Beware of Elon Musk’s warped libertarianism

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Future generations may say that the big event of 2023 was when Elon Musk thought about TruthGPT, the “ultimate truth-seeking AI” that he intends to launch. Musk is many things: brilliant engineer, great risk taker, overgrown teenager. One thing he is not is someone who can be trusted with a technology that could take on a divine influence on our lives. Nor is anyone for that matter. But the point about billionaire libertarians is that they have the money to do whatever they want.

There are about eight billion reasons why the rest of humanity should find this creepy. We could start with the most basic: American libertarians should rarely be taken at face value. They generally share two characteristics. The first is that they are rich. It is as rare to find an impoverished libertarian as it is to find a wealthy socialist. The second reason is that their libertarianism rarely extends beyond their personal freedoms, especially the freedom not to be taxed. The freedom of others is their lookout.

Once you accept it MossSeems to be the worldview that he should be allowed to do as he pleases, his philosophical confusion ceases to matter. The same goes for many in his cohort, such as Peter Thiel, Ken Griffin and Charles Koch. He watches what they do, not what they say. Many of them subscribe to the life vision of Ayn Rand’s individualist epic, John Galt, the fictional character of Atlas shrugged, whose selfishness is presented as heroic. The message of this novel is that extreme selfishness can be extremely moral.

Some of Musk’s fellow billionaires back Donald Trump, who is the most unlibertarian figure around US politics. If the former president is re-elected next year, he has promised to pass a federal ban on abortion, deport millions of illegal immigrants and impose a loyalty test on federal employees. He promised to be America’s “punishment”.

Little of this fits with commonsense ideas of freedom. Many plausibly argue that Trump’s return would mean the end of US liberal democracy. Not much of this seems to bother libertarians. Trump, of course, enacted the largest corporate tax cut in US history, a $2 trillion measure that disproportionately benefited the super-rich. Which Musk will be hosting this week Ron DeSantis presidential pitch on Twitter it’s a nuance. The Florida governor wants to be Trump without the personal drama.

Most billionaires, both left and right, think they got rich because the government stayed out of the way. You hear this account from Mark Zuckerberg’s liberal friends as much as from conservatives. However, this is often convenient amnesia. Musk’s Tesla, for example, received $465 million from taxpayers in 2009. The search that led to the Google search engine was funded by the National Science Foundation in the 90’s. They seem small numbers today but they were decisive when these big fish were minnows.

Libertarian values ​​of free speech are also selective. Among democracies, the United States is unique in interpreting any curb on campaign spending as an attack on free speech. This means that people like Musk talk infinitely more than the average person. There are no limits to what they can contribute to their favorite causes or candidates. Peter Thiel’s $15 million was instrumental in JD Vance’s success in winning an Ohio Senate seat last year. Both Thiel and Vance are admirers of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s self-styled illiberal prime minister.

Musk has converted Twitter into his idea of ​​a free speech platform. He said Twitter was censored by liberals ahead of its $44 billion takeover last year. Indeed, there have been cases where flags have been placed on tweets that go against the rapidly evolving science on Covid, like mask wearing, for example. His guidelines were often arbitrary. Now, though, it’s turning into a vehicle for Musk’s id. He tweeted last week that George Soros, the liberal billionaire, was a threat to civilization: “He Hates humanity,” Musk said. The demonization of Soros is a sure sign that you are falling into a dark conspiracy. See Orbán, Russian President Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister.

Musk’s love of free speech fades when it comes to China. I challenge readers to find one key thing Musk said about the world’s most censored major corporation. Twitter is blocked in China. But Tesla has a large plant in Shanghai and is planning to open another one. “I will say what I mean and if the consequence of that is the loss of money, then so be it,” Musk said when asked about his comments about Soros. This was very misleading. Musk can tolerate leaks on his Twitter vanity project. But he bet the farm on Tesla. Criticizing China would jeopardize Tesla’s business model.

Musk, like Thiel, has the right to say what he wants and to invest his money where he wants. Nothing in America seriously threatens him. But that doesn’t give him the right to be taken seriously. The sooner people see Musk’s political motivations for what they are, not what he claims to be, the better for the mental health of society. Even if he’s right about government failures, Washington should put a titanium fence around artificial intelligence.

edward.luce@ft.com