Donald Trump interviewed Elon Musk on his social network X, making ‘Trump Elon X Interview’ the most Googled term on Tuesday.
Here are some quick points if you want a recap:
- “The war had zero chance of starting if I were president,” Trump said.
- Trump argued that his ‘strong’ relationship with Putin could have prevented the conflict, saying that he had even told Putin not to take action. “I got along with Putin very well, and he respected me,” Trump told Musk, adding, “We would talk about Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye. But I told him don’t do it.”
- Trump warned about the threat from “nuclear warming,” which he said posed a greater danger than “global warming.”
The interview didn’t do much to bolster Trump’s failing numbers, but Trump and Musk focused on several trends happening globally and in the Western world that we wanted to expand upon.
Here are five trends from the Trump Elon X interview that politically engaged people should know.
1. Elon Musk Tells @realdonaldtrump People Are Working More For Less
Inflation was a major talking point in the interview, with Elon Musk proposing that Trump create a task force to keep government spending down.
As Adam Smith said, “The real price of everything is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
While the overall workweek has shortened over the past two centuries, it averaged about 70 hours in 1830; most of us today don’t feel any richer due to government spending and compounding inflation.
Today, Germans work the fewest hours (1,347), and Singaporeans work the most (2,237), but worldwide, the trend is that we feel much poorer than we did only a few years ago.
2. More People + More freedom = More Innovation.
A central topic to the Trump Elon X Interview was that resource availability has not declined over the past 50 years, despite predictions that they would
Trump and Musk agreed that a growing population promotes innovation and problem-solving through free thinking and exchanging ideas.
More people + more freedom = more innovation.
Musk wasn’t fully on board with Trump’s climate position (more on that below) but lauded the energy companies for their shift towards sustainability when it was predicted in 1980 by Nobel Prize-winning German physician Paul Elrich that resources would be far less abundant in the 21st century.
3. Trump Elon X Interview: Are We At Peak Oil?
Nope, hasn’t happened. Yet in 1919, geologist David White boldly predicted that the world’s oil production would peak in just nine years. Fast forward almost a century later, and Princeton University geologist Ken Deffeyes took a shot at forecasting that peak global oil production would happen on Thanksgiving Day in 2005.
4. Do We Have An Infinitely Bountiful Planet?
Once again, no. However, as Elon pointed out, as the population expands, problems will continue to surface, but people, as history has proven, find efficient ways to handle and overcome them.
One example is that despite the United States producing about 24 percent of the world’s wealth, CO₂ emissions in the country have been decreasing, according to the EPA. In fact, between 1980 and 2022, CO₂ emissions dropped by 73 percent in the United States, 68 percent in the EU, and an impressive 75 percent in China between 1978 and 2014.
Does this mean we have an infinitely bountiful planet? Not in the slightest.
Final Thought on Trump Elon X Interview
One last trend the interview covered was how close we are to WW3.
Trump is very doom and gloom, but he isn’t wrong about this, especially with the Ukraine invading Russia this week.
Whether its Kamala or Trump, this country needs the best leadership to steer us away from chaos.
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