Feeding the crocs
It was, I think, Winston Churchill who said appeasement is like throwing others to a crocodile in the hope that it will eat you last.
Which reminds me of the role that the tech giants are playing in the Trump administration. Not just Musk but a whole host of the top tech companies in America and therefore the world were just desperate to have Trump re-elected. Pretty shamelessly they seem to have done so because they wanted to pay even less tax on their billions.
Well, those tax cuts are to be funded, in part, by an attack on the massively successful science base in America. Universities are having grants worth billions threatened and pulled because of spurious allegations over wokeness or protests. Government science departments are being shredded by DOPE and the health department has been taken over by a vaccine denier, who is not happy to be persuade others about his views but is demanding obedience to them from real experts.
The man is so stupid you wouldn’t let him look after your cat, but the main point is what do these tech billionaires think is happening?
A few like Bill Gates have publicly stated in the past that they would never have achieved their huge success if they had not been lucky enough to have been born, raised, educated and to work in the USA. Gates is even intending to leave a large part of his fortune to the State as a result.
The others, well they are exactly what you would expect from self made billionaires, they think everything they achieved was down to them, their genius and their super human abilities. Like the robber barons of the late 19th century they believe their own hype, and have no idea that they have also been dependent on ground breaking research by independent academics, an educated workforce, government support for science and technology, defence spending etc etc.
And given the circles they move in no one is going to put them right. Which is why the evisceration of the US university sector, which is only just starting, will come as such a shock to them, eventually.
America’s continual ability to re-invent its economy is based on many things but an excellent university system is certainly one of them, especially for tech. Take that away and discourage the brightest and best students and academics from coming to your country, pester foreign researchers, dismantle vaccine research, close down government standards bureaus and see what happens.
They may think letting the paranoid Luddite in the White House destroy science is a price worth paying for more billions now, but the croc is eating them already, slowly and quietly and surely, and they are too dumb to notice.
Their arrogance and greed makes them vulnerable, but they also have to be completely uncaring and dumb not to recognise the role others played in their success.
They are rich enough that they can ride out any storm, but their successors are less likely to emerge in America now, Trump is making sure of that and they helped it happen.
From Jonty Bloom Media Ltd
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
You left ‘ignorant’ and then ‘twat’ out of “paranoid Luddite”
The news about the likely suspension of funding promising specific research into pancreatic cancer is shocking. If this happens let’s hope Europe picks up this research and if successful the vaccine should not be sold to the USA