At first it was funny, cute, haha, but now I'm not friggin laughing. And as the election approaches, the stakes are getting higher than ever. Now Elon is making headlines for the eye-watering amount of money he's throwing at the Trump campaign, for the questionable egality of his scheme to hand out random $1 million gifts to voters in swing states, and for the dark money organizations he's funding and their shady disinformation campaigns.

最初は面白かったし、かわいかったし、ハハハと笑っていた。選挙が近づくにつれ、賭け金はこれまで以上に高くなっている。イーロンは今、トランプ陣営に投じている目を疑うような巨額の資金や、スウィングステートの有権者に100万ドルのプレゼントを無差別に配るという彼の計画の信憑性、そして彼が資金を提供しているダークマネー組織とその怪しげな偽情報キャンペーンで話題になっている。

Elon Musk is a threat to American democracy. And given the fact that his fellow tech billionaire and former business partner Peter Thiel has proclaimed that freedom and democracy are incompatible, that might be entirely the point. Today we're talking Elon Musk's strange political turn from Biden supporter to dark MAGA Trump enthusiast, the vast amounts of power and money he stands to gain in a second Trump presidency, and why he poses an existential threat to this country. And he's not even from here. In a world where the media landscape is increasingly divided, staying informed has become more challenging. The rise of social media, the 24-hour news cycle, and an explosion of alternative news outlets have contributed to echo chambers where people primarily engage with perspectives that align with their beliefs. For example, on Ground News

イーロン・マスクはアメリカの民主主義にとって脅威である。そして、彼の仲間のハイテク億万長者で元ビジネスパートナーのピーター・ティールが、自由と民主主義は両立しないと宣言している事実を考えると、それはまったく的を射ているのかもしれない。今日は、イーロン・マスクがバイデン支持者から暗黒のMAGAトランプ熱狂者へと奇妙な政治的転身を遂げたこと、第二のトランプ大統領誕生で彼が手にすることになる莫大な権力と資金、そしてなぜ彼がこの国に存亡の危機をもたらすのかについて話そう。そして、彼はこの国の出身者ですらない。メデ

I found this story about Elon Musk. Elon Musk promises to award $1 million each day to a signer of his petition. In the 181 articles Ground News gathered covering this topic, the left emphasizes the legality concerns surrounding Musk's campaign, while the right underscores Musk's aspirations, portraying his plan as an extraordinary use of wealth to influence voters, while underplaying legal implications. This is a great example of how different the media reports on stories, depending on their bias. You can see left-leaning The Daily Beast used the headline, expert rips Elon Musk's clearly illegal $1 million lottery to sign his MAGA PAX petition, while far-right publication WLT Report uses the headline, yes it's real, here's how to win $1 million each day from Elon Musk. Very different takes, with the left clearly emphasizing the illegality of this scheme, and this far-right publication using a clickbaity headline to make the scheme seem appealing, exciting, and positive. This is where Ground News comes in, and why I've been using them for over a year. Today's partner Ground News is a great tool for understanding the news. They offer helpful context you need when faced with starkly different headlines about the same story. Here you can see the overall bias distribution of the news sources covering this story, with 46% of news sources right-leaning, and only 21% left-leaning, indicating that this isn't being reported on much by the left. If you scroll down, you can see the overall factuality rating of the sources, with only 31% of sources scoring high factuality ratings, meaning a lot of dubious news sources are picking up this story and running with it. You can also see more information about who owns which source, with 30% of these sources owned by media conglomerates, and another 23% owned by wealthy private individuals. All of these tools can be really helpful to provide more context to your own echo chamber. You and your social media bubble may have had one reaction, but it's important to understand the larger picture and what people outside your bubble are saying, and I'm able to get all of this context and information thanks to Ground News.

イーロン・マスクに関するこんな記事を見つけた。イーロン・マスクは、署名者に毎日100万ドルを贈ると約束している。Ground Newsが集めたこの話題を扱った181の記事の中で、左派はマスクのキャンペーンをめぐる合法性の懸念を強調し、右派はマスクの願望を強調し、彼の計画を有権者に影響を与えるための並外れた富の使い方として描く一方で、法的な影響を軽視している。これは、メディアの偏見によって報道がいかに異なるかを示す好例である。左寄りの『The Daily Beast』は、専門家がイーロン・マスクの明らかに違

My favorite Ground News feature at the moment is their Blind Spot feed. With a bird's eye view of issues that tend to get more attention from the left or right than others, I can easily step out of my echo chamber and understand how partisan narratives shape reality and votes. I'm always really impressed with Ground News, and I genuinely think they're a great resource for identifying biases in the media. So scan my QR code, click the link in the description, or go to ground.news.legia to get 40% off the same vantage plan I use to stay informed, which comes to about $5 a month.

今、私が一番気に入っているのは、Ground NewsのBlind Spotフィードだ。左派や右派から注目されがちな問題を俯瞰的に見ることで、自分のエコーチェンバーから簡単に抜け出し、党派的な物語がどのように現実や票を形成しているのかを理解することができる。私はいつもGround Newsに感銘を受けており、メディアの偏向を見極めるための素晴らしいリソースだと純粋に思っている。私のQRコードをスキャンするか、説明文のリンクをクリックするか、ground.news.legiaにアクセスすると、私が情報収集に

Get unlimited access to all Ground News has to offer while helping an independent team keep the media transparent. Thanks, Ground News. Okay, just to set the scene for you, a reminder that Elon Musk leaned center Democrat for years. He voted for Obama and regularly supported Democrats up until very recently. He was concerned about the owners of Twitter being overtly political. Then in 2022, he announced he'd vote for Ron DeSantis if he ran for president in 2024. Elon's rightward turn seemed to have started around that time, due in part because he's a big giant baby who became radicalized when he didn't get his way. Biden vowed to be the most labor-friendly president in history. Really inconvenient for a man who hates unions and loves to run his companies with zero regard for their workers. He's also pointed to criticism from AOC and Elizabeth Warren as central to his decision to abandon the Democratic Party. Basically, because Democrats didn't bend to his will and praise him at every turn, he started trolling them and found that there were a lot of billionaires and dummies on the internet who would praise him for it. From there, he snowballed into promoting right-wing conspiracy theories, disowning his trans daughter, railing against the woke mind virus, and now throwing millions and millions of dollars behind Donald Trump.

メディアの透明性を保つ独立チームを支援しながら、グラウンド・ニュースが提供するすべてのコンテンツに無制限にアクセスできます。ありがとう、Ground News。さて、ここでイーロン・マスクが長年民主党に傾倒していたことを思い出してほしい。彼はオバマに投票し、ごく最近まで定期的に民主党を支持していた。彼はツイッターのオーナーがあからさまに政治的であることを懸念していた。そして2022年、彼はロン・デサンティスが2024年の大統領選に出馬したら投票すると発表した。イーロンの右傾化はその頃から始まっていたようだ

So there are a few headlines animating today's story. There was, of course, the infamous Trump rally where Elon Kubrick stared down the nation, but only after jumping around like on Sims when you're giving them different personality traits. Despite having previously shown support for Trump and pledged huge sums of money to help his campaign, this was the first time Elon took the stage at a rally and gave what can loosely be described as a speech. Since then, I think the media has taken greater notice, and so reports are starting to come out of the shady s**t that he's been doing. And it just gets shadier. So let's take each headline in turn. It was recently revealed through quarterly filings that Elon has given seven million dollars to his own super PAC,

さて、本日はいくつかの見出しをご紹介しよう。もちろん、イーロン・キューブリックが国民を睨みつけた悪名高いトランプ大統領の集会があった。以前からトランプを支持し、彼の選挙キャンペーンを支援するために巨額の資金を約束していたにもかかわらず、イーロンは初めて集会のステージに立ち、ゆるやかにスピーチと言えるものを行った。それ以来、メディアはより注目するようになり、彼が行ってきた胡散臭いことが報道されるようになったと思う。そして、ますます胡散臭くなっている。では、それぞれの見出しを順番に見ていこう。イーロンは最近、

America PAC, which has grown in recent months into a key player in Trump's campaign.

アメリカPACは、ここ数カ月でトランプ陣営の重要人物に成長した。

And Elon has been heavily involved in the operations of his super PAC. Super PACs only exist thanks largely to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that ruled money is speech and people therefore shouldn't be denied their free speech right to spend gobs of money on political campaigns. Super PACs circumvent traditional donation restrictions that bar individuals from giving more than $3,300 to any politician. So you and I have that upper limit, but anyone with extra cash to burn interested in influencing American politics can create a super

そしてイーロンは、スーパーPACの運営に大きく関与している。スーパーPACが存在するのは、「お金は言論であり、政治運動に大金を費やす言論の自由は否定されるべきではない」というシティズンズ・ユナイテッド最高裁判決のおかげである。スーパーPACは、個人がどの政治家にも3,300ドル以上の寄付をすることを禁じる従来の寄付規制を回避する。つまり、私やあなたにはその上限があるが、アメリカの政治に影響を与えたいという余剰資金を持つ人なら誰でも、スーパーPACを設立することができるのだ。

PAC. Super PACs traditionally have been barred from coordinating directly with the politicians they support. Instead, they tend to spend their money on political ads. However, thanks to a

PACスーパーPACは伝統的に、支援する政治家と直接調整することを禁じられてきた。その代わり、政治広告に資金を使う傾向がある。しかし

March ruling by the FEC, campaigns can now share information and data on efforts to promote voter turnout with outside groups. So now super PACs can coordinate directly with candidates and their campaigns, at least on their voter turnout efforts. Because of this, the Trump campaign, strapped for cash, both because they've been out-fundraised by Harris and because they're funding Trump's millions in legal fees, have outsourced their door-knocking and ground game efforts to outside groups like Elon's America PAC. And instead of spending any money on television ads, America PAC has spent over $100 million on canvassing and direct mail, both in support of

FECによる3月の裁定により、選挙運動は投票率向上の取り組みに関する情報やデータを外部団体と共有できるようになった。つまり、スーパーPACは、少なくとも投票率向上の取り組みに関しては、候補者やその陣営と直接調整できるようになったのだ。このため、トランプ陣営は、ハリスに資金を出し切られ、またトランプの数百万ドルの訴訟費用に資金を提供しているため、資金繰りに窮し、戸別訪問や地上戦の取り組みをイーロンのアメリカPACのような外部団体に委託している。そして、アメリカPACはテレビ広告には一切資金を使わず、1億ドル

Trump, but also in support of Republican candidates in some House and Senate races.

トランプ氏だけでなく、いくつかの上下院選では共和党候補の支援も行っている。

The problem that many experienced campaign organizers have pointed out is that outsourcing arguably the number one way Trump could win this election, turnout of low-propensity Trump-leaning voters, to super PACs run by and organized by inexperienced billionaires who want to play God with US elections, may not be a great strategy. Candidate campaigns tend to be better equipped with knowledge and experience to effectively use their resources in ways that will actually impact the election. Elon Musk buys companies and posts tweets from the Twitter. What the does he know about getting out the vote? That requires empathy and a sense of how ordinary people feel and what motivates them. Scientific studies have found that ultra-wealthy people fundamentally lack basic empathy skills, and reports indicate that Elon has brought his same erratic management style that he's used at Twitter, including insurmountable demands and sudden firings, to the campaign trail. He's even reportedly relocated to Pennsylvania to head the America PAC's office there. Yes, oftentimes if you throw money at a problem you can eventually find a solution, but the Harris campaign just surpassed a billion dollars and has actual campaign experience, so,

多くの経験豊富な選挙キャンペーン・オーガナイザーが指摘している問題は、トランプがこの選挙に勝利するための最も重要な方法である、投票率の低いトランプ支持層の取り込みを、米国の選挙で神を演じたい経験の浅い億万長者が運営・組織するスーパーPACに委託するのは、あまり良い戦略とは言えないということだ。候補者のキャンペーンは、選挙に実際に影響を与えるような方法でリソースを効果的に使うための知識と経験をより備えている傾向がある。イーロン・マスクは会社を買収し、ツイッターからツイートを投稿している。彼に投票率アップの何

I don't know, seems like a losing strategy. Seems like Elon Musk is a big loser. There's also his latest scheme, conducted through his America PAC, to randomly give voters in swing states one million dollars. He created a petition seeking to guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.

どうだろう、負ける戦略のような気がする。イーロン・マスクは大負けしているようだ。また、彼のアメリカPACを通じて行われた、スウィングステートの有権者に無作為に100万ドルを与えるという最新の計画もある。彼は、言論の自由と武器を持つ権利の保障を求める請願書を作成した。

Only registered voters in key swing states, that's Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan,

ペンシルベニア、ジョージア、ネバダ、アリゾナ、ミシガンといった主要スイングステートの登録有権者のみ、

Wisconsin, and North Carolina, can sign the petition, enter to win the one million dollars, and claim an additional one hundred dollar reward. The offer expires today, October 21st, and he awarded the first one million dollar check at a recent event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Not to mention the fact that his one million dollar giveaway stunt is illegal. Not only is Elon breaking the law, but anyone who accepts his checks is breaking the law too. 52 U.S.C. Section 10307C states, whoever knowingly or willfully pays or offers to pay or accepts payment, either for registration to vote or for voting, shall be fined not more than ten thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. Technically, Musk is paying them to sign a petition, but the rules clearly state the only people that can win are registered voters in key swing states, which indicates that this is a very thinly veiled attempt to pay people to register to vote, which is expressly illegal and could come with prison time. The DOJ election crimes manual indicates that a bribe cannot be used to induce voting activities, including bribing with money or a lottery system.

ウィスコンシン州、ノースカロライナ州では、この嘆願書に署名し、100万ドルを獲得するために応募することができ、さらに100ドルの報奨金を請求することができる。このオファーの有効期限は本日10月21日までで、彼は最近ペンシルバニア州ハリスバーグで開催されたイベントで最初の100万ドルの小切手を授与した。彼の100万ドルプレゼントのスタントが違法であることは言うまでもない。イーロンは法を犯しているだけでなく、彼の小切手を受け取る者もまた法を犯しているのだ。合衆国法典第52編第10307C条には、投票登録や投票

There are some lawyers online saying, well, it's arguable because technically he's paying them to sign a petition not to register to vote. But this is the legal shit that really grinds my gears.

ネット上では、厳密に言えば、投票登録をしないよう署名させるために金を払っているのだから、議論の余地はある、と言う弁護士もいる。しかし、これは本当に歯がゆい法律上のたわごとだ。

He's clearly using it as enticement to get voters in swing states to register to vote.

スウィングステートの有権者に投票登録をさせるための誘惑として使っているのは明らかだ。

If they want the million bucks, they have to register. The veil is thin at best and saying it's arguable just to be a contrarian online lawyer gives legitimacy to what is clearly a scheme that is against the law. And this is indicative of a larger issue with Elon Musk and with all billionaires. The law simply doesn't apply to them. Even if the DOJ were to file an injunction to make him stop and then prosecute him, the likelihood of him facing actual jail time is slim to none because he would post bail ahead of trial, he could take a plea deal to avoid it, and he doesn't have any serious priors that would indicate putting him in prison for five years is the correct option. Though perhaps deportation would be better since he's an immigrant committing a crime. Just a thought. But in reality, he'd likely face a fine. A fine of not more than $10,000. Even with the lawyer's fees in this scenario, the penalty doesn't even amount to a slap on the wrist. It's not even a blip on his radar. This is why billionaires shouldn't exist, period. It allows them to take full advantage of our two-tiered justice system and buy their way out of anything. So on top of the clinical lack of empathy they possess, they also don't have to ever legally answer for their actions in any serious way so long as they make a tiny minutiae of effort to create plausible deniability or some sort of pretense to point to for why they're doing what they're doing. Then the legal system is like, oh crap, he got away with it again.

100万ドルが欲しければ、登録しなければならない。そのベールはせいぜい薄く、ネット上で逆張りする弁護士であることを理由に、明らかに法律違反のスキームに正当性を与えている。そしてこれは、イーロン・マスクやすべての億万長者に関するより大きな問題を示している。法律は彼らには適用されないのだ。仮に司法省が差し止め命令を出して彼を起訴したとしても、裁判の前に保釈金を支払うだろうし、それを避けるために司法取引に応じることもできる。彼は移民で犯罪を犯しているのだから、強制送還の方がいいのかもしれないが。単なる思いつきだ

He's too smart for us. And then there's a new article from Open Secrets, a super important organization you should absolutely have on your radar for understanding how money impacts our politics. They investigated his ties to a pro-Trump dark money network that has been creating fake pro-Harris propaganda meant to undermine her messages, creating a fake liberal answer to

彼は私たちには賢すぎる。そして、お金が政治に与える影響を理解するために、絶対に目を光らせておくべき超重要組織、オープン・シークレッツの新しい記事だ。彼らは、彼女のメッセージを弱体化させることを意図した偽の親ハリスプロパガンダを作成し、偽のリベラルな答えを作成した親トランプダークマネーネットワークとの関係を調査した。

Project 2025 called Progress 2028, and claiming her policies include expanding Medicaid to undocumented immigrants and getting rid of borders. These ads are created by a dark money group called

プロジェクト2025はプログレス2028と呼ばれ、彼女の政策には不法移民へのメディケイドの拡大や国境の撤廃が含まれると主張している。これらの広告は、次のようなダークマネー・グループによって作成されている。

Building America's Future. Thanks to unconscionable loopholes in our campaign finance laws, 501c4 groups, aka dark money groups, don't have to disclose their donors. They're meant to be a social welfare organization that doesn't spend most of their money on political purposes, but many of these organizations come close to the line or just completely cross it.

アメリカの未来を築く選挙資金法の不合理な抜け穴のおかげで、501c4グループ、別名ダークマネー・グループは寄付者を公表する必要がない。501c4グループは社会福祉団体であり、ほとんどの資金を政治的な目的に使用することはないが、これらの団体の多くはその一線に近づいているか、あるいは完全に一線を越えている。

Many also claim to be fighting for a cause like banning abortion, for example, and then strategically place ads about abortion in districts where there are elections where abortion is a contested issue. But this is really a network primed for mob-like movement of money because Building America's Future also helps fund other PACs like Future Coalition PAC,

また、例えば中絶禁止などの大義のために戦っていると主張し、中絶が争点となる選挙がある選挙区に中絶に関する広告を戦略的に掲載するものも多い。しかし、ビルディング・アメリカの未来は、フューチャー・コーリションPACのような他のPACへの資金援助も行っているため、このネットワークはまさに暴徒のような資金移動の呼び水となっている、

Duty to America PAC, Stand for Us PAC, and Citizens for Sanity, another dark money group that

Duty to America PAC、Stand for Us PAC、そしてCitizens for Sanityもまた、ダークマネー団体である。

Elon Musk has donated millions to over the years that operates out of the headquarters of the

イーロン・マスクが長年にわたって何百万ドルも寄付してきたこの組織は、「Marriott」の本社で運営されている。

Conservative Partnership Institute. That institute is led by Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint with former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows serving as senior advisor. The web is purposely tangled because that's how you launder money and obscure your aims, make it too complicated to follow. And these are just the things we know about. Thanks to our absolutely bad campaign finance laws in the U.S., Elon could be throwing millions more at getting Trump elected and there's no way we could know about it. And that's perfectly legal. As are the misleading ads produced by Elon backed dark money group Building America's Future. Generally, the First Amendment protects against government intervention of speech except for very specific circumstances, and political speech is highly protected. Truth and advertising rules only apply to businesses untruthfully advertising products or services they're trying to sell, and they don't apply to political ads. Defamation claims brought by public officials have a notoriously high bar and I don't think these would qualify. Voter suppression is illegal, but it requires that the actor deceived qualified voters to prevent them from voting generally, not to prevent them from voting for a specific candidate. States are starting to pass laws barring the use of deceptive AI generated content in political ads, but that doesn't apply here either. Again, for Elon and the other billionaires both here and abroad using their money to influence us and how we vote in this election, campaign finance laws and the FEC provide enough loopholes and weak enforcement that they can get away with pretty much anything scot-free. And outside the realm of directly tampering with our elections through funding dark money networks and door knocking for Trump, Elon also has the benefit of owning one of the largest social media companies in the world and sending daily propaganda to his 200 million followers. Lately, this has included tweets wondering why no one has tried to unalive Kamala

保守パートナーシップ研究所である。この研究所は、ヘリテージ財団のジム・デミント会長が率い、マーク・メドウズ元トランプ大統領首席補佐官が上級顧問を務めている。そうやって資金洗浄を行い、目的を不明瞭にし、複雑すぎて追跡できないようにするため、この網は意図的に絡み合っている。これらは我々が知っていることに過ぎない。米国の選挙資金法のおかげで、イーロンはトランプを当選させるために数百万ドル以上の資金を投じることができたが、我々がそれを知ることはできなかった。そしてそれは完全に合法だ。イーロンを支援するダークマネー

Harris yet and pushing false claims about immigration and voter fraud. He took those conspiracy theories on the road, pushing the debunked Dominion voting conspiracy theory at his first solo Pennsylvania rally in support of Donald Trump just this week. Say the Dominion voting machines, it is weird that the, you know, I think they're used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa

ハリスは、移民や有権者詐欺に関する誤った主張を押し付けている。彼は今週、ドナルド・トランプを支持する初の単独ペンシルバニア集会で、論破されたドミニオン投票陰謀説を推し進めた。ドミニオンの投票機がフィラデルフィアとマリコパで使われているのは奇妙だ。

County, um, but not in a lot of other places. And that seemed like a heck of a coincidence.

しかし、他の多くの場所ではそうではなかった。そしてそれは、とんでもない偶然の一致のように思えた。

And Elon Musk's ramblings reveal, I think one reason why these two men have grown such a bromance in recent months. They speak the same language and that language is literal nonsense, nonsense, which neither of them has ever had to answer for because they were both born millionaires and handed every opportunity in life. Elon Musk didn't create businesses. He bought them. He didn't come up with anything other than millions of dollars in inherited wealth. The man is not a genius. And yet just like Trump, because we have a illness in this country where we see wealth and assume intelligence and we see success and assume hard work, we've given these men over the years, this God-like status. People still call Musk a genius, even while criticizing his actions.

そしてイーロン・マスクの放言は、ここ数カ月でこの2人がこれほど仲良くなっている理由の1つを明らかにしていると思う。彼らは同じ言語を話し、その言語は文字通りのナンセンス、ナンセンスであり、2人とも億万長者として生まれ、人生のあらゆる機会を手渡されたため、答える必要がなかった。イーロン・マスクはビジネスを創造したのではない。買収したのだ。何百万ドルもの富を受け継いだ以外に、彼は何も思いつかなかった。彼は天才ではない。それなのに、トランプと同じように、この国には富を見れば知性があると思い込み、成功を見れば勤勉だ

We need to kill that narrative. Musk is not that smart. You're not very pretty and you're not very bright. A cursory glance at his ex feed indicates as much. His tenuous grasp on first amendment law is another indicator. Also, anytime he opens his mouth, this is a man who has never been told he can't do whatever he wants, has never had to face consequences. And because of all this, he knows how to speak in a tone that is authoritative and sounds smart while saying words that are complete nonsense. And I think seeing these men for what they are prep school boys who always get their way throw tantrums when they don't lack any empathy or emotional intelligence and have skated through life on the backs of their family fortune while doing everything in their power to infect our politics with ideology that protects that fortune no matter what, never having to form personalities or any significant intelligence because they can buy their way into any room they want, it helps to deflate the pedestal we've put them on, but also the fear we feel when faced with the power of their billions of dollars. On the one hand, it is terrifying that these man-baby idiots wield so much power because of their wealth. On the other hand, they're too stupid to form the vast conspiracies we often give them credit for. Yes, they obfuscate their political activities behind complex dark money networks and plausible deniability, but one of the reasons they're so complex is because they have the resources to just make a bunch of shell organizations and stack them on top of each other.

私たちはその物語を終わらせる必要がある。マスクはそれほど賢くない。美人でもないし、頭も良くない。彼の元フィードをざっと見ただけでも、そのことがわかる。彼が憲法修正第1条をほとんど理解していないこともその表れだ。また、彼が口を開けばいつでも、この男は自分がやりたいことをやってはいけないと言われたことがなく、結果に直面したこともない。そのため、彼は権威的な口調で話す方法を心得ており、まったくナンセンスな言葉を口にしながらも、賢く聞こえるのだ。共感性や感情的知性に欠けているわけでもないのに、いつも自分の思い通り

It's like giving a baby a pile of blocks with letters on them and letting them throw them across the room and create indecipherable words out of the letters. That doesn't mean they're a genius, it means they were handed the blocks and allowed to throw them and they fell where they may and you were left to pick up the pieces. The only thing they're good at is using their money to create chaos and maybe five percent of the time it gets them where they're trying to go, which is enough to appear like you're a genius when you have 240 billion dollars worth of blocks to throw around.

赤ちゃんに文字の書かれた積み木を与えて、部屋中に投げさせて、文字から解読不能な言葉を作り出すようなものだ。それは彼らが天才であるという意味ではなく、ブロックを手渡され、投げることを許され、好きなところに落ち、その破片を拾うために残されたということだ。彼らが得意なのは、お金を使って混乱を作り出すことであり、それが目的地に到達する確率は5％程度である。

So no, these men are not geniuses. No, they do not deserve their billions. But much like toddlers throwing blocks, they require guardrails because their chaos can hurt the people around them, which is why regulations are necessary to block them from doing their self-serving bidding, or really from ever existing in the first place but we haven't gotten there yet, and from getting their grubby baby hands on the reins of government. And without greater regulation, and in the case of a future Trump presidency, we're staring down the barrel of a future where billionaires are empowered to drive us all straight off a cliff and Elon will be the first pied piper in line guiding us to our death. Meanwhile, he's got a bunker and a rocket to his new colony for billionaires on Mars.

だから、彼らは天才ではない。数十億を手にするに値しない。しかし、ブロックを投げる幼児のように、彼らのカオスは周囲の人々を傷つける可能性があるため、ガードレールが必要なのだ。だからこそ、彼らの利己的な言いなりにならないように、あるいはそもそも存在しないように、そして彼らの汚い赤子の手が政府の手綱に触れないように、規制が必要なのである。そして、より大きな規制がなければ、そして将来のトランプ大統領の場合には、億万長者が私たち全員を崖からまっすぐに突き落とす力を持ち、イーロンが私たちを死へと導く最初の笛吹きとなる

Because behind all of Elon's fanfare and claims of caring about freedom and the first amendment is the knowledge that if Trump wins this election, Elon will acquire more power than he's ever even dreamed of. Trump has promised that if he wins, he will create a presidential government efficiency task force tasked with identifying government waste and trimming the fat, and he's pledged to put Elon Musk at the helm of that effort. In that role, Elon would have the power to exact revenge on all the administrative agencies that have plagued his efforts for maximum profits with zero accountability. His companies have been targets of at least 20 different investigations and actions by government agencies over the safety of Tesla cars, environmental damage caused by his rockets, OSHA violations, and more. In a world where Elon Musk becomes czar of government efficiency, the Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board get gutted. No more labor protections. The

というのも、イーロンのファンファーレや、自由と憲法修正第1条を大切にするという主張の裏には、トランプがこの選挙に勝てば、イーロンは夢にも思わなかったほどの権力を手に入れることになるという知識があるからだ。トランプ氏は、勝利すれば政府の無駄を洗い出し、脂肪を削ぎ落とすことを任務とする大統領政府効率化タスクフォースを創設し、その指揮官にイーロン・マスクを据えることを約束している。その役割において、イーロンは、説明責任ゼロで最大の利益を得ようとする彼の努力を悩ませてきたすべての行政機関に復讐する力を持つだろう。

Environmental Protection Agency? Obliterated. Consumer protections, environmental protections, securities and fraud protections? Gone. Not only would the role give the world's richest man the power to do away with government regulations, the wet dream of every conservative millionaire and billionaire, it would also give that power to a man who is already a huge beneficiary of government contracts. Yes, while Elon rails against regulations and taxes, he is also the recipient of huge government contracts through his businesses. Contracts which wouldn't exist but for our taxes.

環境保護庁？環境保護局？消費者保護、環境保護、証券・詐欺保護？なくなる。この役割は、保守的な億万長者や億万長者の夢である政府規制を撤廃する力を世界一の富豪に与えるだけでなく、すでに政府契約の莫大な恩恵を受けている人物にその力を与えることになる。そう、イーロンは規制や税金に反対する一方で、自分の事業を通じて政府との巨額の契約も受けている。我々の税金がなければ存在しなかった契約だ。

The bulk of those government contracts are through SpaceX, which has received at least 15.4 billion taxpayer dollars in the form of government contracts. SpaceX's role in NASA is so huge at this point that it effectively dictates NASA's rocket launch schedule. The Department of Defense relies on Elon to get most of its satellites into orbit. Last year alone, his companies were promised $3 billion across 17 federal agencies, and that's with a Democrat in office. If Trump wins,