Elon, you busted. Shot your wad on a libertarian free market dream and everyone hates it. Could of told you. Ask the Rumsfeld crew who screwed up Iraq. So now it's time to realine your priorities. Give up Mars.

I don't think space mining is that far out using slow harvest. Find a watery rockpile near a larger metal rock. Send a small tug to the rockpile to harvest reaction mass. Take mass & match orbit with metal. Then slowly guide it in as a gravity tug to somewhere more convenient (moon?).

The wealth class dreams of a market capitalism free of regulation or obligation. Anything not profit driven is anathema. They ultimately fail because of capitalism's intrinsic deficits; tragedy the commons and negative externalities. This failure always ends in pitchforks.

Elon's hold on Trump is the logical conclusion to Citizens United where Alito, who believes in papal kings, opened the "money is speech" floodgate. Now money is government and Elon owns all of us.

William Gibson must have a crystal ball. His cyberpunk novels, particularly Mona Lisa Overdrive, explore a post constitutional technostate during the rise of AI. Sound familiar? I think it's Elon's dream for all of us.

Just watched Lei's Real Talk on Youtube. Fascinating report using official data together with video posts suggesting a population decline during covid of between 150 and 200 milion. Demographics minus 5.5% in all ages and 20% for 60+.That's over 10% of the population of China! Dead.