A Genius, Alright

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Elon Musk is said – by some – to be a “genius.” Arguably, a more accurate honorific would be king, used in the Elvisian sense.

Elvis, of course, was the King – of rock n’ roll. There was no else like him, insofar as his persona especially. His jump-suited image has become an icon of Americana. Even people who don’t know his music know him – and that is what makes him the King.

Musk is like that in his own way. He has become synomous with the electric cars that bear another man’s name and riff off the legacy of the man who created what was arguably the very first volkswagen (lower case) or people’s car.

That car being, of course, the Model T. Which nomenclature Musk uses to create a false assocation with his Model 3 (and other Models). False – because nothing could imagined that is more contra t everything the Model T was than what the Model 3 (and other Tesla models) are. The T was an everyman’s car. The 3 is a rich man’s car. The T got less expensive to buy with each successive model year; the Model 3 just got more expensive – again. The T was designed to give ordinary people the freedom to go anywhere they wanted, anytime they liked. The 3 is designed to force most people back onto the bus – and tether the few to a cord.

But Musk is a genius – lower case – in a way.

No one heretofore has been as colossaly successful at becoming a billionare (several times over) by using the government to – on the one hand – force his rivals to finance his operations and thereby, their competition and – on the other – to use the government to create a “market” for his products, which would otherwise have a very small market (being very expensive and very impractical).

In the case of the first, he was able to maneuver the government into characterizing (in a regulatory sense) electric cars as “zero emissions” cars. They aren’t actually, but that’s an irrelevance as regards the regulations requiring that every car company manufacture a certain number of them annually in order to be permitted to sell any cars at all – as in states such as California, which is the largest single market for new cars in the country.

Since – at the time of Tesla’s infancy back in the early 2000s – almost no other car company was manufacturing “zero emissions” electric cars and the cost of manufacturing them – to comply with the regulations – was not merely prohibitive but also wasteful of manufacturing resources, other car companies avoided having to actually manufacture them by paying Elon Musk for having manufactured them.

These “carbon credits” went into Elon’s pocket in the same manner as money is transferred from your pocket to those of the state when an armed government worker – that creature often harmlessly styled a “police officer” – hands you a demand note (that thing harmlessly styled a “ticket”) for money which you are obliged to pay – or else – in order that the AGW is paid to continue issuing demand notes.

This was how Elon grew Tesla, as a tick grows itself on the ear of your dog.

Then Elon used the stock market to further line his pockets. The valuation of Tesla stock soared – but not because Teslas were selling. It soared on expectations of forced future sales, as when other than EeeeeeeeVeeeees are not allowed to be sold anymore, as in California, New York and a number of other states.

Tesla sells about the same number of cars annually as Toyota sells Camrys – just one of that car company’s multitude of models.

Yet Tesla is “valued” three times higher than Toyota.

The only reason for this valuation disparity is the anticipated cornering of the market by EeeeeeeeVeeeees, via regulations designed to make it unfeasable to sell anything that isn’t an EeeeeeeeeVeeeee.

It is very much like the future world depicted in Demolition Man, the 1993 movie starring Sylvester Stallone in which the only remaining restaurant left in the U.S. is Taco Bell – which has become very expensive and so very elite.

It is a rare privilege to be able to dine at Taco Bell in 2032.

Oddly, that date almost coincides with the date after which EeeeeeeVeeeees are anticipated to be the only remaining kind of new car you’re allowed to buy.

Elon didn’t forsee this so much as manufacture the necessary conditions for this. Part of that included making his EeeeeeeVeeeeees sleek and fast (though anodyne, like a mannequin with a really great body) so as to gull people into forgetting all about how few of them would ever be able to afford one – as well as how preposterously impractical they are relative to even the humblest Hyundai.

He used aspirational marketing – in the manner of Cosmo selling expensive face creams using airbrushed images of pretty young women to aging-out hausefraus.

Got the “fraus” to believe they’d look just like that . . .

It’s an open question at this point whether he used – or was used – by the media and the government apparat to make EeeeeeeVeeeeees seem appealing to the same kinds of people, so that they’d believe it, too. In the end, it hardly matters – because the result ends up being the same. People bought in to the image – and that enabled Elon to cash in, on them.

It certainly helped that he was also able to use the government (again) to partially pay people to buy the EeeeeeVeeeees he makes, using what are mildly styled “tax credits” paid for by other taxpayers – who pay more taxes, to make up for the losses (to the government) incurred by those “credits.”

Elon’s no genius – if that word has any more meaning than calling a drug that doesn’t immunize the injected a “vaccine.” But he is the King, alright  . . . of rent-seekers and grifters.

He makes Bernie Madoff look like a small-town check-kiter. Enron needed a “genius” such as Elon at the helm. Of course, Enron – and other such grift operations – weren’t fulcrums of the Great Reset, as Tesla has been.

That latter italicized to emphasize the fact that Tesla’s – and Elon’s – work is largely done. The EeeeeeVeeeee juggernaut has taken on a kind of kinetic energy that no longer requires the “genius” of Elon to reach its fulfilment. The rent-seeking is now general.

Everything is proceeding according to plan.

And the plan, itself, is certainly a work of intricate genius.

. . .

Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in! Or email me at EPeters952@yahoo.com if the @!** “ask Eric” button doesn’t work!

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53 COMMENTS

  1. Musk is a carnival barker who has some misplaced admiration from the seriously misguided Libertarian right. Thanks for the Demolition Man video, I really need to take a new look at an unintentionally amazingly psychic view into modren day dystopia. That along with Minority Report and They Live,

  2. Pushers of the CO2, global warming, switch to EV’s narrative, are helping terrorists.

    The globalist/communist, davos, WEF, klaus schwab NWO gang have gone insane

    This gang with their CO2, global warming lies, wants to kill off all hydrocarbon fuel use and go to 100% solar and wind turbine for an energy source, you will starve and freeze to death.

    This same great reset WEF, NWO gang say you will own nothing, eat bugs and be happy.

    They want to stop all hydrocarbon use, now they have become terrorists, blowing up pipelines. Anybody enabling/helping this gang with their CO2, global warming lies, is helping a terrorist.

    If you destroy all the infastructure for hydrocarbon production/use it pushes the price of hydrocarbon fuel far higher, making it easier to sell their highly dangerous, defective, expensive, EV replacements for ice vehicles.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/luongo-curious-whodunit-nordstreams-1-2

    • when you see somebody pushing the CO2, global warming, EV bs, tell them this…….Pushers of the CO2, global warming, switch to EV’s narrative, are helping terrorists.

      Plus the globalists are losing so they are on the losing, hunted side….lol

  3. Musk is or was buying Twitter for 40 billion dollars. A real genius there. He’s dumber than I look.

    Some genius, doesn’t know how to analyze how investments can be structured.

    But then, Musk thinks Teslas are cool even when they burn hotter than the sun, so everybody else should or something, even if they happen to become torched by a Tesla.

    It’s okay, you’re gonna be good with that, it’s a Tesla, c’mon, man.

    A rock pile has more brains. Fence posts even more.

    Take out the battery, weld in motor mounts, have an efficient internal combustion engine that gets 50 mpg and you’ll have a Tesla that sells. Doesn’t take a genius to deduce that, go figure.

    The rocket scientist doesn’t know squat. Warren could teach Elon a thing or two about a thing or two.

    Elon the King Genius could buy 40 billion dollars worth of oil company stocks, any number of them and be earning dividends. He’ll be making money then, not buying some bot farm.

    How to become an oil baron.

    Oil ain’t going away anytime soon, buying oil stocks by the dozen is going to pay. A two percent return on 40,000,000,000 dollars is 800 million USD.

    BTU was 1.35 USD three years ago, somewhere in that time frame, now Peabody Energy is 24 USD per share.

    Hydrocarbons is where its at in any market. Jet fuel for Air Force One, you can’t fly until the 54,000 gallons of jet fuel is in the tanks.

    Oil is going to pay.

    You won’t be steered wrong.

    A better investment decision.

  4. Did Elon really spur all of this, or was he merely the most convenient vehicle/scapegoat for what TPTB wanted to do anyway? That is, if Elon weren’t around, would there be another front man for The Great Reset here in the US?

  5. I don’t care how smart anyone is if they’re a grifter. I have a particular hatred for grifters. Somehow, our society has come to revere them. There is respect for the clever con. I have no such respect. I think such people are pure scum.

  6. On the financial side….

    The derivatives market is $1,000 trillion, the world GDP is $87 trillion, could a blowup in the derivatives market take out the financial system?

    Government workers, parasites, have been promised gold plated definded benefit pensions, the problem is they are unfunded….lol

    Pension funds ready to implode, they are unfunded.

    government workers’ have been promised huge, gold plated, defined benefit, pensions, they are unfunded, money from general revenue (taxes) is being used to prop them up, yes, your tax dollars…

    on top of that they are using very highly dangerous derivatives, LDI, to manage risk, when this mess implodes it could take down the whole financial system.

    What is often getting overlooked in the UK pension meltdown is the use by the pension funds of a niche highly dangerous derivative product “liability-driven investing” (LDI). Most pension funds use LDI.

    Yes, highly dangerous derivatives are still the same weapons of mass financial destruction in 2022 as they were in 2007 and 2008.

    The US derivative market amounts to about $200 Trillion notional value, which means that as Powell raises interest rates, margin calls and refinancing costs rise accordingly, forcing either defaults or liquidations–precipitating the liquidity crisis the BoE is hoping to prevent with their buying of 30-year gilts.

    The Breaking Begins: BoE Intervention Halts The Rise In Yields At The Expense Of Everything Else

    From FT, here’s what scared the BoE straight:

    “At some point this morning I was worried this was the beginning of the end,” said a senior London-based banker, adding that at one point on Wednesday morning there were no buyers of long-dated UK gilts. “It was not quite a Lehman moment. But it got close.”

    the Bank of England capitulated in its inflation fight, intervening in the market to halt rising yields on UK 30-year Gilts (bonds).

    Soon the reasons for the intervention became clear: Rising yields were driving Britain’s pension funds and housing markets into a collective meltdown,

    ATTENTION: highlighting pension fund exposure to that old nemesis of market stability, derivatives.

    The problem centred on the use of niche financial products offered by investment banks to pension funds that are trying to manage or hedge their risks. Those products – known as liability-driven investing, or LDIs….. derivatives……help offset liabilities and risks on pension funds’ books.

    However, as asset prices slumped over the week – including UK government bonds, or gilts – those banks required more collateral to offset the pension funds’ liabilities, forcing the funds to dump assets and raise cash at short notice.

    Rising yields on gilts (yields move inversely to price, and a rising yield means a falling price) were triggering margin calls among UK pension funds, a scenario eerily reminiscent of 2007/2008 just before the Lehman Brothers collapse.

    Relative to the size of global markets, the BoE intervention was short and small. Yet its catalysts within UK markets are of a kind to raise the question whether we are witnessing the beginning of the next Great Financial Crisis.

    https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/the-breaking-begins-boe-intervention

    • Hi Anon,

      You raise and interesting – and alarming – point in the pensions and benefits promised government workers. If the financial system collapses, it leaves millions of these people bereft of what they’d been promised. Meanwhile, people who have assets – especially people who can ride out a financial implosion (or have a shot at doing so) because they own the means of survival, such as land and so on, will be targets for those people, Get the Kulaks style.

      • Hi Eric

        Unfunded government pensions is a huge problem….they are all backed by the taxpayer….

        Politicians give/promise government workers’ (and themselves), huge, gold plated, defined benefit, pensions, (this insures loyalty to their mandate/narrative), they are unfunded, money from general revenue (taxes) is being used to prop them up, yes, your tax dollars…the taxpayer finances this….lol

        “Forced Selling Of Everything” – UK Pension Funds Are Still Liquidating Assets, Seeking Bailouts

        UK pension funds are/have been servicing ever increasing margin calls driven by the extreme moves in real and nominal rates.

        As BondVigilantes.com notes, they are on a hunt for liquidity (cash) to service these calls at the same time the liquidity (bid offer spread) of asset markets is extremely fragile.

        A sub layer to this dynamic is that pension funds are also a significant provider of gilts to the repo market (which they repo out to fund levered investments) and where we are now seeing some strain as these gilts are either withdrawn from repo programmes (to sell, as of yesterday to the BOE) or repo’d out to raise cash to fund said margin calls.

        The timing could not be worse with quarter end looming, increasing demand for bank balance sheet from non-bank market participants and an ever increasing war chest of cash from the liquidity ‘Haves’ chasing collateral.

        While The Bank of England, forced by blackrock… stepped in to buy gilts on Wednesday, stabilising the market, The Financial Times reports that the pension funds are continuing to sell assets to meet cash calls.

        To fund the collateral calls, some pension schemes have resorted to asking employers backing their plans for cash. Outsourcing group Serco provided £60mn after a request from pension trustees, according to a person familiar with the matter, a highly unusual move for a well-funded corporate scheme. Sky News first reported the move.

        While some schemes continue to rush to raise cash to fund their derivatives positions, others have had the positions terminated by LDI managers, like BlackRock, leaving them exposed to further moves in rates and inflation.

        they are using very highly dangerous derivatives, LDI, to manage risk, when this mess implodes it could take down the whole financial system.

        What is often getting overlooked in the UK pension meltdown is the use by the pension funds of a niche highly dangerous derivative product “liability-driven investing” (LDI). Most pension funds use LDI, blackrock is an LDI manager….

        BlackRock, which sits between the pension schemes and banks on derivatives trades designed to hedge against adverse movement in interest rates and inflation, told its clients that it would no longer demand additional collateral but would instead liquidate holdings to meet margin calls that were soaring due to the extreme volatility in UK asset prices.

        Yes, highly dangerous derivatives are still the same weapons of mass financial destruction in 2022 as they were in 2007 and 2008.

        Related to this liquidation, more behind-the scenes details of this week’s chaos in the UK are being exposed with The FT reporting that none other virtue-signaler-extraordinaire BlackRock basically ‘blackmailed’ the UK government into intervention as UK pension funds faced crises.

        David Fogarty, a professional trustee with Dalriada, a trustee firm, said:
        “If you run out of collateral they were saying, ‘we will close the position’, without going back to ask for more money from the fund. It is protecting their positions against contagion but it is not protecting their pension funds.”

        just as JPMorgan did in 2019 with The Fed and ‘Not QE’ to bailout the repo market, BlackRock exercised its ‘TBTF Put’ and forced The Bank of England’s hand to re-liquify the long-end of the gilts market.

        Lord Acton — ‘The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.’

        https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/forced-selling-everything-uk-pension-funds-are-liquidating-assets-seeking-bailouts

        • David Fogarty, a professional trustee with Dalriada, a trustee firm, said:

          “If you run out of collateral blackrock were saying, ‘we will close the position’, without going back to ask for more money from the fund. It is protecting their positions against contagion but it is not protecting their pension funds.”…..

          so blackrock forced the government to use taxpayers money to bail out their position, then the taxpayer gets to bail out the parasite government employee pension plan too…that is interesting…

    • so blackrock runs the planet….. the G7 at least now?….sounds like it

      just as JPMorgan did in 2019 with The Fed and ‘Not QE’ to bailout the repo market, BlackRock exercised its ‘TBTF Put’ and forced The Bank of England’s hand to re-liquify the long-end of the gilts market.

      This is interesting…using your money to further their agenda..

      Politicians give/promise government workers’ (and themselves), huge, gold plated, defined benefit, pensions, (for most government workers it is the only reason to work there, plus of course huge salaries and benefits too)

      NOTE: (this insures loyalty to their mandate/narrative),

      the pensions are unfunded, money from general revenue (taxes) is being used to prop them up, yes, your tax dollars…the taxpayer finances this….lol….plus you will pay to bail them out…

      so you get to pay for this at least twice….you pay their huge salaries, then pay again to bailout their pensions…..forced by blackrock which is really interesting….it just happened in the UK….coming to other countries soon….lol

  7. The transhumanism agenda, led by controlled opposition Elon Musk, is the final step of The Great Reset.

    Joe Biden at it again – this time Executive Order 14081
    We first published the COVID Legal USA website on January 8, 2021. All Pfizer and Moderna website links utilized therein were immediately archived. We knew that Moderna would take down or heavily scrub the page previously entitled, “mRNA Platform: Enabling Drug Discovery and Development.” That’s the infamous page that says mRNA technology is “like an operating system on a computer.” Former Moderna CEO Tal Zaks referred to mRNA injections as “the software of life” able to “change lines of code” in human genes.

    The transhumanism agenda, led by controlled opposition Elon Musk, is the final step of The Great Reset. In layman’s terms, the powers-that-be (TPTB) want all of humanity to be cyborgs – part human and part machine. They want everyone connected to a central computer for 24/7/365 control and surveillance.

    Bill Gates filed patents on his “Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data” apparatus in June 2019, right before COVID. Upwards of 70% of humanity from December 2020 to August 2021 were/are trial-and-error guinea pigs for TPTB to determine the most efficient installation processes for this software (mRNA and viral vector DNA injections).

    Nearly everyone who received real injections (not placebos) from December 2020 to August 2021 will die by the end of 2024. Those injections were 100% experimental. The fake “full approval” of Pfizer Comirnaty in August 2021 marked the time when the slow-kill mRNA formula was released. It was perfected from the data derived from the vast global human trial with billions of unwitting and willing people. Vaxxed people who survive beyond 2024 have the software installed.

    RELATED: Executive Order 14067 update: will paper currency really end in the U.S. on December 13, 2022, and be replaced by government-controlled cryptocurrency? (August 23, 2022)

    Joe Biden’s handlers already pushed through the aforementioned Executive Order 14067 on March 14. It instructs the federal government to draft blueprints for the forthcoming U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Now Executive Order 14081 (“EO 14081”), signed on September 12, combines the elements of everything in this article’s subsection, and hastens the transhumanism agenda.

    EO 14081 starts off as follows:

    “It is the policy of my Administration to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing towards innovative solutions in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security…The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the vital role of biotechnology and biomanufacturing in developing and producing life-saving diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines that protect Americans and the world. “

    The EO continues, saying the federal government will invest in a “biological data ecosystem” (referring again to the Bill Gates patent) and “domestic biomanufacturing production capacity and processes.” The EO defines biological data as “the information, including associated descriptors, derived from the structure, function, or process of a biological system(s) that is measured, collected, or aggregated for analysis.” It gets worse.

    “In order to facilitate development of the United States bioeconomy, my Administration shall establish a Data for the Bioeconomy Initiative (Data Initiative) that will ensure that high-quality, wide-ranging, easily accessible, and secure biological data sets can drive breakthroughs for the United States bioeconomy.”

    The Biden Administration instructed, among others, the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon, and the Department of Health and Human Services, to execute all this.

    EO 14081 is the social credit system necessary for a full dystopian, China-like society in the U.S. But the U.S. version is far more sinister. The Secretary of Agriculture has until September 12, 2023 to submit the blueprints for the biomanufacturing and “food security” (bug-eating) aspects of it all. All the other White House departments have 100 to 240 days to submit their reports.

    Initial funding has already been appropriated for this agenda. Thus there’s no stopping it. If you had even one mRNA or viral vector DNA injection, you’re already connected to this grid. The swab tests also potentially installed the software. Thus upwards of 90% of Americans are already connected.

    https://thecovidblog.com/2022/09/16/friday-afternoon-news-the-joe-biden-transhumanism-executive-order-14081-gruesome-astrazeneca-skin-reaction-in-vietnam-and-four-more-sudden-deaths/

  8. ‘king, used in the Elvisian sense’ — eric

    Damn, that’s some fine wordsmithing … pronounced el-veeeeeeee-zhun.

    King of the aging-out hausfraus.

    There are worse things to aspire to, you know.

    Well tell him I was calling
    Just to wish him well
    Let me leave my number
    Heartbreak Hotel
    Oh love me tender
    Baby, don’t be cruel
    Return to sender
    Treat me like a fool

    — Dire Straits, Calling Elvis

  9. Since the Biden administration is willing to blow up a natural gas pipeline in a false flag operation to blame the guy who stole the 2016 election, why don’t they blow up a refinery and blame Trump and his supporters? With (1 or 2) refineries out of operation there would be a gas crisis since we haven’t permitted nor built a new one on US soil in 20 years. More reasons for EV’s! Those rascally MAGA-Republican terrorists were at it again blowing up refineries and destroying the environment. Time to cancel the mid-terms until every last one of them is in the gulag.

    • Hans,
      Nearly all “officials” are saying the demolition of the Nord Streams was far to sophisticated not to be state sponsored. I made a list of possible culprits, and identified what, if any, advantage they would get from it. The only two I found it gains advantage for are the EU, and the US. The EU would get cover for their victims starving and freezing in the dark this winter. The US would gain total vassalage of the EU, an increase in its LNG sales, and the stifling of the growing protest among Europeans to cut the Russophobic crap.

      • I agree, John. Although the news media is trying to spin it that Russia did it to themselves. They even had my nephew repeating the propaganda the other night. I looked at him and went “What? If I have the keys to the car and I don’t want someone else driving my car I just hide the keys, right? Why would I jam a screwdriver through the engine? If Russia controls the switch, they could turn it off, why would they spend the time and effort to destroy their own property.”

        It doesn’t help that some senile old man who is supposed to be in charge told the news media in February that if Russia invaded Ukraine that the Nord Stream pipeline would be destroyed. This is what happens when you allow dementia patients to hold Presidential positions. They say stuff out loud.

  10. His genius, or corrupted lack thereof, aside, he’s also a charismatic entertainer. Since one never has any idea what kind of insane equine fecal matter is going to come out of his multibillionaire mouth next, or what he might do next. Smoking marijuana with Joe Rogan, for example. I’ve never been enamored with him, but I can see how some might be.

  11. He also makes mini-submarines for use in cave rescues. And Starlink, which floated over my house the other night. Word is, he’s also working on some version of a human centipede. If life imitates art, we will hopefully soon see headlines like: “Elon Musk Committed. Crackpot Inventor Declared Legally Insane.”

    • I’ve been using Starlink for couple months now. It is a godsend if you live/work very remote/rural. Any prior option did not work well at all, if at all.
      For a long time promises were made to get us rural users connected. The best we could get was DSL if you were lucky to have a phone line, some don’t. I had DLS but speed was 3 down, 1 up, not kidding. Send a large email file and go to lunch. No company is/was expanding or even caring for phone lines. They call it ‘copper’. They told me ‘copper is dead, no investment is being made’. Current or older tech Satellite was marginal at best and very expensive. Fiber promises have been made for years with no one reaching to rural users.
      Starlink is a gamechanger for rural people.

      • Perhaps Starlink, not yet available here, will goose the local fiber supplier in my area to expand its coverage a bit faster. They’ve been saying “next year” for the past three years. As Starlink is now saying as well.

        • At&t been promising fiber in my town for nearly twenty years. At this point just a few pockets of town have it finally. And this is a suburb near Chicago, not rural at all.

        • John, there was a brief period earlier this year when I was in the Starlink “available” area, so I ordered. The line between available and unavailable actually ran through our property. The house was barely outside it, so I used the GPS coordinates about 1,000 feet away when I registered it. It was horrible – like going back to dialup. After a few back-and-forths with tech support I sent it all back for a refund. Ever since that we’ve been in the Starlink coverage map’s “Expanding in 2023” area again. For the time being I think the closest service to you and me is on the Missouri/Iowa border. The Starlink phone app that you scan the sky with to find a suitable location for the dish is also not very good. It first told me our deck was a “great” location, but when I put the dish there it said there were too many obstructions. Moved it to the roof but it didn’t help. I have to say that their support department was very responsive, and they all spoke in clear American English.

          • Roland, my experience was/is very good. I gave them the exact coordinates. I am in a fairly deep valley, and my house is surrounded by large trees. I did not use the locate tool, but I did put it on the highest practical spot I could (roof ridge), and hoped for the best, knowing it would not be good enough. Because I could see the satellites on the right night, and knew the angle needed was going to go through a lot of my large trees.
            Within a few hours their ‘obstruction’ map was populated (and excellently detailed to the actual tree(s), with outlines, causing obstacles. I was able to take down 3 of the trees myself and my service has been outstanding, even though there are about 3 more very large trees in the way that I can’t take down myself at the moment.

            • Chris, I think the main problem for me was that the registered location was not exactly the same as the location where I ended up installing the dish. In other words, I cheated a little so it would let me order, since the house was slightly outside the “available” area. I had watched lots of videos by guys claiming that they registered their dishes in locations hours away from their homes and then brought them home and they worked OK. I wonder whether it would have worked if I had set it up in the exact location that I registered it for, and then once it was working moved it to the house. I would have had to use a generator, because the spot I registered was up next to the county road.
              What kind of up/down speeds are you getting? I’ve heard complaints that it decreases significantly as they get more users in your area.

              • HI Roland, I’ve been averaging between 50-100 down and 5-10 up. I’m in lala land compared to what I’ve had for 7 years and sending large files and going to lunch.
                I am still getting ‘glitches’ of 5-10 sec. of downtime once or twice a day, probably because of the 3 large trees still in the way.
                The obstruction map is amazingly accurate.
                And I’m still keeping my very cheap DSL only because I want to see what happens in the winter with storms/snow. So far some half decent rain storms hasn’t effected it’s performance.

      • ChrisIN,
        Brought to you by Elon’s profits from grifting the EV charade. In other words, you paid for it. So did every one else in the US.

        • John, at this point, I don’t care. I begged our cable co. to bring cable to my house. I had to promise 4-5 users, and I lobbied my neighbors (far apart) to sign on. They did, the cable co. balked. I offered to install the lines myself, no dice. F-them. My investment in time/energy to get decent connectivity was all for naught. They too promised fiber for years! I would never get it anyway.
          We all pay for it I think, we’ll, only anyone that works for a living. Small biz pays all the bills I’m afraid. For 25 years we used to be effective rate of 20%, the past couple years we’re at 25%. I could hire another Engineer (that we need) with the differential.

      • ChrisIN I’m sure it is a great product. But will it make a profit? Motorola built the Iridium constellation back in the 1990s and it almost immediately went bankrupt. The investment group who bought the company for pennies found the best customer was the US military and even then operations were much more expensive than estimated.

        Customers are already reporting speeds decreasing as subscriber numbers ramp up. Will they be OK with the company when they start throttling bandwidth to whatever speed is specified?

        • RK, my neighbors (over a mile radius, haha) and I have little to no choice other than really slow DSL (some neighbors don’t have that) and old school SAT. Some have tried old SAT with poor results so I suffered through slow but very reliable DSL.
          SAT also had pretty restrictive GB limits in which Starlink does not, at least at the moment.
          They all have installed or ordered Starlink. All that have it say it is wonderful. I got in on the ‘get in line order’ approx. 1.5 years ago and just got it this summer. Worth the wait, but again with little to no other options.
          I’d still be ahead of the game, even if speeds dropped by 50-70% with more users.
          As for going out of biz? Maybe, but I would think Gov or lawsuits from the cable/SAT cabal could be more of an issue. Reportedly DISH (i think?) is suing them, for what I don’t know.

          • Hi Chris,

            We have DSL here in the Woods – which is probably not deep enough in the Woods. The monthly cost is obnoxious – $120 – but there is no other option. Literally, as there is no other “provider.” I pine for the day, if it ever arrives, when I can live without Internet, sail fawns and live a 1980s life again.

            We couldn’t send pics and texts back then. But I think we were the better off for it.

            • Been there Eric, they know they have you over a barrel, but not anymore. Paid $100 for 12-2 DSL, only option, but then they cut it to 3-1 (growth in the region, node overloaded I was told), but price went to $38. I suffered for years, but persevered.
              Starlink is approx. $500 buy-in and $110 a month. And I get 50-100 down, 5-10up. I couldn’t write the check fast enough. I can send a large email file and don’t have to go to lunch :). We’ll see how it works/lasts long term, but I’m satisfied at the moment.

  12. Very perceptive:

    “Tesla’s – and Elon’s – work is largely done. The EeeeeeVeeeee juggernaut has taken on a kind of kinetic energy that no longer requires the “genius” of Elon to reach its fulfilment. The rent-seeking is now general.”

    An alleged libertarian friend of mine sees Musk as the second coming. He tells me: “He’s going to take us to the moon again!” Turning loaves into fishes is nothing compared to that, huh?

  13. Eric, in addition to Demolition Man I would add Elmer Gantry (a con man and a beauty) to the cinema list…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Gantry_(film)

    And Seger’s Night Moves covers the relationship between GovCo and The Muskrat…

    I used her, she used me
    But neither one cared
    We were gettin’ our share

    All part of the Decline and Fall of a Once Great Civilization.

  14. His genius is that his ultimate customer is the government. Not through the products he wishes to sell, but by selling policy makers validation. Their payment is policies that give his companies the ability to make money. Without government, he would go broke.

  15. Musk is a hard nut to crack. He is intelligent, probably a Mensa style genius. He’ll smoke a joint with Joe Rogan. He’s banged some really hot women & has 10 or so kids with bizarre names amongst the pool of baby mammas. He’s a visionary and the only one who could’ve brought about reusable orbital class first stage boosters and the payload fairings. He envisioned and made a high speed, low latency satellite constellation possible. He espouses free speech and yet does significant business with the chicoms.

    He’s the champion of a failed technology. He profits mightily from it. And in spite of it, he readily admits fossil fuels simply can’t just go away.

    • And, since he admits fossil fuels can’t simply go away, I have hope that he may one day buy an American Automaker like Ford or Government Motors and allow them to continue building IC powered cars. Or maybe use his lobbying clout to get a relaxation of regulations currently strangling the industry. This is wishful thinking, but fun. Musk is a bit of an egnima and I don’t trust him at all. Of course, I don’t trust anyone who smokes a J.

      • Hi Noxon,

        I’d like to like Musk. But I do not because I don’t like the way he has singlehandlely made EeeeeeeeeeeVeeeees seem “cool.” Without Tesla, there would likely be no push – right now – to ban other-than-EeeeeeeVeeees by within a few years from now (and it’s actually effectively much sooner than that as R&D in new non-EeeeeeeVeeeeees is basically ending right now). But Elon sexed up the image of EeeeeeeeVeeeee’s, allowing the perception to be created that they are desirable – by turning attention away from their myriad inferiorities as regards practicality and affordabilty.

        Some apologists will say: But Elon is only doing what Apple (and microwave oven manufacturers) did at first; i.e., selling high-end models to create demand for the lower-end models, which would then become less expensive, etc. Bullshit. Apple (and microwave oven manufacturers) did not use government to force their rivals to finance their development. Nor did they use the government to subsidize the purchase of their products. They were market-driven successes.

        Tesla is the antitheses of that.

        Elon makes occasionally libertarian noises. But he is the antitheses of that.

        • Eric, the differences between Apple and Amana (Raytheon) and Tesla was that Apple and Amana were introducing a new class of product. Apple made microcomputers that weren’t powerful in comparison to mainframes. Amana made an oven that didn’t use heat (and actually didn’t cook as well as a normal oven). It took time for end users to figure out how best to use the new product. Tesla is trying to sell a replacement product. Replacing mainframes with microcomputers took decades and mainframes are still in use today, although they look a lot like micros.

          So where does that leave Tesla? If you want to unseat the internal combustion engine, you better have a product that’s exponentially better.

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