Comparing Musk to Henry Ford is a good starting place, engineers whose global reach had little to do with engineering once the empire was up and running. One big difference was Ford's core business was highly profitable. Musk's core SpaceX keeps getting used to hide his money-losing projects, which doesn't seem too stable. Add in that SpaceX is successful largely due to the work of its CEO Shotwell, not Musk, and all that's left is Musk's skill at handling investors. Krugman calls Musk a Ponzi scheme, hard to disagree.
Being that good with investor relations, he can buy a lot of time (and other people's ideas). A background point is that he did a lot of the hyping and run-up in the ZIRP era. Not sure how he gets to a post-ZIRP SpaceX IPO without that hype-up period at near-zero interest rates.
The only things extraordinary about Elon Musk are his arrogance and his utter lack of empathy and human compassion. He's a manufactured character...ultimately, like Trump, a middleman within the hierarchy of FIC who takes and follows orders from those in control. Tesla is a vastly inferior company compared to BYD in China. There's a reason the US doesn't let BYD's electric vehicles into the US. BYD's EV's are superior and sell for a fraction of the cost of Tesla's EV's. In Europe, where the playing field is more level, BYD is crushing Tesla. Yet, amazingly, Telsa has an unjustifiable market value of 372 x earnings versus BYD's 31 x earnings. There is no realistic reason for this incredible discrepancy; unless you consider immense market manipulation by Wall Street and transnational (non-US) capital as a realistic reason. Expect the same for SpaceX, and its $23 trillion estimated IPO value. Both are gigantic ponzi schemes designed to drain wealth away from pensioners and small / index fund / ETF investors, leaving them to hold the near empty bag that will be left after the FIC milks these ponzi schemes dry. Buyer beware *** NASDAQ has been rigged to allow for the entry of SpaceX into its market indices, and therefore, based on its extraordinary valuation, many will own, without even knowing it, a substantial chunk of this ponzi scheme. And Elon Musk and all the FIC insiders have been granted unusually short stock lockup periods, meaning they will be able to sell and cash out before the all-knowing market eventually figures it out, which of course will be far too late for the pension funds and small investors to save their pension and stock market investments. Like I said...nothing extraordinary about Musk. Like Trump, he's just another con man standing out in front of the con.
A quibble: vertical integration of the sort discussed is not Musk's invention at all. Apple is the most salient example that immediately springs to mind here.
It’s worth considering Muskismus in the context of the evolution, or erosion, of the nation state. The nation state type of political organization is largely about hard and fast borders: This currency changes to that one across this line, stamps and phone calls cost more when they cross it, the uniforms and technology of state-run coercion change from police to army. Often they are founded on a language-based social organization, which the state manages through mass education in history and grammar. Digital first took out the borders of communication with email, then the borders of currency with crypto (not too successfully, but stablecoins are a blend.) Now drones and surveillance technologies, powered by digital computation, are blurring the borders in state violence. Social media uses memes and images that are often transnational.
The powers creating and controlling the new technologies don’t recognize state boundaries, and are coopting the old states into something new. Which may not be in the interest of democratic representation.
The ultimate effects of global warming will blow nation states apart into thousands of little feudal fiefdoms. I suspect Muskismus is largely about exploiting this "new world order".
Musk "launched" SpaceX and Xai at the time Tesla was weakening as a high-growth, cult-fueled business, now largely supported through billions in carbon-credits paid by polluting companies. Most if not all of the glowing promises made to investors on Tesla's future have fallen well short of the exaggerated claims.
Now, Elno is repeating the Tesla (early) success story with SPCX, and there is even rumors of him folding Tesla into SPCX, and given the ownership structure, voting shares, and hand-picked BoDs, who's to doubt this...after all, what Elno wants, Elno gets.
So, it's off to the races, yet again, with a mammoth following of willing and unwilling investors sending share prices to the moon — actually, to Mars! — and the ringmaster pocketing the lion's share of the rubes' money. It has worked so well for Musk's Tesla promotions, so why not really go for the gold with SPCX fantasizing?
Something doesn’t feel quite right with this analysis. I imagine the potential change to the mode of production as AI, i.e. not Muskism. LLMs constitute the new forces of production that, as they are unleashed globally, are changing the human relations of production, and hence creating a new mode of production. How this happens will determine the shape of this new mode of production, which may be at least about the variant US and Chineseapproaches to AI, and how humans adapt, and secure their humanity, along the lines of the Pope’s encyclical or Yuval Noah Harari’s humanism. One can already see tensions in State-Private Sector relations in Anthropic’s position, rather than Musk’s. Then there’s the vexed question posed about the relation of US hegemony to Muskism. It is arguable that in Trumpism 2.0, the US has already sacrificed US hegemony globally, not least through Musk’s DOGE actions in shutting down USAID. Trump’s approach is force, not the building of consent to US power. Hegemony can be lost as much as it can be maintained, pace Gramsci. All of this is too soon to call. The question for me is whether Trumpism and Muskism as sub-ideologies of the broader changes in the AI mode of production will be able to defy gravity indefinitely. So far Trumpism has bounced along a few metres above calamity, assisted by Trump’s superpower. Perhaps Musk can do the same with SpaceX. Maybe they really have changed reality.
What Mu卐kRat wants everyone to forget is that it was Obama who saved Tesla from going down the tubes, not Mu卐kRat. If it weren't for Obama, nobody would even know who Mu卐kRat is. He'd be a nobody. It's a most unfortunate irony.
"But there are lots of people who are willing to go along for the ride for the moment, as long as other people are willing as well". Isn't that the very definition of a Ponzi scheme?
"Musk’s adversary Peter Thiel" I don't think they're adversarial to each other - but they're both adversarial to us.
"Is small-d democratic Muskism a contradiction in terms?" Yes. Mu卐kRat believes in the "dark enlightenment/neo-reactionary movement", so it follows that Muskism revolves around that.
Comparing Musk to Henry Ford is a good starting place, engineers whose global reach had little to do with engineering once the empire was up and running. One big difference was Ford's core business was highly profitable. Musk's core SpaceX keeps getting used to hide his money-losing projects, which doesn't seem too stable. Add in that SpaceX is successful largely due to the work of its CEO Shotwell, not Musk, and all that's left is Musk's skill at handling investors. Krugman calls Musk a Ponzi scheme, hard to disagree.
And both are/were Nazi's.
If Elon has any real skill, it is investor relations.
That and using that skill to leverage other person's ideas. PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla were all other people's work.
Being that good with investor relations, he can buy a lot of time (and other people's ideas). A background point is that he did a lot of the hyping and run-up in the ZIRP era. Not sure how he gets to a post-ZIRP SpaceX IPO without that hype-up period at near-zero interest rates.
This was the cherry on top of the delicious read:
"Pliny the Younger described Christianity as a “contagious superstition” (superstitionis contagio) back in the day. I owe this to Cosma."
The only things extraordinary about Elon Musk are his arrogance and his utter lack of empathy and human compassion. He's a manufactured character...ultimately, like Trump, a middleman within the hierarchy of FIC who takes and follows orders from those in control. Tesla is a vastly inferior company compared to BYD in China. There's a reason the US doesn't let BYD's electric vehicles into the US. BYD's EV's are superior and sell for a fraction of the cost of Tesla's EV's. In Europe, where the playing field is more level, BYD is crushing Tesla. Yet, amazingly, Telsa has an unjustifiable market value of 372 x earnings versus BYD's 31 x earnings. There is no realistic reason for this incredible discrepancy; unless you consider immense market manipulation by Wall Street and transnational (non-US) capital as a realistic reason. Expect the same for SpaceX, and its $23 trillion estimated IPO value. Both are gigantic ponzi schemes designed to drain wealth away from pensioners and small / index fund / ETF investors, leaving them to hold the near empty bag that will be left after the FIC milks these ponzi schemes dry. Buyer beware *** NASDAQ has been rigged to allow for the entry of SpaceX into its market indices, and therefore, based on its extraordinary valuation, many will own, without even knowing it, a substantial chunk of this ponzi scheme. And Elon Musk and all the FIC insiders have been granted unusually short stock lockup periods, meaning they will be able to sell and cash out before the all-knowing market eventually figures it out, which of course will be far too late for the pension funds and small investors to save their pension and stock market investments. Like I said...nothing extraordinary about Musk. Like Trump, he's just another con man standing out in front of the con.
A quibble: vertical integration of the sort discussed is not Musk's invention at all. Apple is the most salient example that immediately springs to mind here.
That's true, but it is one major aspect of Muskism.
It’s worth considering Muskismus in the context of the evolution, or erosion, of the nation state. The nation state type of political organization is largely about hard and fast borders: This currency changes to that one across this line, stamps and phone calls cost more when they cross it, the uniforms and technology of state-run coercion change from police to army. Often they are founded on a language-based social organization, which the state manages through mass education in history and grammar. Digital first took out the borders of communication with email, then the borders of currency with crypto (not too successfully, but stablecoins are a blend.) Now drones and surveillance technologies, powered by digital computation, are blurring the borders in state violence. Social media uses memes and images that are often transnational.
The powers creating and controlling the new technologies don’t recognize state boundaries, and are coopting the old states into something new. Which may not be in the interest of democratic representation.
The ultimate effects of global warming will blow nation states apart into thousands of little feudal fiefdoms. I suspect Muskismus is largely about exploiting this "new world order".
Possibly, though the future is usually assembled from much of the past.
Musk "launched" SpaceX and Xai at the time Tesla was weakening as a high-growth, cult-fueled business, now largely supported through billions in carbon-credits paid by polluting companies. Most if not all of the glowing promises made to investors on Tesla's future have fallen well short of the exaggerated claims.
Now, Elno is repeating the Tesla (early) success story with SPCX, and there is even rumors of him folding Tesla into SPCX, and given the ownership structure, voting shares, and hand-picked BoDs, who's to doubt this...after all, what Elno wants, Elno gets.
So, it's off to the races, yet again, with a mammoth following of willing and unwilling investors sending share prices to the moon — actually, to Mars! — and the ringmaster pocketing the lion's share of the rubes' money. It has worked so well for Musk's Tesla promotions, so why not really go for the gold with SPCX fantasizing?
Ain't capitalism great!
We overlook Musk's attachment to the dissociative agency of Ketamine at our peril.
And Ecstasy and Magic Mushrooms. He's a walking psychedelic pharmacy.
Something doesn’t feel quite right with this analysis. I imagine the potential change to the mode of production as AI, i.e. not Muskism. LLMs constitute the new forces of production that, as they are unleashed globally, are changing the human relations of production, and hence creating a new mode of production. How this happens will determine the shape of this new mode of production, which may be at least about the variant US and Chineseapproaches to AI, and how humans adapt, and secure their humanity, along the lines of the Pope’s encyclical or Yuval Noah Harari’s humanism. One can already see tensions in State-Private Sector relations in Anthropic’s position, rather than Musk’s. Then there’s the vexed question posed about the relation of US hegemony to Muskism. It is arguable that in Trumpism 2.0, the US has already sacrificed US hegemony globally, not least through Musk’s DOGE actions in shutting down USAID. Trump’s approach is force, not the building of consent to US power. Hegemony can be lost as much as it can be maintained, pace Gramsci. All of this is too soon to call. The question for me is whether Trumpism and Muskism as sub-ideologies of the broader changes in the AI mode of production will be able to defy gravity indefinitely. So far Trumpism has bounced along a few metres above calamity, assisted by Trump’s superpower. Perhaps Musk can do the same with SpaceX. Maybe they really have changed reality.
"Musk’s adversary Peter Thiel"? Since when?
Well, shit, that is all rather depressing
What Mu卐kRat wants everyone to forget is that it was Obama who saved Tesla from going down the tubes, not Mu卐kRat. If it weren't for Obama, nobody would even know who Mu卐kRat is. He'd be a nobody. It's a most unfortunate irony.
"But there are lots of people who are willing to go along for the ride for the moment, as long as other people are willing as well". Isn't that the very definition of a Ponzi scheme?
"Musk’s adversary Peter Thiel" I don't think they're adversarial to each other - but they're both adversarial to us.
"Is small-d democratic Muskism a contradiction in terms?" Yes. Mu卐kRat believes in the "dark enlightenment/neo-reactionary movement", so it follows that Muskism revolves around that.