Monkeys Hoarding Bananas: The Economic Confusion on X is Not Abating.

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It must be privately entertaining to Elon Musk that all of the angry progressives denouncing him on X are doing so on a platform he owns. 

I regret to tell you, dear reader, that since yesterday the situation has not improved. Looking around this morning I see even more people than before who are righteously outraged that someone else is a triillionaire while...

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Insert your own caveat there. ...while kids are not getting free lunches. ...while people struggle to get health care. Basically just a laundry list of progressive pipe dreams, all of which they want to see made real before Elon Musk or anyone else is allowed to be wealthy. For example:

Believe it or not, Marc Cuban actually wrote a pretty decent response to this one. I've been critical of Cuban for some of his defenses of DEI, but this is pretty good.

Here's the first bit:

The reason anyone gets insanely rich is almost always because of the stock market.  It certainly how @elonmusk did.

And the reason they get rich from the stock market,  is because 150m Americans decided they wanted to own shares of stocks directly, or through their retirement plans, or through other approaches as a way of building their net worth and trying to create a better life for themselves.  

One Hundred Fifty Million Americans.  About 60% of adults.  

Effectively believing that @elonmusk and many billionaires could make them wealthier and help them achieve a better life. 

If you want @elonmusk, and most billionaires to no longer be that rich, convince those 150m  to sell their stocks, funds, ETFs whatever.  

Of course you would wipe out the net-worth of most of those people, and everyone else’s savings, as the markets crashed and brought down the economy and created the worst depression we have ever seen...

Capitalism is better than socialism because 150m Americans can influence exactly what happens in this country.

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I think my favorite reaction to the Musk trillionaire news is this one which has been liked a quarter of a million times.

There was another post with nearly the same analogy that also got some attention. 

Elon is hoarding all the bananas, y'all. That's what he's doing. There are only so many bananas and Elon just went around and grabbed them all up. That is what these people think is happening here.

Jonah Goldberg asks if the real world application is that Musk is hoarding naturally occurring electric cars:

Lots of people replied by just throwing their hands up. What do you say to someone who is this confused?

Others extended the metaphor, which was entertaining.

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A monkey hoards a trillion bananas. The troop, enraged, beats him to death. They gather around the pile to feast at last.

But... oh wait, there is no pile.

It turns out the "bananas" were shares in a banana-launching company the dead monkey founded. 

The shares were worth a trillion because he was alive to run it. 

Now he is dead and the stock is worth $0. 

The retarded monkeys have clubbed their way into a recession.

But it gets worse. 

Half the "bananas" were tied up in a rocket that supplies bananas to monkeys on the far mountain who had no bananas at all. 

Another chunk was tied up in a little satellite dish that beamed banana coordinates to the troop after a flood took out their trees. 

So now they realized they beat to death the only monkey who knew how the dish worked.

So the monkeys sit there. 

No bananas. 

No rockets. 

No coordinates to get more banananas. 

Just a dead body and a powerful sense of fairness as they all now became infinitely poorer.

I am actually starting to think that socialism, despite it's association with higher education, is just people whose understanding of wealth is that of a not very bright monkey. This guy made a plea for sympathy because he has nothing to show for 37 years of working. 

"And there is now a trillionaire" may be the funniest thing I've read on X in weeks. That should be an all purpose addendum to every sentence from now on. You can fit it into to almost any scenario.

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  • Honey, I'm running out to the store for milk. And there is now a trillionaire.
  • I'm sorry to tell you that the biopsy results show you have stage 4 cancer and there is now a trillionaire.
  • Sir, I pulled you over because you were going 62 in a 45 zone. And there is now a trillionaire.
  • Hello, 911, send help my house is on fire! And there is now a trillionaire!

    •  People tried to explain that the two things were not connected:

    Others pointed out that his own choices may have played a role in the outcome.

    Choices matter and living on an island may not be a great one for accumulating wealth (or owning a home).

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    And some people just had a laugh.

    This guy also has a Master's degree. I wonder what it's in.

    The sad thing about all of this is that elected Senators don't seem to have any more sophisticated understanding of economics than random people. That or they just want to lie to the rubes.

    What would free healthcare for everyone cost? Bernie Sanders proposed this back in 2016 and some think tanks ran the numbers. It was something like $3 trillion per year. So Elon Musk's entire fortune would cover about 4 months of free healthcare. Does Adam Schiff know this would not solve the problem? Probably. We all know he's prone to lying for partisan advantage.

    There's so much more out there along these same themes. The ignorance is deep and wide and we're going to be seeing lots of people acting on it for years to come.

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    I'll close this out with Elon Musk explaining why having a simplistic zero-sum understanding of the economy is not helpful.

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