Elon Musk Is No Friend To Dissidents
Never Trust A Fundamentally Dishonest Man To Put Humpty Back Together Again
The Internet is aglow with its usual polarization around an individual while in the background institutional power is at stake. In the past week this mindless hysteria has played out around Elon Musk’s bid to take over Twitter. The pretext for this move and the great hope that, “The Right”, is so excited about is that Musk is galloping into town with his diamond crusted revolvers to single handedly rescue free speech. All hail the tech oligarch riding in to save us from the tech oligarchy.
This latest act by Elon Musk appears to me to be yet another publicity stunt where boys and unformed men desperate for a savior project their hopes and fantasies upon Musk. Already Musk has stated that he is going to make Twitter for the 80% of the bell curve. How can he be for free speech if he is already talking about cutting out or suppressing 20% of the speech on the platform? Why 20% instead of 5% or .1% or whatever percent if any is truly libel or fraud and thus illegal? At what point(s) along the bell curve do you cut speech out? Who among us is asking those questions?
Musk has pulled the wool over the eyes of the public many times. My biggest concern about Musk has always been his egregious dishonesty. He presents himself as a self-made capitalist and champion of free markets and innovation, but this story is a well managed fiction eagerly perpetuated by infantilized and unformed men.
Take his company Tesla. Over the course of its history this paragon of capitalist success has lost multiples of tens of billions of dollars. Moreover, it claims as, “profits”, money that it steals from its competitors. That theft is legal. The pretext for this theft is that a Tesla has, “zero-emissions” of carbon dioxide and that carbon dioxide emissions are an existential threat to life on our planet. Both of those pretexts are patently false. Yet, Musk, the supposed greatest leader of our time, willfully perpetuates those fictions so that he can legally steal the profits from his competitors, (profitable auto manufacturers), and claim them as profits for Tesla. These legally stolen profits are called, “carbon credits.” Not only is a Tesla not a car that emits, “zero carbon”, its manufacture and the energy that is used to power it releases far more carbon than a typical ICE (Internal Combustion Engine), vehicle and far more than the most energy efficient ICE vehicles.
Musk’s dishonesty and pathological criminality when it comes to Tesla does not stop there. The, “Catastrophic Climate Change”, narrative that Musk willfully promotes to his advantage has been used in many large jurisdictions to future date the outlawing of his competitor’s products. California, New York, New Jersey, Britain, Germany and an increasing number of jurisdictions have mandated that no ICE vehicles can be sold as of dates ranging from 2030 to 2035. This is an outright outlawing of a product and a technology. It doesn’t just harm his competitors, it harms all consumers. For many cannot afford an Emissions Elsewhere Vehicle, (EEV), like a Tesla. Nor will they be able to in the future as the battery chemistry and energy density of EEV’s are already close to the limits of meaningful gains in cost and efficiency. This fantasy that Moore’s Law applies to chemistry is yet another lie that Musk willfully perpetuates. Remember, “You will own nothing and you will be happy.” The EEV scam is part of what they have in mind when they say that.
Musk, for the most part, lets the Cult of Climate Catastrophe perpetuate the falsehoods that he benefits from. The CCC does this work by and large on his behalf. Musk is a very smart and very shrewd, fascist oligarch. Sometimes though that isn’t enough for him and he lets slip the most brazen and patently absurd lies. He has stated that solar power can generate the same amount of energy on the same amount of land as a nuclear power plant. This is a claim that would be laughable, and is laughable to any person with the most basic knowledge of energy density, if it were not criminal in its implications for all of society. He is promoting the use of a form of energy, (solar photo-voltaics), that will take our civilization backward while denigrating the use of a form of energy that holds the greatest promise to radically increase the well being of our civilization, (nuclear fission). Even more absurd is that nuclear energy is far far better in terms of the amount of carbon emitted over its lifespan of energy production vs. the tiny lifespan of solar panels. But Musk, remember, is fully vested in selling solar panels and vested in saving the planet only in so much as its needing saving relies upon and thus benefits him.
For the past week, I have been doing what I always do. I have been standing back and trying to make sense of Musk’s Twitter takeover. That requires looking outside of the pro and contra cult of personality hysterics that define our time and scouring the distant hills for information that helps the pieces of the puzzle fit into something that makes sense based upon what I already know to be true. Peter Schiff recently brought to light that Musk already had a significant stake in Twitter and a stake whose value is languishing. Schiff points out that Musk is using his Tesla stock as leverage to perform the buyout. This is beginning to look a lot like Musk’s signature move. He leverages his celebrity and hero image to invigorate his cult like following to bring hype to his venture that he holds stock in. This can be used to lever his company scrip and induce speculative buying.
Is it possible that this move gives him and Twitter a massive PR boost and encourages, “The Right”, and dissidents to come back to Twitter, in hopes they won’t be part of that 20% that is suppressed? This hype and the new eyeballs and activity on Twitter will boost Twitter’s flagging fortunes, and the Meme investing lemmings and institutional investors will put a bid under his existing stake in Twitter and allow him to quietly exit over time. That is the crux of Schiff’s thesis.
Another potential outcome of this move by Musk is yet another manifestation of mal-investment by debt induced liquidity bubbles. Right now, many people in the Internet freedom world are hard at work building alternatives to the Big Tech platforms. This move by Musk has the potential to starve them of investment and the growth momentum of the user and activity exodus from Twitter. Who would invest in a Twitter alternative if Musk and his celebrity can bring the dissidents back onto Twitter?
Alternatively, Musk could stay in control of Twitter. Then, a man whose primary company Tesla, and his secondary company SpaceX which exists because of government contracts, can have control of the algorithms. This has the potential to make Musk and his business practices beyond reproach. Musk can add to his crown the glimmering jewel that regales him the great champion of free speech. Thus one of the great liars and perpetuators of self-serving fictions of all time will have buttressed his reputation as a champion of the people. He will have fooled the public and his fanatical fanboys once again.
I wonder why so many, conservatives and free market thinkers have never considered how in bed with government and how utterly dependent upon government and the religious-cult narrative of Catastrophic Climate Change, Elon Musk and his business empire are. I wonder how a businessman so dependent upon government largesse and legal privileges and so willing to leverage them can be the savior and bulwark and cavalry leader of the charge against the very system his success depends upon. Will Musk, whose existing businesses are deeply dependent on the government, keep government and government censorship at bay?
I am guided by history and precedent. I look at the incentives, for it is incentives that determine outcomes. I wouldn’t count on it. The government could decide to favor GM and Ford over Tesla at will and Musk and those so vested in Tesla’s lofty valuation will obey. Moreover, Musk and Tesla have leverage over GM and Ford and other competitors, because Musk holds control over the information megaphone that the government and its newly minted Ministry of Misinformation so desperately want to control. Tesla wants an advantage over its competitors? A little quid pro quo with Twitter and its owner and like magic the government and Musk and his portfolio of companies mutually benefit. Do not forget the power of Wall St. and the SEC. They permit Musk to leverage his Tesla shares. Do not think they do not, and will not come knocking.
We live in a time of great confusion and uncertainty. In such times people arrive who assuage that uncertainty with lies and assurances that they have the genius to put Humpty Dumpty back together again - or better, to make a far greater Humpty to put back upon the wall. In their desperation, and desire just to have a Humpty on the wall, the bewildered forget to step back and ask, “What is so wrong with this wall that Humpty won’t stay there? What is so wrong with this Humpty that keeps falling down and breaking? Maybe we don’t need a new Humpty. Maybe what we need is a new breed of men who will build themselves up, and patch and guard the wall themselves and abandon the futility of putting Humpty back together again.”
Perhaps Elon Musk is doing society a service by buying Twitter. I am not holding my breath. For if he wants to do society a service, he will use his celebrity to tell the truth about energy. He will use his paper wealth to end the outlawing of his competitor’s products and stop stealing their profits. What good can come of a situation and what good can befall a civilization when its great champion of free speech is a bald faced liar? What good can come when the lies of the champion of free speech are so significant and consequential to the future of civilization? Will speech like mine and the many engineers and scientists criticizing Musk and his projects that already harm society and promise to do far greater harm in the future be part of the 20% Musk is against and that get sent to Twitter’s algorithmic /dev/null?
I have long thought that Tesla was the ultimate bugman vehicle and bugman company. After all, what kind of man wants his car to drive him around? What kind of man checks out from the truth and tumbles down a virtue signaling rabbit hole of delusion and unscientific, “thinking?” The herd has been called back inside the slaughterhouse’s pasture fence by the great Messiah Elon. All of the delusions and idolatry in the world won’t change the character of a cult and its leader nor the incentive structures that have been aligned against the unwitting in broad daylight. In fact ignoring what is in broad daylight is the most dangerous incentive of all. It both invites and signals an escalation in the depravity of the cult’s inner circles. A society that so willingly submits to liars, is a society poised to get what it deserves.
Men, we are on our own. But, take heart, rising to the challenges, taking the sober and long view and planning accordingly is what makes us men.
Nicely put. The élan for Elon is misguided. Rugged individualism with tax credits. Rent seekers unite!
Sometimes I can't bring myself to listen to Schiff because he's correct. He gives us the what, how and why, just not the exact when. No one can, but it's like having the almanac without the time machine or vice-versa.
I've always thought of Elon as the Pepsi to Bill Gates's Coca Cola. People need a hero and they will be provided one so that no real hero ever rises through the ranks to evoke real change. Pepsi or Coke; Gates or Musk; Trump or ---? These characters are presented on the world stage and we just keep buying tickets. Sad.
Not to mention the "car in space"... who bought that nonsense?! Just so in your face about the lies.