Elon isn't mad at Trump, he's mad at the laws of thermodynamics

Sorry I'm late: was working on an effortpost on the Ukrainian raid on Russia's strategic bomber fleet — I figured that would be the craziest thing to happen in at least a month. But then Elon Musk accused the President of being a pederast and called for a coup.

The ground-level controversy is somewhat mysterious to me:

The “big beautiful bill” is right on the margin of failure.

The Democratic Party still exists, they control half of Congress, and they're never, ever going to vote for spending cuts. The Democratic Party exists to expand the scope of government and disburse benefits to clients. Their coalition has no other principles.

So it's not clear what Elon wants, exactly. The BBB has, empirically, as much cut spending as Congress will accept.

The alternative is to let the Trump tax cuts expire, lose out on border funding, and keep blood flowing to various libtard NGO tumors.

Elon (as well as Trump) is up against the fundamental logic of liberal democracy:

Americans no longer have any common identity as countrymen. They don't view the nation as a commonwealth, a patrimony that they owe to their children.

Even conservative and nationalistic people who would like to enjoy that kind of reciprocal loyalty have no such expectations.

Under those conditions, every commons is simply an unclaimed resource — and if you don't spend it, your internal enemies will.

This is how things inevitably unfold if you think of your country as, say, “a professional sports team", instead of an extended family.

There's never an incentive to vote against spending.

Guys like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie have the freedom to grandstand precisely because they're marginal. If they had any capacity to actually deny the flow of benefits to their constituents, they'd immediately be chucked out of Congress.

This game begins well before any of these people run for Congress, and if they are truly uncomfortable playing it, they get selected out. If they were heroes, they wouldn't be there.

And even if Elon prevailed on the party to torpedo this bill, they would be clobbered by Dems in 2024 and 2028, who would promise to turn the spigot back on and End the Chaos.

Elon is now pitching a socially liberal, fiscally conservative “centrist" party.

But just as there are no low-energy rich countries, there are no libertarian voters.

To be clear, I am not saying, “Libertarianism is currently unpopular”. This is not a contingent problem of education that we could solve by making high school kids watch John Stossel.

There are no libertarian voters.

Most voters don’t work. They aren’t net taxpayers. As long as it is possible to increase spending and cut taxes, parties that propose to do so will defeat parties that propose the reverse, because the median voter is always playing with the house’s money.

Elon likes to push his engineers by asking, “is it against the laws of physics?”

Like the relationship between wealth and energy use, the unpopularity of libertarian politics is rooted in thermodynamic reality: there's always more energy in political movements that eat the commons than in movements that abstain.

Campaigns like Javier Milei's in Argentina only work after the commons is utterly spent and the socialists have no more gibs to distribute. (Even for him it'll be a close thing.)

Elon's right that we’re headed for a crisis.

The government is spending $10B a day (or was, a year ago). The debt cannot be repaid under our present economic and political paradigm.

Our options are a) explicit default, b) implicit default through hyperinflation, or c) a decade of austerity and managed inflation.

The first two would be a global national security and humanitarian catastrophe.

The third is by far the best option for everyone, but no democratically elected government could survive it.

A government that derived its authority from other principles might — but Trump is the only remotely credible candidate for something like that, and there's nothing to be gained from undermining him.

Besides which, BBB directly funds the law enforcement resources that are currently testing the waters and building capacity for that kind of political transition.

In any case, if there is not an orderly reform of the American political system, there will be a chaotic and violent one in the aftermath of default.

Bottom line: I know a handful of you have Elon's number — America needs you to gift him some Hoppe on Audible, immediately.

What does this mean for us?

Maybe nothing. Maybe Elon and Trump are playing 4D chess. Maybe they’ll kiss and make up tomorrow. Trump has brought people back into the fold after more acrimonious arguments than this.

But at face value, the incident suggests that Elon is still (still!) basically a 90s tech libertarian: eternally at war with human nature, eternally commanding the tide.

We may not need Elon to get it, but it would be a lot cooler if he did.

Fortunately: while there are zero cases of a democracy waking up en masse and becoming libertarian, there are many, many cases of smart libertarians waking up and rejecting democracy. It can still happen.

In the meantime, we need to prepare for our leaders to remain unimaginative, and for the ship of state to continue lurching toward the cliff.

We have to build the systems that get our families what they need, including basics like financial and physical security. We need redundancies for anything whose provenance depends on USG having its shit together for the next decade.

Accordingly, this month we are making our first group investment.

A group of the EXIT guys has convened to choose a champion and help him achieve escape velocity in an “atoms-not-bits” cashflow business.

Over the last two weeks we’ve developed our investment thesis together, heard pitches, and deliberated — now we’ve got our three finalists, who will present a full business plan on Monday, June 16th.

We view this as a way to build capacity and cohesion inside the group, and convert email-job dollars into more durable investments.

Several months back, I talked to an EXIT guy who was expecting to come into some money.

We were discussing the volatility ahead: how do you invest for the future when it looks like everything is going to hell?

He couldn’t put the money in the stock market, the bond market, the real estate market. It’s no good stuffing hyperinflating cash under the mattress. You’d even have to be careful stacking gold or Bitcoin, if you think the local police department is going to struggle to make payroll.

Like the unjust steward in the parable, we’re all about to lose our living in the fake and gay economy. We are too weak to dig, and too proud to beg. The unjust steward used his ephemeral position to build lasting relationships, so that when he failed of his position, his friends would receive him into everlasting habitations.

Under these conditions, the only investment that makes sense is in people.

exitgroup.us

EXIT News

• Weekly Group Calls

  • This Tuesday (6/3), we presented on the principles and thesis of the EXIT investment syndicate.

  • Next Tuesday (6/10) we will be introducing a summer fitness challenge and showcasing Sterker’s work on the weekly fitness calls.

  • On 6/17, we will have a showcase of the Tech and AI call, and a report on our Utah hackathon.

  • On 6/24, we will discuss content creation and publishing with a round-table discussion from EXIT members who have experience in traditional and independent publishing.

• Our Great Houses call is now weekly on Thursdays at 1PM ET. If you enjoyed Greg’s recorded presentations, this will be more discussion and planning in the same vein.

• This week we held our first Civil Affairs call, for guys who are interested in getting involved in local government. You need to be flipping city council seats, manipulating procedural outcomes, etc.

• Meetups

  • Salt Lake City — Saturday, June 14

  • Minneapolis — Friday, June 20

  • Seattle — Thursday, June 26

  • Informal meetups successful in DC, Virginia Beach, New York City, and Nashville. Thank you very much to the local file leaders for coordinating.

  • Upcoming informal meetups in Northern Utah (6/7), San Francisco (6/8), Atlanta (6/14), and Dallas (6/14).

• RSVP links for Salt Lake and Seattle cocktail hours available to subscribers below the paywall. EXIT cocktail hours are a great way to get to know the EXIT guys in your area and see if the group is right for you.