The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)

[Grant]

If you were a con-man who was good at manipulating financial markets what sort of industries would you invest in?

You'd want to invest in fashionable businesses which attract massive government subsidies.

I give you......Elon Musk

[Grant]

Harsh, you say. This is the man who is the modern Edison, an innovator of genius. But what has he actually innovated? Let's examine the evidence of his genius:

PayPal - this is apparently how he made his money. But PayPal already existed when he "discovered " it. He put family money into the business and eventually cashed out. Well done Elon, but no innovation there.

Tesla - again already existed. Put money into the company and then benefited from the fashion for all things green

SpaceX - built dozens of rockets which often blew up, but apparently some of the parts are reusable. Their reusable nature is demonstrated by the spectacular landings of the first stage of the rockets. But despite the publicity campaigns championing his genius he has done nothing which NASA hadn't done forty years before.

AI - put billions into Grok, his unsuccessful challenger to ChatGPT

When the money started to dry out, he launched SpaceX as an IPO and sold 5% of the company for 80 billion, nominally valuing the company at one and a half trillion. But it relies totally on government funding and turnover is a mere 20 billion.

Notice that all of Musk's initiatives are always those which generate the maximum publicity like missions to Mars, underground tunnels solving transport problems, great AI models. All of these initiatives are failing but can be promoted by Musk's own social media platform.

[Grant]

Musk is at best a financier of genius who is great at boosting his businesses, which have been chosen more for their promotional opportunities than a desire for true innovation.

At worst, he is the greatest con-man in history, making Bernie Madoff look like an amateur.

[Mick Harper]

This is completely ludicrous. Not liking the man is hardly a reason to mischaracterise him.

[Mick Harper]

The only man ever to allow a nuclear weapon to be used in earnest is President Harry Truman. He did not know much about The Bomb because he wasn't told about it when he was V-P. In fact Roosevelt only spoke to his vice-president twice about anything at all.

When Truman told Stalin about it at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 he was surprised at the Marshall's lack of interest. Possibly because Stalin knew more about The Bomb than both Roosevelt and Truman combined thanks to his agents having helped to construct it.

[Grant]

No, I like Musk.I share most of his political views and admire him for how much money he's made.

I just think that when Space X and Tesla go bust and crash the US economy, there will be books explaining that he was just a con man. In fact, it will become received opinion.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

One of the more instructive aspects of the British railway industry is what is called 'open access'. This is when an outside company--or group of disaffected middle management railway execs--applies to run its own scheduled service on someone else's line.

As you might imagine this is somewhat unpopular with that someone else since it means their own traffic will have to shared with the interloper. On the other hand it is wildly popular with the travelling public since they are guaranteed more trains and almost certainly lower fares.

The big stumbling block though is that every line has a limit to the number of trains and in today's go-go Britain most lines, especially the ones popular with the travelling public, are full to bursting. Or full enough anyway for the incumbents to say with one voice, "Ooh, no, we need spare capacity for... you know... emergencies... and things." This applies whether these Johnnies-on-the-spot are private railway franchisees or the British government.

Nevertheless a few Open Accessors have squeezed through, with unexpected results...

[Mick Harper]

The first thing I discovered when viewing a past YouTube interview with Britain's most vocal proponent of Open Access--despite it being conducted on York station and competing with train announcements over the tannoy (who could have predicted that?)--was some quite substantial British cities don't have a direct service with their nation's capital.

Sunderland, for example, doesn't. Bradford has only one a day. Hull is moaning about the paucity. Nothing much to speak of north of Edinburgh and Glasgow. True, this is for sound commercial and technical reasons but--it has been found when Open Access got given a go at redressing the slight--it has made a big difference to those cities.

Not many foreign businessmen want to set up shop in a city they can't get to from Heathrow without having to hang around on York station for an hour or two listening to the tannoy. But that's not the main thing...

[Mick Harper]

The real discovery, said our man from the Open Access lobby, was that the Great British public simply didn't know about trains. Well no, not literally, but in the sense they'd grown up in an era when it cost an arm and a leg to visit Aunty Ida by train, so they've been using the car (if they could) or the bus (if they couldn't) ever since Ida was knee-high.

As soon as they were told--and this is something else the Old Timers had been a bit remiss about--it would only cost them an arm, they boarded the train to Ida-town with great élan and in remarkable numbers. The Open Accessors were not, after all, stealing market share, they had created a whole new market.

The thing about trains--if a soupçon of customer care was included in the price of a ticket--was they were part of the experience. Two adults and three complaining children in a car or sitting cheek by jowl with an uncongenial bus habitué for several hours were parts of a wholly different experience.

But I don't know why I'm telling you any of this. You can be sure Open Access will be a dead duck as soon as our brand new Great British Railways has its way. There's one thing nationalised industries are good at and that's making sure competing products don't get a look in. 'We know what's best for you, sunshine.'

[Mick Harper]

A fascinating -- even heartwarming -- piece on Newsnight about shoplifting. It seemed obvious to me that this is (a) a serious problem which (b) won't be solved by pious pleas about giving the police more resources. I doubt very much that will move shoplifting up their list of priorities. Nor would it help much if it did.

The crime happens far away from them but right in front of store staff. That is clearly where the (new) action should take place. Last time I raised the subject I advocated there should be 'retail police'. That way the cost of the crime will be met by the cost of preventing it. A potentially beneficial spiral.

All it requires is to get rid of this absurd demarcation between police (who can do everything) and everyone else (who can do nothing). Six week courses and a Special Constable badge per shop would do the job, I reckon. If only the liberals would still their bleedin' hearts for a minute or two.