Admiring Elon Musk

I received some blowback from an unkind remark in a recent column about Elon Musk.

I received some blowback from an unkind remark in a recent column about Elon Musk.

I don’t want to give the impression that all I think about him is unfavorable, to be expressed in casual sneering. I agree strongly with the practice of the Cato Institute, for which I work, in wanting always to make reasoned arguments. If you read my columns here regularly, or look into my other writings both political and scientific, you’ll see that I am devoted to reasoned arguments. Almost insanely so.

Yes, I know. The world does not always pause to consider reasoned arguments. This depresses me. My opinions are by no means “official” Cato opinions—at Cato we have varied opinions on, for example, aid to Ukraine. But anyway my bosses and I lament that people often do not pause to consider. They quickly put what they hear into little boxes according to their prejudices.

Such behavior is by the way not some modern development—humans have always done it. But it’s not good. People suppose, for example, that Cato is “conservative.” It’s not, though we welcome friends in-house and out all along the conventional political spectrum if they support liberalism.

So you ask me what I actually think about Musk.

If you remember, I defended him unconditionally in this column for his free-speech stand in Brazil when your remarkable judge threatened his company, and I believe him personally, with dire legal consequences for not bending to the will of the judge—who it seemed to me was posing a threat to free speech in my favorite Portuguese-speaking country in Latin America.

True, like many exceptionally smart people, Musk tends to believe that his smartness extends beyond his actual knowledge—of economics, say.

But no one can deny that Musk is an exceptionally smart entrepreneur. If you want to see how very much I admire smart entrepreneurs, read my books. I only add that ordinary people are also entrepreneurs when they move to a new job or start a little business, or venture in any field. They are permitted to do so in a liberal country. So it’s not just multi-billionaires like Musk whom I admire.

And I by no means join in the usual sneering at rich people—Musk being now the richest person in the world, at any rate, if you don’t count people like Putin or Maduro or the Saudi royal family who have seized entire countries by violence for profit. Musk sells his cars and his space flights and many other things pretty much in free markets. The only way a person gets as rich as he is in such circumstances is by making his customers vastly better off. Another multi-billionaire whose present political moves I am not so happy with, Jeff Bezos, makes me vastly better off with Amazon. I love it.

And furthermore, I completely agree with his proposals to deregulate the U.S. economy. True, I don’t think he’s going to get as far as Milei will in Argentina. But you know that I wish Brazil would do it.

So what’s my complaint? I worry that many other parts of the Trump proposals are highly anti-liberal. Musk joining lends prestige to the whole.

Be careful.

Weekly column in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil
Translated into Portuguese for the newspaper.