Clair Kiernan retweeted
I’m not voting because Republicans have earned my vote.
I’m voting to buy our country enough time to replace the Republicans who don’t deserve my vote with Republicans who do.
If Democrats retake control of even one chamber, it’s game over.
Vote like your nation’s survival depends on it — because it does 🗳️
Clair Kiernan retweeted
I don't know how many people realize that if Elon Musk pulls off what he's building, it will be the biggest social reset in human history.
To understand why, you need to understand a concept almost nobody really gets: rent.
Yesterday I was talking about it with someone. I told them something simple: the moment a rent sets in, whatever kind it is, it gets paid for. Not necessarily in dollars. It gets paid for in stagnation.
So what is a rent?
A rent is income that doesn't come from the value you create, but from the position you hold. You don't win because you're better. You win because nobody is allowed to come and beat you.
The mechanism is almost always the same. A company succeeds. Then, instead of continuing to innovate, it goes for regulatory capture: licenses, standards, quotas, approvals, lobbying. It turns its lead into a wall. And behind that wall, new entrants can't get in.
But they're the ones who innovate. They're the ones who drive prices down, raise quality, create new wealth. When you block them, nothing dramatic happens. Nothing happens at all. Prices stop falling. Quality stalls. The pie stops growing. And when the pie stops growing, the only way to get richer is to take someone else's slice.
This is the point almost nobody sees: what people blame on "capitalism" (frozen inequality, a broken social ladder, the feeling that the game is rigged from the start) are the effects of that stagnation. The symptoms of rent. Not of capitalism. Capitalism is competition. Rent is its negation.
Now, Elon Musk.
He said that by 2036, money won't matter anymore. Most people read it as science fiction. I read it as an implicit critique of our entire monetary system.
His reasoning: AI and robots will produce more than we can possibly consume. So prices will collapse. Deflation, not inflation.
And this is where it gets interesting. For decades, the role of central banks has been to stabilize prices. In practice: to stop them from falling. Yet in an economy that innovates, the natural direction of prices is down. Look at what a computer cost thirty years ago.
Preventing prices from falling was the worst thing we could have done. Because it created an entire generation of rentiers. People who got rich not by creating something, but by owning something at the right time. An apartment. A plot of land. An asset shielded from falling prices by money printing and by rules that choke supply.
In a world not captured by the state, house prices would be extremely low.
And who would stay rich? The people who keep creating value. The ones whose wealth comes from the valuation of their company, because their company keeps innovating. Wealth you have to re-earn every single year.
That's where Elon's line really makes sense. In a world of deflationary abundance, human life would look like a video game. Or a game of chess.
If you're good and you start at the bottom, you can rise very, very fast. In a few years.
If you're bad and you inherit the inertia of a position you don't know how to maintain, against people who keep innovating, you fall very, very fast too.
No more rent. No more entitlement. Just your ability to create value, put back on the line every day.
It would be the greatest equalizer in human history.
Not equality of outcomes imposed from above. Equality of the playing field, imposed by abundance.
I think Elon Musk is reinventing the rules of capitalism. Or rather, bringing them back to their original form: the Austrian school. Real capitalism. Value creation as the only legitimate source of wealth.
And at the end of the road, something neither rent nor redistribution has ever achieved: the end of poverty on a global scale.
Clair Kiernan retweeted
It is fun every election season to watch people lie their asses off arguing about different candidates' morals, when in reality we are all gonna vote for which of the two corrupt assholes is more likely to vote for stuff we want and against stuff we don't want.
Nobody with a functioning brain has ever said "Gee whiz, the guy who agrees with me on 80% of the issues is kinda a dick, so I'm gonna vote for the godless communist psychopath who agrees with me on 0% of the issues and who hates me, everyone like me, and will actively work to destroy my way of life, because by golly he seems like an honest sort!"
That morality play bullshit is all to sway the low info mushy moderates who're too lazy and apathetic to get more than meme level understanding of basically fucking anything. So watching hardcore partisan pundits pretending they're swayed by a candidate's morals is a hoot.
Funny thing, as I said that you all thought of a different midterm race too, and you are all correct that it fits. :D
EDIT: You want morals in your candidates, your only chance is during the primary where you pick between the better of the two scumbags on your side, and not in the general where it is between your scumbag and the scumbag from Team Satan.
Clair Kiernan retweeted
Always funny when a business X account says stuff like this thinking they will not face backlash or consequences.
Clair Kiernan retweeted
oil was $147 in 2008 and diesel peaked under $5. oil is $95 now and diesel is $6.50.
how? it's not the oil, it's the diesel. the world is short, and everyone's bidding for ours. full breakdown:
Clair Kiernan retweeted
89 years ago today, The Hobbit landed on bookshelves and introduced the world to Bilbo Baggins.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was published in Britain on September 21, 1937, by George Allen & Unwin. The first printing was only 1,500 copies, with Tolkien himself providing the illustrations and designing the dust jacket. By December, every copy was gone.
The story itself started in a much less dramatic place. Tolkien was grading exam papers when he came across a blank page and wrote, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” He later said he didn’t even know why he wrote it.
Before the publisher took a chance on it, Stanley Unwin handed the manuscript to his 10-year-old son Rayner to read. Rayner liked it, wrote a favorable report, and was paid one shilling for the job.
The Hobbit became such a success that the publisher wanted more stories about hobbits. Tolkien started writing again, and years later that became The Lord of the Rings.
Not bad for a sentence scribbled on a blank exam paper.
Did you read The Hobbit first, or did you discover Middle-earth through the movies?
#TheHobbit #Tolkien
🤖 Made with AI
Clair Kiernan retweeted
I know of a real world example of this joke. My wife's late grandmother.
She was the terror of Tavares FL. She had been a school teacher in HS (when kids tend to get in trouble) for 40+ years before retiring, about 20 years of which was as the school 'disciplinarian' back when spanking was still a thing.
After her retirement, (and probably before) she had numerous police complaints against her but NOBODY wanted to take her to court.
Many of these involved 'discharge of a weapon in city limits.' See, the house she'd lived in for most of those years and nearly 40 years more (she lived to past 100) had originally been in country but the town had expanded. Not her fault!
And she had had a plus 80 year battle against squirrels who were trying to eat her figs. What else was she going to do but shoot them with a shotgun!
Problem being a major road (441) had been redirected past her house at some point.
And occasionally the pellets would head that way.
Story begins.
So, sheriff's deputy responds to a German couple from Canada visiting (or at least passing through) Lake County, FL. Their rent-a-car was struck by 'gunfire.' They give the location where the incident occurred.
He determines it's Mrs. Ragan again and ACTUALLY CHARGES HER AND TAKES HER TO COURT!
(He's new. He didn't last long.)
When she's in court the deputy tells his side of the incident and the judge, very cautiously, asks Mrs. Ragan if she has anything to say in her defense.
'I do, and I'd call you 'Your Honor' but your momma and daddy weren't married when they made you...'
'CASE DISMISSED! Deputy, prosecutor I'd like to see you at side-table!'
That old witch had blackmail on the entire county and she wasn't afraid to use it.
There was a drawer in the Chief of Police' office that was just filled with all her incident reports.
My MIL, who is the sweetest, kindest, most Christian woman on earth, once remarked when Nana Ragan (her mother) passed 105:
'That woman is never going to die. Heaven won't take her and Hell's afraid she'll take over.'
Lawyers should never ask grandmas a question if they aren’t prepared for the answer!
In a trial, a small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness, an elderly grandmother, to the stand.
He approached her and asked, "Mrs Jones, do you know me?"_
She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you, Mr Williams._ I've known you since you were a young boy, and frankly, you're a big disappointment to me''
''You lie, cheat on your wife, manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a big shot when you haven't the brains to realise you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you''
The lawyer was stunned! Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, "Mrs Jones, do you know the defence attorney?''
She again replied, "Why, yes, I do. I've known Mr Bradley since he was a youngster. He's lazy, bigoted, and has a drinking problem. He can't build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the worst in the state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him."
The defence attorney almost died.
The judge asked both lawyers to approach the bench and, in a quiet voice, said:
"If either of you rascals asks her if she knows me, I'll send you to jail for contempt of court.''
Clair Kiernan retweeted
You know you've made something good when someone takes your video, chops off your name at the end and posts it a year later.
Kind of love that this has gotten passed around. Did something right.
Clair Kiernan retweeted
We don’t have 60 votes for the House-passed SAVE America Act
But we do have a simple majority
Given the bill’s widespread bipartisan popularity, we could pass it with a simple majority—by debating it until it passes
I explain how in this clip
Share if you want this to happen
Clair Kiernan retweeted
Bullying journalists is more American than apple pie, baseball, and driving your car with the AC on and the windows down.
What this insufferable civilization killing shrew doesn’t understand is that her words are poison to the United States military.
What she also fails to tell you about are all the other women across services getting promoted to flag rank. But she won’t tell you that because it’s inconvenient to her midwit narrative.
Here’s a little history lesson about why merit isn’t some abstract goal that some people like and others don’t. It is NECESSARY to preserving civilization itself.
A civilization can spend years smothering excellence under layers of ideology. Then one day the ceiling caves in all at once.
That is what @PeteHegseth understands and the DEI priesthood does not.
The people screeching about “equity” think this is just another political knife fight. Just another turn of the wheel. They think standards are social constructs and institutions are toys that can be bent around ideology forever without consequence. But history says otherwise.
George Washington spent years trying to earn a royal commission. He fought for the British. Fought and bled for them. Then built formations the British themselves respected immensely (the Virginia Militia). None of it mattered enough to penetrate the arrogance of a system that had started rewarding class and proximity over raw ability.
The empire looked at a dangerous man and saw a provincial, a mere colonist. That was
THE most expensive personnel mistake in human history.
This is the eternal pattern. Once institutions stop rewarding merit, they stop attracting loyal excellence. Honor sours and ambition detaches from the state. The people strongest enough to save the institution begin quietly calculating whether it deserves to be saved.
The fools always think the danger comes from men with standards. NO! It comes from institutions that mock them.
The purpose of merit isn’t fairness. Nature doesn’t give a damn about fairness. Merit is survival. It is the mechanism that convinces talented and ambitious people to build civilizations instead of turning against the people strangling them.
What these people do not understand is that eventually a society produces someone with a critical mass of intelligence, ambition, discipline, and honor that cannot be contained forever by mediocrity, corruption, and ideological gatekeeping.
George Washington was not born wanting revolution. He wanted recognition, advancement and a path upward through merit and service.
Then one day they discovered they had not insulted a man. They had insulted a force.
That is the danger of arrogant systems. They mistake honorable people for obedient people. They assume talent will tolerate humiliation forever. They think ambition can be endlessly chained down without consequence.
IT CAN’T.
Eventually pressure becomes heat. Heat becomes rupture. Then the same ruling class that spent years mocking standards and walling off advancement suddenly stares in disbelief as the foundations begin to shake beneath them.
So yes, Hegseth is bringing back merit. Sometimes women get promoted, sometimes not. Same with men.
What do you care anyway? You can’t even define what a woman even is.
Stop dividing us. Or we will continue to stuff you into the digital locker of consequences like the divisive geek you are.
Over the last year the Navy has not promoted a single female officer from Captain to one-star admiral - an important read from
@TaskandPurpose taskandpurpose.com/news/navy…
Clair Kiernan retweeted
Hello Julia, sans aucune ironie, c'est top que tu prennes le temps de te renseigner. Mais le problème quand on lit Marx aujourd'hui, c'est qu'on prend pour acquis sa prémisse de départ, alors qu'elle a été démontée scientifiquement il y a plus de 150 ans.
Toute la pensée de Marx repose sur la théorie de la valeur-travail. L'idée que la valeur d'un bien vient de la quantité de travail nécessaire pour le produire. Si tu acceptes cette prémisse, alors oui, tout son raisonnement tient. Le capitaliste "vole" la plus-value du travailleur, l'exploitation est mathématique, la révolution est inévitable.
Sauf qu'en 1871, trois économistes (Menger en Autriche, Jevons en Angleterre, Walras en Suisse) découvrent indépendamment la même chose : la valeur n'est pas objective, elle est subjective et marginale.
Un verre d'eau dans le désert vaut une fortune. Le même verre à côté d'une rivière ne vaut rien. Le travail incorporé est identique. Donc le travail ne détermine pas la valeur. C'est le consommateur qui valorise un bien selon son utilité marginale dans un contexte donné.
Exemple concret : tu peux passer 1000 heures à tricoter un pull moche que personne ne veut. Selon Marx, ce pull a énormément de valeur (beaucoup de travail incorporé). Selon la réalité, il ne vaut rien. Parce que personne n'en veut.
À l'inverse, Bernard Arnault crée des milliards de valeur non pas parce qu'il "exploite" mais parce qu'il a su anticiper et organiser des désirs humains à grande échelle. La valeur est créée par la coordination, pas extraite par le vol.
Cette découverte (la révolution marginaliste) a invalidé tout l'édifice marxiste. Pas pour des raisons idéologiques, pour des raisons scientifiques. C'est pour ça que plus aucun département d'économie sérieux au monde n'enseigne Marx comme un cadre d'analyse valide. On l'enseigne en histoire de la pensée.
Maintenant, le truc important. Si ton intention en lisant Marx c'est d'aider les pauvres (c'est une intention noble), alors tu vas être surprise par ce qui suit.
Regarde les chiffres de la Banque mondiale. En 1820, 90% de l'humanité vivait dans l'extrême pauvreté. Aujourd'hui, moins de 9%. Cette chute historique ne s'est PAS produite dans les pays qui ont appliqué Marx. Elle s'est produite dans les pays qui ont libéralisé leur économie.
Chine post-1978, Vietnam post-1986, Inde post-1991, Pologne post-1989. À chaque fois qu'un pays libéralise, des centaines de millions de gens sortent de la pauvreté en une génération. À chaque fois qu'un pays applique Marx (URSS, Cambodge, Corée du Nord, Venezuela), c'est la famine et les goulags.
Ce n'est pas une opinion, c'est l'expérience la plus massive jamais menée en sciences sociales. Plusieurs milliards de cobayes humains, sur un siècle.
Donc paradoxalement, si tu aimes vraiment les pauvres, la position la plus cohérente n'est pas d'être marxiste. C'est d'être pour la liberté économique. Parce que c'est empiriquement la seule chose qui a jamais sorti massivement les gens de la misère.
Pour creuser, je te recommande trois lectures qui vont changer ta vision :
"La Loi" de Frédéric Bastiat (court, lumineux, gratuit en ligne)
"La Route de la Servitude" de Hayek
"Économie en une leçon" de Henry Hazlitt
Bonne lecture, et vraiment chapeau de chercher à comprendre plutôt que de rester dans tes certitudes. C'est rare.
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