'What About the Whales'? Elon Musk Tells FUNNY but Maddening Story About Government Overregulation

There isn't a facet of life the government doesn't think it should have a say in. From our light bulbs to our food to our cars to our housing, there's a list of regulations and standards a mile long.

It's overkill and ridiculous.

Few people know about government overregulation better than Elon Musk, and here he is sharing one story of how messed up government really is:

Elon Musk tonight on overregulation:

"I got a bunch of nutty stories. SpaceX had to do this study to see if Starship would hit a shark. And I'm like... it's a big ocean. There are a lot of sharks! It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely. So we said, 'Fine, we’ll do the… pic.twitter.com/Ytbqg374vI
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 20, 2024

The entire post reads:

I got a bunch of nutty stories. SpaceX had to do this study to see if Starship would hit a shark. And I'm like... it's a big ocean. There are a lot of sharks! It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely. So we said, 'Fine, we’ll do the analysis. Can you give us the shark data?' They were like, 'No, we can’t give you the shark data.'
Well, then, okay, we’re in a bit of a quandary. How do we solve this shark probability issue? They said, 'Well, we could give it to our western division, but we don’t trust them.' I’m like, 'Am I in a comedy sketch here?!'
Eventually, we got the data and could run the analysis to say, 'Yeah, the sharks are going to be fine.' But they wouldn’t let us proceed with the launch until we did this crazy shark analysis.
Then we thought, 'Okay, now we’re done.' But then they said, 'What about whales?'
When you look at a picture of the Pacific, what percent of the surface area do you see as whale? If Starship did hit a whale, honestly, it’s like the whale had it coming, cause the odds are... so low. It’s like Final Destination: Whale Edition.
And then they said, 'What if the rocket goes underwater, then explodes, and the whales have hearing damage?' This is real!

Entrepreneur regulatory hell. Raleigh once forced me to plant 4 trees over the main Miami-to-DC fiberoptic trunk. AT&T was screaming at Raleigh not to plant there. I offered to plant 30 trees instead on the 2-acre property. Nope. Cost me $30,000 for 4 enclosure boxes. https://t.co/ABLvqUprHl
— Follower 41 (@dartsandmonkeys) October 20, 2024

Egads.

It's not that federal staff are incompetent, in fact many are quite bright. But left unchecked, ignorance of how the real world works and a need to justify their existence will lead to this kind of thing. And if this is what Elon gets, imagine small businesses https://t.co/E7IVXYSbav
— Michael Brickman (@BrickM) October 20, 2024

This writer once worked for local government and was tasked with making a flowchart for small businesses looking for permits. The process was, in a word, onerous.

And it needs to change.