Why isn't Elon Musk a hero of the left?
You drive a Tesla, have Solar City panels installed, use Starlink internet, and then complain about Elon Musk on Twitter all day. What do you want?
Cast your mind back to the early 2000s when climate concerns shifted from fringe to mainstream. The talk then was about electrification, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.
Imagine that a left political leader enacted a policy forcing every car company to shift from petroleum fuel to electricity. A hero they would be.
That leader already had accolades from previously starting a state-run bank that offered online payment services at drastically lower cost while being easier to use, undercutting margins from the big banks. A gift to the people.
Then, as the policy of electrifying cars progressed, he accelerated the adoption of home solar and battery storage.
And then he started offering a global satellite service that was competitive for remote areas, helping make internet access more equitable between the city and country.
Lastly, he pushes for peaceful negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to avoid further escalation of the war.
This is the dream leader of the left by any standards I would say.
But yet Elon Musk, who accomplished these same things, is somehow hated by the elite left. What gives?
A friend of mine recently observed the following.
The huge backflip in how left opinion leaders (I can't think of a better name) treat Elon Musk is fascinating and bizarre. Take this article. Lumping together the failure of an offshore crypto scammer with a guy possibly over-paying for a profitable social media company is just stupid. What's the goal here? How do they all KNOW they're supposed to now hate Musk?
And here is Dr Vinay Prasad noting the outbreak of an insane culture war over Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition.
Why is this happening? Please let me know your views in the comment.
Mostly I think it’s a question of tribal identity. There’s the obvious take that he’s an anti union billionaire, but there’s a lot of “left-wing” people who like “green” rich people (in Australia, Simon Holmes a Court for example). It’s that he doesn’t signal his tribal identity properly, he doesn’t beat his chest and say “diversity” or whatever. I think he is bad because he’s a billionaire and I think no one should be a billionaire from a Rawlsian perspective but I don’t think that’s the main impetus for the anti Elon stuff
I think the left was pretty neutral on him until he said he was buying Twitter and is for more free speech. That threatens one of their bastions. Before that he was a billionaire (bad) with libertarian tendencies (bad) who made electric cars (good) and space ships (good). So there was some balance.