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* The government is paying claims for people who are 150 years old.
* The database is using 150 year olds as a sentinel value for a missing data.
Given that the people making the claims for the former are reportedly young people (who thus have less experience with the quality of data in actual databases), who are outsiders and thus have not had training on the actual data entry procedures for the database in question, I find it extremely plausible that they made a search term for old claimants, claimed it as clear fraud, and never realized (or even bothered to ask) that it could just be a sentinel value. Especially given Musk's history of contempt for experts who tell him he's wrong, I don't think Musk's explanation that it's fraud holds up to any scrutiny, even given a lack of knowledge of the particulars of the database in question.
This more likely than you think, likely enough, in fact, that it has already been confirmed to have happened in multiple countries [1]. The problem of fraud and data corruption is widespread enough that it is hampering longevity research [2][3]
[1] https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-blue-zone-distraction
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000148
[3] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3Yes, beneficiary fraud is likely--if you said that hundreds of people were drawing Social Security for people who are deceased, I would believe you. But the reason we know this occurs is because we periodically audit the databases to find cases where deaths were unreported.
A claim of 150 years old would be older than the oldest verified age for the past 30 years. Saying that the SSA merely failed to notice the claimant's death is thus tantamount to saying that the SSA has never audited its database for unreported deaths in at least the past 30 years, despite welfare fraud being a salient political issue at multiple times in that timeframe.
...and that no-one has noticed for the ~40 years they'd presumably be unlikely to be alive given that living past 110 is vanishingly rare despite audits, etc., until Elon and his Special Boys turned up.
I note that the same dude also said in his White House interview not to believe him because he'll often be wrong.
https://chatgpt.com/share/67b2e31b-e6fc-800f-9ed8-5a4ce1d254...
This led me to something even more chilling. He appears to be critiquing people's net worth vis a vis their salaries. It may just be more bullsh but if so, it's an unacceptable level of invasion of privacy. And further confirmation that he is not fit to do this kind of work:
"We do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have, ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” Musk claimed"
The implication here, that someone could be examining our wealth and deciding if we deserved it or not, is horrifying. It rcalls some of the other dark aspects of totalitarian governments.
IRS is indeed horrifying.
Is it only totalitarian if Musk does it? Someone examines wealth and decides if it's deserved or not every day.
> BTW any news on DJTs tax return? Maybe we should ask Elon?
Maybe. Wouldn't it be great if he tried to uncover his tax returns? Would you still think it's a sign of totalitarianism?
It's not appropriate for the Chief Executive (far less an unappointed private citizen, in charge of an ad hoc advisory body) to have arbitrary un-auditable access to every citizen's financial records.
Who are a bunch of teenagers with zero COBOL or government experience.
I would take a random person on the internet, especially on here, any day.