Doug Bernauer

Elon Musk: Irrational regulations are an invisible tax on humanity. “You really can think of the United States and many countries – it's arguably worse in the EU – as being like Gulliver, tied down by a million little strings. Any one given regulation is not that bad, but you've got millions of them. Eventually, you just can't get anything done. This is a massive tax on the consumer, on the people. It's just that they don't realize that there's this massive tax in the form of irrational regulations. I'll give you a recent example that is just insane. SpaceX was fined by the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] $140,000 for, they claimed, dumping potable water on the ground, drinking water. This is at Starbase, and we're like, we're in a tropical thunderstorm region. That stuff comes from the sky all the time. You know, it was just water to cool the launch pad during liftoff. And there's zero harm done. And they agree: Yes, there's zero harm done. We're like, okay, so there's no harm done, and you want us to pay a $140,000 fine? Yes, because you didn't have a permit. We didn't know there was a permit needed for zero-harm, fresh water being on the ground in a place where fresh water falls from the sky all the time. I mean, sometimes it rains so much the roads are flooded. So we're like, how does this make any sense? And they were like, we're not going to process any more of your applications for Starship launch unless you pay this $140,000. They just ransomed us. And we're like, okay, so we paid $140,000. But this is no good. I mean, at this rate, we're never going to get to Mars.” Source: The All-In Podcast, September 9, 2024