Progressive music, electric cars, fast software, and liberty. Decentralize the economy and the Internet.
Bend, OR
Joined March 2012
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Brian Hauer retweeted
Elon Musk understands something that the political establishment desperately wants people to forget.
Government isn’t some magical institution that protects you from concentrated corporate power. It is concentrated power. And unlike corporations, it has the legal authority to use force against you.
Now imagine giving that power to a global government. One political hierarchy. Billions of people. No competing jurisdiction to escape to. No meaningful alternative when the people in charge decide your rights are inconvenient. That’s not progress. That’s the blueprint for the most terrifying monopoly in human history.
Look at what’s happening across Europe.
More authority concentrated in distant institutions. More regulatory power. More restrictions on speech. More decisions made by people ordinary citizens can barely hold accountable.
The answer has always been decentralization, private property, free markets, and the freedom to walk away.
Yet the political left keeps demanding more centralization, more bureaucracy, and more authority over ordinary people. And somehow they call that liberation.
What a fucking joke.
Brian Hauer retweeted
You absolute midwit. Congrats on repeating the Wikipedia "Nazis were far-right, end of story" summary you absorbed between TikToks.
Yes, the Nazis crushed independent unions, jailed and murdered communists and social democrats, and Hitler liquidated the Strasserite "left" wing of his own party in the Night of the Long Knives. That part is not in dispute. They were not Marxist class-struggle socialists. They hated Bolshevism as a Jewish plot and treated international socialism as the main enemy. Fine.
What your middle-school history class skipped is that they still ran a National *Socialist* state: private property existed only as long as it served the Führer’s racial and war goals, wages and prices were controlled, industry was cartelized under state direction, profit was subordinated to the party, and the economy was planned for autarky and rearmament. That is not free-market capitalism, liberal conservatism, or classical right-wing economics. It is the same family of state-directed, anti-liberal, collectivist economics practiced by every other fascist and "national socialist" regime. The name was not a prank; the 25-point program and the early rhetoric were full of anti-capitalist planks precisely because they were competing with the actual socialists for working-class support.
Your North Korea comparison is the usual gotcha and it is only half-clever. Yes, names can lie. But the NSDAP did not merely call itself socialist while secretly running a Rothschild hedge fund. They nationalized, directed, rationed, and regimented. The difference from Soviet socialism was mainly that the Nazis kept the owners as managers under party orders instead of shooting them all and installing commissars. Both systems produced shortages, secret police, and mass graves; one just had better uniforms and Wagner.
Elon pointing out the obvious—that "National Socialist" is not an ironic branding exercise and that the regime was economically left of any classical liberal or conservative—does not make him a moron. It makes him less obedient to the post-1945 academic consensus that insists every totalitarian who isn’t a full Marxist must be filed under "far-right" so the left never has to share the body count. Money didn’t buy him a brain; it just bought him a platform where he doesn’t have to pretend your selective reading of 1930s Germany is the complete picture.
Keep yelling "far-right fascists" while ignoring the actual economic policies and the party’s own name. It is the historical equivalent of covering your ears and shouting.
Brian Hauer retweeted
“He jailed socialists, so he wasn’t a socialist.”
This is the argument every single person in my replies thinks is a mic drop. It’s actually the weakest one available, and it collapses in five seconds.
Lenin banned the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries. Both were socialist parties. By your logic, Lenin wasn’t a socialist.
Stalin shot Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and sent an ice axe through Trotsky’s skull. All of them were founding fathers of the Bolshevik revolution. By your logic, Stalin wasn’t a socialist.
Mao purged Liu Shaoqi, the President of the People’s Republic, and let him die in a cell. Pol Pot murdered his own cadres by the thousands. Robespierre sent Danton to the guillotine, then got the guillotine himself.
There’s a reason Vergniaud said the Revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children. Purging rival socialists isn’t evidence against collectivism. It’s one of its most reliable signatures.
Why? Because when the state decides everything, there can only be one plan. Two factions with two plans for the same economy can’t coexist. One has to disappear. In a free society, disagreements get settled by markets and elections. In a planned society, they get settled by the secret police. Hitler crushing the SPD and the KPD, then murdering Röhm and Strasser in his own party, is exactly what you’d predict from a regime competing for the same thing: total control of the economy and of society.
And that’s the real question. Not “what did he call himself” and not “who did he arrest”. The question is: who runs the economy? Under the Nazis, independent unions were abolished and replaced by a state labor front. Prices and wages were frozen by decree. Investment was directed by a Four-Year Plan. Private property existed on paper, as long as owners did exactly what the state told them to do.
Hayek saw this in real time. He dedicated The Road to Serfdom “To the socialists of all parties” precisely because he understood that the planners of the left and the planners of the right were the same species. Collectivism isn’t a color on the political spectrum. It’s the belief that a central authority can and should direct the economy. Once you accept that, the purges, the camps and the one-party state aren’t accidents. They’re the operating manual.
So no, “he jailed communists” doesn’t refute anything. Communists jailed communists for seventy years.
Read Hayek. Then come back.
This probably hits hard if you failed history in high school.
Hitler was a far-Right fascist whose party was named the National Socialist German Workers' Party to attract working-class voters.
Then he banned the Social Democratic and Communist parties, and sent socialists and communists to concentration camps.
Brian Hauer retweeted
Correct.
Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.
Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.
Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.
Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.
Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.
SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.
That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.
End of story.
Brian Hauer retweeted
It's been months that I keep saying Hitler was far left. Every time, thousands of clowns show up in my replies to give me history lessons.
So I made a video to answer all these low IQ takes at once.
Topic closed. Next.
Brian Hauer retweeted
Legacy cell carriers a few months ago: Starlink Mobile will not be a competitor. Their signal won’t even be able to penetrate walls.
Legacy cell carriers today: Oh shit, we were wrong. Quick, start lobbying so they can’t compete!
SpaceX plans to launch their next-gen Starlink Mobile service, built for 5G speeds, in early 2028.
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are jointly lobbying the FCC to preserve existing rules as @SpaceX moves closer to launching its own independent cellular network that would compete directly with the three major U.S. carriers.
On Oct 20th, reps from all three major U.S. wireless carriers met with FCC officials to push back against proposed changes that would give satellite companies more freedom to offer cellular service.
The carriers urged the FCC to:
• Block satellite companies from using certain 5G frequencies currently used by wireless carriers.
• Keep rules requiring satellite companies to get permission from wireless carriers before using their licensed spectrum.
• Allow wireless carriers to maintain control over these agreements, including the ability to end them.
• Reconsider proposed interference limits to protect existing cellular networks.
Based on all the public communications from these carriers, and the lobbying, they are clearly worried that SpaceX's @Starlink Mobile network is going to be a major competitor to them. Starlink Mobile will become the first network operator to deploy both satellite and terrestrial spectrum.
The FCC recently announced that they are considering new rules that could make it easier for satellite companies like SpaceX to offer cellular service without relying as heavily on existing wireless carriers, so this is partly what the three big carriers are fighting against.
Brian Hauer retweeted
It's hilarious that there are idiotic people who think it's impossible to design or be responsible for designs if they're not a "licensed engineer." Or that only "scientists" can create innovative products.
Gell-Mann epiphany.
tiamat.tsotech.com/gell-mann…
Brian Hauer retweeted
HBO's @LastWeekTonight has a long track record of citing social science findings without the appropriate context, massaging them to support whatever point @iamjohnoliver is trying to make.
Brian Hauer retweeted
What's more dangerous is a government that considers its role to be appeasing demands rather than protecting individual rights.
The political influence of billionaires becomes a problem precisely when government has the authority to dispense favors, subsidies, contracts, and regulatory privileges.
The solution isn't to give that same government even more power over private wealth. It's to remove its authority to grant those favors in the first place.
The danger isn't wealth itself. It's political power being used to violate rights, regardless of who's demanding it.
There’s nothing more dangerous to democracy than one man approaching a trillion dollars in wealth, wielding enormous influence over our government, our economy, our technology, and the information billions of people consume.
When one individual accumulates that much wealth and power, democracy risks becoming an illusion.
No unelected billionaire should have more influence over our future than the people themselves.
Brian Hauer retweeted
Democrats will win because the Republicans have been terrible
Doesn’t mean either deserve it
Brian Hauer retweeted
this California wealth tax thing is just incredible.
so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time).
polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it).
there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate.
supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right?
well as it turns out, they did.
a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative.
proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave.
just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues.
but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion.
so when you add it all up you get:
+ $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated)
- $69b in present value of lost future income taxes
= - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax
of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time.
and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes.
[1]: nber.org/system/files/workin…
Brian Hauer retweeted
We have reached such insane levels of absurdity.
"Elon, thanks for helping Ukraine. Now we are going to seize your companies and maybe even throw you in prison."
It's like a Babylon Bee headline. The "No Kings" people want the government to nationalize Musk's businesses. 😂
Brian Hauer retweeted
SF voters on robotaxis:
Sept 2023: 44% support, 51% oppose
July 2025: 67% support, 29% oppose
What changed? People rode them.
Robotaxi opposition peaks before anyone has ridden. D.C., New York and Massachusetts are deciding at peak fear and minimum experience.
Brian Hauer retweeted
it's truly wild to think just how much of socialist rhetoric comes down to being economically illiterate and stupid
like they literally do not know how shares work
when they rant about billionaires they think they literally have a scrooge mcduck pile of gold in the basement
when they talk about raising taxes they don't know the US has one of the most progressive systems of all time and that the top 1% already pays nearly ** HALF** of all taxes
they have never run a lemonade stand
they have never built anything
their mindset is pure envy, pure greed
they will simultaneously hate Elon (despite him producing probably 100k jobs in his lifetime, and making many people into millionaires or billionaires) and idolize Ilhan Omar (despite her defrauding taxpayers)
they can't conceptualize that 1 mile of the california rail costs more to develop than all of spacex's total spend, of all time
they are fixed-pie thinkers who cannot conceptualize that if they want nice things they should build things
takers, thieves, malcontents, simpletons. not makers.
everything else in the dysfunctional, self-destructive idiocy they produce is just downstream of them being stupid and greedy
