Comment on Elon Musk says he needs $1 trillion to control Tesla's robot army. Yes, really.

beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Sociopathic Oligarchs have a serious form of OCD/ Hoarding Disorder, that makes them crave even more money, no matter how much they have.

  If they were hoarding cats, or rusty cars, or old refrigerators, or piles of scrap metal, etc., the authorities would intervene, and get them help for their mental illness.

  But if they are hoarding money on a historically mind-blowing scale, they call them a successful businessman, and give them government grants and tax breaks.

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  • CandleTiger@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    If they were hoarding cats, or rusty cars, or old refrigerators, or piles of scrap metal, etc., the authorities would intervene, and get them help for their mental illness.

    This is a common misconception.

    “The authorities” (USA viewpoint) are really extremely unlikely to intervene in any way at all with hoarding, and even more extremely unlikely to provide any kind of useful mental health intervention.

    If the hoarding is causing a public safety hazard then the authorities may eventually start fining the hoarder until they do whatever is minimally required to clear the hazard.

    Much much more likely, if the hoarder is renting, the landlord may evict them which is one of the many paths to homelessness.

    But by far the most common outcome is that the authorities do nothing whatsoever to stop or help with harmful hoarding behavior.

    In this way, crazy aunt Florence and Elon Musk are similar.

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    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Perhaps, but it doesn’t change the fact that these people have a very serious mental illness so massive that it literally affects the rest of the world. They must be dealt with properly, not encouraged to lean into their destructive mental illness by funding their follies with taxpayer money.

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  • beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The kleptocracy in action.

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