The Dictatorship
This right-wing myth about Elon Musk is as foolish as it is pernicious
Fox News host John Robert issued a striking defense of Elon Musk’s invasive and maddeningly opaque DOGE operations across the federal government on Tuesday. “If you’re gonna trust anybody with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, wouldn’t you want it to be a guy who really doesn’t need your money?” he queried.
It’s a narrative seems to be gaining traction on the right. Podcast host Joe Rogan recently argued that people ought not be worried about Musk’s recent intrusions into sensitive government data because “he has $400 billion. I’m telling you, he’s not going to steal your money.” In December, when Musk had just been named as a co-head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu waved off Musk’s many conflicts of interest with the federal government and said, “I like the fact that in a way he’s so rich he’s so removed from the potential financial influence of it.”
There are a few factors that make Musk exceptionally prone to exploit his remarkable new influence over the federal government.
I can see how one might surmise, in the abstract, that an individual who has a ton of money in the bank could reach a point of satiety and lose motivation to exploit any opportunity to make an extra buck. Even President Donald Trump made this argument early in his 2016 campaign, claiming that his wealth meant he couldn’t be bought by donors.
As Trump’s record has shownthe opposite is generally true. Saying Musk should get the keys to the government because he is too rich to be corrupt is catastrophically naive.
Musk has been a millionaire since 1999 and a billionaire since 2004. If his appetite for accumulating wealth had a ceiling, we would have seen it by now. His entry into the stratosphere of extreme wealth didn’t prompt him to give everything up and meditate on a mountain or to forfeit almost all his assets and turn to nonprofit work. Instead he continued to aggressively invest in and work on a wider array of for-profit projects that have now made him the richest man in the world. He controls six companies and recently he led a consortium of investors making a $100 billion cash bid for OpenAI, rival to Musk’s own xAI (OpenAI has rejected Musk’s offer and is exploring options to prevent a hostile takeover).
There is nothing unusual about Musk’s quest for more. Capitalists, as a class, seek to maximize their profits and accumulate greater wealth. The economic dictates of ownership of companies and other assets require growth in order to remain valuable. That economic incentive shapes a great deal of their political behavior: it’s why Silicon Valley and Wall Street and other big business interests typically try to use their enormous resources to influence both parties to reduce tax burdens, regulations and labor costs in their sectors. Indeed, Musk displayed this behavior in typical fashion long before his overt swing to the right in recent years. As Business Insider noted in an overview of Musk’s pre-Twitter purchase behaviorMusk’s political activity was “quite average for a business leader with operations in both solidly red and blue states,” with consistent donations to both Republicans and Democrats.
In addition, there are a few factors that make Musk exceptionally prone to exploit his remarkable new influence over the federal government. The most obvious one is that some of Musk’s companies, such as SpaceX, rely heavily on contracts with the federal government to make money. Musk’s businesses have, according to PBS Newsbeen awarded $13 billion in government contracts in just the past five years. And his companies — both the ones that receive contracts and those that don’t — are also regulated by the federal government. According to The New York Timesthe spree of firings and resignations since Trump took office have affected the capacity of least 11 federal agencies — including the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Securities and Exchange Commission — to continue overseeing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions against Musk’s six companies. And The Wall Street Journal is reporting that X is trying to cajole a major advertising conglomerate to get more of its clients to spend money on the platform by insinuating that Musk could use his power in the government to interfere with that company’s financial future.
Despite all this, Trump insists that Musk is capable of policing himself.
Another factor that makes Musk predisposed to using his newfound political authority to advance his own business interests is that the strength of his business empire is a bit more precarious and dependent on constant motion than commonly understood. “Elon Musk might be the poorest richest person in the world there’s ever been,” wrote Slate’s Alex Kirshner recently. “He has way more stressors than John D. Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie ever had. His net worth is the biggest in world history but is tied up in things that require him to remain attentive and engaged with countless projects at once, because their value depends on an association with Musk.” Because Musk doesn’t have a ton of cash on hand, in order to keep growing he has to constantly be working and wooing investors. And it’s in his interest to change the business landscape in order to make it easier for him to do that.
Beyond all this, Musk demonstrably cares about more than just money; he wants to transform the world and seeks out the power required to do it. Many of his companies such as SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Company are tied to a broader mission to fundamentally change human infrastructure and transportation. He has long discussed an interest in making human beings an interplanetary species and pioneering the colonization of Mars. His purchase of Twitter was a poor financial investment, but it has paid tremendous dividends for his influence politically and culturally, and he has used the platform as a gigantic megaphone for his right-wing nationalist views.
In other words, the idea that Musk is some disinterested accountant-type merely looking to make the federal government run faster flies in the face of everything we know about him; in addition to seeking to accumulate money, he’s a mission-oriented guy. And we should not be surprised, then, that DOGE is disproportionately targeting federal agencies perceived as liberal.
The cult of Musk will often depict his business acumen as stemming from a kind of special genius that purportedly allows him to transcend material concerns. In defense of Musk’s operations through DOGE, Joe Rogan said Americans would benefit from Musk’s “brilliant mind” rifling through government drawers. But every bit of Musk’s behavior in business and politics matches that of so many of his fellow businessmen: a desire for more money, power and influence.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for BLN Daily. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Blue Light News, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter here.