First things first: I am not an Elon Musk fanboy, simp, or cheerleader. I have a lot of doubts and concerns about him, his businesses, and his influence. However, any criticism of his critics is invariably assumed to be "taking his side." I want people to make better arguments, and I refuse to join bandwagons. Get over it.
What's this all about? The big news today is that Elon Musk is officially the world's first trillionaire following the initial public offering of SpaceX stock. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move (bonus points to whoever gets that reference!) especially on Web2 social media. This rage is usually expressed in ways which demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of many basic principles.
The facts: Elon Musk owns 4.8 billion shares and 350 million stock options, or a 38% stake in SpaceX, to paraphrase the information in the Forbes article linked above. This is worth around $800 billion based on current market prices of approximately $160/share. When added to Tesla, The Boring Company, Twitter, Starlink, etc. it seems his net worth is thus north of $1 trillion dollars. This is a mind-boggling sum, and I share a general suspicion of anyone who accumulates so much wealth, but not for the same reasons as the social media meme machine.
That's just too much money!
It isn't money, it's the present market value of a business in which he owns a major stake. We aren't talking about Scrooge McDuck in a silo of coins here. If he sells his shares, it has two significant effects:
An influx of liquid stocks dilutes the pool of available assets on the market. This increase in supply means a new equilibrium point with the demand curve on the market. If he sold 5 billion shares, they would bring in far less than $800 billion.
For better or worse, SpaceX stock value is linked to Musk's ownership. Confidence in his business acumen is part of the reason people value stock in his company. If he divests shares, and thus ownership, the value people place on his company falls, potentially dramatically. Musk holding his shares is what many other shareholders value.
These are very basic principles, but social media rabblerousers invariably dismiss them, often openly. However, we can't have a serious discussion without building a foundation on facts. If these facts are in error, or omit further significant factors, feel free to chime in with a comment!
That money could be used for X, Y, and Z!
Suppose you did get $1.1 trillion from confiscating all of Musk's assets and nationalizing SpaceX. Then what? "Feed the hungry! Pay for schools! Build housing!" If giving government money and power fixed problems, we would live in paradise. That trillion-ish lump sum barely covers just the interest on the national debt for one year. That total debt is now pushing $40 trillion, by the way, and the "Big Beautiful Bill" raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. Trump also wants a trillion dollar military budget. A trillion here, a trillion there... before long, we're talking about real money!
What has Elon Musk done with his money? People value SpaceX because the Falcon 9 is one of the most successful rockets ever developed. SpaceX made reusable rockets into reality instead of science fiction. Starship is still in development, but shows real promise despite some very public failures. The Dragon capsule is a remarkable feat of engineering with a solid reliability and safety record thus far.
This isn't hero worship, it's a set of facts, and they matter regardless of what we think of Elon Musk or his overall business practices. He has done a lot with his wealth to build a remarkable space program. That was demonstrably a good use of money because people voluntarily pay for his services and voluntarily buy shares. This is a signal he is doing something a lot of people value.
Government does not have this feedback mechanism, and once again, we know what government does with many times as much money: it bombs people. It imprisons people for victimless "crimes." It colludes with corporations to build surveillance networks. The welfare programs and other "social services" aren't the primary function of government, it's a propaganda system to buy your belief in their legitimacy so they can continue committing evil.
Am I arguing Musk is a saint? No. Do I trust him? Well, I don't own shares of SpaceX, I don't drive a Tesla, I don't use Twitter, and I don't have internet via Starlink. Make of that what you will. But I have those choices even in our vestigial market. Government affords us no such choice, and still fails to handle issues X, Y, and Z.
That said, to the extent his businesses rely on government contracts and subsidies, I will certainly call him a dirty welfare whore. But that doesn't make him special. The military-industrial-prison complex is full of corporations doing less for the market and more evil for the government, so why is Musk suddenly Public Enemy #1?
We have a trillionaire before we have X, Y, and Z, and this proves something about our society!
This adds a layer of moralization to the arguments above, but is it really saying anything? The economy is not a zero-sum game. It is a false dichotomy to assert we, as a society or in any other way, had to choose between Musk becoming a trillionaire, and virtuous deeds. To the extent Musk built businesses which served consumer demands and employed people in productive ventures in a voluntary market, his profits are proof his system benefited everyone involved.
This isn't a moral statement, but it is a fundamental aspect of the market economy: voluntary exchange only occurs when both parties perceive a benefit. That benefit is real wealth. Half is measured in the transfer of money, the other half in the satisfaction of wants.
This does not mean everything Musk does is good, but it does throw a wrench in the works once you think about the nature of government. You must pay what they demand, or else. You will accept what they provide, and be grateful. That isn't a path to peace, prosperity, or progress no matter how you slice it.
Demanding government power is not virtuous. I would argue it is even less moral than Musk's dubious profits, because there is no element of consent, and no reciprocity. A society under a command economy is amoral at best in principle, but invariably deeply immoral in practice, no matter how the political class tries to sell it.
But Elon Musk is a fascist!
Sigh.
Do I trust him? No. Do I suspect he has covert and overt authoritarian tendencies? Yes. Has he gained a significant portion of his wealth through collusion with government? Yes. But terms like fascist and Nazi have very specific meanings, and the evidence that they apply to him is lacking.
The famous raised arm wasn't a Nazi salute.
DOGE was supposed to pare back government central planning and economic controls, whereas fascism demands state control over nominally-private business.
The US didn't have a federal department of education until less than 50 years ago, and paring that back is the opposite of fascist tendencies toward state-centered education.
For the love of all that is holy, please understand that words mean things, and applying labels to people you do not like is not an argument, especially when those labels objectively do not apply based on the evidence of word and deed. Again, he's been more than happy to benefit from pork-barrel spending, so I'm not proclaiming him a paragon of laissez-faire virtue here.
Politics, Perception, and Reality
Remember when Tesla was the darling of the left because he made electric cars cool? His personal faults could be overlooked until he joined Team Trump. When Trump won reelection in 2024, Musk was appointed head of the "Department of Government Efficiency," and there was a lot of uproar over his plan for cutting "essential programs," but what really came of that again?
Oh, right.
Nothing.
Trump broke his promises for fiscal responsibility, and Musk was ejected from the cult of personality because he didn't get the memo that it was all for show until inauguration was secured. yet this very public break from MAGA seems to have had no bearing on how people perceive Musk's politics.
So remember, Musk's entire net worth today would barely cover what the government plans to spend on turning foreign nations into rubble while creating orphans, widows, and parents who must bury their children.
Further, Elon Musk never directly taxed anyone. His rockets didn't grow from a cold war ICBM program. He hasn't blockaded Cuba or the Strait of Hormuz. He isn't sinking random boats on the South American coast. He isn't installing a network of surveillance cameras and A.I. profiling data centers (although I still don't trust Starlink), and he isn't running one of the most incarceration-crazed police systems in the world.
I'm not asking you to trust him. I don't trust him any further than I can throw him, and my back is seriously messed up.
I'm not asking you to treat his wealth as a sacred property rights claim. I don't think it all meets the criteria for that principle to apply.
I'm not asking you to respect him as an individual. The dude is sus AF, as probably no one actually would say, but screw it.
I am asking you to be better than every smooth-brained slack-jawed NPC ignoramus sharing nonsense memes on Facebook, or even more ironically, Twitter. Make sound arguments. Base them on verifiable data, not vacuous accusations. Build a case against bad ideas and destructive actions, not playground-level name-calling. Try to understand deeper economic principles before denouncing actions you dislike as "irrational" or "evil." You can do better, or at least I hope so.
A.I. slop image source: Pixabay
