lol

I have no idea what a PAC is, but when you're donating to both main parties it strikes me as odd you'd be donating to a group specifically aimed at keeping one of them in power?

PACs are effectively vehicles for donating unlimited amounts of money to candidates. By federal law, there are limits to how much you can donate directly to candidates/campaigns. You can circumvent those limitations by donating money to a PAC, which often work on behalf of candidates but are legally separate entities from political campaigns.

The way to think of it isn't that donating money to the GOP cancels out the money that Musk gives to the Democrats, and vice versa. The way to think of it is: if Musk contributes to candidates from both parties, no matter who wins, he'll have someone who knows he donated to help them win, and who'll therefore be more amenable to helping him out when he deals with the government.

Like, most of the reasons why Musk contributed to candidates of both parties is because he wants favorable legislation on issues that have nothing to do with hot button political issues. He just wants a favorable regulatory regime for space travel and whenever the federal government legalizes self-driving cars he wants it to happen on his terms. That's why he gave to both parties: not because he cares about social issues (or whatever other reason some lefties think it's some kind of grievous sin to give money to the GOP), but because he cares about issues that are so arcane that they won't even get covered in the news when the relevant legislation is passed.

Generally people don't see rational, selfish maximization as moral. In fact, it's basically the antithesis of moral in all world religions. So is playing both sides of a conflict for profit.

So the issue is people actually sometimes care about morality when evaluating what business power does.

Corrupt politics are not fine. In no world is getting favorable legislation because of your donation preferred, even the most ardent of capitalists like Milton Friedman recognize the damage of rent-seeking behavior, selective enforcement, or selectively exclusive institutions. What you're arguing for is a degenerate society.

I don't think he's arguing for that society, he's just saying what Elon Musk is doing...

Yeah. What Eversor wrote was Not An Argument.

oh boy

sus

69 nice

He said what Elon Musk is doing isn't a big deal; it was not just an explanation.

I remember you making a big deal about how important shame is in politics. Needless to say, your shamelessness does not surprise me.

You mean he implied it wasn't a big deal, by failing to participate in the two minutes of hate upon invoking the name of this thread's whipping boy.

As I read this thread, I am reminded of the words of Benjamin Molyneux: "Argue, or Die".

Reading this again, I can't find a single sentence that goes beyond explanation and into justification. Could this be the moment we realize Reid has some trouble telling the two apart?

That post you quoted was further explanation of the above.

I won't pretend to speak for him, but if I had to guess, Eversor might not even care too much about whether or not Elon Musk is in the right or the wrong here. Or maybe he does, but also is interested in establishing what Musk's actual motivations might be, rather than assuming he is a supervillain whose nefarious scheming defines his every action.

Oh, I see. Well that sounds much more like a justification.

It's fine to not personally care. With that post I felt he was saying that we shouldn't care, and as such should tolerate that kind of behavior.

I'd be interested to hear Eversor's opinion of campaign finance laws, since Reid's quote of him sounds less like a defense of Musk than a defense of lobbying in general.

For example, is it necessary for European business owners to bribe legislators in order to bring their products to market? Or is this a more an American phenomenon? I think it would be interesting to find that out.

I can't believe you're making me spell this out.

Everything I wrote after Baconfish's question was nothing more than an explanation of why Musk would give money to both the Democrats and to the GOP, rather than only to one party. It was a response to his question. This question:



You'll note that he posed this well after I said that I didn't understand what the big deal was. When I said the "big deal" line, I was responding specifically to what I take to be the implicit charge that there's something wrong with donating money to the GOP, rather than with donating money at all. It's as if people want to say he's somehow implicated in Trump electoral success, or that he must be some kind of closet conservative, despite his seeming liberalism (or whatever the argument is for why giving money to the GOP makes Musk such as *******, to use your word). But as I pointed out, the fact that he gave money to the GOP doesn't necessarily imply any special affinity for conservatism or the specific aspirations of the GOP. He likely just wants the things that I said he wants (involving space and self-driving cars), which is why he also contributed money to the Democrats too (because he could just as likely get them from them).

As saperobus correctly identified, at no point did I take a stance on whether unlimited political donations were good or bad, I just described them as something that occur, and a little bit about how they work. See? So it's not that what I wrote was that difficult to understand. (After all, other people here managed to comprehend my meaning.) It's that Reid is actually bad at reading.

How dare Musk bribe the wrong people

I'm against unlimited donations.

I, nor anybody here, is really taking the charge that donating to the GOP implies you desire their entire platform, are we? That's a charge nobody here stands by, and is apparently the one you're most interested in talking about. I only said that political donations are still bad for the country, so yes, knowing who is donating and for why is still a big deal, especially when it's both-sides donating, as that represents more extreme, amoral rent-seeking behavior.

Then you got really weird about it, and idk anymore.

I feel like conversations would go more smoothly if you weren't reflexively bashing on people who don't even post here for what they say about the GOP.

Come on guys, reading isn't that hard. Go back and read the two posts by Steven and Spook that Eversor was responding to. If you're capable of understanding that very short conversation, I don't even think I need to say who is right here.

Regardless of your interest in talking about that, it's exactly the context of Eversor's quote which you had criticized.

Exactly!

Even truer now than a few hours ago:

I was explaining why it was a big deal. I was disagreeing that it's not a big deal, but substituting another reason why I did think it was. Elon Musk has always given the image of being sort of progressive, so it was assumed he cozied up to the Democrats. My post was saying it's not a big deal that he donated to Republicans because it means he supports Republicans, it's a big deal because it means he doesn't hold any progressive values at all, that rent-seeking takes place for him over any values whatsoever. So, yeah, I mean, it's not really big enough deal to warrant this silly discussion, but it's relevant enough to be the focus of an article, moreso than his Democratic PAC donations.

I don't have anything more to add to the conversation.

lol:



Said the guy who now won't admit to being wrong, despite all evidence to the contrary.

It sort of boggles my mind that you can type that sentence out and not appreciate the how ridiculous and inflammatory it is to be making excuses for having taken somebody's words out of context in order to chide them.

I didn't chide him.

You didn't chide him? Then what is this?

There are other things you wrote that I could cite, but this is also a complete and total lie:

Reid: you even tried to claim that Eversor is "arguing for a degenerate society". Your story is looking more and more ridiculous.

An explanation of why Elon's donations still matter. Do you perceive that as chiding?

I chided you then, but not in my first two posts.