"Muskism"

[MsAmerica]

From a review of a new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff (review by Jennifer Szalai), which I found interesting.

How ‘Muskism’ Is Changing the Way America Works
In a new book, Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff argue that Elon Musk’s disruptive approach to business is transforming both politics and the economy.

The ensuing cycle is virtuous for Musk and vicious for almost everyone else. If your self-reliance requires a Tesla charger or Starlink access, you have to plug into infrastructures that Musk owns. Other tech billionaires may want consumers to become entirely reliant on their products, but Musk has been operating on a different scale, helping to sell the idea that the public good is so degraded that consumers can count only on him. Slobodian, a historian, and Tarnoff, a technology writer, note that one of Muskism’s defining traits is this paradox of autonomy and dependency...

He settled in North America but, the authors write, “apartheid South Africa came along like a spore in his luggage.”...

A striking turn in “Muskism” takes place right here, at the part of the book where the authors discuss Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. They show how bothered he was by Twitter’s track record of galvanizing egalitarian social movements. Hashtags like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter took off on the platform. “Muskism had always been committed to a vigorous defense of hierarchy,” Slobodian and Tarnoff write. Musk, who gave himself the title of Technoking at Tesla, turned Twitter, now X, into a platform “that would reaffirm the power of the boss.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/books/review/muskism-quinn-slobodian-ben-tarnoff.html

I don’t understand the hate for Musk, nor how it spilled over against Teslas.

Musk, the man, the myth, the ego? A self made man (who worships his creator), who's Tesla and SpaceX were subsidized to the tune of $38 billion by the US government. He's been promising humanoid robots for five years, and has them up to dancing on stage (instead of the human actors in robot costumes he used to employ), but not yet doing real work. Looking on the bright side, robot cars have only killed a few people. With SpaceX he plans to build data centers in space. His main problems will be dissipating heat in a vacuum, and the cost of transporting hardware into orbit (which he hopes to reduce by using mostly recyclable rockets). With the early hype a lot of investors in SPCX might have made money, but those who held the IPO shares now see the price languishing well below their initial value.
Outside of business his behaviour is strange, to say the least. (Perhaps behind closed doors he's like that at work too?)
He challenging Zuckerberg to a cage fight. Boys will be boys.
He smoked marijuana during a live podcast with Joe Rogan in 2018, an unconventional look for a CEO to give to investors.
His record at DOGE, sowing chaos to drive efficiency, was, shall we say, a little patchy. He managed to sack many government employees. There are a few ongoing lawsuits.
He predicted a civil war in the UK.
An interesting character, but it's a no from me Mr Musk; I'd rather invest my money in a boring business with a proven track record of making consistent profits.

I can't remember who said what I am about to post, and I am paraphrasing, but this rings very true to me.

I Heard Musk talk about self driving cars, and I know nothing about self driving cars. So I accepted it when he said he was an expert on them. I heard him talk about spaceships, and I know nothing about spaceships. And when he said he was an expert on spaceships, I accepted it. Then I heard him talking about coding, and how he says he is an expert at coding. But I am an expert coder, and take it from me, he knows near nothing about coding.

When you take the above, and listen to him speak about a subject you do know about, what he actually says is just rubbish. But the problem is that what he actually says is filtered by the popular press, so a casual news reader can't pick up that most of what he says is rubbish.

Yup. He is a master of vaporware.

Well, the hatred for Musk is easy to explore, if you have a little time to Google. And it's natural, and reasonable, that if you think a person or corporation is deplorable, you would avoid their products.

Great post, thanks.

I've wondered if Musk himself is really a competent creator, or if he is more of a promoter/beneficiary of other people's work.

Nice. That's the kind of thing that has me wondering whether he's really a creator/inventor, or just a great PR guy. By contrast, my sense is that Steve Jobs really was crucial to the inventing/developing of products.

Yes, I’m not that bothered.
Just seems to be the fashion to hate Musk and Israel.
People are weak minded.

I think he is a really good salesman, of vaporware, and he is good at making money for himself, as in taking money from other people.

Tesla he bought into. Just at the right time as EVs were about to explode. He pushed/ wrangled the other people who started Tesla out. He promised robo taxis. That anyone who bought a Tesla would be able to drive it to work, push a button, and it would set off on it's own earning money. That never happened.

And what other models have Tesla, under his control, come out with ? Cyber truck, that did not sell, and his arctic semi, that is not selling.

He oversells, does not deliver, but still people pour money in, because he has "vision".

His "ideas" appear not to be constrained by having to make economic sense, or make a profit. He sold the idea of electric pods in tunnels, and magnetic pods in vacuum tubes. He delivered the Vegas loop. A couple of half mile long tunnels the size of sewers under Vegas, with ordinary Teslas with.... drivers.

He promised life on mars with his starship. He has yet to get one into space with a full load. Remember, starship is supposed to carry fuel into space to refuel other ships.

He promised humanoid robots. And we got men in robot suits. He promised brain chips. Now forgotten.

His Falcon 9 rocket is superb. But is it his ? Nope, he sold the idea then hired NASA engineers. He sold the idea that he could do it and NASA could not. He just announced he will retire it. Why ? Because starlink does not make money. Now it's push the moon, and mars again, to keep the investment money coming in.

I think, if one stops and thinks... what has he done that has changed anything... nothing.

I forgot his roof solar panels. Got huge grants, cos his vision.. shut down cos it was a scam.

How on earth do you get from "hate" Musk to Israel ?

Then, quote " People are weak minded."

I don't hate Musk. I dislike what he stands for. And one of the things I dislike about what he stands for, is this whole notion that is that if you are with him and do not question him, then you are on the "good side" But if you dare question him, then you are just a hate filled person and you hate everything. Because you are " weak minded."

Your post actually demonstrates one of the key reasons to dislike him.

Weak-minded how?
Does that mean that you reckon that it's sheeple behaviour to "hate Musk", merely fashionable, an unjustified trend that will collapse quickly? Weak=temporary or sheeple?

Did you feel it was weak-minded when Musk was being celebrated and gushed about widely, say 12-15 years ago? You must have deplored the Musk celebrations back then as weak-minded too, right?

The mention of Israel is a bad connect, especially since outrage about Israeli action goes back almost 60 years. At that point in your post, did you completely change your definition of weak-minded, meaning that it's weak-minded to hold onto a grudge for 60 years?

Left wing politics ever since Marx has been based on the concept of the "oppressor and the oppressed", "bourgeoisie and proletariat", "strong and weak ", "winner and loser"or "perpetrator and victim ". Combined with a view that economics is a zero sum game where if one person is making money then someone else must be losing money.

So as a very high profile successful businessman he obviously attracts hate from the left.

What truly puzzles me from a moral compass perspective is that many of those who would boycott say a purchase of a Tesla, would happily buy a Chinese EV manufactured with actual Muslim Uighur slave labour in actual concentration camps. Which simply reinforces my view that it's nothing to do with morality and everything to do with the politics of envy and success.

"Apartheid South Africa came like a spore in his luggage" yes indeed!

We were talking about Musk last night, dh is South African and we have a South African couple staying with us. They all grew up in apartheid (all white) and they obviously benefited hugely from it. But dh and his friends totally accept they had enormous privilege because thry were white, dh always says "I could easily have been born black and my life would have been totally different ". Musk has no such insight, no humility, he believes he was absolutely entitled to all that privilege. And he slags off S.A now all the time insisting there is a white genocide and all that shit. Dh says Musk is the kind of South African that Monty Python wrote the sing about!

It predates Marx you know. This whole concept of sharing and working together.

There was a fella called Jesus, apparently, who was pretty big on it. Or at least his followers were

Act 4:32 - 35- and of the multitude of those who believed, the heart and the soul were one, and not one was saying that anything of the things he had was his own, but all things were in common to them. And with great power the apostles were giving the testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, great grace was also on them all, for there was not anyone among them who lacked, for as many as were possessors of fields, or houses, selling [them], were bringing the prices of the thing sold, and were laying them at the feet of the apostles, and distribution was being made to each according as anyone had need. (LSV)

Reads like socialism/communism/MARXISM to me.

Who says they do ? Do you have numbers ?

OP is talking philosophy which the book is about.
I can count a lot of things against Musk for what he's done (eg., ruining my Twitter feed). But if we're talking about philosophy...

I imagine Muskism = "Whatever makes me feel good" really, bit like "Trumpism" = Kleptocracy-is-Great.

To keep to the topic of the thread, there are plenty of reasons to detest Musk.

There are multiple billionaires, some well known and some not so much, all men, who are bent on using the world and all of us plebs to further line their gigantic and insatiable pockets and to convert everybody to their own world view. This world view links back again to increasing their profits.

Musk is one of them.

my view that it's nothing to do with morality and everything to do with the politics of envy and success.

Don't think OP was talking "morality", this thread is not talking morality.

How does success-envy claim fit with Dolly Parton, Tailor Swift , Warren Buffet or Meryl Streep being so widely liked? Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Bill Gates, Jeremy Clarkson, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Larry Page... sure these super wealthy people have detractors, but has any of these sucessful & wealthy guys become as disliked as Elon Musk?

The nearest comparator to the anti-Elon Musk sentiment is how people in Britain feel about Rupert Murdoch. And to similar extent Nigel Farage although at least NF now holds elected office. Because of Overt statements Murdoch, Farage & Musk have made about wanting to use their wealth to reshape the world politically when they were merely ideological outsiders; it's their political activity that made them so controversial. OP is talking about philosophy that underpins the political activism.

Fact that Musk got in to politics rather than try to repair relationship with his kid kind of undermines his whole stupid claim to have a philosophy based on any sensible principles, of course.

In normal day to day life, I never hear the name Elon Musk. It never comes up in the office, or social situations.

I am sure you don't discuss George Soros as you chat either, but I suspect you have some sort of opinion on him.

Here is an example of something Musk said, in 2022.

“My recommendation … would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy,” Musk told the Financial Times in an interview published on Friday. “And it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

Source -

Elon Musk’s unsolicited idea for Taiwan welcomed by Beijing, slammed in Taipei | CNN Business

Of course, it just so happens that the biggest market for Tesla is the PRC, and he has a factory there and his supply chain depends on it. So we can say he will be popular in the PRC, and not popular in the ROC.

If people in the ROC prefer not to buy Teslas cars because of what he said, would you consider that to be "fashionable hatred", or justified ?

The left is a broad range of views, mostly not Marxist communist. Bourgeoisie vs proletariat is a very 19th century view of class. Unsurprisingly, since The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, and Das Capital 1867-1894.

Opportunities, living standards, and working conditions have improved for working class people, and a burgeoning middle class, since the Victorian era, caused in part by the introduction of democracy: 1870 for working class men, 1928 for working class women, which has gradually resulted in government policies that distribute wealth and increase opportunity, resulting in a fairer society. Scientific and technological innovation have been driving forces in more efficient economic production, new products, new markets, creating that wealth. But without governmental intervention it would have been unlikely that much of that wealth would have been so widely distributed.

In the UK the difference between mainstream left and right parties on economic policy is the degree to which governments should spend on defence, policing, education, social services, health care, pensions and other benefits, international aid, etc... and on how much tax on income and wealth should be raised to provide those government functions. Unfortunately for a quarter of a century governments of the left and the right have been consistently spending more than they raise in taxes, resulting in greater borrowing (along with additional borrowing in responses to the financial crisis (QE) and the pandemic (lockdowns)).

Musk and Trump, want to radically reduce government intervention, and workers rights. So it is not surprising they are not popular with some people. As an investor I'm unconvinced by Musk's projections for SpaceX, and not particularly impressed by his conduct in business and elsewhere. I'm also a little perturbed by Trump's Iranian war, its affect on the supply of oil, the inflationary effect of that, and the value of my bond holdings.

Possibly you're not that bothered because you're not well-informed?

I think Musk did change some things. For example, he greatly undermined the U.S. government's ability to function. I just think he's more of a pitchman than an inventor/creator. Which is fine. But then I wish people would stop thinking he's a genius.

But you have to keep in mind that Uighurs aren't headline news the way Musk is.