Elon Musk supports eliminating voting rights for people without children

I support eating the rich; one bite at a time.

In french a bite is a.., well this sentence is funny to me.
- Tiny bite Elon

I support eliminating billionaires.

I’m not having kids because billionaires have bribed, lobbied, and misinformed this country, and by extension the world, to the brink of ruin
- Yeah but they are still having kids lol that's just what they want

crazy that this guy used to be the billionaire that wanted to use solar power and electric cars to make an impact against climate change, now he's half Murdoch, half Hitler

Why report on that guy's opinions as if they matter? He's rich, not a voting rights expert.

He's a fascist, too, which people conveniently ignore because he's rich and some of it might rub off on them.

For the same reason the opinion of someone like Rupert Murdoch matters. Its not about their viewpoint directly as an individual, its the fact they control massive platforms that can and do sway public opinions.
In murdochs case he's had an influential impact on British politics over the last 40 years and has used his media empire to act as a king maker.
Musk isn't as savvy or as intelligent as Murdoch but that doesn't mean is influential position should be ignored.
I don't like Elon Musk, but can you explain what makes him a fascist? I feel like people are really throwing that term around a lot and it's kind of concerning.
- I think eliminating voting rights for citizens without children is a fascist policy. Fascism is about enforcing a "correct" or "natural" hierarchy in society. Historically this has usually been about race, but has also included other factors (for example, disabled people were the first group targeted for extermination by the Nazis). For some of us, not having kids is a choice (and imo a valid one that shouldn't be punished by the state). But this sounds like an easy way to discriminate against same-sex couples, and all fascist systems have a history of doing that.
- It's a fair question, but you're probably getting downvoted because you "feel like people are really throwing that term around a lot and it’s kind of concerning". People are throwing the term around a lot because of all the fascism, and the fact that you find the term more concerning than the actual fascism is a bad look.
- I personally find Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco a good read. Fascism is really hard to pin down because it's quite a wide category due to the different tendencies in history.

I disagree with his fundamental premise that people with children can see the interests of society better.

I don't have children, but I have heard from every possible source that once you have children they become your world.

How is a person expected to reason clearly about the interest of millions of people when they are running an ancient biological program focused on the interests of a tiny family unit?

edit: I once saw the argument that having family doens't make you a better person. Having family makes you a ruthless user and taker on behalf of your family. Most of the stories you hear of people giving in to corruption, happen because those people can't afford to lose their jobs, because they have mouths to feed. Once you have kids, you must choose whether you value your kids over your civic responsibility, or vice-versa.

People with children won't have the time to research issues too deeply, and they will be sleep deprived for several years.
They make better sheep.

why republicans always find a way to deny voting for some random group?

Is this guy literally having a psychosis?

His actions lately (I say lately, loosely) have been absolutely batshit bonkers.

I'm enjoying the show none the less

Welcome to the rise of aggressively pro-natalism billionaires, because it's 2023 and we're not imploding fast enough.

Remember, you won't have a seat on the transport to Mars. And if you ever get there, it will be to work the mines.

I feel like these people are using the Handmaids Tale as a guide at this point...

Just stop giving this idiot attention, it's what he gets off on. You're all getting him off. If that's what you're into, fine but, if it's not, you're being taken advantage of.

Talk about unalienable rights to life and liberty

Most of the rights after the first 10 are 100% alienable in a naturalist sense. A man in the jungle will speak freely and associate voluntarily... A man in the jungle has a right to not be lorded over for more than 8 years by one individual (a la 25A, for instance)...? The verbiage becomes meaningless.
- Uh if a jungle cat wants you to shut the fuck up then your inalienable right to free speech won't protect you lol
- The US Bill of Rights only includes the first 10 amendments, so the 25A isn't included. It also doesn't itself contain "unalienable", that being only in the Declaration of Independence, and in the discussions around the proposal of the amendments.
  While the whole unalienable rights of all people that we're just stating as one country rather seems like Enlightenment ridiculousness and extremely pretentious, and I've certainly seen interpretations that are extremely hegemonic, such as arguing that the US Bill of Rights applies to all countries, it doesn't include later amendments.

Judging by how he treats his wives, he probably even wants to repeal women's right to vote.

Immediately read this headline and thought "Next, only married people should be having kids so realistically only the husband needs to vote since his wife should align with him". Followed by some good ol SA-style apartheid for the minorities.
- "Turns out non-landowners don't have much stake in the future"

Why oh why do we care what this cuck says? He’s not even a citizen.

We definitely shouldn't care what he says; He's probably just begging for attention. But he is a US citizen. A quick search shows he became one in 2002.
- I meant to say not born here so he can’t run for president. Clearly wasn’t thinking when I typed it out. Anywho, thank you for the correction.

How about we stop caring what that clown has to say?

I find it especially egregious the people who (rightfully) bash him, but continue to support his products such as Twitter and Tesla. Stop supporting him. Especially on Twitter. Advertisers have fled the platform. Some users have as well. If even 1/2 the people who claim to hate the guy just stopped using Twitter, the entire platform would collapse. Instead you people prop up that site by going to it.

People whine about how shitty the API has become and how shitty tech support is and how there's no one to talk to when they run into bugs - yet they keep paying Musk $42,000 a month for that privilege.

Not surprising anymore. The guy (like his father) has a insane breeding fetish. And never forget that his father groomed his own adopted daughter (that he know since she was a child) and has two kids with her 🤮.

People forget a huge side of this as well. It's not just being financial able to have kids but physically able. More and more people now days are seeking fertility treatment and having fertility issues. According to elon, those people would not have the right to vote.

People who go to college and then university and then intern somewhere to get a junior position and then a senior position are in their mid 30s when they're in a stable enough position to plan for kids.
By contrast, a lot of people who are happy with a high school degree have kids before they're 20.
This is not a value judgment, but separating people by when they're having kids segments the population of into very distinct strata.
It's not hard to guess why a billionaire who's running a right-wing social media platform would prefer a certain demographic.
- We waited until our 30s to have a child for a lot of reasons, and I'm glad we did it. We were more financially secure and had sowed our wild oats, so we were also not likely to go out and party. Elon was already financially secure when he had is first child. He has no idea how much a child costs in terms of money and in terms of what sort of life you want to live for most people.

It’s amazing he’s had sex 10 times. I don’t get what’s attractive about him in any form.

Money.
Grimes is pretty unappealing too, so maybe all of his children's mothers are similarly unappealing.

To think that not so long ago, this authoritarian, grifting man-child was hailed as the real-life Tony Stark. If the mask slips any further, even his remaining fanboys are going to find it difficult to defend him.

I don't think he has near as many fanboys as the musk circlejerkers on reddit always made it out to seem. I barely ever see anyone genuinely fanboy him anymore, at most many are neutral to him while still thinking he's an idiot.
I think reddit (and social media in general) just has a habit of giving megaphones to "the other side", no matter how small it actually is, so they can have someone to appear to argue against so it doesn't look like they're yelling at a wall.
- Not enough people point out he has bot farms at this disposal.
  https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-off-the-twitter-board-of-directors-the-tesla-twitter-bot-army-marches-on
  Old news, predates Twitter. His popularity is wildly over estimated. It's inflated. It's fake. Always was meme.
- I'm a big fan of SpaceX. I think they are doing amazing things that will make space allot more accessible. That being said he's definitely a douche.
He is kinda like that though, but more like Tony from the beginning of the first movie.
- “What if?” Tony where he goes from a decent guy to piece of shit instead of the other way around.

Why do republicans hate freedom so much?

Because they like two things: money and power.
If the people are free, they have less of both

what in the starship-troopers-ass fuck is this troll shit

at this point I'm not surprized, he gives a GIVE ME ATTENTION vibe hardcore, everything he does is against cultural standard.

At this point I have finally realised that Elon Musk is an attention-seeking cunt and we should probably start to just ignore him, at least for a while.

However, I've got some ideas! Instead of people without children, how about we restrict the vote to the children themselves? How does that sound, Elon? Nobody over 20 should get a vote because they only have... pthh, I dunno, a few decades, 90 years at most left on this planet, so fuck them. Am I right? Maybe we could give everyone a voting point for every year they have left assuming an average lifespan of 75 years - perhaps women could have more points as they generally live longer. That would be fair, no? We should also completely take money out of politics and stop billionaires and large corporations from undermining democracy too! Don't you think that's a great idea?

I don't want people to ignore him. I want him in the news every day, pissing people off and agitating the masses.
Every time Musk opens his mouth the screams "eat the rich!" get louder. Why on Earth would I want that to stop?

Does this apply to boomers who no longer have kids that are under the age of 18? You mean they still get to vote? Then fuck off Elon no one wants to buy your stupid tesla coils.

Hey why stop there? Let's also not allow voting for people that have been disowned by their kids like musk has. And no voting for religious people who think earth is just a pit stop before heaven/hell so there's no need to improve life on earth at all.

Ah yes, “I don’t want to say gay and intersex people shouldn’t be allowed to vote, but I do want it to happen.”

Anyways I’m sterile and drive the most fuel efficient vehicle practical, don’t eat meat, and have made other sacrifices for future generations to have a habitable planet. Musky here has a private jet and at least one of his kids hates him

Republicans sure are obsessed with eliminating people’s voting rights. So let’s remove all Republicans from office instead by voting them out in the next election. ✊

Yeah, only the desperate, finantially dependent on shitty jobs to feed their youngling should vote. Only them and the wealthy people that provide said shitty jobs. That will surely save what little democracy is left. You know what? People that make as much money as Musk should not be allowed to vote or to donate in order to influence campaings. These dudes have no real nationality, they are not tied anywhere and don’t have the best interest of any nation at heart. Billionaires are practically a walking, talking, foreign power operating within your country’s borders with almost total impunity. A self-deluded eugenecist foreign power at that.

They took our ability to have children through monetary strain, caused by corporate greed, now they think we should lose voting rights lol...

I support 100% tax over $1 billion. If you can't manage on a billion dollars, the rest would be better spent on others, anyway.

It's generally just beneficial for ultra high tax rates as wealth goes up. That's what actually incentivizes "trickle down economics". As the uber wealthy approach the tax limit it stops making sense for them to horde the wealth. And, instead of letting the tax man get it most of them decide to put their money back into the businesses or charities or whatever.
They don't actually have 1 billion dollars tho, they have stocks with an estimated value of 1 billion dollar. I don't think there's an effective way to tax that.
- More realistically you can make more tax brackets for levels of income higher than $500k. Cash income regularly exceeds this for CEOs.
  You can also pass laws restricting how much can be paid out in ways other than cash both in value and percentage of shares. Or increase capital gains tax further past certain limits (this has already happened in 2013). Or have a graduated tax on loans taken against certain collateral (like stocks, bonds).
  The laws themselves can get a bit complicated but such is law. There are plenty of ways to make sure the rich pay their fair share. They just don't want us doing it.
- Stop letting people own more than 1 share of a company

Point would be that if you have kids you have skin in the game and would make more responsible choices with your vote. Same has been said about military service, which also makes a lot of sense. Not practically, of course, but the point highlights the fact that we could have people who are unqualified to make decisions, even if its electing officials, making decisions that impact everyone, including and maybe more importantly, the generations to come.

In a true democracy there is no mechanism for qualifiying or handling quality control for the voting population, and so for elected officials and their policies. This is why we are a democratic republic, and Elon is just saying if you're going to be involved in electing officials you should have skin in the game.

We already have requirements to voting and if you think about it, they are in the same spirit.

Stop. Feeding. The. Troll!

FrEe SpEeCh

What happened to free speech absolutist

What happened to free speech absolutist
It turns out he's a disingenuous shit-bag. But you didn't need me to tell you that.

Wait till he finds out, that parents are an ethnically much more diverse group than the general public.

"Today, children of color represent a 53% majority share of the US child population, and more children than ever before identify as multiracial, non-Hispanic white. "

Is he racist or are you racist?
- I don't know about the person you replied to, but he's definitely a racist.
  https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-calls-us-media-schools-racist-whites-asians-newspapers-drop-rcna72437

I've heard people make this kind of argument before: 'People with children are actively invested in the future of the nation. People without children are on a 100year free-trial.'

Its not unthinkable, tbh.

It's pretty damn unthinkable when it excludes most gay people.
I have kids but this is such a dumb take. Some of the worst people that don’t give a shit about anything or anyone other than themselves have a kids. It’s not hard. The barrier to entry is super low.
On the other hand, some of the most genuinely thoughtful and kind people in the world have no kids whether by choice or otherwise.
This would be a horrible way to do things.
- Fair enough. Its not my position, either... However this is the logic for the idea. Seemingly nobody even tried to rationalize this in-thread, lol. Its literally not-un-thinkable :p

Elon Derangement Syndrome

Don't non-parents have more stake in the future than parents? Parents always need immediate help, they don't care about the long term consequences, that will be faced in 10, 25, 50 years.

No way, it wasn't until after I had my kid that I really started ***seriously ***thinking about how shit would be 80+ years in the future after I was dead. Like maybe I had some passing thoughts about the future before that but it was always very theoretical and not a concrete thing to consider.
- What about 15-20 years from now? Most parents I know are just struggling to get through the week and want any help they possibly can.

I feel like "has children" probably correlates with "has stable income", which makes this classism by another name.

I think the literal opposite is true.
"In 2021, women in households with an income below the poverty threshold had the highest birth rate at 72 births per 1,000 women."
https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-poverty-status-in-the-us/#:~:text=This%20statistic%20shows%20the%20birth,72%20births%20per%201%2C000%20women.
I think it has more to do with the massive reduction in the reserve labor army in the last few years due to people dying of and becoming disabled by COVID. The remaining labor force is smaller and is therefore better able to negotiate higher wages and better working conditions, while employers are left scrambling to fill empty positions, especially in industries that have historically been awful to work in like retail and food service. Forcing and coercing reproduction will lead to an increased reserve labor army, reduce the power of workers collectively and individually, and reduce the number of workers who are able to participate in disruptive organization (ie unionization) purely due to a lack of surplus time and resources. It also has the effect of oppressing those of us labeled "women" due to our bodies being the means of reproduction, which is a win for the right wing in particular both economically and ideologically.

It's crazy to me that we live in a world where money and celebrity implies influence, and credentials don't mean much on a general public stage. This man can tweet something insane and its taken as a serious discussion point.

Given that money can buy influence, it is a legitimate risk to society, I get that. But how crazy is that as a concept?

Ever seen the movie Glass Onion? There's a character who is modeled partly on Musk, and it's spot on.
It's as much a function of human evolution as it is of how our society functions. And hell, isn't that dependent on human evolution too?
We evolved to survive, not to run a society. We've done pretty well overall despite that problem, but the wheels are coming off.
- Humans have evolved to be social cooperative creatures not greedy selfish hoarders, and it is only in the last few thousand years, a blip in human history, that these systems developed by, and that only reward, greed and selfishness, have been around.
  Don't let these systems and the people who benefit from them (and those who have been propagandised to believe they benefit from it but really don't) fool you in to thinking any of this is natural.

He's so damn creepy. First the pedo thing, then the breeding thing, now this. I'm beginning to think Musk is the pedophile.

Not saying he isn't, because we know he's a sex offender, but I think the breeding thing is more about Great Replacement, which really boils down to racist megalomania.
There's a reason Elon Musk thinks like that. Apparently his father's current wife is elon's step sister. Apparently he groomed her from a young age to be a future wife. And this is not something unique with elon's father. His whole breeding kink also comes from his sicko father. The reason he thinks everyone else is fucked up is because he is.

It's an academic exercise discussing the democratic system and how most voters are not looking at the long-term health of the country that they are leaving to their children or the children of others. I find nothing objectionable to Elon expressing his opinion, which by the way was very short and to the point. What's more concerning is how people get so riled up about these things and talking about Elon and how much they dislike him. The masses are being entertained and you are all falling for the bait.

It’s an objectively fascist belief to hold, there’s no need to tie it to the rest of Musks bullshit, because it’s disgusting enough on its own.
- What I find disgusting is not anybody’s expressed opinion on anything no matter how objectionable I may find it. What I do find disgusting is a political system that no longer works for the greater good of the society as a whole. The voting system is there to give the voting public the illusion that they hold the keys to change. Government and its servants for the lost part can disregard those votes. What matters is $$$ and how these $$$ can affect elections by a voting public that for the most part is uninformed and falls easily for simple slogans that the $$$ get repeated often enough till people believe them to represent the truth.
- I don't think that viewing the world through the else of "racist or not" is necessarily the best way to approach a thought experiment. There is an old, perpetually mis-attributed quote along the lines of "it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it".
  I happen to take personal objection with the notion that felons can't vote in the USA. It provides a path to disenfranchise undesirable votes by perhaps abusing the law, or creating laws specifically to diminish the voting capacity of groups. I think that's "facist", but simply applying that label without a good faith explanation towards that "what" and "why" doesn't lead to anyone learning anything about anything.
  I've heard support of adding upper age limits on legislators under the justification of "they'll be dead before they ever feel the results of their bad decisions". I don't see that argument as fundamentally different.
  To be clear, I am not in favour of anyone's vote getting taken away.
  But I AM in favour of grown up discussions about how as a species, our ability to transform the earth has reached a point that our decisions can echo so far into the future, so far past our own lifespans, that it's become way too easy to let future generations hold the bag.
  We already see it financially. The boomers policy absolutely pulled the ladder up behind them buttfucking millenials and genz.
  The headline isn't"you must have children to vote", thats controversial and a bait solution.
  Don't fall for it. accept and consider the actually existant issue that the incentive model for legislation who's effects push past the lifetime of decisioning stakeholders is broken... Because it is.
  "A society is great when old men plant trees under who's shade they will never sit."
  How do we make THAT happen?

I don't, because this will be used to steal millions of dollars from undocumented workers who keep the American economy from collapsing.

Considering that he doesn't give a shit about his own children, this is typical Musk-Irony (tm)

I support trebucheing this guy into the sun.

This comment is more newsworthy imo
- He can even do it himself when he blasts off to Mars!! JUST KEEP GOING, BUDDY

He's not a politician and has shown no interest in being one, so why are people talking about this? So tired of seeing his face all over Lemmy/KBin

When he wants to take away my voting rights because I dont' have any kids, he's talking politics. Have you never seen a person able to buy a Congressman who doesn't like your existence???

I would have a kid just to vote then ditch the poor bastard at twitter HQ.