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i really want to know where you got that figure, because a quick google search does not verify a median inheritance of 70k. there are some figures which report a mean inheritance of around that, but most are significantly lower, and this document suggests both that the median inheritance is around 8k across income groups, and that less that 7% of people are will receive any inheritance at all when averaged across all income groups. (the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to receive an inheritance).

and sure, most people who start a business can take out a loan, but there are a vast quantity of people who can’t take out a loan, because they have bad credit, or do not want to take out a loan they know they will never be able to repay if they fail to get their business off the ground. rich people can afford to take more risks, can afford to not spend excess money that they have on making sure they get to eat next month, and thus are conferred specific structural advantages when starting, maintaining, and growing businesses.

i’m not saying that 28k can automatically turn him into a billionaire. i’m simply pointing out the truth, that Elon Musk did, in fact, benefit from structural advantages which cleared barriers to entry that the vast majority of people do not have the resources to bypass.

i get that people would really like it if he was some rags to riches story about a poor kid ascending up the ladder, but no. it isn’t true about musk, and it isn’t true about most billionaires. their wealth is unprecedented, sure, and they have leveraged their resources beyond what most people can conceive, but it bears repeating. statistically, most of the monstrously wealthy started out wealthy, had access to resources that the average person will never have from the start, and were only in a position to grow their wealth because they had money to burn on things other than food, shelter, and physical health.

its not easy to become a billionaire. but i think that its disingenuous to suggest that 28,000 bucks of dad’s money for your startup isn’t in and of itself a privilege of the wealthy. starting a business is completely out of scope for most people. it can’t make you a billionaire, but you can’t be a billionaire unless you can start a business, and you can’t do that without money to spend on that business in the vast majority of cases.

and the skill of running a business is just not impressive to me. there is no way to cultivate skill at entrepreneurship without doing entrepreneurial things, and that’s just way easier to do if you can afford to fail, and have a way of making yourself the boss of other people. most people can’t afford to fail, so they can’t take risks with quantities of money they’ll probably never accumulate in their lifetime.

i mean, that’s still way more wealthy than most people. i don’t think i know anybody who had 28,000 buckaroos of money to burn on their child’s business venture. and the article that you linked does say that musk’s dad made around 400,000 dollars off the emerald mine, which is… still more wealth than most people will see in their lifetime. according to Errol, he sent money he made off the emerald mine and by selling his yacht to Elon and Kimbal to pay for living expenses while they were studying in the US.

engineering types do seem to fall off the conservatism cliff more frequently than other science-adjacent professions. so do surgeons, for some reason? at least from what i’ve observed. i think something about high performance, high pay jobs that require specialized education can make a person more vulnerable to brain worms.

yeah i get that perspective. the assumption that people are dumb or incurious because they don’t find computer tech interesting is weird to me. like, just generally assume that people have rich inner lives, skills, hobbies, and interests, even if you don’t share those interests.

i do think tech literacy should be part of school curricula, though. its a pretty useful skill no matter what thing you like doing. tech literacy has made so many of my other interests more accessible to me.

yeah, i get the sentiment for sure. i’ve done tech support work. i just don’t agree. if so many people aren’t acquiring tech literacy by osmosis, it obviously is something worth teaching. people can teach themselves how to read, but before public schooling reading was a privileged skill. what we have now is… vaguely similar? its different, because UI design can be more or less user friendly and specific applications can be skillsets of their own, but if enough people aren’t acquiring the skill by exposure, that means something on its own.

it can mean that there are just a bunch of incurious people walking around, or we could not make judgements like that about people, and recognize that some people really don’t seem to be getting it, and take steps to ensure they do.

tech support can make misanthropes of us all, but it isn’t because these people are stupid or incurious, its because your job is dependent on people getting frustrated or confused enough to ask for help. the job filters for customers who can’t figure it out, and at a work setting every moment you haven’t fixed their problem is wasted time from their perspective. that they don’t want to be taught a new skill in that context is reasonable, even if its deeply frustrating.

its why i think literacy is a good comparison. some people find it fairly intuitive, find joy in reading, and grow up practicing that skill , but plenty of people don’t, and in large part if they aren’t directed to learn it they never acquire the skill, because the friction in day to day life is never large enough to motivate them to act.

i’ve experienced the same thing, but tech support workers encounter those kinds of people more frequently because they’re the ones who need help the most frequently. the people who can figure it out on their own don’t seek out tech support.

i like the pun, good job.

i really don’t like this attitude, and i see this it pop up around here fairly frequently. its kind of elitist? classist? i’ll try to articulate myself here, though its not like… directly aimed at you, so try not to take it personally.

computer skills are just like being illiterate, but not in the way you’re presenting. if somebody grows up to adulthood and they are illiterate, that isn’t some sort of personal failing, its an indication that the people responsible for this person’s care neglected their obligation to properly educate their child, or did not have the resources to provide such an education, because nearly everybody can become literate if somebody teaches them. the reality is that every single person on earth comes into this world without the ability to read, write, use computers, or do fucking anything at all, and its the responsibility of the people who do know these things to be open and kind and helpful so that they can learn. did you have the option to take computer skills classes in school? maybe? in a lot of places, no. did you come into technology effortlessly good at everything? probably not. lots of people aren’t given the opportunity to hone these skills, or aren’t given motivation to pursue them for themselves.

it’s a problem in tech spaces. there is this subset of tech dudes who got in early and have made this weird, toxic culture of competition and exclusion that makes pursuing these skills actively difficult for newcomers. no. open source tech is for everybody. computer skills are for everybody. respond kindly and with understanding to those who do not already know these things, please. as much as it seems obvious or natural, it really really isn’t. people need to be taught this stuff most of the time. i don’t mean to be hostile, its just… the comparison to being illiterate is absurd to me, even if it was just a joke. when have you ever met a person who’s illiterate who hasn’t been systematically let down by their educators??? have you ever met somebody who’s illiterate? they aren’t that way because they’re stupid, or don’t want to learn, its usually something that happens to people who have been profoundly neglected by the systems supposed to protect them, who are poor, disabled, or otherwise marginalized. the stigmatization of illiteracy is cruel to people who have already been deeply wronged, denied full access to language and our vast inheritance of knowledge by systems and people which find it inconvenient to teach them.

i sorta agree with you, it’s a bummer that people don’t have these skills, that so many don’t have a strong grasp of how the machines that are so important to their lives even work. but that isn’t their fault, it isn’t their responsibility, and our response should be kind and accommodating. it should be a call to improve public education and provide resources to expand access to this knowledge, to build open source and demystify what has been mystified. that’s part of why there are so many free educational resources for coding online. because this is a field of study that is not being taught to students by default, as it rightly should be.

i don’t mean to go off on you specifically. lots of people don’t think very deeply about this, you haven’t committed a social justice crime or anything. but this is not a “people are dumb” problem. its an injustice. its a failure that we should do everything in our power to correct.

i’ll drop the tone. i’ve looked at your other comments, have a general clue about what you’re about. i’ll just say this: there are specific patterns of behavior and ideas which are either attributed to or linked to the Nazi Party, or more generally to fascist ideologies, which have, throughout history, led to oppressive regimes. when people see these patterns or ideas expressed, there is a tendency on the left to reject these ideas because of that association, because they have proved to be potent tools for the spread of fascism, and encourage the dehumanization of minority groups.

transphobia, and specifically appeals to the pedophilic nature of queer people? this is unambiguously Nazi shit. trans people were the some of the very first people the nazi’s actually threw into concentration camps in nazi germany. this process included the burning of medical literature describing the proper treatment of transgender people. it also included the denial of an explicit description of the gender spectrum, as observed by medical professionals of the time. so if you are dismissive of or make a political issue out of trans identity, call queer people groomers, any of that bullshit, even if you are “not a nazi”, many of the information sources publishing anti-trans rhetoric today have explicit ties to real neo-nazi organizations, or are politically aligned with movements calling for the “eradication” of “”“transgenderism”“”.

to anybody with an education on the historical circumstances of Nazi Germany, this exact rhetoric and the modern political movement against trans people, is unambiguously mirrored by the actions of modern republican politicians, including legislating restrictions against cross-dressing (happened in nazi germany), restricting transgender medical care (happened in nazi germany), and revoking the ability for trans people to be recognized legally as trans (happened in nazi germany). people who are queer or trans both do not necessarily want to be confronted with this rhetoric wherever they go online, as it can be extremely distressing seeing people parroting literal nazi talking points in the modern era, and do not want that kind of rhetoric to spread, because it was nazi propaganda that lead to the execution of human beings.

while theoretically somebody might “misuse” this label, call somebody a transphobe or a nazi when they aren’t explicitly talking about this stuff, you may be able to follow the logic from here. if transphobia, questioning the validity of transgender identity, calling for the restriction of transgender medical care, restricting access to books about queer people, if this has explicit links to nazi ideology and activity, what do you call people that want to open up a space for these people to spread their beliefs? what do you call people who accommodate or legitimize these beliefs which have led to the genocide of people groups? well, for a lot of people, if you accommodate the people who accommodate the fascists, that really isn’t that different from letting the fascists run about.

maybe you don’t think of yourself as somebody who does that. maybe you really do think of yourself as a moderate who wants productive discourse, and believes that if everybody just talked to each other, all these political divisions would be easier for us to solve. for the people who would be impacted by the threat of violence behind these beliefs, that isn’t so easy. for the people who see the striking similarity between the modern transgender panic and the genocidal escalation of yesteryear, it isn’t worth the risk to allow in the would be monsters, willing to execute the people who are not like them, even if that means that some reasonable people are caught in the crossfire. hopefully that gives you at least some insight into why productive dialogue isn’t a very convincing argument on this side of the fence. you’ve called yourself a moderate in other posts. tell me, what is the moderate position between genocide and tolerance? between eradication and acceptance? if you’re moderate about that shit? well, that just sounds like bigotry to me.

i would encourage you, if you aren’t just a nazi concern troll, to look into the Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft, and the history behind the persecution of transgender and gay people in nazi germany, and try to conceive of why people believe that they are right in rejecting those who display sympathy towards the right wing of the United States, especially in light of their modern retreading of old bigotry. i would love to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are truly just advocates for free speech, concerned about authoritarian censorship, all that jazz, but the content of what opinions people like you are defending the right to have are historically ruinous for minority groups, a harbinger of a horrifically violent regime which killed countless people, and burned the records of what had been learned about their humanity.

sure. i’ll bite. how about you tell me exactly what opinions have gotten you branded in this way? please. tell me what exactly are the kinds of things you say that get other people to call you a nazi.

thats weird. i never get called a fascist, and nobody i know gets called fascists, and i’ve never had to worry about other people calling me a fascist when i disagree with them. huh…

the rise of the ad blocker blocker blockers begins.

“Protests don’t work” is a weird take on this. No political action is an unmitigated success, movements take time to build momentum. I dunno, try to cool it with the misanthropy. This has gotten a ton of media coverage, built the legitimacy of the fediverse, and forced Reddit to act to break a strike. Not to mention that every step of enshittification makes arguments against corporate controlled social media more compelling in the long term.

I’m just waiting until these models get completely unraveled by training on output. The more people use generative AI to make stuff online, the more useless the internet is as a data source.