Make money doing the work you believe in
On Elon Musk’s trillionaire status, the banana analogy is, fittingly, bananas. Only the economically illiterate could make it, resting as it does on the assumption that this is a zero-sum game – that one person's wealth is another's poverty (aka the fixed pie fallacy). Wealth isn't a fixed quantity divided up and distributed, but something created. Musk's billions came out of companies that didn't exist before he built them, not money he took from other people's pockets. As Gurwinder says, we could use some more literacy on this topic.
There's a better objection that gets drowned out by the politics of envy. It's that wealth on this scale buys power and influence that's hard to square with democracy – a project we all supposedly consent to on the understanding that we have a roughly equal say in how things turn out. That's the thing worth discussing, not the bananas.
On cue, I see a bunch of left-wing commentators frothing at the news. Nick Cohen has just published a piece titled "Elon Musk: The trillion-dollar psycho — He has hastened the deaths of millions," and he's one of the less crazy ones.
For the record, I find Musk insufferable and admirable in roughly equal measure. He's obviously a genius behind several multi-billion-dollar companies, and I don't doubt that much of it is driven by a real desire to see humans progress. It's born of an optimism that's in drastically low supply. At the same time, I wish he'd stay out of politics. I'm grateful he dragged the grooming gangs (and other evils) into the light, but that's Britain's mess to clean up through its own institutions.
With all that said, I'm considering adding a Trillionaire tier to my Substack, in case he's interested. For everyone else the free option remains, and if you've read this far, do consider hitting subscribe.
UPDATE: I have now extended this into a full post:
