 
>> Elon Musk wants make humanity multiplanetary.   Maybe he really cares about that, maybe he wants to do mining.  In any case, he has poured a lot of money into Starship and is close to having that platform working.   There’s this fairly famous photo of construction:
>> 


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