Everyone has something to say about Musk: that he is a messiah, a threat, a genius, a clown. The authors argue something different: Elon Musk is not a glitch in the system, but the system itself.
If Ford’s vision defined 20th-century capitalism, then Musk’s vision may shape our future in the 21st. Ford helped establish the welfare state.
Musk is dismantling it. He preys on our independence while promising freedom. His cars run on government subsidies; his satellites hover over battlefields; his social networks feed data to artificial intelligence, which in turn shapes us.