What's Elon Musk up to?

Is he Tony Stark, John Galt, or something completely different?

Elon Musk sure is an interesting fellow.

He has founded (or co-founded) some of the most innovative and important companies on the planet. He revolutionized private space flight with SpaceX, and claims he’s going to take humanity to Mars. And as a side project, the company makes Starlink, putting satellites in space that can provide Internet service anywhere on earth, regardless of infrastructure or political unrest or war or whatever.

Then there’s Tesla, the first iconic electric car company — which is really more of a solar power, battery, and AI/robotics company. The cars (as popular as they are) are really just there to let Elon Musk work on the bigger product concepts.

But there’s also Neuralink, which is making it possible for the paralyzed to walk and which may eventually accomplish even more amazing brain-machine links in the future.

Not finished yet. There’s also the Boring Company, revolutionizing digging tunnels underground. Many believe that mankind’s future is much more integral to exploring under the surface of the earth (and making that space useful) than anywhere else.

Still not finished. There’s also OpenAI, one of the biggest LLM “artificial intelligence” companies and maker of world-famous ChatGPT. Then he left that company because a conflict of vision and launched his own AI company, xAI.

You may have interacted with xAI’s first product on Twitter(X). It’s called “Grok” — hat tip to Robert Heinlien.

And don’t forget, when he was young, Musk dabbled with online map services (Zip2) and co-founded the first federally insured online bank (X.com), which eventually merged with the company that became PayPal, revolutionizing the online payment systems we now all take for granted.

Then, seemingly on a lark, he plopped down $44 billion and purchased Twitter because he was afraid free speech on social media was in jeopardy. Then he renamed the wildly popular company “X” and somehow got us all to go along with it.

Did I say “interesting”? This guy is freaking amazing.

He’s like a comic book hero/villain or something. He’s even got that wild South African accent. Oh, and he’s got 11 children. Forbes estimates his net worth at around $178 billion. How can we not be fascinated by the guy?

When discussing him, I often picture Tony Stark, Marvel’s Iron Man. Elon Musk got super-rich partially off government contracts and subsidies (Tesla and SpaceX), but now he’s trying to use his “powers” for good — and I’m still referring mostly to his businesses, not his philanthropic Musk Foundation.

The comparison isn’t perfect, but there’s something there.

But lately, I’m wondering if Elon Musk is more like John Galt from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Published in 1957, the novel is still hugely influential to the libertarian movement.

In the story, John Galt is a genius inventor who quits his job at a car company and travels the country, convincing other brilliant entrepreneurs to go on strike and quit serving the oppressive dystopian big-government society that seeks to enslave them.

Like Atlas in the Greek myth, John Galt convinces the greatest men who carry human civilization on their backs to “shrug”.

We already know Musk loves free speech. We also know he’s distrustful of government. He’s on record saying, “…government is the biggest corporation, with a monopoly on violence…”

I wouldn’t slur the corporate structure that way, myself. I view government as more of a criminal gang or authoritarian religion than something as productive as a corporation, but that’s fine.

So, why might Musk be “shrugging”? Well, for one thing, he recently fired all the Tesla employees who run their Supercharger network (along with 10% of the total workforce) sending shockwaves throughout the industry.

Maybe Musk is just laying people off because his robots are taking up the labor slack. Maybe. Probably, even.

But maybe, just maybe (fingers crossed) he’s striking back at government mandates (mostly by California, and sometimes insane) that are taking Tesla’s charging stations as a “given”, as just a feature of nature.

I can see how a fella like Elon might find that annoying.

I’m probably wrong. These big layoffs probably have something to do with normal business concerns, cash flows, earnings projections, normal stuff like that. Or maybe it has something to do with Tesla’s probable pivot to robotics-oriented things.

But a childish, churlish, man-boy, obsessed with revenge and a hatred of government tyranny, who really loves a certain libertarian novel can dream, can’t he?

Naturally,

Adam