From the Harvard Book Store, a window into the thinking of our nation’s cognitive elite:
The #2 hardcover bestseller during my April 2025 visit was Muskism:
Elon Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.
If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His cars run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us.
Muskism sells itself as the future but entrenches age-old hierarchies. It offers autonomy for some and exclusion for others. It’s pro-natalist but anti-immigrant, futurist but reactionary. It speaks of humanity but warns against empathy.
The authors:
Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at Boston University
Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts … He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the New Republic,
These giant credentialed academically-inclined brains say that Elon is pernicious. He’s our “dependent”, which means he is costing us money. What’s worse, this spending has resulted in Musk “owning us” rather than vice versa.
Elon Musk is pernicious and we’d certainly be better off without him. But it is also bad to be “anti-immigrant”, according to the authors, and we thus can’t use our ICE thugs to denaturalize Musk and deport him. Maybe we could persuade him to leave voluntarily? Hardly likely, given the U.S.’s massive exit tax on those who renounce U.S. citizenship. Elon would have to pay 20% capital gains tax plus 3.8% Obamacare tax (NIIT), albeit not the 13.3% California state income tax since he moved to Texas rather than pay his fair share to Gavin Newsom. This tax rate would be assessed against substantially all of Musk’s assets since nearly all of his wealth is unrealized capital gains.
What if we offered our most toxic citizens, the ones who contribute the least to our prosperity (since they don’t pay their fair share of taxes) and contribute the most to our problems (all of the above-cited, plus their presence in our society exacerbates inequality), a reasonable cost way out? If they leave in 2026, for example, they wouldn’t have to pay the exit tax.
Let’s say that someone needs a minimum net worth of $200 million to make the rest of us truly sick with envy. Anyone under $200 million, therefore, would still have to pay for expatriation.
(Separately, one of our neighbors has taken to parking his or her fairly new Rolls-Royce on the street (to make room for a truly valuable car in the garage?). I often walk Mindy the Crippler (our golden retriever) with a physician across the street and his dogs. In response to the Rolls-Royce sighting, the doctor and I have agreed that anyone richer than us should have to pay a 100% wealth tax.)
(Separately, SpaceX has a 98% launch success rate over its corporate life. The authors and publisher have chosen to feature on the cover a photo of one of the 2% unsuccessful launches.)
> Elon Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.
What kind of an argument is this? If you have no control over your senses, anything, including food, owns you.
> If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His cars run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us.
He’s a businessman. He is using the system to his advantage. Maybe he’s just an indicator of the larger problem in the system? Not the problem itself?
It astonishes me that these credentialed moochers wrote a guide for myself. If they are counting on my $20 they won’t get it.
They better have long scientific citations index, when Mask’s AI finally takes over they will be allocated their wine and soy burgers based on their usefulness rating in the free brave new world.
Maimonides called, he wants his title back. In future Mask AI age, Maimonides profile AI entity will sue them for tarnishing its reputation.