Elon Musk talks about being pro small government

[fatjohn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UNCdh05ck8&feature=player_embedded

Watch from 12:00 onwards. He steals a couple of ron paul sentences. Maybe a possible future endorsement? I know his paypal buddy was openly libertarian.
Or watch the whole thing, if you do not know him yet you should. He's a very brilliant entrepreneur. Founder of paypal, tesla and SpaceX.

Ow yeah he just announced the production of the biggest rocket since the Saturn V. Just so you know what the whole thing is about.

[tpreitzel]

Personally, I find PayPal one of the most intrusive and obnoxious businesses imaginable. I avoid PayPal like a plague. Even Tesla just might survive if their SUV reaches production. ;)

[fisharmor]

Personally, I find PayPal one of the most intrusive and obnoxious businesses imaginable. I avoid PayPal like a plague. Even Tesla just might survive if their SUV reaches production. ;)

I've read that the original intent behind PayPal was to replace USD as an online currency, and that he wasn't real happy with the way things went down.
Given that anything to do with money gets you immediate federal intrusion and obnoxiousness, I'm guessing that was just passed on to the customer.
Point being, in the absence of Leviathan's intrusions, a non-intrusive business policy would be more profitable.

[Sakimoto]

I used to follow SpaceX and Elon Musk very closely. I was very enthusiastic about the Falcon line of rockets and the potential of commercial space in general. I thought it was great that a company outside of the military industrial complex was competing and taking the risks involved in developing new space launch hardware. However, I stopped following when I received an email letter from Elon Musk ( I was on the mailing list ) thanking people who supported a big stimulus spending bill because SpaceX was a beneficiary of part of that money. His company has also received hundreds of millions of dollars from the NASA COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) program to develop his rockets. I realized SpaceX wasn't a great example of the free market at work and Elon Musk definitely has no problem taking tax payer money to benefit his company. In fact, he has admitted that it is a lot harder to develop a rocket system than he realized and that his new line won't realize the cost decrease per kilo to LEO that he touted in the beginning. I think the system is nominally cheaper than a rocket from one of the major players. I guess I just became disillusioned about Elon Musk and SpaceX.

[archangel689]

His company also has to survive in a non-free market society, so he'd be stupid not to take the money unless it also came with ridiculous regulations and bureaucrats that would kill the company

[Johncjackson]

Personally, I find PayPal one of the most intrusive and obnoxious businesses imaginable. I avoid PayPal like a plague. Even Tesla just might survive if their SUV reaches production. ;)

That's mostly after the government got its hands on it, and then eBay. I remember the early days- I had an x.com account/card and then Paypal. It was promising, but you know.... the government.