Why They Really Hate Elon Musk
Mises Wire Connor O’Keeffe
As Elon Musk continues to take over and wind down parts of the federal bureaucracy, establishment figures from across media and politics are growing increasingly resentful of the tech entrepreneur. If you read a national newspaper, turn on a major news channel, or tune into one of the establishment’s many late-night “satire” shows, you’re bound to see Musk getting mocked and criticized relentlessly.
He’s framed as a rich person using government to get even richer and as a political operative willing to skirt rules and norms to get what he wants. Many establishment types also like to remind their audience Musk is “unelected” at any chance they get—a not-so-subtle suggestion that the actions he’s taking in DC right now are illegitimate.
You’ll also hear Musk and his team criticized for conducting some of their work in secret. And then there’s, of course, the swipe that’s become popular in the wake of his gutting of USAID: that he is willing to hurt poor people to make himself better off.
Setting aside the many flaws and inaccuracies with these characterizations of Elon Musk, it’s worth noting that all of them apply even more accurately to the American political establishment itself.
To start, “rich people using the government to benefit themselves” has defined the American political system for more than a century. As Murray Rothbard laid out in great detail in his book The Progressive Era, the transition from the laissez-faire, hyper-limited government system of the mid-1800s was not driven by the bottom-up plea to protect workers and keep food clean that we were taught about in elementary school. It grew out of the recognition among the heads of industry that they could much more effectively protect their market share from smaller competitors and go on to expand it if they used the power of government for their own benefit. In other words, the key to staying on top switched from innovating to lobbying.
That started with railroad companies in the late 1800s but quickly grew to include industrial farmers, healthcare providers, and bankers in the early 1900s, followed by weapons companies, Wall Street firms, and many others in the second half of the century.
Today, virtually all the giant corporations that dominate these industries owe their positions to government policies set up in their favor—to the detriment of the American public.
The modern political establishment is defined by their willingness and ability to protect and expand this dynamic. It is laughable to hear them falsely criticize Musk for doing the same thing.
The same goes for his supposed violation of constitutional rules and norms. Many of the loudest establishment voices condemning this behavior were cheering just as loudly as the George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations launched dozens of undeclared wars, conducted warrantless surveillance, used torture, carried out extrajudicial assassinations on American citizens, and provided aid and comfort to Al Qaeda.
At the very least, these are explicit violations of Article 1, Section 8; Article 3, Section 3; and the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, as well as Section 2340A of Title 18 of the United States Code.
And during the covid pandemic, the political establishment took the exact same kind of approach they’re now criticizing Musk for conducting. Federal and state governments rushed to close businesses, schools, and churches and prohibit people from attending public gatherings—all without even pretending to care about the constitutional rules and norms they’re now feigning concern about.
Next, the implication that what Musk is doing is illegitimate because he’s unelected is ridiculous. Not only was it made very clear to voters before the election that Musk would do this if Trump won, virtually the entire federal workforce that the establishment is trying to protect from Musk is unelected too. The millions of unelected officials who conduct the bulk of federal government operations were brought on and set to work without even a fraction of the transparency and publicity involved in Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk.
Speaking of transparency, it’s comical that a political class that classifies an estimated fifty million documents a year—ninety percent of which are “probably unnecessary” according to some establishment legal experts—is voicing disgust over Musk’s team’s occasional use of discretion.
Finally, it is appalling to hear the American political establishment criticize Elon Musk for his supposed willingness to hurt the poor and vulnerable to make himself better off. That is essentially all these people have done the entire time they’ve been in power. Over a century of government meddling in crucially important industries has made it harder for the poorest Americans to afford food, education, housing, healthcare services, and medications.
Federal policies have discouraged sensible financial decisions like saving while encouraging riskier investments with politically-connected firms—just as other policies drive Americans to adopt a tragically unhealthy diet to the benefit of well-connected food, healthcare, and drug companies.
And then, of course, there are the wars launched by the political establishment across the Middle East, North Africa, and now Eastern Europe. These wars have raked in trillions of dollars for weapons companies and other contractors. But they have also killed millions of people and destroyed tens of millions of lives across these regions.
Understanding who the political establishment really is and what they have done makes it clear that the principles they are pretending to have when denouncing Elon Musk are fake.
The establishment’s problem with Elon Musk is not that he’s willing to upend norms and test or break rules. They have shown an enthusiastic willingness to do so themselves.
The establishment’s problem with Elon Musk is, put simply, that he is threatening some of their power. And to them, that is unacceptable.
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Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
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