<Barack Obama once declared “If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.” But he was wrong. Yes, human organizations are a collective enterprise. But the unique value of entrepreneurs in gathering, selecting, coordinating, and inspiring the people in an enterprise can’t be minimized. If “that” is an organization, then yes, an entrepreneur did build that.>
Not gonna quibble about the importance of entrepreneurs, although that sorta sounds like economics’ version of “Great Man” theory of history. But once again, someone is misquoting Obama and doing so out of context. I personally don’t like Obama, but what I don’t like more is people quoting others out of context. Here’s what Obama actuually said:
"Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that."
Obama was clearly referring to the infrastructure/government institutions that have powered the American economy. This was in the context of running against a GOP that was so enthralled with fringe libertarianism that they bungled through several government shutdowns and a near default on the national debt (among other crises). It would be highly out of character for Obama to be openly dissing rich entrepreneurs (unlike, say, Bernie Sanders), especially given how many in tech and finance supported his presidential campaigns.
I don't believe it's a misquote at all. I read the entire speech to make sure I didn't misquote it. Obama is talking about the collective nature of business. That's fine. But he's underrating the importance of entrepreneurs. And I think that underrating has been systematic and consistent among Democrats in recent years. Fortunately, I think Harris is starting to reverse it, with her emphasis on entrepreneurship in her policy plans.
c'mon. The full quote is "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that."
The final "that" was clearly NOT a reference to "a business", but back to "this unbelievable American system" and "roads and bridges".
Pulling the single last sentence is unfair and misleading and you should correct this.
I agree with Miles. I think the following sentence “The Internet didn’t get invented on it its own.” fairly clearly shows that the “that” in “you didn’t build that” refers to the infrastructure and ecosystem that allowed the business to be invented, not the business itself, although I agree it is somewhat confusing. Here are the full two paragraphs from a page on FactCheck.org.
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
Noah, I love reading your work but I have to say, with all respect, I totally disagree with your assumptions. I am sorry for the slapdash approach to writing, it is late. The Obama quote was about paying taxes and not agreeing with the libertarian approach to decreasing taxes (We know that bc he brings up fire department at the end which, against the theories of libertarians, must be in a form of socialism. (Govt pays, everyone whose house is on fire gets the service>). The original idea comes from Elizabeth Warren who stated "I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." Its pretty evident that Warren's contention is that she congratulates business owners on being successful but points out that the government built the roads/transportation foundation that allow products, people, and supplies to be quickly transferred, educated the work force, and kept criminals from interfering with the company. Taxes pay for that. Obama, in later discussions, also pointed out the technology that was made into businesses was first developed by government institutions such as DARPA (Internet, mouse, semiconductor, etc) that was shared with companies so that they could build on that.
To be specific, on July 13, 2012, Obama also gives a tip of the hat to entrepreneurs/business owners by saying at the end of his talk“The point is … that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”
Lastly, in the interest of going to back to my work and trying to get to bed before 4am, I am quoting wikipedia.
"In his remarks Obama noted that while he was willing to cut government waste, he would not gut investments that grow the economy or give tax breaks to millionaires like himself or Mitt Romney.[11] Obama went on to say that rich people did not get rich solely due to their own talent and hard work, but that, to varying degrees, they owe some of their success to good fortune and the contributions of government.[17] Obama said in this context:
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn't – look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.[18]
Obama then cited the funding of the G.I. Bill, the creation of the middle class, the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam, creation of the Internet, and landing on the Moon as examples"
One last point, thanks for reading, America's spocial sauce is entrepreneurship. It is derived from a mixture of America's unique educational approach (fostering creativity vs call and response in China or Russia) and the risk taking of immigrants who came here often without others (so not tied down from old culture or family ties,), and bankruptcy laws. Unlike in China or Russia, if you have the right relationships, you can survive bad loans and losses. In America, the bank or the government takes your company, they try to sell it to others to make something else out of it. Also, during recessions, laid off workers have time and the opportunity to say fuck it, lets go for it. This is why much of Web 2.0 was built during the recession and drop of the tech market in 2001-2003. Good night
Noah: First off, I really, really love this piece. I've already forwarded it to a number of folks (including my wife) who tend to be quick to dismiss Musk (because of all they have been reading about him lately) without recognizing the scale of what he has accomplished.
But when I forwarded it, I included the caveat that you get the Obama quote wrong. I wrote that partly because I didn't want people to dismiss your entire piece (and all it gets right) just on the basis of this mistake, but mainly because you did get that quote wrong in vital ways that really matter.
When you listen to the full quote (https://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/you-didnt-build-that-uncut-and-unedited/), the "that" Obama was referring to is clearly "the roads and bridges" and "this unbelievable American system" and not an entrepreneur's business. The correct interpretation of Obama's remarks is the one he explicitly gives in that speech: “The point is … that when we succeed, we succeed BECAUSE OF OUR INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE , but ALSO because we do things together.” In other words, both things matter.
Obama is 100% correct about this, and the implication that comes with it, that those who are successful in our system have a moral as well as legal obligation to contribute back to it in taxes (and other ways). Which is why it's so frustrating for you to get this wrong in a piece that is otherwise so insightful. So I hope you'll correct it.
Meanwhile, there is perhaps another good piece to be written about your feelings that the Democrats have underrated the importance of entrepreneurs in recent years. Not sure I think that is right, but I'd be interested in hearing your argument for it.
Thank you Elie! I rarely comment here but came here to make exactly that point.
I hate how Obama's comment has been distorted. It's 100% spot on and a big part of the reason I both celebrate and honor entrepreneurs, while also believing that they (and all the wealthy) should be paying much higher levels of taxes (as in pre-Reagan era rates).
It's amazing that folks like Jobs and Musk are able to lead people to build great, new things. But the ability to translate those innovations into vast wealth is a function of the society they live in, which many, many people, past and present, have contributed to.
Basic bare functioning of a society isn’t much to write home about as a basis for entrepreneurial succuess. If strong government regulation were what was needed, Europe would be leading the charge.
Seneca: If your point is that Europe over regulates and doesn't give enough cultural support for entrepreneurship compared to America, I fully agree with you. I'm definitely not saying that America should be more like Europe on either dimension.
But I do think America should go back to much higher marginal tax rates on high incomes (as we had in the post-war period). I think that can be fully compatible with creating a great environment for entrepreneurs, while also helping support a society where everyone can have a decent life.
Pretty sure I know how Noah misquoted this so badly. He saw that the GOP ran an *entire convention* themed on this exact misquoting and didn’t consider that they might have been that recklessly dishonest.
If your idea here is that Obama and his side undervalue the importance of entrepreneurship, that’s a fine opinion to have (though I’d debate it -Elon Musk is the richest, most powerful person in the world and perhaps in world history. How the heck is his work undervalued?)
But the grammatical context of this specific quote doesn’t make any sense with the interpretation you are making. Why did he bring up our publicly funded infrastructure in the previous sentence at all, if this isn’t what he talks about in the next sentence?
He’s undervalued because the Left incessantly point out his father owned an emerald mine or something that supposedly explains most of how Elon Musk accomplished what he accomplished.
Musk built his two great companies Tesla and SpaceX off of the support of the Federal Government under Obama. He gets huge props for his vision and accomplishments, but all his leadership would be for nothing if not for the backing he got from collective institutions.
"Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that."
I'm very much in agreement with the meaning of Obama's statement, but not who the "somebody" is. That somebody is in the past. We rely today on infrastructure that simply could not be build today. The railroads that carry our cargo, the refineries (last one built in the 70s) and pipelines that manufacture and deliver the gas that we put in our cars, and in many cases even the homes that we live in, couldn't be built today with the morass of bureaucracy, "environmental" reviews, and lawsuits that we now live under. If more of our tax money went to building those things and less went to getting in the way of building it, I don't think the government would need Obama to defend its utility.
While I don't necessarily disagree with your analysis (things are harder to build now than they used to be), I still think there'd be a large social base of people who mistrust the federal government. It's worth noting that the main supporters of the Tea Party (and fringe libertarianism more generally) tend to be what Patrick Wyman called the "American landowning gentry class": small business owners and petty capitalists who own small-time factories, hedge funds, car dealerships, etc. Bigger fish (like the big banks or the Big Three automakers) tend to be less ideological and generally follow the political winds (hence their brief infatuation with DEI). The petty capitalists hate Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor, basically any institution so large they need a bureaucracy to manage it (believe it or not, bureaucracy emerges to make life more efficient, not less). They'd be more than happy to trim the bureaucracy and make it more efficient, but deep down they want to burn down the administrative state and let the market (i.e., themselves) run the show.
Sadly, after the past 40 years of deregulation, humankind all around the world is experiencing the consequences of letting oligarchs get the government "out of the way."
I've been a sub for a while and I never bother to comment on the posts and I always love Noah's posts, this one included, but that particular interpretation of the "You didn't build that" line did send me into a tizzy because it is so bad faith and is exactly the bad faith interpretation that the conservatives lobbed at Obama circa 2012. Not a big deal but it was a big eyeroll.
Uhg. I know Obama said it and meant it just like that because I had Democrats repeating it back when they thought it was witty before they realized it was an own goal.
So tired of this left-wing "That didn't happen but it's good that it did" BS. Are you going to explain to me how "defund the police" wasn't actually about defunding the police next?
I guess it boils down to whether or not Obama made a grammatical error. In "Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that." "roads and bridges" are plural and "you didn't build that" is singular. So either Obama was talking about the business (singular), or he made a grammatical error, which is unlike him...
I suspect the ambiguity was by design. Obama was an incredible orator and I suspect his team was aware the it could be read differently by people.
And while I cannot second guess Obama with any degree of certainty…being in Portland OR I can promise you that most of the people i talk to read it similarly to Noah.
Musk clearly never watched Spiderman, because he refuses to acknowledge or honor the great responsibility that his power demands of him. We deserve a better class of leadership, not this garbage.
Instead of inspiring his society and future generations, he shares conspiracies and porn memes on Twitter. What a waste.
Hmm, I think Mush truly believes that his embrace of Trump and his biasing of Twitter for right-wing content is him responsibly using his power. There is a cynical framing that sees Musk as purely pursuing his economic interests and calculating that Trump and Republicans are more aligned in that way. I think that is giving Musk way too much credit and requires us to dismiss his long track record of reckless behavior. Eg, committing security fraud via tweet in 2018.
That pattern of recklessness includes founding Tesla and SpaceX, both of which started from the premise of assuming unrealistic (at the time) cost structures and working backwards from there. Yes, he made it work, and that does demonstrate some truly amazing capabilities as technical leader. Yet his critics at the time were correct in noting that these were speculative long shots without sufficient justification to be achievable in any reasonable time frame.
I believe Musk is similarly taking a reckless risk based on assuming some political outcome and working backwards. That seems to be centered on a rightwing culture war victory (and more lenient regulation of business for he may actually have a point). Yet he's not operating in the world of physics and engineering where he and his team simply needs to find a solution within the structure of hard physical constraints. The political world is far more open-ended and he can't just engineer out a solution. Yet Musk doesn't see it that way and he truly believes he can just figure this out as he goes.
You're absolutely correct - let me clarify what I mean.
I suppose my responsibility comment is related to the manner in which Musk, and also the rest of the modern GOP under Trump, pursue their agendas. As public figures, their example matters, yet they've completely abandoned all sense of character. They brag incessantly, whine when they lose, troll everyone they disagree with, and take no responsibility for their actions. Something is always somebody else's fault. And if you don't like what they're doing, then you're just a p**sy beta.
Wtf is this behavior? Why don't these men have any sense of moral responsibility to be upstanding citizens and set an example? What impact is this having on our culture?
Everyone likes to pretend like it doesn't matter because it doesn't impact their behavior personally, yet we all acknowledge that we live in a meaner and less emotionally tolerant culture. If you flood the zone with bullies, it's going to seep through.
1. His companies may do physics-related things but companies themselves are social constructs. Musk's superpower, as Noah notes, is in organizing and recruiting people as much as understanding physics (although he does understand it, very well indeed).
2. His turn to the right is partly triggered by one of his children transitioning.
Pedantic correction: Musk didn't found Tesla. (Though he has certainly been instrumental in the success it has achieved.)
It was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk invested $6.5 million in the Series A in February 2004, over six months later.
I haven't followed the full details but I don't think Musk was involved in day to day stuff at Tesla until 2006 or so, which is approximately when Eberhard and Tarpenning, the founders, left the company.
Musk is legally allowed to call himself a "founder" due to a settlement in a 2009 lawsuit involving Eberhard.
Learning of his conversations with Putin, I can’t help but remember Saruman. His choice to look into the palantir, his lack of humility in the face of someone more cunning than himself, did not end well for anyone.
It is ironic that a day after the WaPo declared the paper would not endorse a candidate in this year's Presidential election, that a story appears about Elon Musk coming to Palo Alto to enroll in grad school at Stanford on a student visa. Well, he withdrew prior to classes starting and was in the US as an "illegal immigrant" in violation of the law. He could not obtain a driver's license yet drove in violation of state law. Hmmmm, this is exactly the kind of guy he is currently railing against!
Musk has had some successes as well as failures (the tunneling machine and hyperloop, and of course the takeover of Twitter). Yet the successes were in large part dependent on government payments and subsidies. Would Tesla have been as successful without all the tax credits that buyers received? Would SpaceX have done as well as they have without government contracts? Musk, to his credit, saw opportunities and overcame a number of sluggish American companies who were asleep at the wheel. Other than GM, the other American auto companies were late in embracing EVs, though GM does have a major commitment here (disclosure: I'm a GM shareholder). The bigger question is why the major aerospace companies did not see the opportunities in new modular rockets not to mention Starlink. Neither of these are totally ground breaking technologies in the same way the personal computer was.
As long as America continues to focus on service industries and financial engineering, it runs the risk of not being aggressive in the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, China's economy continues to suffere from the real estate fall out and they certainly have a long way to go in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Despite purchasing GE's appliance business they are not as competitive as South Korean, US, and German manufacturers.
“But Reagan, after all, had free enterprise, traditional Christian values, and pride in America’s history to defend from the USSR”
Sanewashing Saint Reagan is a misdirected pastime. He was a racist (recorded phone conversation with President Nixon in which Reagan made fun of Africans) and his “pride in America’s history to defend” didn’t mean a thing when he dodged WWII military combat with the claim of poor eyesight. He had no problem reading cue cards throughout his movie and television career. My father was blind as a bat without his eyeglasses, but he served 36 months of combat in the 1st Armored Division, was wounded and refused to come home, and earned the Bronze Star.
Saint Reagan also laid the foundation for our political problems today and Trump. He gutted the middle class with his supply-side economics, creating the largest income/wealth gap in the U.S. since the 1920s. His name emblazoned on the Washington International Airport speaks volumes about false gods.
People in the intelligence service risked their careers to sound the alarm about Musk and Putin. I don’t think Trump will win. However, if Trump wins, we can expect a lot more leaks about Musk from the intelligence community.
Note: Bezos, Salzburg, and other major newspaper owners may fear Trump and Bezos, but Rupert Murdock doesn’t. And there are multiples of people who don’t have empires to lose and have nothing to fear from Musk. This is why overreach brings down a so-called Super Hero. And let’s not pretend the federal government didn’t bailout Musk with a cheap loan when Tesla was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. That came at a vulnerable time for Musk, when he was on the outs with Peter Thiel.
Reagan is underrated. He did amnesty for immigrants, arms control with the USSR, improved science policy, and moved the GOP temporarily saner, less reactionary direction. He did not gut the middle class at all.
Underrated by whom? The left? Reagan is held in high esteem (by those who hold him in high esteem). Reagan “improved science policy?” He did nothing to encourage the NIH to focus attention on AIDS, which was the major public health crisis under his watch. By today’s standards I think Reagan appears to be a moderate Republican, yes, but underrated, no. Anyway, Elon Musk inherited and has not questioned the worst outlook of white South Africans, and that explains everything about his political behavior.
Yeah, and Nixon declared war on cancer. Reagan did not veto the tech transfer bill, but he didn’t write the legislation nor AFAIK did he declare it part of his platform anymore than Trump cared about the Music Modernization Act which had a positive effect on the copyright economy. Not caring- in fact proactively disparaging- the major health crisis of AIDS is hard to abide by comparison, at least for me. But I agree Reagan was a far better president and (in areas unaffected by his homophobia) a better human being than some others. I think a lot of people think so.
Reagan did not really make the GOP "saner." He'd long been seen as a far-right gadfly in a party traditionally dominated by socially-liberal WASPs like Nelson Rockefeller. He crushed the air traffic controllers' strike, doubled down on financial deregulation that led to the savings & loans crisis at the end of his presidency, and violated US law by trading munitions with Iran and using the profits to fund the narco-funded Contras in Nicaragua.
He was definitely a "Great" president, in no small part because he was the Great Communicator. But being "great" does not necessarily suggest that he was "good."
Personally, I think this article is way too forgiving on Elon Musk’s behalf. If Musk is willing to indulge in batshit conspiracies and schmooze up to our enemies, that’s on him towards being a contrarian wrecker to a fault. This will have to be one of those articles I respectfully but strongly disagree with.
That is not to say the headline thesis is wrong, per se, just the a disagreement of where blame falls.
There’s no reason to think that Elon would be shadow president.
In the case where Trump hangs on, increasingly demented and incoherent but still alive, then there are a lot of other people who have Trump’s ear and established positions in his organization. Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, RFK jr and many more. As you noted, Elon is not really a bureaucratic infighter. No reason to think he’s rise to the top in that case.
If Trump actually dies in office, then Vance becomes president, then yes Elon is better positioned and has more influence. But he still won’t be the only one with influence. He’d have to contend with Peter Thiel, of course and they often don’t see eye-to-eye. Not to mention that Vance’s current stated beliefs run counter to Musk’s stated desire for the government to get out of the way of tech entrepreneurs.
Either you believe that certain people have such unique talents that they deserve to rule over the rest of us untermensch, or you believe that we are equal citizens in a republic.
Third option: You believe that some people are uniquely talented, but also that nobody deserves to rule over anyone else, no matter how unique their talents are.
I believe it was H. G. Wells who said the best argument against slavery wasn't that there were no natural slaves, it was that there were no natural masters.
Well said. Just because some people are smarter, or stronger, or better at video games, or whatever, doesn't mean they deserve to rule over other people. Natural talent doesn't make you a king.
What was the point of this article if not to argue that Elon Musk is so singularly talented that the entire American political system should bend itself to suit his whims?
That may not be what you intended but that is certainly how it reads.
Democrats should try to get over their weird obsession with Musk’s politics and focus on why someone like him moved to the other side. I’m an independent who hasn’t switched yet but living in a blue state long enough can make anyone hate Democratic policies.
It's well known why, he's divorced and mad at his wife and children.
The business factor is that his businesses happened to be located in blue states during Covid, so he's imprinted on that local government and hasn't had time to become mad at the new local government yet.
That's a pretty distant counterfactual though, we have primary elections which means they're incapable of nominating her.
Btw, local politics aren't the same people as national politics and I'd recommend against comparing them. I live in Silicon Valley and there are no serious people running as Republicans here; any bad policy a D has, they have the same one but worse. If the state is all D, then that means everyone who runs is D.
It’s more logical than saying that someone started voting for Trump because they’re mad at their ex-wife and children and not because Democrats have made some terrible policy choices in the last 4 years.
Except that Biden made very progressive policy choices at the national level - on immigration, DEI, trans, student loan forgiveness, climate change. If he had governed as the moderate that he was, I don’t think Trump would be in a toss up race with Harris.
I think this an underrated factor. He stopped being treated for his mood disorder and chose to self-dose psychedelics instead. And lo and behold, there was personality shift and an overall huge drop in impulse control. I don't know if his future will be quite that grim, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was.
I think you are overall correct. There are people who just have an internal drive to build things and get things done and those you call "organization men" who simply value status and their position in the hierarchy. And builders tend to have a burning contempt for the organization men.
In my experience, getting work done in a corporation is a process of shoving organization men out of the way. I believe that a major part in the success of Elon Musk (and many other legendary founders) is their ability and desire to sniff out and purge the organization men from the company leaving only builders. I also believe this is why these type of people are generally considered assholes. It is considered rude by most people to fire the well liked, but unproductive people in an organization.
> Only the combined powers of America and Musk can stand against those empires.
I believe this is exactly right, but it will have to be America that compromises, because I can guarantee you that Elon Musk will not. He does not care about procedures, or what titles, credentials, or offices you hold, only what you can get done. And when he looks at the governemnt bureaucracy, he is not impressed.
Most folks here, commenting online during the workday, are working in corporate America. When they look at how hard it is to get anything done, I can’t understand who they can look at someone like Musk in anything but awe.
Noah, I am not sure if you caught Bill Maher’s episode, in which he took to task Gen Z’s ignorance about America’s history and civics, but the hate America theme which runs through some on the Left and, as far as I know, only a handful of usual idiots on the right.
While not voting for either candidate, I appreciated Kamala Harris’s speech at her DNC nominating convention. She pointed out what many Americans already know. America is a great country to be born into or to live in. This is why immigrants will crawl through busted glass and dangerous jungles to get here. Do we have problems? Of course, we are human.
In so far as Musk goes, there have always been superhumans. George Washington and Lincoln come to mind. Einstein, Carnegie, Gandhi, Mother Teresa. Yes, Musk is quirky, intelligent, very wealthy and probably drives many people crazy. Do I think he was hurt when Joe Biden didn’t invite him to his EV confab with the other American manufacturers? You bet as he should have been.
No, I have no idea why Musk would talk to a genocidal mass murderer. He is, however, an American citizen, and he has every right to talk to anyone he likes, even if I find it awful.
"No, I have no idea why Musk would talk to a genocidal mass murderer. He is, however, an American citizen, and he has every right to talk to anyone he likes, even if I find it awful."
Totally, Musk’s right to talk to whoever he wants is part of being an American, sure, but this isn’t some random conversation over coffee in a starbucks. When the richest person in the world, who controls companies like SpaceX, with massive ties to U.S. national security, is having conversations with Putin—a leader who’s openly hostile to the U.S.—it’s not just freedom of speech. There’s a real-world impact here which you're choosing to ignore.
Life and politics are messy, and when you’re that powerful, your actions ripple far beyond yourself. Musk isn’t just a guy with opinions; he’s a guy with a massive influence on critical infrastructure, space exploration, transportation, even communication networks in places where geopolitical tensions are already on edge. Add in the fact that he openly uses mind-altering drugs like ketamine, which could cloud judgment or impact his decision-making, and it’s not hard to see why people might be worried.
This isn’t just a “freedom” question; it’s a national security one. We’d be asking similar questions if any other major player with influence over American defense was in the same position. It’s a strange and concerning mix when someone with this much power, access, and influence decides to casually interact with world leaders who pose threats to our country.
I'm not sure it matters. I don't really know how to drive home the point that Putin, more so than just about anyone else on the planet, wants Americans divided, suffering, destitute, destroyed. He is a man with no allies, only vassals, who believes the world belongs to him and no one else.
I'm sorry, there is no acceptable "why" to have a conversation with this man, unless you are actively working negotiations as the person in charge of foreign relations for the United States - and that's one person - the President.
This is very good and equally disturbing in some ways
A. I agree that Founders build new new and create and attract talent.
B. Jack Welch was considered the greatest CEO of the last 50 years. He is now moving into the dustbin of history. Forgotten. His great thematic business paradigm changes were, a. Be 1st or 2nd in Market Share (see also Porter), b. He broke the International approach to business (IBM Germany, IBM Japan, Xerox Fuji, Rank Xerox all run heavy handed from HQ), to "Act Local, Thank Global". He saw locally developed products led by local customer facing teams competed vs national companies.
C. Welch Forgotten. Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk names will be known for a century.
D. The big concern is, a. Companies can't compete with Nations in the Big Nuclear league
E. US Companies have rarely been patriotic to the United States over profit maximization.
And China's Xi, a poor but powerful "Musk"; is beating out the US.
I think a Musk President, Vance puppet and demented Trump is a huge negative future.
Jack Welch broke GE by over investing in financial products and manipulating the numbers to show GE constantly was beating Wall Street estimates. While Jeff Emmelt was a mediocre CEO, as Welch's successor he inherited a flimsy house of cards that could not be repaired.
Yes, very disturbing election coming up. We have a democracy, and people voting for Trump are aware of Elon Musk’s ambitions. If he were eligible, I would vote for Elon, but I won’t vote for Trump because I can’t stand his character. Kamala Harris is bad at even just the dumb politician’s skill of evading answers, and has no one of Musk’s caliber on her team (Beyoncé?) so I’m worried if it comes to a showdown with China it would not go well for us. In essence if she wins, Xi wins.
Can you explain why under the "reviled" President Biden (not my preferred term) the economy is doing so well. Job creation has been higher than under Trump, ignoring the pandemic year. Inflation, largely a result of supply chain disruption and in the case of eggs, avian influenza, has come down to the Fed's 2% comfort range. The price of gas at the pump is way down as well. Stock market is at record highs and if you have a retirement fund, you are in much better shape than under Trump. Tell me what I am missing.
This post is about leadership and foreign policy, please explain how Biden or Harris are doing so well handling this. Ukraine, Gaza, Iran all hotspots and now North Korea sending troops to fight with Russia; this did not occur under Trump. Hilary worried about who would take the 3am call on the White House red phone, but Biden wouldn’t even wake up and Harris apparently can’t coherently speak under pressure, such as being asked why her positions have changed.
Trump has already announced that he is giving Israel free rein to carry out their war against Gaza and Hezbollah. Lest I be accused of being unsympathetic to Israel, I have immediate family members who live there and served in the military. If you can look at the humanitarian disaster that has taken place in Gaza and not feel the least bit of sympathy for the non-Hamas populace (which is the overwhelming number) than you obviously have no empathy. Trump will support the Russians attempt to fully take over the eastern quarter of Ukraine. The fact that Russia invaded Ukraine under Biden's watch is irrelevant, they would have done so under a Trump administration had things turned out differently in 2020. Ascribing all of this to who is President is a fool's errand; geopolitics is beyond the control of a single person except perhaps the late Henry Kissinger.
I think the objection from Trump supporters re Ukraine is more like "if Trump is such a Putin stooge, then why didn't Russia invade Ukraine some time between between 2017 and 2020?"
I'm guessing the answer to that one is something like "they needed time to fortify their economy against the inevitable new sanctions"...
Biden didn't cause any of that and deserves no credit. He also didn't cause any of the economic problems we face and deserves no blame for that either.
Inflation was not the result of supply chain disruption. It was the result of money supply expansion. If it was caused by supply chain disruption, the prices would have gone back down when the disruption ended.
Prices are mostly sticky; they won't generally go down if they're elevated for a few years, since they've already spread and people have gotten pay raises.
Prices of individual goods are not sticky. They rise and fall with the forces of supply and demand. Just look at a chart of any commodity price to see this. Prices do not suddenly become "sticky" when they all increase at the same time either. I see no plausible mechanism for that.
Money supply, on the other hand, is very sticky. When it goes up, it's very hard to bring down because that would cause deflation, and central banks will do anything to avoid it because it's the classic case of the cure being worse than the disease.
If you try to explain inflation by sticky prices, and not money supply, the cause must be velocity of money. And that has not increased from pre pandemic levels https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
Which leaves the increase in money supply as the clear cause.
"Democrats and progressives have downplayed and underrated those superpowers over the last decade".
No, we just expect these people to pay their taxes, play by our antitrust rules, and not run amuck over our environment. If they believe these rules don't apply to them they can kiss our a$$. They're not indispensable - no one is or has ever been.
I think some have. After Musk took over Twitter and let conservatives back on, there was a big rash of leftists saying things like Musk isn't really to be credited for SpaceX's success, that it's all Gwynn Shotwell, that Tesla didn't really succeed on the merits etc. There's multiple posts on this thread making exactly that argument, in fact. The authors think it's all a lie that Musk - SpaceX founder - built SpaceX for instance, although the facts and testimony of many people are all out there in public. This is not merely downplaying or underrating Musk's skills but flat out conspiracy-theory level denial of them.
Most leftists can't decouple. The only worse ones are the rightoids. "Person I don't like did an impressive thing" is data they can't process. lefty.exe has stopped working
Spot on Noah, this piece echoed my thoughts on Musk quite closely and I sincerely hope he can battle his own ego and paranoia about woke-ism, which would be helped in part if more left elites would have some perspective and tone things down or at least focus criticism of him in a more productive way. But maybe the allure of total power is just too blinding……and perhaps we really don't have a true shared sense of common cause to unify behind anymore when push comes to shove.
Sorry, I replied to the wrong comment. But to your points, left elites have no perspective and no interest in toning anything down. He made them mad when he allowed people with views they do not like into their private sandbox. And supporting Trump is beyond the pale. Exhibit A of a Democrat elite (at least in his own mind) is Keith Olbermann calling for the immediate arrest and asset confiscation of Musk, on Musk's X platform, mind you. And Musk did not censor him.
<Barack Obama once declared “If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.” But he was wrong. Yes, human organizations are a collective enterprise. But the unique value of entrepreneurs in gathering, selecting, coordinating, and inspiring the people in an enterprise can’t be minimized. If “that” is an organization, then yes, an entrepreneur did build that.>
Not gonna quibble about the importance of entrepreneurs, although that sorta sounds like economics’ version of “Great Man” theory of history. But once again, someone is misquoting Obama and doing so out of context. I personally don’t like Obama, but what I don’t like more is people quoting others out of context. Here’s what Obama actuually said:
"Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that."
Obama was clearly referring to the infrastructure/government institutions that have powered the American economy. This was in the context of running against a GOP that was so enthralled with fringe libertarianism that they bungled through several government shutdowns and a near default on the national debt (among other crises). It would be highly out of character for Obama to be openly dissing rich entrepreneurs (unlike, say, Bernie Sanders), especially given how many in tech and finance supported his presidential campaigns.
I don't believe it's a misquote at all. I read the entire speech to make sure I didn't misquote it. Obama is talking about the collective nature of business. That's fine. But he's underrating the importance of entrepreneurs. And I think that underrating has been systematic and consistent among Democrats in recent years. Fortunately, I think Harris is starting to reverse it, with her emphasis on entrepreneurship in her policy plans.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/lets-evaluate-kamala-harris-entire
c'mon. The full quote is "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that."
The final "that" was clearly NOT a reference to "a business", but back to "this unbelievable American system" and "roads and bridges".
Pulling the single last sentence is unfair and misleading and you should correct this.
I agree with Miles. I think the following sentence “The Internet didn’t get invented on it its own.” fairly clearly shows that the “that” in “you didn’t build that” refers to the infrastructure and ecosystem that allowed the business to be invented, not the business itself, although I agree it is somewhat confusing. Here are the full two paragraphs from a page on FactCheck.org.
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
Noah, I love reading your work but I have to say, with all respect, I totally disagree with your assumptions. I am sorry for the slapdash approach to writing, it is late. The Obama quote was about paying taxes and not agreeing with the libertarian approach to decreasing taxes (We know that bc he brings up fire department at the end which, against the theories of libertarians, must be in a form of socialism. (Govt pays, everyone whose house is on fire gets the service>). The original idea comes from Elizabeth Warren who stated "I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." Its pretty evident that Warren's contention is that she congratulates business owners on being successful but points out that the government built the roads/transportation foundation that allow products, people, and supplies to be quickly transferred, educated the work force, and kept criminals from interfering with the company. Taxes pay for that. Obama, in later discussions, also pointed out the technology that was made into businesses was first developed by government institutions such as DARPA (Internet, mouse, semiconductor, etc) that was shared with companies so that they could build on that.
To be specific, on July 13, 2012, Obama also gives a tip of the hat to entrepreneurs/business owners by saying at the end of his talk“The point is … that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”
Lastly, in the interest of going to back to my work and trying to get to bed before 4am, I am quoting wikipedia.
"In his remarks Obama noted that while he was willing to cut government waste, he would not gut investments that grow the economy or give tax breaks to millionaires like himself or Mitt Romney.[11] Obama went on to say that rich people did not get rich solely due to their own talent and hard work, but that, to varying degrees, they owe some of their success to good fortune and the contributions of government.[17] Obama said in this context:
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn't – look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.[18]
Obama then cited the funding of the G.I. Bill, the creation of the middle class, the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam, creation of the Internet, and landing on the Moon as examples"
One last point, thanks for reading, America's spocial sauce is entrepreneurship. It is derived from a mixture of America's unique educational approach (fostering creativity vs call and response in China or Russia) and the risk taking of immigrants who came here often without others (so not tied down from old culture or family ties,), and bankruptcy laws. Unlike in China or Russia, if you have the right relationships, you can survive bad loans and losses. In America, the bank or the government takes your company, they try to sell it to others to make something else out of it. Also, during recessions, laid off workers have time and the opportunity to say fuck it, lets go for it. This is why much of Web 2.0 was built during the recession and drop of the tech market in 2001-2003. Good night
Noah: First off, I really, really love this piece. I've already forwarded it to a number of folks (including my wife) who tend to be quick to dismiss Musk (because of all they have been reading about him lately) without recognizing the scale of what he has accomplished.
But when I forwarded it, I included the caveat that you get the Obama quote wrong. I wrote that partly because I didn't want people to dismiss your entire piece (and all it gets right) just on the basis of this mistake, but mainly because you did get that quote wrong in vital ways that really matter.
When you listen to the full quote (https://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/you-didnt-build-that-uncut-and-unedited/), the "that" Obama was referring to is clearly "the roads and bridges" and "this unbelievable American system" and not an entrepreneur's business. The correct interpretation of Obama's remarks is the one he explicitly gives in that speech: “The point is … that when we succeed, we succeed BECAUSE OF OUR INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE , but ALSO because we do things together.” In other words, both things matter.
Obama is 100% correct about this, and the implication that comes with it, that those who are successful in our system have a moral as well as legal obligation to contribute back to it in taxes (and other ways). Which is why it's so frustrating for you to get this wrong in a piece that is otherwise so insightful. So I hope you'll correct it.
Meanwhile, there is perhaps another good piece to be written about your feelings that the Democrats have underrated the importance of entrepreneurs in recent years. Not sure I think that is right, but I'd be interested in hearing your argument for it.
Thank you Elie! I rarely comment here but came here to make exactly that point.
I hate how Obama's comment has been distorted. It's 100% spot on and a big part of the reason I both celebrate and honor entrepreneurs, while also believing that they (and all the wealthy) should be paying much higher levels of taxes (as in pre-Reagan era rates).
It's amazing that folks like Jobs and Musk are able to lead people to build great, new things. But the ability to translate those innovations into vast wealth is a function of the society they live in, which many, many people, past and present, have contributed to.
Basic bare functioning of a society isn’t much to write home about as a basis for entrepreneurial succuess. If strong government regulation were what was needed, Europe would be leading the charge.
Seneca: If your point is that Europe over regulates and doesn't give enough cultural support for entrepreneurship compared to America, I fully agree with you. I'm definitely not saying that America should be more like Europe on either dimension.
But I do think America should go back to much higher marginal tax rates on high incomes (as we had in the post-war period). I think that can be fully compatible with creating a great environment for entrepreneurs, while also helping support a society where everyone can have a decent life.
Pretty sure I know how Noah misquoted this so badly. He saw that the GOP ran an *entire convention* themed on this exact misquoting and didn’t consider that they might have been that recklessly dishonest.
No, I read the entire speech, because I wanted to make sure I wasn't misquoting.
If your idea here is that Obama and his side undervalue the importance of entrepreneurship, that’s a fine opinion to have (though I’d debate it -Elon Musk is the richest, most powerful person in the world and perhaps in world history. How the heck is his work undervalued?)
But the grammatical context of this specific quote doesn’t make any sense with the interpretation you are making. Why did he bring up our publicly funded infrastructure in the previous sentence at all, if this isn’t what he talks about in the next sentence?
He’s undervalued because the Left incessantly point out his father owned an emerald mine or something that supposedly explains most of how Elon Musk accomplished what he accomplished.
Musk built his two great companies Tesla and SpaceX off of the support of the Federal Government under Obama. He gets huge props for his vision and accomplishments, but all his leadership would be for nothing if not for the backing he got from collective institutions.
"Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that."
I'm very much in agreement with the meaning of Obama's statement, but not who the "somebody" is. That somebody is in the past. We rely today on infrastructure that simply could not be build today. The railroads that carry our cargo, the refineries (last one built in the 70s) and pipelines that manufacture and deliver the gas that we put in our cars, and in many cases even the homes that we live in, couldn't be built today with the morass of bureaucracy, "environmental" reviews, and lawsuits that we now live under. If more of our tax money went to building those things and less went to getting in the way of building it, I don't think the government would need Obama to defend its utility.
While I don't necessarily disagree with your analysis (things are harder to build now than they used to be), I still think there'd be a large social base of people who mistrust the federal government. It's worth noting that the main supporters of the Tea Party (and fringe libertarianism more generally) tend to be what Patrick Wyman called the "American landowning gentry class": small business owners and petty capitalists who own small-time factories, hedge funds, car dealerships, etc. Bigger fish (like the big banks or the Big Three automakers) tend to be less ideological and generally follow the political winds (hence their brief infatuation with DEI). The petty capitalists hate Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor, basically any institution so large they need a bureaucracy to manage it (believe it or not, bureaucracy emerges to make life more efficient, not less). They'd be more than happy to trim the bureaucracy and make it more efficient, but deep down they want to burn down the administrative state and let the market (i.e., themselves) run the show.
Yes
Sadly, after the past 40 years of deregulation, humankind all around the world is experiencing the consequences of letting oligarchs get the government "out of the way."
Many good points
Yeah, Noah took his statements right out of Romney’s attack ad.
Thank you. I’d only heard the Noah version.
I've been a sub for a while and I never bother to comment on the posts and I always love Noah's posts, this one included, but that particular interpretation of the "You didn't build that" line did send me into a tizzy because it is so bad faith and is exactly the bad faith interpretation that the conservatives lobbed at Obama circa 2012. Not a big deal but it was a big eyeroll.
Uhg. I know Obama said it and meant it just like that because I had Democrats repeating it back when they thought it was witty before they realized it was an own goal.
So tired of this left-wing "That didn't happen but it's good that it did" BS. Are you going to explain to me how "defund the police" wasn't actually about defunding the police next?
I guess it boils down to whether or not Obama made a grammatical error. In "Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that." "roads and bridges" are plural and "you didn't build that" is singular. So either Obama was talking about the business (singular), or he made a grammatical error, which is unlike him...
I suspect the ambiguity was by design. Obama was an incredible orator and I suspect his team was aware the it could be read differently by people.
And while I cannot second guess Obama with any degree of certainty…being in Portland OR I can promise you that most of the people i talk to read it similarly to Noah.
Musk clearly never watched Spiderman, because he refuses to acknowledge or honor the great responsibility that his power demands of him. We deserve a better class of leadership, not this garbage.
Instead of inspiring his society and future generations, he shares conspiracies and porn memes on Twitter. What a waste.
Hmm, I think Mush truly believes that his embrace of Trump and his biasing of Twitter for right-wing content is him responsibly using his power. There is a cynical framing that sees Musk as purely pursuing his economic interests and calculating that Trump and Republicans are more aligned in that way. I think that is giving Musk way too much credit and requires us to dismiss his long track record of reckless behavior. Eg, committing security fraud via tweet in 2018.
That pattern of recklessness includes founding Tesla and SpaceX, both of which started from the premise of assuming unrealistic (at the time) cost structures and working backwards from there. Yes, he made it work, and that does demonstrate some truly amazing capabilities as technical leader. Yet his critics at the time were correct in noting that these were speculative long shots without sufficient justification to be achievable in any reasonable time frame.
I believe Musk is similarly taking a reckless risk based on assuming some political outcome and working backwards. That seems to be centered on a rightwing culture war victory (and more lenient regulation of business for he may actually have a point). Yet he's not operating in the world of physics and engineering where he and his team simply needs to find a solution within the structure of hard physical constraints. The political world is far more open-ended and he can't just engineer out a solution. Yet Musk doesn't see it that way and he truly believes he can just figure this out as he goes.
You're absolutely correct - let me clarify what I mean.
I suppose my responsibility comment is related to the manner in which Musk, and also the rest of the modern GOP under Trump, pursue their agendas. As public figures, their example matters, yet they've completely abandoned all sense of character. They brag incessantly, whine when they lose, troll everyone they disagree with, and take no responsibility for their actions. Something is always somebody else's fault. And if you don't like what they're doing, then you're just a p**sy beta.
Wtf is this behavior? Why don't these men have any sense of moral responsibility to be upstanding citizens and set an example? What impact is this having on our culture?
Everyone likes to pretend like it doesn't matter because it doesn't impact their behavior personally, yet we all acknowledge that we live in a meaner and less emotionally tolerant culture. If you flood the zone with bullies, it's going to seep through.
Bear in mind a couple of things:
1. His companies may do physics-related things but companies themselves are social constructs. Musk's superpower, as Noah notes, is in organizing and recruiting people as much as understanding physics (although he does understand it, very well indeed).
2. His turn to the right is partly triggered by one of his children transitioning.
Pedantic correction: Musk didn't found Tesla. (Though he has certainly been instrumental in the success it has achieved.)
It was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk invested $6.5 million in the Series A in February 2004, over six months later.
I haven't followed the full details but I don't think Musk was involved in day to day stuff at Tesla until 2006 or so, which is approximately when Eberhard and Tarpenning, the founders, left the company.
Musk is legally allowed to call himself a "founder" due to a settlement in a 2009 lawsuit involving Eberhard.
Learning of his conversations with Putin, I can’t help but remember Saruman. His choice to look into the palantir, his lack of humility in the face of someone more cunning than himself, did not end well for anyone.
Good reference
It is ironic that a day after the WaPo declared the paper would not endorse a candidate in this year's Presidential election, that a story appears about Elon Musk coming to Palo Alto to enroll in grad school at Stanford on a student visa. Well, he withdrew prior to classes starting and was in the US as an "illegal immigrant" in violation of the law. He could not obtain a driver's license yet drove in violation of state law. Hmmmm, this is exactly the kind of guy he is currently railing against!
Musk has had some successes as well as failures (the tunneling machine and hyperloop, and of course the takeover of Twitter). Yet the successes were in large part dependent on government payments and subsidies. Would Tesla have been as successful without all the tax credits that buyers received? Would SpaceX have done as well as they have without government contracts? Musk, to his credit, saw opportunities and overcame a number of sluggish American companies who were asleep at the wheel. Other than GM, the other American auto companies were late in embracing EVs, though GM does have a major commitment here (disclosure: I'm a GM shareholder). The bigger question is why the major aerospace companies did not see the opportunities in new modular rockets not to mention Starlink. Neither of these are totally ground breaking technologies in the same way the personal computer was.
As long as America continues to focus on service industries and financial engineering, it runs the risk of not being aggressive in the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, China's economy continues to suffere from the real estate fall out and they certainly have a long way to go in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Despite purchasing GE's appliance business they are not as competitive as South Korean, US, and German manufacturers.
“But Reagan, after all, had free enterprise, traditional Christian values, and pride in America’s history to defend from the USSR”
Sanewashing Saint Reagan is a misdirected pastime. He was a racist (recorded phone conversation with President Nixon in which Reagan made fun of Africans) and his “pride in America’s history to defend” didn’t mean a thing when he dodged WWII military combat with the claim of poor eyesight. He had no problem reading cue cards throughout his movie and television career. My father was blind as a bat without his eyeglasses, but he served 36 months of combat in the 1st Armored Division, was wounded and refused to come home, and earned the Bronze Star.
Saint Reagan also laid the foundation for our political problems today and Trump. He gutted the middle class with his supply-side economics, creating the largest income/wealth gap in the U.S. since the 1920s. His name emblazoned on the Washington International Airport speaks volumes about false gods.
People in the intelligence service risked their careers to sound the alarm about Musk and Putin. I don’t think Trump will win. However, if Trump wins, we can expect a lot more leaks about Musk from the intelligence community.
Note: Bezos, Salzburg, and other major newspaper owners may fear Trump and Bezos, but Rupert Murdock doesn’t. And there are multiples of people who don’t have empires to lose and have nothing to fear from Musk. This is why overreach brings down a so-called Super Hero. And let’s not pretend the federal government didn’t bailout Musk with a cheap loan when Tesla was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. That came at a vulnerable time for Musk, when he was on the outs with Peter Thiel.
Reagan is underrated. He did amnesty for immigrants, arms control with the USSR, improved science policy, and moved the GOP temporarily saner, less reactionary direction. He did not gut the middle class at all.
Underrated by whom? The left? Reagan is held in high esteem (by those who hold him in high esteem). Reagan “improved science policy?” He did nothing to encourage the NIH to focus attention on AIDS, which was the major public health crisis under his watch. By today’s standards I think Reagan appears to be a moderate Republican, yes, but underrated, no. Anyway, Elon Musk inherited and has not questioned the worst outlook of white South Africans, and that explains everything about his political behavior.
Reagan increased research spending and signed a bill allowing commercialization of university research. Both great moves.
Yeah, and Nixon declared war on cancer. Reagan did not veto the tech transfer bill, but he didn’t write the legislation nor AFAIK did he declare it part of his platform anymore than Trump cared about the Music Modernization Act which had a positive effect on the copyright economy. Not caring- in fact proactively disparaging- the major health crisis of AIDS is hard to abide by comparison, at least for me. But I agree Reagan was a far better president and (in areas unaffected by his homophobia) a better human being than some others. I think a lot of people think so.
Dude? Supply side/voodoo economics, first instituted by Reagan, has hollowed out the American middle class. That seems undebatable.
A lot of the deregulation started under Carter tho...
Reagan did not really make the GOP "saner." He'd long been seen as a far-right gadfly in a party traditionally dominated by socially-liberal WASPs like Nelson Rockefeller. He crushed the air traffic controllers' strike, doubled down on financial deregulation that led to the savings & loans crisis at the end of his presidency, and violated US law by trading munitions with Iran and using the profits to fund the narco-funded Contras in Nicaragua.
He was definitely a "Great" president, in no small part because he was the Great Communicator. But being "great" does not necessarily suggest that he was "good."
Most historians rate him very highly. He had very high approval ratings. So, maybe it’s just people in your progressive circles.
Personally, I think this article is way too forgiving on Elon Musk’s behalf. If Musk is willing to indulge in batshit conspiracies and schmooze up to our enemies, that’s on him towards being a contrarian wrecker to a fault. This will have to be one of those articles I respectfully but strongly disagree with.
That is not to say the headline thesis is wrong, per se, just the a disagreement of where blame falls.
There’s no reason to think that Elon would be shadow president.
In the case where Trump hangs on, increasingly demented and incoherent but still alive, then there are a lot of other people who have Trump’s ear and established positions in his organization. Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, RFK jr and many more. As you noted, Elon is not really a bureaucratic infighter. No reason to think he’s rise to the top in that case.
If Trump actually dies in office, then Vance becomes president, then yes Elon is better positioned and has more influence. But he still won’t be the only one with influence. He’d have to contend with Peter Thiel, of course and they often don’t see eye-to-eye. Not to mention that Vance’s current stated beliefs run counter to Musk’s stated desire for the government to get out of the way of tech entrepreneurs.
What kind of bullshit is this?
Either you believe that certain people have such unique talents that they deserve to rule over the rest of us untermensch, or you believe that we are equal citizens in a republic.
Third option: You believe that some people are uniquely talented, but also that nobody deserves to rule over anyone else, no matter how unique their talents are.
I believe it was H. G. Wells who said the best argument against slavery wasn't that there were no natural slaves, it was that there were no natural masters.
Well said. Just because some people are smarter, or stronger, or better at video games, or whatever, doesn't mean they deserve to rule over other people. Natural talent doesn't make you a king.
What was the point of this article if not to argue that Elon Musk is so singularly talented that the entire American political system should bend itself to suit his whims?
That may not be what you intended but that is certainly how it reads.
I didn’t read it that way at all. Noah was signaling the danger of Elon wanting political power, or, worse, us giving it to him.
If they have unique talents, that doesn't mean they have unique ruling talents. Leadership of a company isn't the same as being a good president.
(Being good at running for president isn't the same either tbh.)
Careful now, social and political equality is CCP propaganda
Democrats should try to get over their weird obsession with Musk’s politics and focus on why someone like him moved to the other side. I’m an independent who hasn’t switched yet but living in a blue state long enough can make anyone hate Democratic policies.
It's well known why, he's divorced and mad at his wife and children.
The business factor is that his businesses happened to be located in blue states during Covid, so he's imprinted on that local government and hasn't had time to become mad at the new local government yet.
No he isn't. One of his kids is actually working at X, if I recall correctly.
I’m not divorced or mad at my kid. Guess who I’d have voted for if the Republicans had nominated Haley?
That's a pretty distant counterfactual though, we have primary elections which means they're incapable of nominating her.
Btw, local politics aren't the same people as national politics and I'd recommend against comparing them. I live in Silicon Valley and there are no serious people running as Republicans here; any bad policy a D has, they have the same one but worse. If the state is all D, then that means everyone who runs is D.
It’s more logical than saying that someone started voting for Trump because they’re mad at their ex-wife and children and not because Democrats have made some terrible policy choices in the last 4 years.
We're not talking about "someone" though, we're talking about Elon, who is especially weird and a drug addict.
(He's also not just voting for Trump but has basically taken over his entire campaign.)
Except that Biden made very progressive policy choices at the national level - on immigration, DEI, trans, student loan forgiveness, climate change. If he had governed as the moderate that he was, I don’t think Trump would be in a toss up race with Harris.
Musk's already demonstrated his willingness to flip the Starlink kill switch if you don't toe the line. Doesn't strike me as hero behavior.
Musk is blowing his brain up with Ketamine. He won't even be functional in five years.
He's this generation's Howard Hughes.
Interesting comparison. Keep your eyes on his fingernails ...
I think this an underrated factor. He stopped being treated for his mood disorder and chose to self-dose psychedelics instead. And lo and behold, there was personality shift and an overall huge drop in impulse control. I don't know if his future will be quite that grim, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was.
I think you are overall correct. There are people who just have an internal drive to build things and get things done and those you call "organization men" who simply value status and their position in the hierarchy. And builders tend to have a burning contempt for the organization men.
In my experience, getting work done in a corporation is a process of shoving organization men out of the way. I believe that a major part in the success of Elon Musk (and many other legendary founders) is their ability and desire to sniff out and purge the organization men from the company leaving only builders. I also believe this is why these type of people are generally considered assholes. It is considered rude by most people to fire the well liked, but unproductive people in an organization.
> Only the combined powers of America and Musk can stand against those empires.
I believe this is exactly right, but it will have to be America that compromises, because I can guarantee you that Elon Musk will not. He does not care about procedures, or what titles, credentials, or offices you hold, only what you can get done. And when he looks at the governemnt bureaucracy, he is not impressed.
Most folks here, commenting online during the workday, are working in corporate America. When they look at how hard it is to get anything done, I can’t understand who they can look at someone like Musk in anything but awe.
Those haters are not the people getting anything done. They are the people who would be fired if someone like Elon Musk was running their company.
Noah, I am not sure if you caught Bill Maher’s episode, in which he took to task Gen Z’s ignorance about America’s history and civics, but the hate America theme which runs through some on the Left and, as far as I know, only a handful of usual idiots on the right.
While not voting for either candidate, I appreciated Kamala Harris’s speech at her DNC nominating convention. She pointed out what many Americans already know. America is a great country to be born into or to live in. This is why immigrants will crawl through busted glass and dangerous jungles to get here. Do we have problems? Of course, we are human.
In so far as Musk goes, there have always been superhumans. George Washington and Lincoln come to mind. Einstein, Carnegie, Gandhi, Mother Teresa. Yes, Musk is quirky, intelligent, very wealthy and probably drives many people crazy. Do I think he was hurt when Joe Biden didn’t invite him to his EV confab with the other American manufacturers? You bet as he should have been.
No, I have no idea why Musk would talk to a genocidal mass murderer. He is, however, an American citizen, and he has every right to talk to anyone he likes, even if I find it awful.
"No, I have no idea why Musk would talk to a genocidal mass murderer. He is, however, an American citizen, and he has every right to talk to anyone he likes, even if I find it awful."
Totally, Musk’s right to talk to whoever he wants is part of being an American, sure, but this isn’t some random conversation over coffee in a starbucks. When the richest person in the world, who controls companies like SpaceX, with massive ties to U.S. national security, is having conversations with Putin—a leader who’s openly hostile to the U.S.—it’s not just freedom of speech. There’s a real-world impact here which you're choosing to ignore.
Life and politics are messy, and when you’re that powerful, your actions ripple far beyond yourself. Musk isn’t just a guy with opinions; he’s a guy with a massive influence on critical infrastructure, space exploration, transportation, even communication networks in places where geopolitical tensions are already on edge. Add in the fact that he openly uses mind-altering drugs like ketamine, which could cloud judgment or impact his decision-making, and it’s not hard to see why people might be worried.
This isn’t just a “freedom” question; it’s a national security one. We’d be asking similar questions if any other major player with influence over American defense was in the same position. It’s a strange and concerning mix when someone with this much power, access, and influence decides to casually interact with world leaders who pose threats to our country.
I’m pretty sure the NSA knew he was talking to Putin. Not an excuse but an observation.
I’m far more interested in the why...Has anyone asked him?
I'm not sure it matters. I don't really know how to drive home the point that Putin, more so than just about anyone else on the planet, wants Americans divided, suffering, destitute, destroyed. He is a man with no allies, only vassals, who believes the world belongs to him and no one else.
I'm sorry, there is no acceptable "why" to have a conversation with this man, unless you are actively working negotiations as the person in charge of foreign relations for the United States - and that's one person - the President.
Even if I agree with your assertion, this is still not unlawful. Ill-advised, but not illegal.
No. Musk should not have contact with Putin when he is getting federal money. Including taxpayers money. Including defense money.
Pretty certain the CEOs of Raytheon, Northrup, Lockheed, GE military engines ain't talking to Putin alone. Without State Department involvement
Good question, still he is an American protected by the first Amendment. As for the proper thing to do, I wouldn’t have done it.
"Do I think he was hurt when Joe Biden didn’t invite him to his EV confab with the other American manufacturers? You bet as he should have been."
But, who was more "hurt" in the long run by alienating Musk?
Is this a test? Ok, Kamala?
This is very good and equally disturbing in some ways
A. I agree that Founders build new new and create and attract talent.
B. Jack Welch was considered the greatest CEO of the last 50 years. He is now moving into the dustbin of history. Forgotten. His great thematic business paradigm changes were, a. Be 1st or 2nd in Market Share (see also Porter), b. He broke the International approach to business (IBM Germany, IBM Japan, Xerox Fuji, Rank Xerox all run heavy handed from HQ), to "Act Local, Thank Global". He saw locally developed products led by local customer facing teams competed vs national companies.
C. Welch Forgotten. Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk names will be known for a century.
D. The big concern is, a. Companies can't compete with Nations in the Big Nuclear league
E. US Companies have rarely been patriotic to the United States over profit maximization.
And China's Xi, a poor but powerful "Musk"; is beating out the US.
I think a Musk President, Vance puppet and demented Trump is a huge negative future.
If it "works", why have a democracy?
Jack Welch broke GE by over investing in financial products and manipulating the numbers to show GE constantly was beating Wall Street estimates. While Jeff Emmelt was a mediocre CEO, as Welch's successor he inherited a flimsy house of cards that could not be repaired.
Immelt. I worked with Jeff. He was given an iceberg hand by Jack.
I don’t think Welch is regarded as the best CEO of the past fifty years. Much of the myth surrounding evaporated as GE collapsed.
Fortune Magazine named him CEO of the century in 1999. You can use Google to find the link.
In the moment, 1982 to 2002. He was considered genius. Had dinner with Jack and Roger Smith, GM CEO once. Huge difference.
Yes, very disturbing election coming up. We have a democracy, and people voting for Trump are aware of Elon Musk’s ambitions. If he were eligible, I would vote for Elon, but I won’t vote for Trump because I can’t stand his character. Kamala Harris is bad at even just the dumb politician’s skill of evading answers, and has no one of Musk’s caliber on her team (Beyoncé?) so I’m worried if it comes to a showdown with China it would not go well for us. In essence if she wins, Xi wins.
Can you explain why under the "reviled" President Biden (not my preferred term) the economy is doing so well. Job creation has been higher than under Trump, ignoring the pandemic year. Inflation, largely a result of supply chain disruption and in the case of eggs, avian influenza, has come down to the Fed's 2% comfort range. The price of gas at the pump is way down as well. Stock market is at record highs and if you have a retirement fund, you are in much better shape than under Trump. Tell me what I am missing.
This post is about leadership and foreign policy, please explain how Biden or Harris are doing so well handling this. Ukraine, Gaza, Iran all hotspots and now North Korea sending troops to fight with Russia; this did not occur under Trump. Hilary worried about who would take the 3am call on the White House red phone, but Biden wouldn’t even wake up and Harris apparently can’t coherently speak under pressure, such as being asked why her positions have changed.
Trump has already announced that he is giving Israel free rein to carry out their war against Gaza and Hezbollah. Lest I be accused of being unsympathetic to Israel, I have immediate family members who live there and served in the military. If you can look at the humanitarian disaster that has taken place in Gaza and not feel the least bit of sympathy for the non-Hamas populace (which is the overwhelming number) than you obviously have no empathy. Trump will support the Russians attempt to fully take over the eastern quarter of Ukraine. The fact that Russia invaded Ukraine under Biden's watch is irrelevant, they would have done so under a Trump administration had things turned out differently in 2020. Ascribing all of this to who is President is a fool's errand; geopolitics is beyond the control of a single person except perhaps the late Henry Kissinger.
I think the objection from Trump supporters re Ukraine is more like "if Trump is such a Putin stooge, then why didn't Russia invade Ukraine some time between between 2017 and 2020?"
I'm guessing the answer to that one is something like "they needed time to fortify their economy against the inevitable new sanctions"...
Biden didn't cause any of that and deserves no credit. He also didn't cause any of the economic problems we face and deserves no blame for that either.
Inflation was not the result of supply chain disruption. It was the result of money supply expansion. If it was caused by supply chain disruption, the prices would have gone back down when the disruption ended.
Prices are mostly sticky; they won't generally go down if they're elevated for a few years, since they've already spread and people have gotten pay raises.
Some like food prices have gone down though.
Prices of individual goods are not sticky. They rise and fall with the forces of supply and demand. Just look at a chart of any commodity price to see this. Prices do not suddenly become "sticky" when they all increase at the same time either. I see no plausible mechanism for that.
Money supply, on the other hand, is very sticky. When it goes up, it's very hard to bring down because that would cause deflation, and central banks will do anything to avoid it because it's the classic case of the cure being worse than the disease.
If you try to explain inflation by sticky prices, and not money supply, the cause must be velocity of money. And that has not increased from pre pandemic levels https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
Which leaves the increase in money supply as the clear cause.
"Democrats and progressives have downplayed and underrated those superpowers over the last decade".
No, we just expect these people to pay their taxes, play by our antitrust rules, and not run amuck over our environment. If they believe these rules don't apply to them they can kiss our a$$. They're not indispensable - no one is or has ever been.
“ They're not indispensable - no one is or has ever been.”
Thats laughably untrue. People always say, “Anyone could have done that.” Well…you’re anyone, why didn’t you do it?
I think some have. After Musk took over Twitter and let conservatives back on, there was a big rash of leftists saying things like Musk isn't really to be credited for SpaceX's success, that it's all Gwynn Shotwell, that Tesla didn't really succeed on the merits etc. There's multiple posts on this thread making exactly that argument, in fact. The authors think it's all a lie that Musk - SpaceX founder - built SpaceX for instance, although the facts and testimony of many people are all out there in public. This is not merely downplaying or underrating Musk's skills but flat out conspiracy-theory level denial of them.
Most leftists can't decouple. The only worse ones are the rightoids. "Person I don't like did an impressive thing" is data they can't process. lefty.exe has stopped working
Spot on Noah, this piece echoed my thoughts on Musk quite closely and I sincerely hope he can battle his own ego and paranoia about woke-ism, which would be helped in part if more left elites would have some perspective and tone things down or at least focus criticism of him in a more productive way. But maybe the allure of total power is just too blinding……and perhaps we really don't have a true shared sense of common cause to unify behind anymore when push comes to shove.
Sorry, I replied to the wrong comment. But to your points, left elites have no perspective and no interest in toning anything down. He made them mad when he allowed people with views they do not like into their private sandbox. And supporting Trump is beyond the pale. Exhibit A of a Democrat elite (at least in his own mind) is Keith Olbermann calling for the immediate arrest and asset confiscation of Musk, on Musk's X platform, mind you. And Musk did not censor him.