Summary
Elon Musk condemned rising vandalism against Tesla, blaming the political left and suggesting a conspiracy against him.
He cited incidents of arson, gunfire, and property destruction at Tesla dealerships, linking them to protests against his work with DOGE.
Trump and the DOJ have labeled the attacks “domestic terrorism,” vowing arrests.
Some Tesla owners are selling their vehicles or adding bumper stickers distancing themselves from Musk, who defended Tesla as a “peaceful company,” saying “I’ve never done anything harmful.”
Well then, let me be the first for you. I don’t think the government should be without fraud and waste. I think it is inevitable for a large government to have some. Better to give people too many food stamps than too few. Better to have too many free student lunches. Better to have extra pension payments. I 100% support not worrying too much about small money inefficiency or waste. Aiming for perfect efficiency and zero fraud on that level guarantees that you will be killing people, making them homeless, or destroying their education.
It’s the rich bastards who steal our money and freedom that we need to stop. The military contracts. The Starlink. The tax fraud by Google and Amazon and Coca Cola and every other large corporation. That shit is what I think almost everyone in the country wishes we could eliminate.
I’m not saying perfection. That’s my last sentence. The fraud of by a small number of people is worth it if it means more people are helped.
It doesn’t make sense to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent fraud of hundreds of dollars.
I agree with your conclusion. It was the statement in the middle, where you said you would be hard-pressed to find people who wanted the government to be efficient and without waste, that’s the statement where I’m telling you that here I am saying I don’t need a government that’s efficient and I don’t mind a government that has some waste. I really don’t.
What I do mind is a government that’s inefficient and wasteful in ways that are throwing money at the rich. That’s something I mind a lot. Certainly we both agree that we shouldn’t be trying to crack down so hard that we’re depriving people of support that they clearly ought to be receiving based on the law and morality.
Let me go an obvious step farther. Suppose there’s some office somewhere that has 100 employees and they might be able to get by with 95 if they streamlined their process. And maybe those employees are making $40K or $60K whatever. I’m just not hugely worried about that 5% inefficiency. I’m happy enough knowing that they’re probably supporting themselves and pushing that money right back into the local community. I’m also happy knowing that if you tried to replace them with a private company, it would cost twice as much and you would get a fraction of the service. People love to talk about the magic number, efficiency, but most of us are not living to be efficient. We have other goals in life. The actually important things. That’s what our governments should be pushing for. When efficiency is a reasonable step towards making life better for the people who live in that country, then we can focus on efficiency, but we should never ever think that efficiency is the goal when so often it’s the opposite of the goal.
Oh I totally agree.
When I say efficiency, I’m talking about quickly providing service. I expect the USPS to be efficient in that they deliver the mail without sending something around the country pointlessly and that they deliver it quickly. Efficient in that appointments are easy to get. Efficient in that applications are processed in a timely fashion.
I don’t want meaningless busy work or pointless paperwork. I honestly don’t think there is a lot of that anyway. These aren’t things that federal workers want or administrators would set up to purposely be obtuse. (Other than those purposely trying to sabotage agencies for privatization. But I’m good with my tax money going to more federal workers. Those people aren’t getting rich on their government salaries.