Why America’s future could hinge on Elon Musk
In recent months, a number of progressive commentators have suggested that Musk s support for Donald Trump is part of a campaign to become a Shadow President . Many people I talk to in the tech industry also believe this but they think of it as a good thing. Many of them, even the conservatives, despise Donald Trump as a human being, but they hope that with Trump aging and fading, Musk and J.D. Vance will be running the show in a competent technocratic manner. Put a superhero in charge, the thinking goes, and you get super-results just as happened with SpaceX and Tesla.
But superpowers are inherently dangerous. For one thing, when you have all that power concentrated in the hands of one man, you incur a ton of idiosyncratic risk if the superhero makes a bad decision, the whole populace is screwed. Also, power corrupts humans are fallible beings, and the temptation to use one s superpowers to settle scores, torment one s critics, or simply rule the world is very large.
Most of superhero comics are about this. Superheroes are the super-people who subordinate their own wishes and desires to the good of broader society Superman could become Earth s absolute ruler, but instead he chooses to live a humble life and fight for truth, justice, and the American way . Supervillains , meanwhile, are the people who let their own desires override the public s. Some are motivated by pure will to power (Dr. Doom, Green Goblin) or whimsical nihilism (The Joker), while others have a strong sense of their moral self-righteousness (Magneto, Adrian Veidt).3
Noah Smith.
Elon Musk might be a superhero who is our undoing. Uh, yeah, I suppose he might. It’s important we keep up on that whole limited government thing. And probably not sign up to get our brains drilled a la Neuralink.