Elon Musk, the soothsayer, space colonist and chimp

17 May 2020 - 08:57We have had much of Elon Musk.

The litigant, battling the US Securities and Exchange Commission over fraud charges: “I do not respect the SEC. I do not respect them.” The stock picker, wiping almost $15bn off Tesla’s valuation by observing publicly that its shares were too pricey. And we’ve had Musk doubling down about Covid-19 lockdowns more recently: “You should be allowed to do what you want as long as it does not endanger others ... I think there’s the question of where do civil liberties fit in this picture? And what can the government make you do, what can they make you not do, and what’s OK?”Musk enjoyed a lucrative string of entrepreneurial successes — Zip2, X.com, and PayPal Holdings — before he joined Tesla.

There certainly are abundantly wise members of the business community, and Bill Gates and Warren Buffett arguably qualify. Others, not so much. Musk may simply be charting a Dunning-Kruger course through all of his soothsaying, but when he complains about the shackles of big government, hypocrisy is at work, too.

Over the years, Tesla has received billions of dollars in government subsidies and tax credits meant to further the development of affordable electric vehicles. Conservatives have taken shots at Tesla for receiving department of energy loans and cite it as an example of corporate welfare run amok, but in my mind it’s another example of the kind of public-private partnership that, in theory, is worth it even if, in practice, it hits roadblocks.

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