The Aspirations of Elon Musk

And the Fear of Future Dystopia

The past couple weeks have been eventful for tech entrepreneur, X.com owner, and recent Trump enthusiast Elon Musk. On Saturday, October 5, Musk joined Donald Trump at his second rally in Butler, PA, where Trump had miraculously survived an assassination attempt in July. Musk jumped around on stage in obvious excitement and delivered a few brief remarks. Then, on Thursday, October 10, Musk unveiled advances Tesla has made in a much publicized We, Robot keynote event. The big takeaways from the evening were the introduction of the fully autonomous Robotaxi and Robovan, as well as the Optimus humanoid robots who can carry on conversation and complete basic tasks. Finally, early Sunday morning October 13, SpaceX successfully launched Starship for the fifth time, but on this occasion the Super Heavy booster rocket successfully returned to earth on its own power and was caught by the docking tower. Undoubtedly, this latter event is a breathtaking achievement and a feat of engineering genius.

When Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, his aggressive power play to take over the tech giant helped to expose the government regime of censorship driven by a private-public collusion to silence conservatives through speech codes and blacklists. He subsequently liberalized and monetized Twitter, rebranded the company as X.com, and unsuspended many notorious accounts. Since then, not only has X become a popular platform for traditional conservatives and Trump-supporting MAGA country, but Musk has virtually been adopted as a hero on the New Right who will help save American democracy.

Musk has been vocal about his goals. For Tesla, he wants electric cars to replace all gas and diesel powered vehicles eventually. Both Robotaxi and Robovan will supplant human taxi services, and both will be available for individual purchase. Musk’s promotional video of Optimus shows the robots getting the mail, watering the plants, serving cocktails, wiping down the counters, and playing a board game with the family. Musk described Optimus as “your own personal R2-D2 C-3PO,” and said that it can “do anything you want” including being “a teacher, babysit your kids, walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks—whatever you can think of.” As for space, Musk’s goals are more ambitious: to save the future of humanity by making interplanetary travel and Mars colonization possible.

Critics Left and Right

Criticizing Musk is not popular on the right at the moment. Most of the criticism of the South African immigrant and tech guru turned political activist comes from the political left: resentful of Musk’s capture and transformation of Twitter that dislodged regime apparatchiks and the legacy media’s stranglehold, they bluster, complain, and snipe on X nonstop. Musk, to his credit, accords them the freedom to speak that was denied conservatives, being faithful to his understanding and embrace of the right to free speech.

On the right, Musk has become somewhat of a hero who can do nothing wrong. While Musk has always considered himself a centrist politically and he is clearly a libertarian economically, he is trending in conservative directions on other matters (constitutionally, on immigration, limited government, etc.). This makes him very enticing to traditional conservatives and even the New Right. He has the money (power), ambition, and ideas to effect real change in America’s regime. More importantly, the current political brokers in America are an obstacle and threat to Musk’s ambitions and life goals. Musk had to become political in order to delegitimize and dethrone the current oligarchs who have sought to contain, silence, and squelch his voice and money influence. (The story is a bit more complicated, of course, since Tesla has also received U.S. government subsidies.)

What makes Musk dangerous to the current regime makes him both inspiring and dangerous to the New Right. As Charles Haywood recently (and rightly) observed after Starship’s recent successful launch, “The real (immediate) threat of Musk to the Regime … is that he shows men, especially young men, that things can be different, that there is a better way.” This is undoubtedly true, and in many ways Musk fits the immigrant-entrepreneur stereotype who is dynamic, innovative, and relentless in overcoming obstacles as compared to the lazy and stupid political class that bilks its constituency for a living. We should hope that Musk inspires a new generation of young men to do great things, to throw off the emasculating shackles of late post-liberal ideology that suppresses not only the human spirit but especially the male libido.

At the same time, we must realize that what makes Musk dangerous to the regime and aspirational to us, also makes him dangerous to the New Right—especially the Christian Right. While Musk is not an orthodox Christian, he might be a theist, and he might be more open to the Christian gospel than he’s ever been. Yet, Musk’s inventions and his purposes for them are rife with problems. In a recent statement on why Musk was so intent upon removing the landing gear of Starship in order to make its payload higher and fuel consumption lower, he stated that “at that cost, it becomes possible to make life multiplanetary, ensuring the long-term survival of life as we know it, without materially affecting people’s standard of living on Earth.” Musk’s goal with spaceflight is not to enhance life on earth, but to make life beyond earth possible.

In response, I casually remarked that Musk was “lost theologically,” which imperils the entirety of his space adventures. Musk thinks life on earth is headed toward extinction (probably through population implosion, which he’s also very concerned about), and he wants to save humanity by colonizing Mars and beyond. From a Christian theological perspective, this is not only a pipe dream, but it is entirely unnecessary. God created the earth and mankind to live on it, to tend and cultivate it so that life and civilization would blossom. To take dominion over the world as God’s representatives is literally man’s raison d’état. Additionally, God has promised in his Word not to abandon man and life on earth, but to finally restore it—even if through a refining fire (2 Pet. 3:10)—and make it fit for eternal habitation in the New Heavens and New Earth (Rev. 21:1-4). Our world may yet pass through many trials, but there will never be need to “save humanity” via interplanetary settlement. Our salvation lies in our trust in Jesus Christ, who currently reigns as King of Kings at God’s right hand. We are called to tend the Garden of Earth as stewards of the King, not escape it or hand it over to robots.

The Problem of Capital and Private Property

My criticism of Musk was met with the typical libertarian bromides: Musk is doing this with his own hard earned money and with the products of his own genius and innovation—and besides, he has the right to his own choices regardless of what I or others want him to do or not do. If Musk believes humanity needs saving or human life need improving, and his entrepreneurial projects are how he is attempting to preserve and progress human life, who am I to object—let alone obstruct him? How can the things Musk is doing harm us? Look at his inventions, look at his support for free speech and democracy, look at his support for legal immigration and merit, look at how he’s inspiring a new generation of American workers.

Not everything Musk is doing is wrongheaded, of course, and I am no Luddite. Technological innovations have and will continue to markedly improve the quality of our lives. Yet at the same time, we should always heed the warnings of Neil Postman: technology can deaden man’s spirit through endless entertainment, we can become divorced from what it means to be human, and our technological advances can radically and materially transform life such that it is never the same again. If Musk’s inventions in electric vehicle, robots, and spaceflight were to have these effects, how would we know? More importantly, could we even do anything about it?

The latter issue is the more pressing one. The reason modern man would be hamstrung to stop someone like Musk from imposing unwanted tech upon our lives is because of our understanding of private property. Our conception of the sacrosanct right to private property comes from John Locke’s Second Treatise. There, Locke argued that in the state of nature private property arises when men mix their labor with the land and accrue to themselves what had, moments before, been common to all: “The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed in Labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby make it his Property” (§27). The real reason this was so, Locke said, was that man owns himself, and thus “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself” (§27). Locke was arguing that private property is an extension of man’s essential ownership of himself; by virtue of his self-ownership and agency men are able to transfer the things of material earth from common to private ownership.

This is the standard account of Lockean property that classical liberals and libertarians love to tell. Yet what many modern scholars miss is that Locke did not believe that the only person who owns man is himself and that property is all rights and no duties. Earlier in the Second Treatise, Locke had contended that men must seek to preserve themselves and that “no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.” Locke grounded these duties in God’s creation and ownership of man: “For Men being all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker; All the Servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the World by his order and about his business, they are his Property, whose Workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s Pleasure” (§6). The truth is that God owns every human since they are uniquely created by him, yet at the same time every person is accorded a share in owning and directing his own life. God owns us and we own ourselves.

A holistic reading of Locke on property would hold these two truths together. Yes, men can accrue private property through their labor, creation, and innovative work (in essence, mirroring God’s own creative activity), yet at the same time, because God ultimately owns them, they have duties before God and other men in how they ought to use and employ their labor and private property. We have the right to private property, but not to use it however we want; we have moral, religious, and social duties required of us by God and in conjunction with our familial, social, and Christian relationships. Locke clearly believed this, for he too places limitations of use and spoilage on the right to property and accumulation of possessions (§31).

The problem with Locke’s account of property is that he failed to explicitly elaborate on the implications of God’s ownership of man for the right of private property. Astute readers of Locke can piece together the disparate aspects of his political theology underlying the First and Second Treatise, but Locke primarily grounds the origin and right of property in man’s self-ownership, his labor, and his reason. It is man’s choice and agency that creates private property, not God’s will, sustaining providence, or concurrence. That God’s ownership of us and the duties he requires of us might place limitations on property’s accumulation and use is implied, but not stated by Locke.

This allows Lockean interpreters to claim that human self-ownership is essential and absolute, and therefore that the origin and right to private property that comes through human labor, thought, or capital investment is likewise essential and absolute.¹ To place any but the barest limitations or requirements on property acquisition and use (i.e., the rule of law for civil and criminal purposes according to a ‘no harm’ moral principle) is to therefore violate the right to private property.

Locke’s account of private property—even the absolutist reading by classical liberals and libertarians—enhances the welfare of societies when men own a reasonable amount of land and possessions. When property is widely owned, more or less equally distributed among the classes, and robustly protected by law, wonderful things are possible—such as the emergence of a middle class, an escape from grinding poverty, investment and innovation, homeownership, private business, and most importantly, the political independence that comes with private wealth and industry. This is all the more true when those who own property in a political community are cut from a common history and culture. In this setting, the acquisition and use of property is governed as much by cultural norms, laws of fashion, and public praise and shame as by political acts passed by a legislature. 

Yet what happens when absolutist and individualist protections of property, shorn of their traditional moral, social, and religious duties, are applied to extraordinarily wealthy individuals? Elon Musk is currently worth over $250 billion and is on track to be the world’s first trillionaire. Such wealth cannot be comprehended by the human mind. Musk’s wealth and popular consumer products, protected by modern property and finance law, not only buy him independence and popular influence, but it means that he is able to single-handedly transform America through his innovations.

When Economics Eclipses Politics

Who among us asked for cell phones to dominate our lives? Yet here we are, almost two decades after Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. Nowadays, few of us are able to conduct business or communications without a personal cell phone that is constantly connected to the world, inundating us with updates, news, and notifications about everything. This is even truer of older technologies: personal computers, the internet, airplanes, cars, microwaves, and air conditioning. Of course, few of us would want to jettison these inventions; humans have a tendency not only to adapt new technology, but to justify (if not rationalize) its benefits, seeing in them only net positives. Yet research on the use of cell phones and social media clearly indicates that these technologies are distracting and stupefying, making the next generation lazy and dumb. Not all technological gains are automatically signs of “progress.”

Who among us would like an Optimus robot in their home within the next decade? Who volunteers that AI be introduced into cars, phones, and home appliances? Who would entrust babysitting their children to a humanoid robot? Do we really believe humans can develop friendship with robots? Some of these technologies are unwanted; they are intrusive, and impersonal; they destroy personal and familial privacy, further atomize humans and autonomize society, and estrange us from the natural world that God created us to inhabit.

The problem is that Americans as a people—as a supposedly self-governing and constitutionally formed political community—have no power or ability to stop an Elon Musk from creating new technologies that will effectively and permanently alter, if not completely destroy, traditional and historic ways of life. Of course, the half-brained libertarian high on Lockean property maxims retorts with the tired old saw of ‘live and let live’: if you don’t like it, then don’t buy it, but who are you to stop others from creating and using these technologies? That’s their private property, that’s their personal right! Of course, none of us asked for the internet or iPhones either, yet these inventions become so integrated into society that one cannot function well without having to adapt them to life in some manner.

The displacement of politics proper with economics and the commercialization of life is a common theme in our globalized and financial world. When this occurs, constitutional republics are transformed into commercial economic zones, secure national borders are thrown open to the world’s migrants, self-determining and self-respecting citizens with political agency and honor are transmogrified into consumers and productivity units, and representative governments accountable to the people are diluted by corporate buy offs and global machinations. In such a scenario, the people lose the ability to control their quality of life and their future. Tomorrow’s technologies that will be subtly and commercially infused into their life lies beyond their ability to deliberate over, attenuate, or even halt. They are at the mercy of wealthy capitalists, most of whom today are godless, who know little about America’s past, and who care little to preserve the beautiful and rich heritage left to us.

These laments are not new, but were raised by southern agrarians in the mid-twentieth century. In the introduction to his 1968 book The Southern Tradition at Bay, Richard Weaver warned of the irreparable consequences of unlimited industrialization:

The painful truth is now beginning to emerge that a flourishing technology may make civilization more rather than less difficult of attainment. It leads to mobilization of external forces; it creates enormous concentrations of irresponsible power; through an inexorable standardization it destroys refinement and individuality.

Prior to this, a collection of essays published in 1930 as I’ll Take My Stand warned of “the inevitable consequence of industrial progress [where] production greatly outruns the rate of natural consumption”—something even Locke would have opposed. The authors continue: “To overcome the disparity, the producers, disguised as the pure idealists of progress, must coerce and wheedle the public into being loyal and steady consumers, in order to keep the machines running. So the rise of modern advertising—along with its twin, personal salesmanship—is the most significant development of our industrialism.” Keynote addresses by Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, who hawk their “cool” tech wares to the masses, are just the modern iteration of something very old.

In his essay in the same book, “Reconstructed But Unregenerate,” John Crowe Ransom interrogated producers and their justifications of “progress”:

This is simply to say that Progress never defines its ultimate objective, but thrusts its victims at once into an infinite series. Our vast industrial machine, with its laboratory centers of experimentation, and its far-flung organ of mass production, is like a Prussianized state which is organized strictly for war and can never consent to peace.

Entrepreneurs like Musk cannot be at peace with human life as it is. Everything must be battery-powered, robots and AI must take over all menial tasks and blue-collar jobs, and Mars must be made habitable. Some of Musk’s innovations may indeed be good, and we can incorporate them into our lives without undue risk. Yet it is not hard to envision an electronic and robotic future that approaches dystopia more than anything salutary.

Conclusion: Progress or Dystopia?

The question before us is, will we recover and reclaim ourselves as a political people capable of self-determination, instead of continuing as atomized consumers in a global economy or starstruck lackeys for capitalist entrepreneurs and their fancy gadgets? Will we succumb to a dystopian future where robots watch our children on earth while we go to work mining the rare metals of Mars? To choose a human life on the earth that God created for us will require political will, reassertion of cultural and ethnic identity, and differentiation from others; it will require overthrowing the current regime in Washington, D.C.; it will require acts of exclusion and a cessation of America as global military hegemon and financial bully. Ironically, the very “democracy” that Musk wants to save (which is actually an illusion), might in fact work to restrain or inhibit his ability to thrust unwanted technology upon us—not as communist control over production and distribution, but as a free people choosing humane existence and preservation of a traditional way of life over-and-against the crushing machine of industrial, digital, and technological progress.

Recovering ourselves as a political people also does not require a repudiation of private property. In his treatise on moral duties, De Officiis, the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero contended that “we are not born for ourselves alone … but our country claims for itself one part of our birth and our friends another. Everything produced on the earth is created for the use of mankind, and men are born for the sake of men, so that they may be able to assist one another” (I.22). Aristotle, in his critique of Plato’s disparagement of private property, argued that property ought to be privately owned but used for common ends: “For property ought to be common in a sense, but private speaking generally. …For the superintendence of properties being divided among the owners … will improve the more because each will apply himself to it as to private business of his own; while on the other hand virtue will result in making ‘friends’ goods common goods,’ as the proverb goes, for the purpose of use” (Politics II.2).

The classics understood the dangers of the common ownership of all things (such as the tragedy of the commons) and how unworkable it was. They sought to balance the necessity and good that comes from private property with providing for the needs of the community and building a good life together socially and politically. Christian political theorists have long understood these truths, too. America historically has had robust protection of citizen’s property, yet at the same time regulated property at the state level for the common good. We can do this again, but it will require confronting billionaire-entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and their unwanted visions of a robotic and interplanetary future.

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