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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

What power do politicians have? I guess you can nudge bureaucratic legislation to favor one group of developers over another and get favorable investment deals, but that just gets you more money.

Or maybe you can elect a district attorney and go after an enemy of yours, but even that's not an easy win. And you can always buy influence for this sort of thing without going through the trouble and cost of running

You certainly can't wave a magic wand and garner favor and respect from people. People hate politicians in the US.

I don't know, I just don't see the "power". It's just an appeal to narcissism as people in the media would be obsessing over you and dissecting every word you say. But that's definitely not power.

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The fewer politicians there are, the more power they have. In the US, levers of power are widely distributed compared to a typical autocratic country. If you want to avoid autocratic rule, split up the power into many hands. The end result may look like a top heavy lumbering bureaucracy, but if it's difficult to wrest control of someone's lever of power from them then you have a better defense against autocratic takeover.

It almost like it was intentional on the part of the founders of the US

Sadly we did not heed their wisdom and we have over the course of time consolidated power in the the hands of fewer people by putting more things into the hands of the federal government, allowed congress to shift their responsibility to the executive, and failing to increase the size of congress.

Trump vaporized Soleimani; you can't do that when you're just the host of a TV show.

Obama to this day loves to brag about how he sent SEAL Team 6 to deal with enemies of the US; you can't do that either when you're just a successful author.

Hollande (former French president) also bragged to journalists, many times, about assassinating ISIS leaders.

These are "normal" leaders elected in democracies; it's much worse of course with more authoritarian regimes.

Real power is the power to kill other human beings and not suffer any consequence for it. We don't usually talk about that when discussing politics, but this is what aspiring leaders really crave.

>Real power is the power to kill other human beings and not suffer any consequence for it. We don't usually talk about that when discussing politics, but this is what aspiring leaders really crave.

Well put. It makes sense in that context that Musk's fans think he has no interest in politics and his detractors think he must.

As insane as Musk's fanbase can be, I still find his detractors' view of the world less realistic. There's a metric to assess that opinion by. As a fan, I predict he won't run for political office on Earth.

It's not like President Musk would have the authority to murder anyone. His murder powers would largely be limited to the Middle East and loosely defined enemies of the United States.

Musk has never shown a desire to murder random people and he has never shown particular hatred for those in the Middle East. Why would he want the power to murder people who are basically unrelated to him?

He’s South African and can’t be US President due to that, what is this thread

> Trump vaporized Soleimani; you can't do that when you're just the host of a TV show.

True, but Musk has a fleet of absurdly huge rockets at his command. If he really wanted to, he could de-orbit something large on top of Tehran.

Given the rate at which he is progressing toward his stated goals, he’s not that far from being able to do that and get away with it - by moving to Mars.

Yeah, this post is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but there is some truth to it. SpaceX is a company with assets that could easily be weaponized far in excess of many country’s militaries. I’m now imagining a future where a crazed trillionaire executes a first strike against some country with kinetic energy weapons, flees to a different planet, and all the governments of the world are scrambling trying to figure out if they can retrieve him.

> I’m now imagining a future where a crazed trillionaire executes a first strike against some country with kinetic energy weapons, flees to a different planet, and all the governments of the world are scrambling trying to figure out if they can retrieve him.

This is an excellent plot!!

Contact II: Total Commitment

I get what you're saying, and I would agree that the power of _most_ politicians is minimal compared to the absolute richest people in the world (so not just mere single-digit billionaires, unless their wealth is built on owning a platform, like Oprah).

However, read the book Charlie Wilson's War. Wilson had no money to speak of, but the book reveals the incredible power that he wielded, largely by sidling up to selective groups (like the Israeli lobby) and getting key committee appointments. And Wilson wasn't even a U.S. Senator! (Generally speaking Representatives have far less power than Senators)

I mean, it would be trivial for a president with a lot of stock in EV companies to reduce domestic oil drilling/pipelines, start a "police action" in the Middle East that combined with super harsh sanctions on Iran, Russia and Venezuela sends oil soaring.

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