Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 713: Elon Musk's Shadow Rule

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from gloryhole studios in chicago and beyond This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. Today is Thursday, September the 7th. If you're hearing this, it is not actually-

It's not actually that day. As we record it, Thursday, September the 7th. If you're a patron, you're probably hearing this a couple of days early too. It is some date. It is a date. Look at your calendar. In the future or the past.

That's what date is. I don't know how to introduce these anymore. It's okay. I'm failing at every level, Cecil. But at least I'm not Elon Musk. Although Elon Musk is winning at every fucking level, just about in a way that like this article from the New Yorker, Elon Musk's shadow rule.

Like I've been, I guess, like peripherally interested in Elon Musk for kind of a while. I thought I knew a little bit about him. I knew sort of his like business story. I didn't know that. Yeah. What I did not understand was the incredible depth of the power that he holds internationally and politically. Yeah. I wasn't, to be honest, I wasn't either. And it didn't really even occur to me. I had heard the sparring and jabs that were happening because of Starlink and Ukraine. So I had heard that stuff and saw that stuff online.

And you kind of forget, at least I forgot, or at least maybe I wasn't even informed of how important Starlink was to the military there to continue to fight and to communicate. I had no idea the importance level. I thought it was a helpful thing. Elon Musk, who is donating this equipment to give the connectivity to the Ukraine army as they continue either both advancing and defending their country from Russia. And he's using this technology because they had no real means of communication. And it's actually a godsend because the stuff that it's able to do is really helpful.

It can't be, you know, it can't be, there's like ways in which that it was beneficial for them to use it. They explained it in the article, why it's beneficial. There's no real reason to get into it, but it's beneficial for them to use specifically this technology. In short, it's decentralized.

So it can't be attacked with like, you can't strategically shoot a missile at a piece of infrastructure because it's a series of satellite dishes the size of a computer monitor that can be set up by the thousands across battlefields everywhere. And he used his influence, because he owns the company, to just send them stuff. And it feels obvious to me in retrospect, watching what unfolded, which was he sent his stuff over to them. They accepted it happily. They used it for a while. Then he started complaining about it to say, well, who's paying? We can't pay for this indefinitely. You guys got to cough up some money, et cetera, et cetera.

And what it seems painfully obvious to me looking at it in retrospect is that this is a guy who's a narcissist who cannot stand to be out of the spotlight. So what happens is, is he gives it away because it's great free press and he looks like a hero. So he gives it to them, but then there's no more mention of it, right? They're still using it to do all this stuff and it's like a hero. So he gives it to them, but then there's no more mention of it,

right? They're still using it to do all this stuff and it's still very important and it's integral to their offensive and defensive capabilities, but he's not receiving any accolades moment to moment for doing it. So instead, he's got to bring it up again to let people, just so you know, hey, everybody, I don't know if you knew, but I, you know, you know what I mean? He's got to do it over and over and over again. And then he starts talking about, you know, this is a guy whose whole entire career is funded by the government through subsidies. This is another opportunity for him to take some government money, money that we all have to help fund something like this. He's ready to take it.

He's ready to snap it all up. But he's got to be in the spotlight every moment or else he feels like he's immediately attacked because of it. Yeah, and I will say embarrassingly, there was a minute when I heard about this. So when I heard that he was like, hey, you know, it's been a minute.

Is somebody going to pay for my Starlink services? Like there was a minute where I was like this. So when I heard that he was like, hey, you know, it's been a minute. Is somebody going to pay for my Starlink services? Like there was a minute where I was like, yeah, that makes sense. Like, yeah, like I can see, I can see the point there. But then I thought, no, you're worth $250 billion. And like if I

could donate some small chunk of my fortune, and I don't have a fortune, but if I could donate some tiny piece of my..., and I don't have a fortune, but if I could donate some tiny piece of my- I could buy a Starbucks for somebody. Right. And it would help the Ukrainian cause. I'm morally obligated to do that, right? Because the attack from Russia into Ukraine

is a barbarous anti-democratic attack that has cost something like 500,000 lives. And if I'm looking at that and I'm saying, man, it would really cost me anything. No matter what happens, I'm still fantastically wealthy. And I could

help. But I just am like, yeah, but I want to get mine back. I want to get paid. Like there's this like really funny part of the article, like where they, they talked to him about his, like, he's pretending he's wrestling with a moral dilemma where he says, you know, like, yeah, I, I, I don't want my technologies to be used for war, for evil purposes. And it's like, first of all, that ship sailed the minute you offered it. So like, no, like that's already a bad argument because you, you already offered it and they accepted it. You gave it. So you, you were the one who had your hand up saying, pick me. Right.

So like, you don't get to have that and eat it too. Like you can't be like, yeah. And then he's pretending that there's some like big moral question here, but it's a moral question that he wants to alleviate by getting paid for it. So like you don't have a fucking moral quandary if you're willing to accept a check to soothe your fucking morals. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And if you're talking about it just as a greedy capitalist, it makes sense to let them use it. Become reliant. Well, because, well, also because like, the war itself is destabilizing many markets.

Yeah. And so in order to get equilibrium back into the world and into many markets. Oh yeah, I didn't even think of that. You know what I mean? You would want to stop this war as quickly as possible. And the best way to do it is to make sure that the Ukrainian people can protect themselves possible. And the best way to do it is to make sure that the Ukrainian people can protect themselves.

That's the best way to do it. We've shown that. That's literally how it's happened, right? That's how it played out. And so in the beginning. So even selfishly, it would be more advantageous for you who has markets all over the world, sells things all over the world to have a stable market.

And so you're not selling it. I don't, I mean, I don't think he's selling like an immense amount of Teslas to Russia. I mean, I can't imagine he's selling. I mean, maybe he's selling them to individual people, but he's not just, I don't think he's just starting up massive places over there where they'll curtail him.

But again, another opportunity in this article pops up relatively quickly after. The reason why he's pushing back is because he had a conversation with Putin. And I'm so blown away by all these ultra genius guys who are so easily manipulated by this KGB guy. This old ex-KGB guy, he can fucking twist these people up

into a fucking pretzel in two seconds. Every single one of them. all this, Trump's the smartest, strongest guy in the world. And he's an absolute puppy dog next to Putin. And then same thing with Musk, who's supposed to be this ultra genius guy or whatever. No, immediately manipulated by, by Putin to stop giving aid right away. Well, what I think, what I think the article alludes to and what I think happened is like when, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the whole world was like, Whoa,

fuck that. And so the easy, big accolades thing to do, like you said, it'd be like, cool. I'm going to rush in, give him Starlink.

But I think he probably thought what everybody thought Russia was going to roll over Ukraine. No, we gave him. So we tried our best to help. Russia's going to roll over it. You got to look like the good guy. Your outlay of capital is relatively short term. Yeah. You still had a lot of good PR for it.

And then the chips fall where the chips fall. But then what really happened was Ukraine put up an immense, powerful resistance. And then I think deeply importantly, Russia and China became much more closely tied together economically and militarily. So they are forming a closer and closer alliance. And that has implications for Musk because Musk's technology is built in China. So now he's got like, wait a minute, I tried to help Ukraine, but now I'm actually in bed sideways with Russia. Because if I'm in bed with China, I'm in bed with Russia. So now I'm in bed sideways with Russia.

So now I want to pull that back. Well, here's what I'll do. I'll say, well, it's been a minute, guys. I can't keep up. I can't afford, even though I'm a 255 billionaire, I can't afford to do this forever. And then the US government has to come in and actually pay him for it.

And yeah, in the meantime- And he probably doesn't even want the money. He wants to just get out of it. Right. I think he just wants the fuck out of it, right? But like now he doesn't have a good out for it. And then he pretends that there's some fucking moral quandary, right?

Like it's like, oh, well, you know, I want to be a, I, you know, I'm not here to intervene in politics. You're here to intervene in politics, motherfucker. You're a guy who sits with heads of state. Yeah. That is something that like, I really want to talk to you about. It's like, there is a deep problem of billionaires rising to a level of eminence as a result of the power of their money, such that leaders and heads of state bend the fucking knee to them. Yeah. They have to not bend a knee, bend an ear.

to them. Yeah. They have to not bend a knee, bend an ear. And when I thought about this too, there could be no more powerful person in the world when we think about the future than Elon Musk. He holds basic dominion over important parts of what humanity's future will hold. He holds rocket technology and things he's building. And right now, things I didn't even know, like NASA has to use him to get people to places and things.

I mean, things I had no idea. Almost all of the satellites. That the satellites and that astronauts and other stuff like wind up getting moved around through his rocketry. Like stuff I had no idea even happened. I thought there was still some sort of, but no, we're just using him. The Starlink thing's a perfect example. This is a military operation that we're letting an oligarch handle, right?

The same thing goes for the environment and electric cars. Here's a man who is in many ways being coddled when it comes to whether or not we're going to create different types of chargers because his charger is a specific proprietary one. And instead of saying, we're just going to make chargers that'll like fit everything.

They're going to create all the chargers based for Teslas and for other things, right? Because of his enormous share of the market. Because of his enormous share of the electric car market. This is an environmental, you're talking about environmental future of the world is very important, right? And this is a guy with his foot in the door when it comes to all that stuff. He's somebody who you

have to talk to. He has to be at that table. The same thing comes with a space exploration. He has to be at that table. He has to be at the table when you're talking about, you know, internet for very difficult places in the world. He has to be at that table when you're talking about, you know, internet for very difficult places in the world. He has to be at that table. You know, Twitter, the social media of the world, like one of the bigger social media platforms in the world. When you're talking about social media, when you're talking about the impacts of social media, he has to be at that table. All of these crazy parts of our existence, you know, sometimes very existential parts of existence. We're talking about like how bad social media

might be for us and how bad the environment is. This is the guy at the table. This is the guy. One guy. Even our military is, our military, the US military is subject to some degree to the capricious whims of one fucking guy.

Because even our military satellites our military and reconnaissance satellites which we rely on for all the things right satellite shit is like it's all fucking musk it's all musk powered at this point it's all elon musk elon musk is putting up like it like i think the percentage was like 80 or 90 percent of all the satellites going up are going and that includes military satellites like we don't it's not like the army shoots their own satellites up there like musk is putting out the fucking armies of satellites like and and the thing is like it's one guy it's not a board of directors somewhere even and that would be bad enough right if it was the board of directors that like lockheed martin they controlled some sliver, but it's not.

It's fucking one guy. One guy who wakes up and is fucking nuts, by the way. One guy who wakes up and is fucking microdosing ketamine all day. This is like a guy who is not well. who is not well. This is a capricious, unwell man who is like wildly inconsistent, who has swung widely from like the left to the center to the right and around again and back to the right again. Like just, he is an inconsistent, capricious dickhead who's worth an impossible sum of money with his fucking personal fingers in all these places. Like you said, like when Biden and the Biden administration wanted to build a national

supercharger infrastructure to help the transition to electric vehicles, they literally had to be like, can we please do it this way? How about that way? What would make you happy, Tesla? Like what would make you happy, Tesla? What would make you happy, Elon Musk? And he gets involved specifically and personally in these decisions. We're at a place where not even just one country, but the world is asking permission. When the heads of state for China and Russia and the Biden administration are going to one plutocrat,

of state for China and Russia and the Biden administration are going to one plutocrat. We aren't even all like China, Russia, and the U S we're not even all friends. What we have in common is that we're all fucking subjects. We are all vassals to money to one fucking ultra rich plutocrat. It's easy to like, and it, for, for, for me, least, it was very easy for me to dismiss Elon Musk as a fucking rich boy Tony Stark wannabe wasting his money buying Twitter. And I kind of did. But this article really shook me up. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And it's not just that it's these companies that are – these countries are able to use him and look to him.

He feels like that kid in that Twilight Zone who's going to put people out in the cornfield. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He very much feels like that kid. And it feels like that's how everybody's placating him all the time. They constantly have to call him up on the phone and massage him and make sure they, you know,

can we get this stuff from you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it feels crazy that that's what's happening. But then the other end of that is that you can't punish him ever, right? So in this article, there's multiple times that he does things wrong or his companies do things wrong, but he has more money and his companies have way more money

than the entire budget of OSHA. So nothing they do, they can't stop him from doing things that he wants to do. He just does it and then they just have to suck it up. And this happens multiple times. There's no way to punish him for doing this stuff. So, and I think, for example, I think one of the only times we've ever seen him really kind of punished is when he was forced to buy Twitter. When he was forced to buy Twitter, that was something of a punishment

because he think he did it. You know, like you were saying, he's capricious. I think that is a very, a great way to put it because he probably would have immediately backed out if he could have. Yeah, he was trying to back out of that Twitter acquisition. Yeah, he didn't want to do it. He said he was going to do it and he had a poll to do it.

And then he decided not to do it. And he was forced to do it. And this is one of those things that, you know, I think it's one of those moments that he is in some way held responsible for what he says, but rarely. This is one of the rare moments that it's happened. There's a story where SpaceX wanted to launch a rocket. I don't know if it was a test launch or not a test launch.

They wanted to launch a rocket. And in order to launch a rocket, you have to get permission from the FAA. The FAA has to be like, yeah, weather conditions look good, et cetera, et cetera. And the FAA was like, weather doesn to be like, yeah, like weather conditions look good, et cetera, et cetera. And the FAA was like, weather doesn't look good. You can't launch. And SpaceX was like, weather looks fine to us.

We think your model's wrong. And they're like, well, but if it explodes, it could be a problem. We don't think the weather looks good. Our model doesn't look like, you know, it should. And they were like,

cool story. We're launching our rocket. They launched the rocket anyway. And the rocket exploded. Now it didn't happen to cause any damage. But like, SpaceX was like, what are you going to do about it? And the FAA was like, there's no point in fining

him. They even say, what are we going to do, fine him? The only way that they could punish him was prohibit him from flying another rocket for two months. That was the thing. They're just like, it's so like, we're just so fucking wildly impotent when it comes to facing down the power of this kind of money.

Yeah. That's the thing that, like, really has to be reckoned with is that when this kind of money, and it's more than just the money, when this kind of money intersects with individual control over pieces of technology that define modern society. One of his goals, and he's stated this as much as like, one of his goals is to build an everything app. Yeah. The everything app, which would be called X for sure, because he's fucking obsessed with X. His kid is named like-

X plus something else. X Burger 179-305, Some crazy schmigoldy nonsense. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you, asshole, by the way? Just like, fuck you for that. But like, like he wants to build an everything app and we should all be really afraid

of that being successful. And he could build that through acquisition. Yeah, he could just buy pieces and put it together. Snap it together. He could buy all the pieces that he'll already use. You know, he could just buy pieces and put it together, snap it together. He could just buy all the pieces that he'll already use.

You know, he could buy, he already has, he could rebuy PayPal tomorrow, he could buy Zelle, he could buy, you know, he could buy like pieces of companies to cobble something together. We're already his bitch.

We are already Elon Musk's bitch. Imagine if like an app that you relied on for all of the structural pieces of your life, the same way that they have apps similar to this in China. Like if you relied on one app to sort of rule them all and that was owned by one fucking guy, the dominance that that would have over the national conversation. It's not just one thing. It's the entirety of your digital existence will be controlled by this one person. And we kind of have that in a store, like Amazon's that store. Amazon is that one store where you can pretty much get whatever you want and it'll get delivered to you almost immediately. And that's what they want. They want to make sure that they maintain that so that you don't go anywhere else. So you don't think to go anywhere else. You don't think,

oh, should I go to Dick's Sporting Goods? No, Amazon will have it. And I have it at my house tomorrow and I have to leave the house. And so they specifically went out to build a store that's based like, but imagine if your entire life was like that. And that's your whole life. And that's one guy who then decides what's on it. And look at his whims when it comes to Twitter. Look at his whims when it comes to all these other things. This is a guy who doesn't just say, I made a thing and now I control it. This is a guy who says, I made a thing.

Now I'm going to micromanage the graphic design of the logo. Oh, I know. Crazy, like crazy. And like his decisions should all be looked at with a fucking giant side eye. Absolutely. Like this is a guy who like if you follow his business story, this is not a guy who had the best ideas in the room. And that's why he got ahead.

He is a guy who got lucky early in the tech sector when a lot of people were getting lucky early in the tech sector. He made a lot of money quickly at a very young age, and he was able to leverage big money into bigger money. That's what he did. He made some reasonably astute business decisions at a fairly early age, but he's also made some insane decisions. Insane. And he's made some really egregiously unethical decisions. When he took over Twitter, I refuse, by the way, to ever call it X.

It's dumb as shit. And also, like, no journalists call it that. I love it. Like, if you read about it, they all say Twitter, now called X. They don't just call it X.

I love that. But, like, he has... And he's a journalist. We figured this out a couple weeks ago. Pulitzer Prize winning Tom. We did figure this out.

We figured this out a couple weeks ago. But, like, this is a guy who digitally persecutes those who criticize him. And yet at the same time calls himself a free speech absolutist. This is a guy who will

sick loose on the world, Alex Jones and Donald Trump and Jordan Peterson and will in the same fucking breath shut down reporters from the Washington Post or NPR. Yeah, when he doesn't like what they have to say. When he doesn't like what they have to say.

He'll remove their blue checkmark, or he'll allow someone else to have at NPR if he wants them to have it, or he'll just remove you from the platform altogether if he doesn't like what you're saying. Right. And he's done that multiple times. And he also, like you say, platforms these horrible people and brings them back on. He has polls where he polls the people on his thing

to make these big decisions. And it's just insane to think that you would outsource this kind of decision-making. If you're a smart guy, what would you need to outsource it for? Wouldn't you just make the right decision all the time, Tony Stark? guy, what would you need to outsource it for? Wouldn't you just make the right decision all the time, Tony Stark? No.

No, you got to outsource it for the weird group of followers and hanger-on who want to follow you around and vote yes on your poll or no on your poll. I want to read a part

of this article because it's just so perfect, Elon Musk, and it's where he crashes his car. Oh, my God, I know. I want to read this. It says, perhaps the most revealing moment

in the PayPal saga happened at the outset. In March 2000, as the merger was underway, Musk was driving his new McLaren. Now this is a million dollar vehicle with Thiel in the passenger seat. And Tom's tells me Thiel is the PayPal person.

The two were on a sand hill road, an artery that cuts through Silicon Valley. Thiel asked Musk, so what can this thing do? Musk replied, watch this. Okay, now this story gets amazing. Then floored his gas pedal, hit an embankment, and sent the car airborne and spinning before it slammed back onto the pavement, blowing out its suspension and its windows. This isn't insured, Musk told Thiel.

Musk critics have used the story to illustrate his recklessness showboating, but it also underscores how often Musk has been rewarded for that behavior. He repaired the McLaren, drove it for several more years, then reportedly sold it for a profit. Musk delights in telling this story, lingering on the risk to his own life.

In one interview, he asked whether it parallels with his approach to building companies. Musk said, I hope not. Appearing to consider the idea, he added, watch this. Yeah, that would be awkward with a rocket launch, end quote. But genuinely, that is his entire MO. That is his persona. Even with the rocket launchers. That is his persona perfectly. Watch this. I'm gonna do something. I mean, he is a fucking little kid standing at the stairs

getting ready to jump down into a bunch of cushions and hopefully not kill himself. Yeah, and like, even with the rockets, other stories, like, when his rockets in testing have exploded, he fucking goes to the sites of the wreckage and does photo ops with them. He calls, like, he calls the

explosions, he reframes them as good things. Like, he basically calls it something stupid, but it's like, oh, it's a learning opportunity, you know? And, like, I just want to point out, that's not 100% wrong, right? But also, like, you did fail. Like, you gotta take the good with the bad. Right? You did fail. Even if you learned something,

you did fail. But, like, what I'm afraid of is that he has come to understand the invincibility of his means. Yeah. That like, he's reached a level of importance and power and financial sort of acumen and like his fingers are in his tendrils, I really should say, are actually like in so many things that like he personally has become too big to fail. And that's a scary, it's scary when an institution is like that.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and there is something deeply, deeply anti-democratic about this kind of plutocracy. Yeah. In the article, there's this great line. It says, there's only one thing worse than a government monopoly, and it's a private monopoly that the government is dependent on. Yeah.

And it's so true because at least if it's government funded, there's some recourse down the road. Somebody's got to, there's somebody that has to answer to something, right? There's a board that's going to sit down. Do you remember, you did the space shuttle and Feynman, Richard Feynman, sat on a board and chewed the ass out of every single person who sent the space shuttle

into the fucking orbit and it blew up. The Challenger. Was it the Challenger? Challenger. So he chewed their asses out in front of Congress. Chewed them out. There was somebody there that was accountable for that. What if Musk blows people up? What do we do?

Nothing. We just shrug. We're like, alright, well, I don't know. That's what we're going to do. What can you do? In that same paragraph, literally a sentence before, several officials told me they were alarmed by NASA's reliance on SpaceX for essential services. for essential services. Yeah. So these are essential services that NASA relies on him for. And what happens when he doesn't follow the rules?

There's a great story in here about how he literally was going to, his team was going to program rolling stops into the fucking driving mechanism on the Teslas. They were going to program breaking the law

into the Teslas because that's how humans drove. And so they figured that's how the machine should drive. It should just roll through stop signs. Which I will say, I kind of am sympathetic to that conceptually. But then when he was challenged by the government, instead of being like, all right, you know what? Good point. We shouldn't build machines that just break the law.

Yeah. Instead, they fought it. Yeah. They fight back every time, right? Everything. Like, you know, there is a, this story also highlights, there's a real danger and vulnerability when the government outsources to private sector things that it has to have and do and need, right? And like, I get that we have to do this to some degree. Like, like I said before, Lockheed Martin builds a lot of our bombs and, right? And like, I get that we have to do this to some degree. Like, like I said before, Lockheed Martin builds a lot of our bombs and, you know, like defense contractors build the shit.

I don't, the army isn't building the army's materials, right? The air force isn't building the air force's materials. I know that, but like, we should be really nervous when there's just one guy who has a fucking monopoly on something that we as a people have decided is essential, right? NASA is a great example. NASA should be doing this work. We should be funding NASA to do this work. We should not be allowing NASA to coordinate and then outsource this work to one fucking guy. One guy.

One guy. Yeah. That's not okay. Hey, we've got a secret. This podcast is supported by Apples Never Fall, a chilling new mystery series from the author of Big Little Lies, starring Annette Bening, Sam Neill, Jake Lacey, and Alison Brie. It's sure to get people talking.

What dark secrets lurk in this family? Tune in on March 21st to find out. I also want to talk, too, there's a part of the article where there's a guy who's talking about him. And they get into, you had said he's doing some non-prescription drugs to deal with his depression and other things that he's, he self-diagnosed himself as autistic. He's got all kinds of things that he's medicating himself for that is not medicated by a professional. He's just doing it on his own, right? He's just doing recreational drugs. And they're talking about specifically about like how difficult his life is. And I want to read this piece because it makes me recognize how fucked up our capitalistic system is. It says his life just sucks. It's so stressful. He's just so dedicated to these companies. He goes to sleep and wakes up answering emails. 99% of people would never know someone that obsessed with,

with that high level of tolerance for sacrifice in their personal life. And you're like, nobody should have to live like that. Nobody should live like that, period. We should look at people who live like that and be like, there's something wrong with you. There's something up with you. You're not somebody we should trust with the public trust. You're not somebody who we should say that person should have this kind of big sway over everything. You're unstable. Yeah. I've thought about this, like, and you have to try to sort of a thin line, but I do think that there should be some interventions

for those who are addicted to work. And I don't mean this to, because I don't want to get this wrong for listeners. If you're a listener who, and my dad was this way, my dad worked two, sometimes three jobs to make ends meet, but he was not addicted to work. He didn't want to do it.

He did not want to do it. He had to do it to put food on the table. That's not a work addiction. But like, I think that we don't address work addiction. And I think that it's real. And I think that it's a real problem. And it is the result of a capitalist society that strips away our ability to self-identify and self-validate outside of the constraints of the workplace. If we feel like our personality and our sense of

our self-worth is enmeshed and equal to the work that we do, if we can't pull those things apart meaningfully, I think that's a psychological problem that needs therapeutic answers. I really genuinely do. But instead we look at it as a cultural value. Yeah, no, it's- Because it feeds the beast. And these people all, everybody who ever talks about things like this,

you know, LinkedIn is a perfect example of this. You know, it's like the grind culture idea. And you go to LinkedIn and you just, you could scroll around LinkedIn to like popular posts. And there's to LinkedIn and you just, you could, you could scroll around LinkedIn to like popular posts. And there's all these crazy grind people who think, you know, I got to, they're going to like turn themselves into nubs over their business. And if I'm not, if I'm not working 20 hours a day, I'm failing. It also becomes like a religion. It's like a religion now where there is, and I, and it's funny because there is a, a really strong undercurrent,

you know, the anti-work sort of undercurrent that's, that's sort of working its way up, which is, you know, your job isn't your identity. Your job isn't who you are. Your job isn't, isn't something that this isn't a group of friends. These, these aren't, these aren't, that sort of idea is cropping up now more than it ever had, right? So there is good because I think there's a huge pushback against this, but then there's also this cult-like worship of these people. And Musk is a perfect example. Look at literally anything that man comments on. Look at the sycophants that comment after him on Twitter. Look at the sycophants that worship how he lives his life, which is a disaster. It sounds like his life is a misery. Yeah. It sounds like it's an absolute misery. You know, yesterday, the day before,

I don't know, a couple of days ago, I watched for the first time, people who know me will know I've never seen any movie, like all the old movies, I've never seen them. So like every once in a while, Haley and I get to talk and she'll be like, oh, have you seen this? And I'll be like, no. She puts it on a list. And so then we work through that list of all the like stuff I've not seen. So I saw Philadelphia for the first time. I hadn't seen Philadelphia. I don't know if you saw that. Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks is the

HIV patient. I saw it a long, long time ago, so I don't remember the plot. So there's a scene in it, though, which speaks to this, which I thought was really, like, there's a lot of scenes that grabbed me, but this one just grabbed me from a work ago. So I don't remember the plot. So there's a scene in it though, which speaks to this, which I thought was really like, there's a lot of scenes that grabbed me, but this one just grabbed me from a work perspective. So when Tom Hanks walks into the boardroom and he's going to be fired, he walks in and there's like the, you know, the law talking attorneys who are on the one side, all the partners, and Tom Hanks is seated on the other side of the conference table. And they say, now, before we finish talking, before we talk, I want you to know that we're all friends here. Then someone else says, no,

we're not friends. We're family. And Tom Hanks is like, yeah, no, yeah, I know. And then they fire him. And I thought about that as I was watching the movie. The need to conflate work with friendship, work with family, work with the village, the idea of our village. Even in the moment that they were firing Tom Hanks in this movie, unjustly for getting sick, they first prefaced that with your family. how apropos and fucked up and how like, how much of a sort of like moment microcosm of the modern workplace is that to sort of say like, I'm about to hurt you. Let me first,

like, let me take this on so that I don't hurt myself first. Yeah. And then I'm going to be like, if you were like, Tom, we're family. I stole your car and burned down your house. I'd be like, dude, we're family. I stole your car and burned down your house.

I'd be like, dude, we're disowned. What the fuck? You're bad at this. It's funny because I just got let go from my job. And very much there was for all the years that I worked there, this idea that we were always trying to create community amongst our group. There was always this push to create community, create community. But as soon as I was like, oh, nobody, there was nobody who ever reached out to me. The only people who reached out to me are the people who wanted to make themselves feel better for letting me go. Right. So they reached out to me to say like, you know, whatever the dumb platitudes that they had to say, I never responded to them. I left them on read, but, but they basically went out of their way to tell me how, like how this affected them. Right. Like, just so you know, and then they wanted to tell

me how I should feel about it. But I never, I never responded to him. He's just like, you know, like, what am I going to tell it? Go fuck yourself. Like, I don't care, but I don't care enough about you to write those pixels in a fucking email. I don't care. But, but genuinely throughout my entire career, there was a sense that you are part of this group. This is a community. Now I always thought it was bullshit. I was like, this, this is a, that's a fucking lie. You're kidding yourself. I'm not, I never once considered myself part of that family. I pretended to be part of that group, but I, I 100%, I mean, you know, I mean, we talked for years and I was like we talked for years. And I was like, they would have these weird meetings

and I'd be like, this is the dumbest shit I've ever been to in my life. But they had these team building meetings all the time that were meant specifically for that. And genuinely, like this is a virtue in the American system. And I don't know what it's like anywhere else, right? Because I've never been employed anywhere,

so I don't know. But I only know the American system. And the American system, we mythologize the workplace in such a way that we make it seem like it supersedes family. It's more important than family. Absolutely. You know, and ever since I was a young person,

I never bought into that bullshit. I was never like, yeah, I'm not going to play on your fucking softball team. Like, I don't fucking like you people. I don't, I'm only here because they pay me. Like, I would never talk to play in your fucking softball team. Like I don't fucking like you people. I don't, I, I'm only here because they pay me. Like I would never talk to you if they didn't pay me. And like, I'm proving it right now with all the jobs I've left in my life. I don't talk to anybody in all those other jobs because I'm only there because you give me money. And so

I think like we have this weird relationship. And then again, you have Elon Musk, who in all this entire story is trying to push that on everyone else. So not only does he believe it, right? Not only does he live it, he enforces it too by making people break COVID rules, by disobeying rules that are laid down. He's breaking those rules because he feels like my ideals and the way I look at the world

is the most important thing. You know, you know what he feels like to me? He feels like the deeply fucking unpopular kid who grew up and like cannot get enough validation. Yeah, it could be. When I think about his like, like his troll culture cannot get enough validation. Yeah, it could be.

When I think about his troll culture sort of enabling, that is become Twitter. He basically looked around a group of people and said, where's the meanest lunch table? I want to go give those guys. Those are the guys that bullied me my whole life. So in order to not get bullied, I'm going to go sit at that table and everyone's going to like me because I'm going to hand them the biggest megaphone so they can be the biggest bullies possible. And he feels like that to me. He just feels like this deeply like sad character. Like honestly,

this like really sad character who has no sense of his own value if it's not constantly being reinforced and validated. Because I was thinking about like, why does this guy feel the need when he is not a free speech absolutist? He does not have a deep integrity-based principle toward like promoting free speech. If he did, he wouldn't have fired NPR, right? If he did, he wouldn't have like locked down like people from the Washington Post and the New York Times. Like, so he doesn't believe that, right?

He doesn't, he's not like, look, I'll take my beatings in order for there to be a marketplace of ideas that's perfectly free. I would disagree with that, but I would respect it more. What I think instead is like, this is a guy who just like cannot understand or appreciate, even at 255 billion units of appreciation,

his own value as a human being, if he's not constantly proving it to everybody else and having it reinforced back to him. You know what I mean? No, I do. And one of the things in the article they said is like, Elon Musk wants to save the world as long as he's the one that saves it. Yeah. As long as he's the one who's able to save it. He wants the world to be saved, but he wants to save it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think,

you know, the bullying thing goes all the way to, you know, him wanting to fight Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. Oh yes. I mean, he wants to, he wants to fist fight Mark Zuckerberg. But the thing is, he doesn't realize Mark Zuckerberg rolls with BJJ jiu-jitsu experts because he's very rich and he can basically call any UFC fighter and train with them. And so he's dedicated part of his life to fighting. And so Musk will get the shit kicked out of him. So he's constantly doing like, oh, my back, my glasses.

Oh, I can't fight. You know, whatever it is to get out of it. It's like, no, I'm sorry. I can't,

I can't take my shirt off. The doctor said, I can't take my shirt off, you know? And so he's a hundred percent pushing back on this fight. He said, he's going to do it. It's just like Twitter.

He said, he's going to do it. There's no recourse though, right? There's no court. That's like, you said, you're going to fight him. Get in the like Twitter. He said he's going to do it. There's no recourse though, right? There's no court that's like, you said you're going to fight him, get in the fucking ring, get in the fucking cage, smart guy, go over there and fight him. No, it's not like that at all. He can literally get away with it. He can say things to get the publicity and the juice that he wants out of it. And then he can literally back away from it and nothing ever happens to him.

Him having this much power over all these sectors of society and then having all these different people in our government have to bend their knee to him makes me recognize how we need to basically turn these into government institutions. I recognize, I understand. There's a lot of problems with governmental institutions. I get it.

But man, the idea that one person can be this fucking powerful, as powerful as he is. Unacceptable. I did not realize it until I read this article. I did not realize how fucking powerful this guy is. The kind of things that we're allowing him to get away with and do,

no, absolutely not. They broke down monopolies in the past, man. I'm like, man, we've got to do something about this. There's got to be something. There's got to be something that can break him up. Yeah. This should be socially, economically, and politically unacceptable. Yeah. We allow it. We allow it to happen. And I don't know where we go from here, right? Because our system is this weird, hyper-capitalistic hellscape that I just don't know how we get out of this. Because at this point, the idea that you would somehow

I just don't know how we get out of this. Because at this point, the idea that you would somehow do something to stop how this works now would be looked at by people in the power right now as a huge problem. And I think that there would be huge pushback if somebody tried to change this in any way. You know, something that occurs to me is that maybe we should think about the idea of a monopoly differently than we do now. We think about a monopoly in terms of, I think, broadly speaking, monopoly would be like, look, you can't own all the railroads, right? But like, and I think that's an antiquated way to think about a monopoly. I really do.

I think that's an old, like, fucking Rooseveltian way to think about a monopoly. I think the reality is that we're now in a place where it's like one person cannot accumulate or aggregate this much money. It's just a financial monopoly. At some point, it doesn't matter where all the money comes from. Is it all railroads? No. It's this and that and this and that and this and that. But it's like, look, you're still a monopoly because you still, as a single person, have accumulated more power than we should ever be comfortable with. So it doesn't matter if

it's like, oh, you can't have all the railroads. Why? We'd be too powerful. But you can have all the money. Well, what is money? Money is literally a stand-in for power. Yeah. So like we should at some point consider that there is a level at which a person themselves becomes a monopoly. Yeah. And if that idea has any juice to it at all,

and I don't know if it does, but if it does, then Elon Musk is a fucking monopoly. Yeah. Hundreds of times over. He needs to go to jail. Direct the tax code. He needs to turn his- of times over. He needs to go to jail, direct the tax code. He needs to turn his-

No free parking. He needs to turn, he put his McLaren on free parking. Get it repaired. I want to talk real quickly, Tom, about this other article that dovetails with this. It's from the Washington Post. Following Elon Musk's lead,

big tech is surrendering to disinformation. Now, this is another article I'll link to as well, but this really shows that Elon Musk, when he came in, he owns one of the largest social media platforms in the world. And that platform, after he came in, essentially removed all the safeguards against misinformation that were up there. They had robust safeguards during the election and during other times where they were removing people that were spreading disinformation. They were removing people that were putting up harmful content and they were taking down and putting up content warnings in places where people were spreading misinformation or putting

harmful stuff up there. They were doing some of that work. Now, I don't know if they were doing that work amazingly well, but they were certainly doing that work. When Musk came in, it almost essentially was completely gone. They gutted the entire system, gone. Now we're seeing Facebook and YouTube are starting to follow the methodology that he was using, letting go of large swaths of people because they saw that they could get rid of a bunch of people. And they thought, they saw the bloat that he got rid of. And they said, well, now we can do that.

And that also includes these content moderation people. And they talked to a bunch of people at different places, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. And all of them now are now sort of just allowing COVID misinformation, just allowing, you know, election misinformation. They're not even putting anything to, at one point they bring up a story in this article where they're talking about J.B. Pritzker, a fake story about J.B. Pritzker, who's our governor. Someone had put a picture up there and said that he's going to start allowing illegal immigrants in our state to become police officers and they'll start arresting regular citizens. And people believed it.

It's on Facebook and there was no nothing. There's nothing there to say it's false. literally pernicious as we enter the realm of generative AI being able to produce believable false content and mass. Like we are going to be flooded with bullshit at a level that is only going to grow. It's going to be, and it's going to be an exponential level of growth. And it's so easy to make this content. Like I can do it like it. And that's, that's, I say that on purpose. It's so easy to produce this content that literally I can do it. I don't like doing this kind of tech stuff. I just fucked around with it. Like you can play around with some of these like image generators and figure out how to make them produce stuff.

That's like scary good in under an hour. It's just like, that's the, and people who are more sophisticated can do far more sophisticated stuff. And we are going to be in a place where like we are machine replicating our own bullshit. So it's like, it's like the wizard from that Disney,

from like when Mickey Mouse breaks the brooms. Yeah. And then there's just fucking an infinite amount of fucking brooms we're headed in that direction with bullshit right and there's no that is 100% an iron clad

truth that's not even a prediction it's just an iron clad truth because why wouldn't we we are headed in that direction and the only thing that stands in the way of that flood of that deluge of bullshit, are, again, like one guy named Mark,

one guy named Elon. Yeah. Like, that's a scary world to live in. Yeah. That is not, we should feel insecure about that. Also, when the profit motive leads them to the misinformation. Yeah, man.

Yes, yes, yes. They are constantly trying to moderate their own profits. And that's a bad thing for businesses, right? A business doesn't want to reduce their profits. And very much when you read this article, there's a part where they talk to somebody in Facebook and the person says something like, well, on one side, they were saying that they stole the election. The other side said that they didn't. And we just got

sick of like arguing between them. I'm picking something. I don't know exactly what they were saying, but they said something like one side said this and one side said this. And we got sick of sort of moderating that. And so we just let him go at it. And I'm like, yeah, but one side is saying the truth. And you know, like one side is saying reality and one side isn't, and you're saying, well, we just don't care what's real. And that, and that's because what's paying your bills is attention. And the attention span is going to keep that person on the phone. And if it just so happens that the attention span is a lie too fucking bad. I got get paid. Yeah. Here's the thing. Social media needs to become a public utility. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. It needs to

become a public utility. It's gotten too big and we need to take it back. Like we can't, you can't let some guy named Mark own this. You can't let some fucking dude named Elon own this. We can't. It needs to be a fucking public utility. Full stop. It just does. Because until it is a public utility, there's no transparency and accountability. And there never, ever will be. There's no transparency and accountability for private companies.

There's not really, not any. Like, we want to find out, like, what's going on at JPMorgan Chase. Like, you can't just, like, give them a call and be like, hey, motherfucker, show me your books. Let me see what's going on at JPMorgan Chase. You can't just give them a call and be like, hey, motherfucker, show me your books. Let me see what's going on at JPMorgan Chase. It's difficult. Fuck yourself. These things need to be bought. Eminent domain.

The government needs to be like, cool, you built it. It's too powerful. Sorry, man. It's like if you built a nuclear bomb in your backyard. We're not going to be like, cool, man. I guess you can have it. Yeah, I mean, you did build that with your own parts. So there's nothing we can do.

Our hands are tied. Your Radio Shack bill was through the roof. Radio Shack. I'm a thousand. Radio Shack. You know, the other thing too about Musk, you know, we're talking about Musk a lot, you know, because it's mostly about him.

But, you know, when you talk about the power that some of these people have, there was a part of that other article that we read where they're talking about him just sticking his followers on people, right? You know, and then he has, there's no repercussions for that. And that's a thing that can happen on social media so easily. And it can turn an entire, you know, it can turn your life into shit. It can turn your life into absolute shit if you get dogpiled online. Absolute shit.

And so the idea that, you know, we just let those people get away with that. We just let him get away with that. And he owns that platform. So he can dogpile whoever he wants. It doesn't matter. You can't throw him off the platform. And there's no teeth outside of the platform

to do anything about it. Nothing. So we're in a really bad situation. And if they start doing the things that they look like they're doing, which is basically saying, no, we're not going to content moderate anymore. Anything goes.

We're in a real deep shit because I thought they were turning that ship around. And they're not. They're not. They're not. They've all just said like, fuck it, we're seeding the battlefield. Oh,

that was great guys. Musk is too powerful and we're seeding the battlefield. Anyway, if you'd like to be a patron, you can join us at patreon.com slash dissonance pod or you can go to

dissonancepod.com and there's a to be a patron link there. You can check that out. One of us works for the show. So it's helpful if you become a patron, it really helps us out, helps pay several salaries, pay three salaries with this show. And so we would very much appreciate it if you became a patron. We are going to be back Monday with a regular show, but we're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. be back Monday with a regular show, but we're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue,

hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive.

Doubt even this. All information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information, and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you. you