I guess this is on HN because people are surprised that not all programmers are atheist members of the Democratic party.
I think this goes beyond mere party politics - the man is incompetent and utterly unqualified for the job. I've heard numerous arguments (including in this thread) about Trump being a "wrecking ball" to the political establishment and I think it's telling about the audience of HN. If you were living on the poverty line, depend on government programs or, hell, are Muslim, you might not want to play so fast and loose with the current system. We're lucky that we can afford to risk such an idea.
I have a hard time believing Thiel actually embraces Trump, and it's more that he was going to be a delegate and will now be legally bound to cast his first ballot for Trump. I am frankly a fan of Thiel, a lot of people here at HN love Musk but I think Musk is a corporate welfare queen; and Thiel is not.
Can you elaborate on that?
Oil and Gas do not get direct subsidies, they get to write off capital expenses. That's completely different.
You can downvote me all you want, but writing off capital expenses is available to every business and this is always included in the "oil and gas subsidies" number people tout, because it fits an agenda of corporate welfare for everyone else. Corporate welfare should be abolished. The Oil & Gas sector did get a bailout in the early 90s, and it shouldn't have. The auto industry also shouldn't have been reaped rewards from government bailouts.
To be fair, all of those industries have had and will continue to have heavy government involvement. He didn't create the problem, although he seems to be attracted to industries which have those sorts of problems.
While I (unsurprisingly as a European) am far to the left in terms of what the government should do, I hate people who take advantage. But Musk mostly just had good timing (when both the space and car industry in the US was loosing momentum) and as long as you don't pretend he did it all by himself I don't see a problem with it. On the other hand you could claim that Palantir is part the military industrial complex.
is a deeply offensive term, and even undermining to the point you are trying to make about Musk.
Both Trump and Sanders are presenting themselves as such.
I have heard more than one time, if Sanders doesn't win, people claim would switch to vote for Trump. Sounds crazy right, well not so crazy if you partition candidates by "entrenched in political establishment" vs "anti-establishment".
As much as Republicans hate Trump. He is probably their best chance at survival. And this is coming from talking to a "rich old white guy" -- the stereotypical Republican. His comment was that based on current trajectory, Republican party will fizzle away.
You can't say the same for Sanders supporters. Traditional liberals aren't going to vote Trump under any circumstances.
I think we are in black swan territory.
This is really really dangerous. It's the classic precondition of totalitarianism. Existing politicians in both parties are doing nothing about it. Being occupants of coastal cities (DC) and largely upper class, many don't even seem to realize there's a problem.
Note that lots of PUMAs -- from polling data, more than this is true of Sanders supporters in this election -- said that they would do that if Obama won the nomination in 2008 rather than Clinton. General election polling data found that that group had evaporated by then.
What people say in anger during the primary campaign and what they do in the fall often aren't the same.
Honestly I think it's far more interesting that he has multiple Congressmen as his delegates, given some of the lines that are rumored to have been drawn inside the party about supporting him.