In a world where Tesla has stayed at "severely overvalued" stock prices for about a decade, with occasional crashes to just "overvalued", I'm not so sure the big AI companies really need returns that justify their stocks. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both in their own ways trying to capture that same lighting in a bottle where the company is evaluated solely on the CEO's vision

The thing I worry about is: what happens when an actual set of adults get back into the White House?

That could well be the trigger for the crash of all crashes because they might actually bring some reality pins with them, which are the antithesis of the growing, in size and number, fantasy balloons of hot-air the current cough leadership cough is facilitating.

How I view the market:

Short term: high volatility and uncertainty, feels more like gambling at a casino

Medium term: the world is too unstable, best to hold cash

Long term: dollar cost averaging and time in the market always win so depending how long your horizon is, it’s a good time as any to invest

Longer term: we all die

There’s always money to be made in a bubble implosion. The challenge is there’s a very thin line between major bank and losing your shirt. Because of that most long terms smart investors just sit it out which is likely why you see Berkshire sitting on treasury bills.

> “It feels like gambling on whether they’re more incompetent or successfully corrupt.”

What you say has a ring to it. A good idea held in tension—provided ‘incompetence’ is the true opposite extreme.

Though it’s difficult to see the picture clearly, because to all _appearances_ Musk is doing well. US Culture collectively believes incompetence will not succeed for long, and this undermines my assessment.

“Twitter is now maybe better understood as a market manipulation device.”

And there’s the obfuscation. If you can manipulate at large scale and your followers somehow profit by following you, then it’s not competence but “confidence”. It’s all a game and our group is waiting for their turn, their opportunity to profit, get a great tip, win big.

I'll believe Musk is a trillionaire when the free float of spcx is 95%, not 5%

This is their 14th straight quarter of piling cash. Will the same article be written on their 15th, and 16th?

Yeah but that is likely the normal state of things - high status people are human too, we're all shocked. And on Twitter comment - mass media has been a tool of propaganda since shortly after it was invented. Twitter is substantially better than something like a newspaper or TV channel.

The difference in the modern era is the internet is such a robust communication channel that the ultra-wealthy can't pay money to have the negative stories suppressed any more. If anything the current crop seem to be unusually well behaved by historical standards because there are so many eyes on them. Scandals like the whole Epstein thing or #metoo would simply have vanished into silence before the 2000s unless they were being used to lever out someone uncooperative for political purposes.

Na. Its just the status quoe with diffrent charectors, same game. Jobs/musk. Altman/gates. Etc