Musk is hero we need
Capitalist innovator vs. ‘Sen. Karen’
BILLIONAIRE Elon Musk gives the world such wonders as spaceships and electric cars, making him Time’s Person of the Year. So how do the planet’s politicians respond?
Anti-capitalist demagogue Sen. Elizabeth Warren reacts with anger and envy, saying Musk ought to pay more taxes. Warren tweeted on Tuesday, “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”
Musk’s response: “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.”
You gotta love this guy. Gloriously capitalistic, irreverent and, yeah, a little weird, Elon Musk is an American original in the mold of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs. And someone I hope is a model to the next generation of young innovators — a perfect antidote to faddish neo-socialists like Warren and AOC.
Warren is pushing a wealth tax, believing at least 2 percent per year of a fortune the size of Musk’s should be seized by the government to be spent by her and her colleagues.
But direct wealth confiscation is an economically dangerous move that heralds a regime on its last legs. Musk is after bigger fish. Technology doesn’t just make little improvements in the world we know. It provides avenues of escape from that world into new, better ones, as Musk constantly reminds us.
He touts the cryptocurrency Dogecoin as a partial escape from government-produced fiat currency.
His use of Twitter reminds us that almost anyone can mock a major politician for near-zero cost now and get the whole planet laughing.
His company SpaceX is a glimpse of a possible future in which the universe beyond our world is not framed solely by the expensive, inefficient government bureaucracy called NASA.
Space technology may one day even allow people to escape from Elon Musk himself, which is only fair. His ex-girlfriend Grimes, a Canadian electronic musician and mother to his unpronounceable son, joked after their recent breakup that if Musk is determined to colonize Mars, she might respond by founding a competing “lesbian space commune” on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
I am sure I speak for every Musk fan when I say that would be awesome. There’s space out there for everyone.
She’s just trolling him — as she was when she allowed herself to be photographed reading a Karl Marx book. But this is the way. Better to have competing visions of quirky space individualism than one command-and-control, centralized dream spun by Sen. Warren.
Yes, Musk’s company did seek government grants, and partnered with NASA to build his business. But he’s also paid his share.
“If you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year,” Musk wrote to Warren.
Not that this will matter to Warren. She has the assumption — as in that incredibly upside-down use of the term “freeloading” — that
everything really belongs to the government anyway, including Musk’s fortune.
Three cheers to Elon Musk for opposing that, and for looking past the next social welfare program to humanity's next advancement. Maybe he can blast Warren into space next.
Todd Seavey is the author of the book “Libertarianism for Beginners” and a columnist for SpliceToday.com.