[FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts from Afar
steve smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu Jul 10 15:54:55 EDT 2025
glen wrote:
> Then all you need to do is rely on hindsight to convince yourself you
> did a good job, you're a genius investor/slaver, a Great Man.
> Spandrel, spandrel, where are the spandrels?
courtesy of Gemini and TMBG (they might be giants) sung to the tune of
/Particle Man/:
<Spew>
/Spandrel Man fights Hindsight Man, /
/Hindsight wins. /
/Great Man argues with Investor Dude, /
/Great Man convinces. /
/Slavery Guy debates with Ethics Gal,/
/Slavery Guy just grins. /
/What's it all about? /
/It's already worked out in his head,/
/that's stout.
Spandrelll Maaaannnn!
/
</endSpew>
>
> On 7/10/25 11:00 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> The spending mostly comes from the elderly.
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2025 8:24 AM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts from Afar
>>
>> Hm. That's not so much a model of money as a semi-historical plus
>> functional account of it. In my mind, money can be boiled down to
>> something like a promissory note (or SteveS' IOU, UOMe, or maybe even
>> IOMe). And in that world, the whole system is built not on earning,
>> assets, value, or whatever. It's based on trust/credit. As long as
>> someone's "good for it", then the money's good.
>>
>> Sure, even if the US is "good for it" or a lot of it, we could run up
>> against some kind of combinatorial explosion, where it would take
>> "us" longer than the lifetime of the universe to pay back whatever
>> promissory note someone wanted to cash in. But that's where something
>> like barter re-emerges - a coincidence of wants. And that's a high
>> dimensional space. (Enter things like the parallelism theorem where
>> we can trade space for time and vice versa.) So maybe we can't pay
>> back a near infinite promissory note. But we can pay back some far
>> less amount *and* compensate with goods in some of those other
>> dimensions (like proxy war, THAAD, cyber defense, intellectual
>> property, immigration, mineral rights, etc.).
>>
>> Now, as Marcus suggested, we're a wealthy country, not merely in
>> money but also in nearly every other dimension because, at this
>> point, we have a unipolar world. The US can barter with anything,
>> including the lives of Palestinian children.
>>
>> Of course, Trump and Musk don't like that. What they want is to swap
>> in their name. Rather than a unipolar world where the US is the
>> monopole, they each want Trump|Musk as the monopole. Part of Trump's
>> strategy is the Unitary Executive. Musk's strategy is less robust,
>> relying more on runaway asset feedback and constant
>> attention/grifting. (Thiel, Bezos, et al rely on a a more traditional
>> secret backdoor/Manchurian key.) Regardless, the "spend less than you
>> earn" is rhetorical prestidigitation that depends on people's
>> over-simplified conception of money.
>>
>> As something of an anarchist-social-democrat, myself, I tend to think
>> the world shouldn't be unipolar. So what Musk & Trump are doing to
>> the US is kindasorta good. Burn it down a little bit so that another
>> pole or 2 can arise. I'd prefer the EU as a 2nd pole. But that prolly
>> won't happen. As long as Trump|Musk don't manage to achieve the swap,
>> the outcome might be OK. (And I predict they won't because they're
>> both chaos agents.) If another pole does arise, however, the US will
>> be less trustworthy ... we may no longer be "good for it". But even
>> then, it's not a matter of spend less than you earn. It's a matter of
>> "what can you do for me today?"
>>
>> On 7/9/25 9:02 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>>
>> > "/*Money isn’t zero-sum. The whole idea of 'don’t spend more than
>> you earn' is not just wrong — it’s a misunderstanding of money*/."
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Now, I get the spirit of that — but hey, let’s give a nod to
>> George Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Maybe this
>> idea isn’t wrong-wrong, but just wrong in a different way depending
>> on your worldview.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > So here’s my (possibly equally wrong) model of money. Let’s put it
>> on the table, kick the tires, and maybe even agree that both our
>> models are wrong — but useful in their own peculiar ways.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Big Picture First
>>
>> > Humans make stuff. Other humans want that stuff.
>>
>> > The trick is: how do we get the right stuff to the right people?
>>
>> >
>>
>> > One approach goes like this:
>>
>> > “From each according to their ability, to each according to their
>> needs,” and the government decides who makes what and who gets what.
>> Sounds great, if your government is made up of wise, fair,
>> well-informed people.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Me? I’d love to live in that world. Show me a party run by such
>> unicorns, and I’ll vote with both hands.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > But — and here comes the plot twist — in the real world, wise and
>> fair leaders are a rare species. So we end up with something else.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Enter the American Way
>>
>> > In the U.S. (and most of the world), they use money as a sort of
>> distributed ledger. No central master list — just everyone tracking
>> value, trading labor or goods for money, then using that money to get
>> what they want.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > This works way better than bartering chickens for shoes.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > In this system, money is really just a record — “Here’s what I
>> contributed, and here’s what I can claim in return.” It’s flexible,
>> decentralized, and surprisingly efficient.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > So far, no government in sight.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > But Wait — Here Comes the Government
>>
>> > Governments step in because, well, someone needs to organize a few
>> things we all need: roads, hospitals, armies, cat memes (okay, maybe
>> not those). Also, someone has to stop the money system from melting
>> down.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > To do this, governments collect taxes and (spoiler alert) borrow
>> money.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Borrowing isn’t bad, in theory. But here’s the rub: both major
>> U.S. parties seem to have developed a taste for borrowing like
>> there’s no tomorrow. Debt keeps growing, interest payments balloon,
>> and one day — surprise! — the interest alone starts eating the budget.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > At that point, the government has a few not-so-great options:
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Print more money (hello, inflation),
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Raise taxes and cut spending (cue screaming),
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Or pretend everything’s fine (until it’s not).
>>
>> >
>>
>> > So What’s the Point?
>>
>> > I’m not saying governments should never borrow. Borrowing to
>> invest in people, infrastructure, or science makes sense — if it’s
>> done carefully. But running constant deficits just to keep the lights
>> on? That’s a recipe for future pain.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > In a perfect world run by wise leaders, debt wouldn’t matter so
>> much. But in our world, the least-bad option might just be the
>> old-fashioned advice: Try not to spend a lot more than you earn.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Not because it’s always true, but because it’s a pretty useful
>> model — at least until someone builds a better one. I'm all ears and
>> like to evaluate different constructive options, don't just criticize
>> what's wrong with the current system.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > On Wed, 9 Jul 2025 at 20:19, glen <gepropella at gmail.com
>> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com
>> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com%20%3cmailto:gepropella at gmail.com>>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>>
>> > And ... and and and, money isn't at all zero sum. The very
>> concept of "don't spend more than you earn" is not even wrong. It's a
>> fundamental misunderstanding of money. And Musk is a great example!
>> When Tesla stock dives, Musk isn't losing what he's earned. Borrowing
>> money to buy Twitter, collateralized against estimates of Tesla
>> stock? Did Elno spend less than what he earned? No. Has he earned
>> whatever "we" estimate his fortune to be? No. Toss in things like
>> quantitative easing, the value of USD as the world loses confidence
>> in it, etc. None of that over-simplified rhetoric makes any sense
>> whatsoever.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > I'd love it if Elno stopped spending money *he* doesn't have.
>> And if he did that, you'd see something magical happen, his name
>> wouldn't be in the headlines every day. Just like with buying Twitter
>> using imaginary money, the political party he wants to create is a
>> mechanism for keeping his name in everyone's feed. He wants you to
>> say his name every day, multiple times per day. Trump does the same
>> thing. They want you to keep saying their name. Again. And again ...
>> and again ... and again... all day every day.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Why? Because we (at least in very developed countries) have an
>> *attention* economy. The more you say their names, the more money
>> they accumulate. That "huge personal hit" is at best empty rhetoric
>> and at worst bullshit designed to distract you with one hand and pick
>> your pocket with the other.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > On 7/9/25 10:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>
>> > > We do have the money. We are a wealthy nation. The
>> problem is we are cheap.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com
>> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com
>> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com%20%3cmailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>>>
>> on behalf of Pieter Steenekamp <pieters at randcontrols.co.za
>> <mailto:pieters at randcontrols.co.za
>> <mailto:pieters at randcontrols.co.za%20%3cmailto:pieters at randcontrols.co.za>>>
>>
>> > > *Date: *Wednesday, July 9, 2025 at 10:07 AM
>>
>> > > *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com
>> <mailto:friam at redfish.com%20%3cmailto:friam at redfish.com>>>
>>
>> > > *Subject: *[FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts
>> from Afar
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > I’m not American—but I’m a big fan of the place.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > What really keeps me up at night is how both major
>> political parties in the U.S. seem to have a shared hobby: spending
>> money like it’s going out of fashion. Year after year, the national
>> debt grows bigger, and the interest payments grow even scarier. It’s
>> like watching someone keep swiping a credit card with no plan to ever
>> pay it back.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > Now, let me put on my South African cap for a moment.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > When South Africa became a democracy and Mandela became
>> president, things were looking financially grim. We weren’t flat-out
>> broke yet, but we were close. Mandela then did something very clever:
>> he made Trevor Manuel the finance minister. Manuel, being honest,
>> told Mandela he knew nothing about finances. Mandela basically said,
>> “Don’t worry about the details—we’ve got smart people for that. Just
>> make sure we don’t spend more than we earn, and I'll politically
>> support you.” And guess what? South Africa’s finances did great for a
>> while.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > (Yes, it all fell apart later when Jacob Zuma came along,
>> but let’s not ruin the story.)
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > Back to America.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > No, I don’t think the U.S. is heading for an immediate
>> meltdown—but the idea that it’s too big to fail? Not something I’d
>> bet my pension on. Sooner or later, the debt monster will come knocking.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > Which brings me to Elon Musk’s political adventure. From
>> where I sit, his main message is: “Hey folks, maybe we should stop
>> spending money we don’t have?” Whether his new party takes off or
>> not, I think it’s great that someone is at least ringing the alarm bell.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > Even if nobody listens, I’m 100% behind the effort. Musk is
>> taking a huge personal hit—his companies, his wealth, all of it’s
>> being affected. But if it helps America become more financially
>> sensible, I say hats off to him.
>>
>
>
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