Why does Elon Musk love this socialist sci-fi series? | Hacker News Reader

Why does Elon Musk love this socialist sci-fi series?

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7 pointsGeoAtreides24 comments

Just because these are truly awful people doesn't mean they can't like out-of-this-world-amazing science fiction.

Conservatives apparently like Star Trek. A series that has worn its socialist and progressive politics on its sleeve for decades. A series whose entire ethos stands in defiance of everything they believe in, and represents a utopia they would consider Hell on Earth. I guess because if you don't pay attention, which they must not, it seems like it's just about militarism and conquest, and thrilling spaceship adventures with pew pew lasers. IDFK. As the article points out, people like Musk and Zuckerberg miss the entire point of the things they read. They probably watch Star Wars and root for the Empire.

I miss the days when nerd culture wasn't so infested with Nazis and incels and influenced by fascist billionaire douchebags.

Mel Brookes understood this very well.

Essentially, morons cannot see past the very superficial surface details. They don't see how Star Treks universe claims all this good comes from literal socialism. They see cool looking spaceships.

It's like how morons do not see the Star Wars Empire as obvious Nazi propaganda ripoffs in their aesthetic, they think they are cool and have cool uniforms and do cool marching.

The ONLY way to ensure morons don't outright celebrate the horrific (but maybe fashionable) things you show in fiction is to ensure that it always comes with a side of making an absolute mockery of the fascists.

You have to laugh at them, to their face. It's the only thing that works.

>Elon Musk had already turned Twitter into a right-wing echo chamber since purchasing it in 2022,

Is it though? I talk with liberals and NDP frequently. I really wish I didnt see people like harry sisson or krassenseins which i dont care about. Not my country, but they are popular so the algo gives them to me.

Not much of a right wing echo chamber if they are forcing left wing foreign people on others.

>Jeff Bezos has revamped the Washington Post’s editorial section to build support for “personal liberties and free markets.”

I hadnt heard that happened. I very much approve.

>It was a massive show of power that revealed how possible it is for these wealthy men to remake our culture in their own image,

Having your newspaper make the case for personal liberty and free markets is remaking your culture?

> Having your newspaper make the case for personal liberty and free markets is remaking your culture?

You're taking him at his word that's what he's doing. I don't think that's what he's doing at all. What he's doing is attempting to limit the conversation to pro-corporatist sentiments.

Ding, ding, ding.

>You're taking him at his word that's what he's doing. I don't think that's what he's doing at all. What he's doing is attempting to limit the conversation to pro-corporatist sentiments.

Like I said, I hadnt heard he even did that. It is fact checked true that he did say this.

I dont read the washington post, it's a foreign newspaper with very little interest to me. So I am happy to take him at his word.

chatgpt analysis right now suggests that the prohibition against posting opinions that are against personal liberty and free markets hasnt changed much, has been done, and is not overtly corporatist. Providing multiple examples in relation to the tariffs and trade wars that express multiple different viewpoints.

> your newspaper

See, that's part of the problem. Historically, quality broadsheet newspapers are not _supposed_ to really be influenced by the owners. Like, arguably even Murdoch does better on this than Bezos with the WSJ (though _only_ with the WSJ, mostly); the WSJ broke the Theranos story, for instance, and Murdoch was one of Holmes's dupes.

I would agree that editorial independence is a core journalistic standard and generally required to be a top outlet.

I dont see washington post as a top outlet. It needs some hand holding from Bezos to get it in order. Perhaps in 5 years they'll shape up to compete to be a top outlet?

"Elon Musk had already turned Twitter into a right-wing echo chamber since purchasing it in 2022"

I disagree. I look at this frequently and Twitter has right and left wing posts pretty equally. Many people think it's a 'right-wing echo chamber' because non-left leaning posts were censored for many years.

Bluesky is an authoritarian nightmare that only allows left-leaning posts and pre-bans people for their content on other platforms, before they even post. It's really telling, since this the founder is the same person that ran Twitter before Elon.

> pre-bans people for their content on other platforms, before they even post

[citation needed]

They're probably getting confused about banlists; awful Twitter people are sometimes pre-emptively banned on _those_. But that's not Bluesky itself, obviously.

It's particularly bizarre because one of Banks' nastier villains, Joiler Veppers, is basically the worst stereotypes of a tech billionaire (probably _not_ specifically Musk, given the timing) turned up to 11.

If Banks says that the Culture is "hippy communists" it must be so but I'm not sure I ever got that impression though. Physical objects and simulated experiences are simply too cheap to meter in that post-scarcity world such that there's no benefit to be gained from excess possession. It's like saying breathable air is communist.

I suspect the broligarchs are more attracted to the concept of all-powerful and all-knowing Minds magnanimously dispensing goods and services to the species under their benevolent(?) management. Minds have the means of production, not the people.

Hydrogen Sonata is largely set in _another_ post-scarcity lower-case-c culture who still have money and property and stuff, apparently largely on a ceremonial basis; the Culture characters involved see this as pretty weird. The Culture is fairly explicitly socialist (in the sense that the means of production isn't owned by companies or individuals).

I'm fairly certain someone from another culture actually uses the _word_ socialist (rather sneeringly), to describe the Culture in one of the books. Possibly Veppers?

> Minds have the means of production, not the people.

This is... arguable (and kind of comes up in the books). However it certainly _wasn't_ the case for the early Culture (the Culture predates the capital-m Minds).

Oh, interesting; I wasn't even aware that he'd written anything in the Culture universe after Look To Windward since there was such a long hiatus after that one. I'll have pick up his last few books.

I still think there's a gap between individuals not having to exercise much self-restraint because nearly anything can be provided to them on demand at no cost because goods and services are too cheap to meter in the Culture and the real world where individuals have to exercise considerable self restraint to hold the means of production by the community and for the community. If the Culture is socialism, it's post-scarcity socialism, which is not a form which most people would recognize.

> It's like saying breathable air is communist.

Try reading some of the older Robert A. Heinlein novels. Hyper capitalist moon colonies where people pay for air.

> It's like saying breathable air is communist.

Clean air is a socialist value. Limiting the ability of corporations to pollute the air is very much a Nordic/European thing that US right wing frowns upon. Watch all the oil wells leaking methane and the coal plants, and the discussion around those. It's very political, and very much on that axis.

You're missing the point. Pick sunlight or something else too cheap to meter if that particular analogy doesn't work for you.

As the one who submitted the post, I disagree with the title change, as "elon musk" and "socialist" are discussion poison

my original title: Why do the broligarchs love The Culture series?

would have been more conductive to interesting discussions

The HN guidelines include using the original title of the article.

they recommend it, but there's slack

especially when it comes to nurturing interesting discussions

"broligarchs" isn't exactly a neutral word either, even if it is rather accurate.

I was not going for neutrality, but minimizing the chances of a reflexive downvote and trying to nurture a discussion about The Culture (definitely not about Elon Musk or socialism; especially as The Culture is not socialist, but anarchist)

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