That number is fake. There's no way to add up to anything within two orders of magnitude without adding extremely specious externalities and permitting rights.
The biggest ones by far is the lack of a carbon tax and, as a sibling comment notes, not having to pay for the health effects of their product. If you factor in the likely costs of climate-induced deaths, the total costs will be almost certainly be more than the total value of all fossil fuels ever extracted. The lack of these costs is therefore the ultimate subsidy in that the entire global industry, and in a sense all human civilization as currently constituted, is premised on keeping these costs unaccounted for. Presumably this is the kind of thing you mean by "specious" though.
Still there are lots of carve outs for the way extraction equipment and other capital costs are accounted for in tax law that are effectively direct subsidies to the oil industry. These won't end the practice of fossil energy use like ending the big ones would, but any little bit helps. Would also be nice to stop leasing out government land to do this incredibly destructive thing with it -- at least make drillers own the land or lease it from a private owner.
OK, so what you really mean by "remove the subsidy" is "tax oil companies seven trillion dollars a year"? That may be a challenge for an industry that sold $2 trillion in the US last year, but if we're making up numbers, it'll work out.
But the larger issue is that this is driven by international emissions, so whatever the US does is essentially irrelevant to that outcome.
> In other words, a job that is traditionally considered to be a basic service of the government is now being privatized by people that nobody knows if we can really trust.
How on earth is it the government's job to protect people's software? It's a mere digital product, not human life or property.
Besides, people also buy padlocks and door locks for safety. Wiz is no different.
A dumb conspiracy theory. Israel has mandatory conscription (barring some cases), and many of the smart ones are recruited into Unit 8200. It's not surprising that they go on to start cyber companies once conscription ends, given that's a major focus of the Unit.
For me it's enough that if Chinese intelligence officers were founding software security companies, I'd not use the product. It's the same idea for Israel. Conscription just makes it worse, because more of their citizens are then suspect.
Not supporting people who take part in the crime of persecution, is a nice side effect.
So you think they shouldn't be trusted because they have ties with a foreign nation or they should be trusted because their foreign nation is really a puppet state of your nation?
It's unclear to me what you're thinking besides the wish to troll.
Which is sadly bad. Those startups are vacuuming up the talent from IDF (unit 8200 for example), the co-founder of Wiz is 8200 alumni. The results are evident with a complete failure of intelligence on Oct 7. Head of 8200 unit was busy writing book about AI stretegy and recruits see IDF's cyber intelligence units as a spring board to startup world and not about dedicating themselves to protecting the country.
I seriously doubt this is why. Israelis love saying “it’ll be fine, don’t worry about it” and then hoping for the best. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out this way, no matter what kind of elite unit you’re associated with.
> We lose a democratic element of corporate America by surrendering our votes to a couple big custodians that really don't care either way.
By design, though, the people who invest with Vanguard do that precisely to offload decisions to experts and focus on other things.
Passive investors have neither the time nor expertise to monitor and vote on corporate decisions, so we're stuck with the current system regardless.
I think Intel is a bureaucracy that's gradually eating itself. Maybe it's harsh, but such companies might not be worth saving. They should be left to fizzle out and another should take their place.
The beauty of capitalism is that giants can fall down to earth, and smaller startups can take their place. Rinse and repeat.
> On the international stage, if you have to put your hand out for assistance, it means you have no say. It is a big advantage for Singapore not to have to beg for aid. We have no need for assistance or loans that will subject us to external pressure. We are not dependent on any single external partner. And perhaps even more importantly, and you have just heard Minister Ng’s speech earlier, we do not depend on any external country to defend Singapore. We have the capability and the will to defend ourselves.
The above is from a recent speech by Singapore's foreign minister; https://www.mfa.gov.sg/Newsroom/Press-Statements-Transcripts.... I think it's a reason why a handful of Westerners detest Singapore: that it developed without being dependent on them. "How dare they?!"
A fitting example is that Europe is currently learning a lesson about the implications of depending on an external partner (the U.S.) for defense. It means being bullied at will by that country and having no say.
The difference is that both Singapore and the EU did, or start doing, things by themselves. Just blaming the US for their misdeeds might feel good but does exactly nothing to help the bullied further.
Musk [ Errol - the father ] studied electromechanics at the University of Pretoria, worked as an electrical and mechanical engineering consultant, and developed properties, especially retail and office property development.
His lucrative engineering business took on "large projects such as office buildings, retail complexes, residential subdivisions, and an air force base." He also owned an auto parts store, at least half a share in an emerald mine, and even "one of the biggest houses in Pretoria"
In 1979, Musk and his wife Maye divorced. Maye's book recalls that at the time of the divorce, he owned two homes, a yacht, a plane, five luxury cars, and a truck.
One of Elon's grandfather's was a senior politician in the (white) S.A. Government, the other grandfather a staunch Hitler supporting nazi who left Canada for SA for better acceptance.
No one disputes that Errol Musk had money (including Elon himself), but, as the link illustrates, it was from an engineering business and not from apartheid mines as implied by the OP.
Errol said his children grew up watching him sell emeralds all over the world, after he had them cut in Johannesburg. However, he always stuck to the rules of the trade: contact the potential buyer, meet in a neutral public place ("for obvious reasons"), and be subtle about exchanging money for gems.
Errol Musk had multiple lines of income, including NSRs from three emerald mines that made a return.
Because it’s true. Aid makes governments less accountable to their people and more accountable to donors.
It has made many countries refuse to create robust healthcare/education/military (etc.) systems with local resources and instead depend on foreign resources that can be zapped away anytime and are often used to control local leaders to do the donor’s bidding.
Many locals in aid-dependent countries (including mine) say the same thing, yet it seems do-good Westerners want to force people to collect their aid.
All the aid to Haiti, Afghanistan, and many other countries…their only achievement is now needing even more aid.
Yes, a famine is a special case where aid is necessary in the short term, but it’ll be a disaster and destroy local agriculture output if continued in the long term..
If you're mentioning Haiti, it's only fair to add that they were saddled with a crippling debt to France (later to the US - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_independence_debt) from the very beginning of their existence, and many of their current problems can be traced back to that. It's important to see both sides, especially now that it's clear how corrosive this narrative is if you're looking at Musk's attitude toward USAID...
We’re likely in agreement. What Haiti needs is investment in domestic industries to be competitive in a capitalist world.
These investments can be provided by foreigners, but it’s ultimately the locals that need to rise up to the occasion and use it well. Unfortunately, Haiti is rooted in endemic corruption, stemming in part from aid dependency.
There’s no point of giving aid to Haiti while maintaining the status quo of the country being a little more than a raw material supplier to richer countries.
My exact complaint is that many countries give aid to feel good…and also for the recipient to do the donor’s bidding instead of what’s right for their countrymen.
Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. If Haitian leaders remain more accountable to foreign donors than their local population, there’s no incentive to improve.
I cannot imagine a way out of this, the way you put it. Not giving any aid today means condemning masses to death. Giving some aid today means feeding the masses and maintaining the corruption. The foreign donors cannot condition the aid, or they theoretically could but have zero leverage for actually following up, because see above - they could only stop it, which nobody wants. I'm aware that it's common to blame the foreign forces for any bad situation, but again, I see zero ways to change the status quo just by modulating the foreign aid. Or you mean the Haitian leaders are paid exactly to keep the population half-starving?
This is one of the aims behind Fair Trade. Its giving a fair price to local producers for products, which means you can help people without running into issues of perverse incentives, dependency, lack of self-determination. That's the theory at least... For items not easily produced in the west e:g tea, coffee, chocolate, bananas, we try wherever possible to buy Fair Trade.
> Not giving any aid today means condemning masses to death.
It’s not the responsibility of foreigners to feed other countries’ populations. Those countries have governments made up of adults (often voted in by the masses) who can take decisions for themselves…it’s their fault if their citizens are left to starve, not foreigners.
> Or you mean the Haitian leaders are paid exactly to keep the population half-starving?
It’s not intentional, but that’s what inadvertently happens. There’s little incentive to find unique domestic solutions to long-running issues when foreign saviors are willing to cover for the Haitian government repeatedly.
At some point, we should admit that it’s arrogant for foreigners thinking they’re responsible for another country’s problems and should be the ones solving them, not the locals.
The above reasoning is what caused the U.S. to spend trillions of dollars on wars and so-called nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, all to no avail.
It helped neither the locals nor the U.S., where these wars have contributed to political turbulence with dire consequences.
"it’s arrogant for foreigners thinking they’re responsible for another country’s problems and should be the ones solving them, not the locals." - I agree with that but, to me that isn't an argument against providing targeted, life-saving aid to those in a terrible situation, whilst try to be mindful that the locals should be listened to and often in charge of it, and that aid can have negative effects if done badly. To give an example, I'm sure no-one in a disaster zone worries about arrogance when they see a doctor arrive from Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). But hopefully MSF once they've dealt with the initial problem, are trying to help locals train up in medical techniques that they themselves want and work in the local environment. From what I've seen, I believe they do just that.. probably not always perfectly.
> it seems do-good Westerners want to force people to collect their aid
"do-good"? No, you are confusing legitimate aid with "the first one's free". The fake aid is often designed to create dependency and send large part of the money back to the donors.
I think maybe there's an important different ethical and practical situation with genuinely foreign aid (rich countries sending resources to poor countries which have their own government, systems, regulations etc) vs a colonizing power that's effectively already in control of the area in which they helped form the crisis. The British were exporting food from Ireland and India in both of those crises. British land speculators bought Irish land and raised the rents and evicted farmers -- i.e. people already engaged in producing food were forced to stop.
So foreign aid may make governments less accountable to their people. But colonial governments don't start off being accountable to their people. The "aid" that the British ruling class said would create dependence can only be understood in the context of the intense extractive practices that were already in place.
> Yes, a famine is a special case where aid is necessary in the short term, but it’ll be a disaster and destroy local agriculture output if continued in the long term.
... but because Ireland was still exporting food to Britain, "aid" in the form of keeping Irish food to feed Irish people would clearly still have supported local agriculture. Not evicting farmers would have supported local agriculture. This is structurally different from shipping American grain to Afghanistan.
True, I was referring to the modern context of aid, not colonial times with extractive economies.
I don’t think it’s fair to apply the modern concept of aid to previous eras of colonialism, wars, and frequent famines. It was a different ballgame I feel I wouldn’t be qualified to comment on except I experienced it first-hand.
Do you have anything better to offer them? Because Malaysia can definitely not build these data centers without foreign investment..
As someone from a certain poor country, I can attest that your tone sounds very condescending. It makes it look like such countries lack the agency to choose for themselves and need a savior to swoop in and rescue them from their predicament.
Politicians were also responsible for initially subsidizing solar to usher in the current boom.
Corporations invested heavily in solar production to create the cheap panels that are being installed rapidly.
Just because some politicians and corporations do things we don’t like doesn’t make them in general “the biggest enemy of humanity.”