Tag: Elon Musk

Thinking Big, and Practically: A Hyperloop between New York and Washington D.C.

It wasn’t that surprising to me, because I’ve been talking about it for a while.  Do you remember dear reader all the stuff I’ve been saying about the Hyperloop?  Well, it’s happening too and only because Elon Musk is continuing to be one of America’s greatest outside the box thinkers who has the financial resources to act on those thoughts.  But the fact that we can even talk about the Hyperloop as a reality has only one person to thank, Donald J. Trump.  Without Trump in the White House a lot of bureaucrats would be looking for a way for Musk to grease the skids.  Now, with the swamp draining as we speak we are on a cultural trajectory to have Hyperloops all over the United States starting with the link between New York City and Washington D.C.  Can you imagine traveling that distance in under 30 minutes?  A lot of people suddenly became very excited to hear that news, and most of them were not Trump supporters.  This is what you get when you have people like Musk in your country with a supportive White House.  Just read Donald Trump’s books, How to Think Like s Billionaire along with Think Big and Kick Ass, and it will be very easy to understand what, why, and how Elon Musk put up this Tweet much to the surprise of the mayors of several of the included cities.

The swamp creatures of bureaucracy want their take, but Trump and Musk are moving well beyond the speed of those people and as we speak Trump is beating them in the public relations battle.  By the time the Boring Company presents its proposals for digging underneath cities like New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and of course Washington D.C. Trump’s team will have destroyed and replaced many of the figures who would otherwise stand against this project—so you can mark it on your calendar, this will get done.

People need to understand that all this controversy in the media about Trump/Russia, and polling numbers and legislative stalls are not a problem for Trump.  It sounds noisy now, but he has the situation under control.  The bureaucrats are not going to win against a Trump White House.  They may stall.  They may try to delay the inevitable, but Trump just has too many resources and works too hard to apply them for him to fail.  Having Trump in the White House puts him in a position to speak to people like Musk and to be essentially the most powerful lobbyist in Washington D.C. which is what Musk needed from the beginning.  Before, Musk would have had to lobby congress and the White House to get some pin head to even understand how the Hyperloop is different from a typical train.  But Trump gets it and knows what to do with good information when it comes his way.

For way too long we have allowed unproductive know-nothings to stand between us and the future and things have just stalled out technologically.  The following link is interesting in how it shows over time how deregulation of the phone industry and the introduction of the Internet allowed for smart phones to evolve to where they are today.  A lot of people forget that it was only ten years ago that the iPhone first came on the scene—but all that occurred because technology happened faster than politicians could crush innovation with their top heavy lumbering bureaucracy.  Regulators can be a good thing to make an industry safer, but often the kind of people who perform those jobs are cowardly people by nature and they love to have control over dreamers like Elon Musk.  So digging massive holes under all these cities and building a new transportation system that goes over 700 MPH is something they’d love to stop because it gives them power over  genius.  Those are the type of people who presently hate the Trump presidency and are doing anything they can to stop the changes that are happening literally right now.

https://www.bounceenergy.com/articles/texas-electricity/history-of-deregulation-telecommunication

Anthony Scaramucci is now taking over in Trump’s White House as the top communications official.  Trump met with Scaramucci recently and liked him so much that he put him immediately into the job.  Sean Spicer resigned to give Scaramucci a clean plate and just like that our new White House will be moving into phase 2 right at the 6 month mark.  The first phase of course was typical of any business dealing.  Trump enters the White House and softens up everyone with aggression.  Then when everyone is reeling he offers them an olive branch—which is what Scaramucci is—that is the “art of the deal.”

They are then happy and responsive to what the White House provides to the public.  So as Trump and Musk talked about the Hyperloop they were talking about things that would happen in step 4 as if those things already happened.  It’s just that the rest of the world isn’t there yet.  They will be and before they know it there will be a Hyperloop between New York and D.C.  It’s a good deal; Musk needs to get the Hyperloop rolling in America so he can convince California to put one between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Trump needs to enhance America’s infrastructure with something that is more “Trumpian.’ It was in these kinds of things that provoked Trump to run for office in the first place—so he’s not going to let this die on the vine.

As much as the media hates Trump by watching these videos did you notice how quickly they suddenly became excited?  That’s how Trump will eventually leave office.  All these silly things talked about today will long be forgotten when people are getting daily news reports from places like the Moon and traveling across the country on Hyperloops at speeds over 700 MPH.  If left to the pin-heads in our bureaucratic culture something like the Hyperloop would take 50 years and cost trillions of dollars.  But if left to the private sector it will only take 5 years and only cost billions, which will be recovered by the technology of a new transportation industry and in the end that’s all people will really remember.

What’s different now than really at any point prior is that these characters are not ideologically political.  Musk obviously has many leftist leanings, but he is a capitalist by the nature of all his companies which are quite good and operate well.  Trump is a pretty hard lined conservative compared to Musk, but he’s good enough in business to be able to have relationships with people who are not like him ideologically.  Just as Scaramucci has more liberal leanings than a Midwest Republican he is an effective communicator and can sell a lot of the things that Trump wants to do so we are truly entering a new phase of American thinking and it’s very exciting.  Honestly I’m very happy about it.  I don’t care that people think the way I do about things as long as they are being productive and moving the ball of the human race forward—not with political philosophy, but in human achievement.  The political philosophy comes as an off-shoot of an emerging society.  We should not build an emerging society off a political philosophy then use regulation to preserve that philosophy.  Instead, what Musk and Trump are doing will shape our civilization with an optimism that can only come from a couple of dreamers who have the financial resources to think big and the political clout to make it happen.  And finally we have both in the White House and things will begin to happen rapidly—for a change!

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg Have Lost Their Minds: The flawed Facebook data and advocacy of Universal Basic Income

I personally like Elon Musk so I’ll forgive him for his ridiculous support of this re-packaged communist proposal that lefties are so excited about, the idea of Universal Basic Income distribution.   Musk is doing good things with his billions of dollars so I can forgive dumb ideas based on his baseline left-leaning philosophies identifying that he has become slightly out-of-touch with reality due to his various projects which happen to be populated by Earth-first wackos.  Musk makes a great car and his SpaceX company is way out in front on driving the frontier of space in the direction that mankind needs to go.  But that stupid kid Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook I have no sympathy for.  He’s an idiot who made his money collecting vast amounts of data from the world population and selling it to intelligence agencies for their covert work.  He’s essentially a sell-out who came into a lot of money because he had no predilection for privacy invasion and he has been fed vast sums of money to keep doing what he’s doing—because the end game is just another modern version of communism disguised as something else for the tech age.

Universal Basic Income is a global idea being floated around that essentially gives everyone a no strings attached paycheck to live life. The big problem is—who pays?  Who pays for the entire world to have a paycheck without having to earn it?  Of course Zuckerberg will tell you that it is the “states” that will have to pay as we all must become one global government working toward the same goals.  Through his Facebook analysis he knows that a majority of the world is lazy and would rather not work a job toward productivity so he’s using this trend to launch this push toward Universal Basic Income.  After all, he’s a billionaire kid who clearly doesn’t understand the value of working at McDonald’s for the summer to buy a new car or earn a down payment on an apartment. Such a proposal as Universal Basic Income will never touch him and his vast wealth—so what does he care.   But he knows that a huge part of the population currently under 30 would rather stay home and play video games and talk on Facebook all day instead of being productive people toward goals of GDP.  Zuckerberg isn’t so smart—he’s not a great visionary.  He’s just a kid who won the lottery doing what other people wouldn’t because their conscious wouldn’t allow them to.  So what Zuckerberg and his other tech buddies are suggesting is an all out assault on our basic sovereignty and it should be challenged boldly.

I’ve made my feelings about Facebook clear. I think it’s vile, and evil.  I want nothing to do with it because it’s essentially a data collection operation designed to study personal habits and associates for sale to intelligence agencies and commercial enterprises.  Facebook wants to know what you know, who you know, how you interact with those people—how important some of those people are compared to other people and essentially what your daily habits are.  Facebook knows that humans are essentially social creatures so it uses a lot of code to exploit that need for the gains of the state.  So I don’t participate.  Facebook is different from other online activity opportunities because it’s a one stop shop of data collection.  Twitter isn’t nearly as invasive, and most other web activity forces data collection to cooperate with each other to build a profile—which is much harder than most people would think.  Facebook puts it all into one place for sale and distribution to those who want to use that information for their own needs.  Facebook isn’t revolutionary it’s just a big spider web designed to capture intellectual property from its users for others to consume at their leisure.

To assume that these advocates for Universal Basic Income are smart because they are part of the tech sector is a folly. As Zuckerberg and Musk both said recently, they think artificial intelligence and robotics are going to replace the human workforce so that gives justification toward Universal Basic Income because as they say, people will still need money in that changing economy.  All this is, is a dressed up new fear created by nothing to back it, to force people into a kind of communist thinking—that we will all be replaced by robots that these tech people are building—so we should listen to them because they have “hidden knowledge” we don’t have.  So we should all be grateful to them for sharing that information—and listen to their proposal.

I don’t mean to come across arrogantly, but I seriously doubt there is anybody in Silicone Valley who can see over the horizon better than I can—into the distant future.  I’d argue that even the best futurists couldn’t outthink me on the matter.  They may be as good, but better would be a statement based on lunacy.  I don’t typically beat people over the head with it—but in cases like this, I can see clearly elements to this puzzle that Zuckerberg and Musk don’t.  In Musk’s case, I think he’s enchanted a bit too much with the power he’s helping to create—but there is a diminishing return on all that he hasn’t yet factored in.  With Zuckerberg, I just think he’s a modern communist hiding his intentions behind modern terms and technology—and he doesn’t care.  What is being ignored which is represented directly by the GDP of a nation is the effect money has on the human soul and the necessity of productivity to extract it for the benefit of spiritual growth.  Humans need to be productive and in capitalist countries that necessity is obvious—and the culture expands at a rate that is very healthy for further development.  Thus, what is missing from these so-called “genius” billionaires is the basic reality that money by itself is worthless without productivity to back it up.  If you just give someone a paycheck—the value of it might buy them groceries, cars and lodging, but it denies them the merit of productive enterprise—or the incentive to be more productive so they could participate in more of life’s fabulous treasures acquired through financial surplus.

I heard a nice challenge to Mark Zuckerberg—if he believes in his Universal Basic Income plan than why don’t he put $1 billion of his so-called $60 billion in total net worth into a little village in Africa and watch what happens.  Give those people a pay check so they can live a basic life and put no demands on it.  Let automated electric cars donated by Elon Musk drive them everywhere they need to go and introduce the best of automation to run their fast food restaurants and their basic needs for manufacturing and measure what happens.  Within a few years the total sum of all that money would be gone and the region would be sucking for more investment but GDP would not contribute to any surplus leaving more investment needed and the rate of invention would decrease because there would be no real incentive to do so except for the back yard mechanics naturally inclined to tinker with things to make them work.  They’d regress as a mini society even from the point where the billion dollars was initially given.  Within a few years there’d be no trace of that billion dollar investment and the village would go back to its status of hut dwellings and chieftain hierarchy.  But why?

Out of all the data Facebook collects it is missing one important element. Facebook can track your associations with other people, your mood at various times of day, your career choices, what you like to eat, the type of music and movies you enjoy—just about everything except for what’s most important in your life—how productive are you.  Productive people don’t tend to spend much time playing on Facebook—but lazy worthless people do—so the data that Mark Zuckerberg is looking at and selling is tainted—it cannot predict the next great revolution in thought, economic, and practice.  And before humans are ever replaced by robots and artificial intelligence, they’ll find a way to excel in other fields where imagination and human input is needed—because at the core of the human experience is the need to be productive.

Now, not everyone feels this way. There are many sick human beings out there who are psychiatrically broken and laziness is part of the symptom of living these shattered lives as a bi-product.  I would go as far to say that likely 90% of our society at all levels is psychiatrically broken to some degree—and those idiots are on Facebook giving a lot of people bad, distorted data based on a whole host of mental illness—such as needing too much correspondence with other human beings to cover deeply personal problems that lay hidden.  That’s not to say those people are not valuable or beyond hope—but as far as functioning in a democracy they are unreliable because they will always seek socialism and other forms of mass collectivism to hide their dysfunctions not only from themselves, but from society as a whole.

It is productivity that is the best way to draw out mental health issues and to become a proper human being and the human race will never surrender productivity to robots, artificial intelligence and other emerging systems of technology just so they can sit around all day and play Call of Duty.  It’s just not going to happen.  There may be a lot of people who will desire such things so they can hide in the shadows and get a free paycheck so they don’t have to deal with real life issues—but giving everyone a free pay check without attaching to it some expected productive output will only lead to a mass psychosis in human activity and we will discover too late—(a hundred years from now) that machines couldn’t do half of what we thought they could because the mysterious human soul is still needed for imagination—and imagination is the first step in all productive output.

I am so certain about these things that you can mark it on your calendar and remember that I told you first—because I just did. Mark Zuckerberg has performed a con by over-sampling human deficiencies while ignoring what matters most to human beings—which is why he and people like Elon Musk are so terrified of artificial intelligence and robots.  Most liberals don’t understand the things I’ve presented here and I would go as far to say that everyone one of them on the liberal side of thinking is operating in some rendition of mental illness.  Even though they are part of shaping tomorrow technologically, they are still liberals who don’t understand the nature of productivity properly—thus they have nothing to contribute on the really big philosophical issues of our time.  And believe me, Universal Basic Income is not a part of any human future that thrives.  It would only contribute to the Vico cycle and destroy our present course because missing from its introduction is the crucial ingredient of productive enterprise that is at the core of all human development.

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

cropped-img_0202.jpg

The Hyperloop Competitions at SpaceX: Let’s make this happen!

Although the political left does not like Donald Trump as president including Elon Musk, (who I think is a wonderful person) I would have never entertained an idea like the Hyperloop before the Trump inauguration.  Now after the first week of Donald Trump’s presidency the Dow closed at over 20,000 for the first time and many big ideas started moving forward, then the wonderful company of SpaceX hosted the Hyperloop competition in Los Angeles at their facility inviting colleges and engineering organizations from around the world to compete with designs of their own fresh perspectives in a very capitalists manner.  The Hyperloop is a radical transportation innovation that is wonderfully revolutionary.  When I was a kid I had something I played with like this design called Rocket Tubes for the Micronaut toy line.  Now under the sponsorship of Elon Musk the reality of Rocket Tubes is coming to life and taking its next evolutionary step.  Prototype designs have been gathered at SpaceX during the weekend of January 28th and 29th to see which works best in head to head competition.  Before Donald Trump’s presidency I couldn’t see any path forward for these liberal leaning dreamers—but under Trump’s presidency and perhaps his daughter Ivanka taking over in the years to come to keep continuity in the White House—Hyperloop as a transportation device may happen on a large continental scale.

http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop

Hyperloop is essentially a large rocket tube that allows passengers to travel at around 1000 miles per hour inside.  That means travel to Disney World in Orlando from Cincinnati would be one hour from a Hyperloop station in theoretical Monroe in the northern suburbs to the Kissimmee station at the gates to the famous theme park.  There are already plans for a Hyperloop line from Columbus, Ohio to Chicago, which would only take 30 minutes of travel time.  There is another proposal for a line from Columbus to Pittsburg in less than 15 minutes.  So for Ohio residents wanting to attend a Steelers game, just get on the Hyperloop and you’ll easily be in Pittsburg within 15 minutes. It takes longer to walk across a parking lot once you’ve parked at a stadium.  But first there are thousands upon thousands of engineering feats that have to be invented and that is the purpose of the Hyperloop competitions mentioned at SpaceX. As you are reading this just click the link above and you can see what’s left of them since most of my readers are on the east coast and will still have time to view the last entries of the day at that link.

In my old toy Rocket Tubes there was a large compressor that injected air into the tubes to move a little Micronaut man in a capsule through the tubes on a bed of air.  The compressor filled the tubes with airflow that actually overtook the weight of the capsule holding the man.  I played with that thing for hour and hours year after year.  I think I got the toy around 10 or 11 and it still worked when I got my first car at 16.  I loved it because it appeared to be a vision into a world of tomorrow.  Now the Hyperloop is that next generation of thinking and instead of just using compressed air to create a bed of air to ride on, the vehicles are expounding on the levitation magnets used in other high-speed rail around the world.  But, the Hyperloop technology further utilizes the removal of that air to create a close simulation to the vacuum of space to take away that wall of resistance that would otherwise build up at the front of the vehicle.  That is how the speeds can be so extremely fast.  Inside the car even at such high speeds you could sit as you would a train with a little drink on a table in front of you and watch the world literally go by outside at a 1000 miles an hour—and your drink wouldn’t spill.  Pretty cool.

As I’ve said about the sky car projects that are now becoming a quick reality which will take traffic to the air as opposed to ground congestion through major cities—having a Hyperloop line would be a tremendous asset—particularly for the shipping industry.  It would really benefit DHL, FedX, and Amazon by getting products from the west coast to the east in the same day as opposed to the expense of flying it against the weight restrictions of air travel.  And many of the Hyperloop lines could exist along existing highway routes—that big grassy area that sits between north and southbound lanes, or east and west, could easily hold a Hyperloop line without disturbing property owners with new acquisitions of property to get a nice network across the country within a short period of time—a decade or so.

Around the world I can think of fine examples of how the Eurostar has greatly helped transportation in Europe, which I plan to visit very soon to see for myself.  And then there is the bullet trains in Japan which I have some personal history with.  For instance I was meeting people for dinner recently in Kobe, Japan who were from as far south as Himeji.  I was staying at the Oriental Hotel and was meeting at the Ikuta Road steakhouse for dinner. By highway Himeji was about an hour to the south so I was emailing my guests as they were about to board the bullet train thinking that I’d get to the dinner location way ahead of them–after all I had a driver picking me up as I was heading to the elevator and from there the drive was only about 5 minutes. By the time I made it down to my car, spoke to a few people, drove down all the one way roads to arrive at the steakhouse, my guests were there, very relaxed and unhurried.  Those same people could easily get up to Tokyo for a night out by the same means, the train works very well in Japan—and its fast. I’m not big on big mass transit projects and traditional rail is just too slow and cumbersome.  But when it comes to the examples listed there are times when it’s just the right thing.  The Hyperloop would be the next generation of these transportation systems and could let us take advantage of great distances for further economic expansion.

Before Donald Trump the cost of the Hyperloop would have been prohibitive.  With 20 trillion in national debt and a world spinning out of control economically with China controlling all the chess pieces, there wasn’t much chance of the Hyperloop getting funded in America.  Too much regulation and bureaucratic red tape would have stood in the way.  Its one thing to dream of these things at SpaceX but quite another to get politicians to see the reason to fund it—the political will just hasn’t been there.  For instance, the Eurostar was privately funded, but it is still upside down and shows no sign of recovering the cost because there just isn’t any way to have enough people travel on it per day to justify the enormous cost of digging under the English Channel and building all the infrastructure to make it happen.  It’s a technical marvel—but was entirely too expensive for two economies that have been stagnant for years—the socialist country of France and the heavily restricted economy of England.  But in the United States with a projected economic expansion rate of over 5% with Trump’s policies, there may be a huge chance to pay down our debt, and actually come out ahead for the Hyperloop network in the 2020s—about the time that the engineers from this Hyperloop competition work out all the bugs with technical innovation.  It won’t take long.

My advice to Elon Musk is to drop all the discussion about carbon taxes and environmental thinking when talking to Donald Trump at the White House because that’s not going to happen.  It would also be good to stop complaining about his immigration policies.  The borderless world concept is done in America so if you want people to embrace Tesla, and to give Hyperloop a chance, you have a friendly president to those technologies so long as you don’t use more regulation to move people from oil based vehicles to electric ones.  My next car may be a Tesla and I’m not a green economy advocate. I would just want a Tesla because it most intelligently applies power to the wheels that hit the road as opposed to what’s out there.  I think the Tesla is a wonderful rethinking of the personal car.  I fully support Trump opening up the coal mines and drilling for oil in the United States so that we can have an economic renaissance like the UAE is experiencing with excess cash from their oil industry alone funding exciting new projects.  But I am open to new methods coming along to replace what we’ve had.  I am ready to see a leap in technology from a combustion engine to a Tesla, or from a commuter train to a Hyperloop—so long as what comes next advances our civilization.  The carbon tax issue and other environmental concerns from the political left will work themselves out if we truly move into space as a human race—where there are full cities on Mars within a hundred or so years and the moon becomes a base of operations for deeper space travel.  We can’t restrict ourselves on earth economically, technically, and politically by fighting the wrong battles.  The human race has to leave the earth and these kinds of technologies take us to that point.  So keep the politics out of the Hyperloop and we could very well have them all over the United States over the next thirty years because they make sense.

With that said the Hyperloop races were very inspiring and provided a glimpse into the kind of nation and world we can become.  I know I’m ready for such a world.  I would love to leave for Orlando at 8 AM in the morning after grabbing a quick breakfast at McDonald’s and arriving an hour before Disney World opens so I could take advantage of the early open to pass holders.  After a day of fun I could be back with my family for dinner and never feel like I had just traveled all day needing to recover after sitting for so long.  The Hyperloop would make such a trip as common as driving to the grocery store for milk, and that would greatly expand our internal economic output, and GDP.  For instance it would greatly benefit me professionally to be able to same day ship from California to West Chester, Ohio because often lead times on things I need mostly involve transit times and ridiculous shipping costs by air.  Hyperloop could dramatically reduce those costs—so it’s very exciting.  But first, we have to get through this infancy period with a president who gets it and can sell it to the politicians.  And that’s what Donald Trump can do that others had no chance at before.  So make friends, keep dreaming, and let’s make this happen!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

cropped-img_0202.jpg

The Blaze Coverage of Tesla: Zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds and a smiling Preston Tucker

I was listening to Pat and Stu on The Blaze Radio Network when Glenn Beck rushed into the studio to interrupt their show declaring with great excitement that he had just driven one of the new Model S Tesla dual motor cars that accelerated from zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds. Beck offered anybody who wanted to test drive one of the new cars by Elon Musk a free ride which immediately sent the radio crew into tapes so they could take Beck up on his offer. Musk has been proving himself to be leaps beyond the current automobile offerings. I have been complexly turned off to electric cars viewing them as environmental wacko projects—because electricity is still largely generated by fossil fuels. However, the magic of the Model S and the rest of the Tesla product line is the dual engine concept which removes all the mechanical linkages which inefficiently drop power dispersal in conventional cars. The Tesla delivers power exactly where it’s needed achieving supercar acceleration in a car that is priced like a regular luxury car.   Watch Stu’s test drive in the following video.

http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/03/19/i-thought-i-was-going-to-pass-out-glenn-test-drives-a-tesla/

One of my favorite and deeply personal movies is the George Lucas production Tucker: A Man and his Dreams. In that classic film Preston Tucker invented a car that was far superior to the products being put out by the Big Three–Ford , GM, and Chrysler in 1948. Tucker is certainly one of the people I most admire and he was about the age I am now when he was trying to get his Tucker car off the ground. Otto Kerner was a US attorney who on behalf of the Big Three attacked Tucker for making his revolutionary car “too good.” Kerner was later jailed for three years and fined $50,000 for 17 counts of bribery, conspiracy, perjury and other charges for stock fraud. The result was that Tucker’s cars featuring a 5.4 liter Franklin 0-335 aircraft engine with hydraulic vales, fuel injection, torque converters on each of the rear wheel—disk brakes, a padded dashboard, self-sealing tubeless tires, and an independent springless suspension—was stopped before it even got started. At the time it was an incredible car about thirty years ahead of its time. The Big Three rather than compete with Tucker looked to bury him, literally suppressing automotive development for nearly a half century thereafter. Only now are they finally starting to climb out of the stalemate technologically that they have been under for so long. Tucker never went to jail, but he never got his car to production either.

Elon Musk unlike Tucker was much wealthier going into the project and was able to achieve market domination in the electric car market while the Big Three were reeling from years of mismanagement and stagnate technological development. At the same time foreign offerings were starting to finally bore Americans. Musk using American ingenuity and the benefits of capitalism launched a new car company that has put on the road a car far in excess of the current offerings. It is technically well ahead of its time and is setting a new standard.

Even as I write this roller coaster season is coming to Southern Ohio where I live. I love the technology of roller coasters and have watched them evolve from wooden roller coasters to the sleek new metal coasters. The electric current launches common now in the best of them make it seem like the logical next step for personal transportation. But it took Elon Musk to actually use the technology in a way that should have been applied decades ago. Tesla’s technology is only state-of-the art because the technology involved was purposely underdeveloped to protect the industry of old. Yet the direction of General Motors didn’t save them from going bankrupt before 2010. The direction of the old cars just doesn’t meet the future, and they failed as a company. In amusement parks new technology comes out all the time to unleash new sensations to thrill parks. The same enthusiasm should have been carried over into personal transportation—but it wasn’t—leaving the door wide open for someone like Musk.

And Musk isn’t alone, just a few days ago I wrote an article about the new self driving Mercedes, and of course Richard Branson is emerging into the market. Both Branson and Musk are also building companies that are punching the reaches of space—so it is natural that their automotive companies are going to push the limits of previous mediocrity. The race for the best between Musk, Branson and the rest coming into the field of play will change the way we all transport ourselves around and I’m excited to see how it transpires.

With the electric car power is not so easily lost to where the tires hit the road. I can easily see a day where the very power that makes them run could be cheaply produced through Thorium energy leaving cars that never ran out of power—no matter where on earth they are. Power creation is another field of endeavor that has been deliberately suppressed by the previous generation. For the same reason that traditional coal power was kept over the emerging technology of Thorium Tucker was destroyed so to protect the Big Three—but to what result? The big companies failed anyway, just as the current energy creation companies will—its only a matter of time before someone breaks through the deliberate suppression of better methods using competition to drive human beings toward advancement.

It was exciting listening to Pat and Stu during the Tesla portion of their show. It was unscripted and their enthusiasm was noticeable, and contagious. In just a few weeks, I have been largely won over by The Blaze and their coverage of this emerging technology. If I could have a car that goes from zero to 60 so quickly without the noise and violent expulsion of energy—I’d take it. If it’s truly better, it should replace the old, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is something we should all embrace and thank because it is yet another example of the wonderful attributes of capitalism and the excitement that comes from minds un-tethered from the rules of engagement established by criminals like Otto Kerner. When people like Elon Musk have success, like he is with his Tesla Company—I smile a bit to myself at a victory Tucker predicted would happen. Musk is doing what Tucker couldn’t—and that makes me very happy to see someone—ANYONE—doing it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Cliffhanger’s Morality on Capitalism” Elon Musk and Han Solo–the unseen value

A few years ago I spent a good part of a summer vacation on the balcony of a condominium reading the Ayn Rand books that my son-in-law had recently bought for me—particularly her collection of essays on capitalism. For as long as I had been alive capitalism was always portrayed as evil, which I never bought into. Yet nobody ever offered any competing theory. Even my favorite character from Star Wars, Han Solo was an unfettered capitalist without any apologies provided. George Lucas by the end of the original trilogy wanted to make Han into a more compassionate person who saw the errors of his ways—and thought about others more than himself—but I never personally bought into that theory. I’ve always seen capitalism as the way to making better things from nothing and had a far superior moral platform to project goodness than the altruistic sacrificial victim of yesteryear. After all if people are asked who they like more in Star Wars, Han Solo or Luke Skywalker who do you think they’ll pick? The results are well documented—just Google it.

I spent much of that summer thinking about those books as they provided a support that was found no place else in favor of capitalism. People like Milton Freeman were before my time, Walt Disney died when I was a little kid, and John Wayne was only fondly remembered in old movies. Reagan pretended to embrace capitalism as a continuation of his spokesman job he had at GE—but there really wasn’t anybody openly defending the morality of capitalism—and there needed to be. After all, from the world that I know people like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and many others like them are doing far more for people than the person who sacrifices their time and energy at a soup kitchen helping the poor. While donating time is a nice thing to do for people down and out—the cause of why people are down and out in the first place is the real issue that needs to be explored—not the result. Capitalism has in it a morality which deserves a hero so that people can understand the value.

Even stories I really like, such as Robin Hood, and Zorro have in their underlying value a kind of socialism—the villains are the rich, the protagonists are the poor. Batman who is a direct evolutionary character of Zorro was like Don Diego a wealthy man who took his gained assets acquired through his family’s success and did good to fight crime.   But what always bothered me about Zorro and Batman is that they inherited their wealth; they didn’t do as Elon Musk did and make it from nothing into becoming one of the most influential people on planet earth. Without Elon Musk and Richard Branson where would the world really be? The wealth they create for the overall economy makes it even possible for people to donate their time to a soup kitchen for the poor. The inventions of the wealthy create spare time and resources so that something can be given back. Without that infusion of wealth, Harrison Ford wouldn’t be able to donate his time to left leaning causes.

Harrison Ford is my favorite actor—maybe just a bit ahead of Clint Eastwood. Ford made a lot of money as an actor because American capitalist culture had expendable income to go see his movies in a darkened theater. He has turned around and done a lot of great things with that money. Individually he became a private pilot most notably crash landing his crippled vintage craft into a golf course saving the craft, people and even himself in a way that defies the actions of most Hollywood actors. But Ford is also a very giving person to the poor, to environmental causes, and to virtually everyone in his life. He is a person who is easy to respect. But what would he be without George Lucas creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films? He would have been just another actor jumping from job to job. Lucas used capitalism to create wealth not just in monetary value, but in philosophy. Without the creation of capitalism all the good things that Ford does in his private life would go nowhere. If he didn’t have excess as a result of his success, he’d have nothing to give away to others by his own volition.

That is why capitalism needs a real hero—and unapologetic champion. I had started formulating that champion years ago in my own character of Cliffhanger. In my novel The Symposium of Justice it is eluded that the protagonist made all his wealth by winning a lottery ticket. However, this is a falsehood created by his political enemies who are protecting their old money political connections from the reality of what Cliffhanger represents—creation and justice. Most people who win the lottery are broke within a few years because they lack the internal value as people to support the sudden infusion of wealth. Unlike people like Elon Musk, most people lack the ability to create wealth, so they assume that it’s a finite resource open for equal distribution discussion. But they are dreadfully wrong. As the Cliffhanger series The Curse of Fort Seven Mile continues to evolve over the coming installments it becomes quite clear who and what Cliffhanger is and why people who can perform such creation are so important to society.

When I was in high school I was the only kid who actually wore a t-shirt featuring Howard Hughes on it. I’ve always liked Hughes and Harrison Ford’s recent plane crash reminded me a lot of a similar incident that Hughes had, in the same area years ago. Hughes was extremely rich, and did a lot of really good things with his money—particularly advancements in aviation that simply would not have happened without his actions. He was an eccentric whose mind ended up collapsing on itself, but the world is much better off because of his life than without it. Yet thousands, even millions of people flash upon the earth in a lifetime and disappear just the same and nobody notices. Is that fair? Aren’t they equal to Howard Hughes? The answer is no. The ability to create something from nothing is more important than equal distribution of fairness.

This brings us back to that summer in Florida with the Ayn Rand books. She was on to something and to my mind she broke through the first layer of an important revelation. In philosophy this is called the creation of Objectivism. I agree with most of the tenants of Objectivism. However Ayn Rand was a lot more socially liberal than I am. She was much more permissive on drugs and sex which hurts her position on capitalism. It allowed liberals to attack her as a product of excess greed and selfishness, which is an inaccurate assessment. The books of hers that I read were very valuable because what she was doing was on the cutting edge of a new way of thinking, so context is needed. Capitalism needed champions, and she officered them particularly in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Other than those characters there really aren’t any other champions of capitalism in novels or movies—with the rare exception of Harrison Ford’s film characters particularly Han Solo. In almost every other circumstance, most notably the man everyone loved to hate in the 80s television show Dallas—in JR, or Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard, rich people are evil and need to have something taken from them and given to people supposedly repressed and in need of equality.

The truth of the matter is that people who don’t have things are in that condition by choice most of the time. The big difference between people like Elon Musk and the typical volunteer at a local soup kitchen is that one creates wealth that enriches our entire culture and the other just does good deeds. Both are important, both may be good men, but only one makes something from nothing which leads to good options for everyone. The creation of Space X is more important than a local charity asking people to throw money into a hat for the needy. Space X creates expendable income to toss into the hat. Without it, there is nothing to donate to the needy.

The efforts of my new Cliffhanger installments are to further this exploration into the morality of capitalism in a way that has been utterly ignored. Ayn Rand started the process and did a lot of great work along that line of thought, but there is much, much more to do. This Cliffhanger project will likely go on for many years but already the stories feel like a continuation of the type of material I wanted to read more of after that summer vacation in Florida. After I ran out of those Ayn Rand books I wanted more, but since she died in the early 80s, there was nothing more to read. But there needed to be. So it is up to us in this new generation to expand on those arguments and further peel back the mysterious goodness of capitalism and to properly define why collectivism is a vile evil—even when its been told to us for centuries that it’s the only path to redemption. These are difficult subjects, but they need to be explored—and through Cliffhanger—they will be.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.