Who Will Hold Elon Musk Accountable?
For many people, billionaires have become symbols for everything that is wrong with America: growing inequality, the rise of big tech, lack of government oversight, erosion of consumer and labor rights.
Tesla CEO, or the self-described Technoking, Elon Musk, meanwhile, has become a symbol of something else: our tendency to worship and encourage a certain type of male leadership. The kind that props up joke-themed cryptocurrency on Twitter, steals memes and fakes securing funding for his companies -- and gets away with it all, over and over again.
So when SNL announced that Musk would host on May 8, fans who believe Musk can do no wrong and are ready to follow him to the Moon and beyond were eager to see their hero elevated to a national late-night stage. Others thought that maybe one of the biggest late-night TV shows shouldn’t be used as a marketing platform for one of the richest people on the planet.
“I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship,” Musk said in his SNL monologue on May 8, in an effort to address the controversy and endear him to the naysayers. “Did you think I was also going to be a chill normal dude?"
And look, I get it. There are reasons to like him: his immigrant story, openness about Asperger’s Syndrome, getting things done no matter what, committing to going to Mars even when presidential administrations balked, inspiring kids to pursue careers in science and tech.
This week, he also did a u-turn on bitcoin, with Tesla suspending taking bitcoin as payment due to the use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining.
But that is precisely the point: so far the only party consistently holding Elon Musk accountable is Elon Musk. Given the broad scope, the ambitious humanitarian vision and the vast potential impact of his companies on entire industries, shouldn’t his activities invite closer examination, consistent scrutiny and penalties from a whole bunch of government agencies? Why were so many people surprised to see the backlash to Musk hosting SNL? Perhaps as journalists we have to do a better job highlighting environmental and societal impact of his technologies. Let’s not wait for Elon Musk to police Elon Musk.
And we shouldn’t close our eyes to Musk’s indifference to facts or regulations, especially in an age of disinformation where there are increasingly fewer barriers to entry to new trading platforms.
During his SNL appearance, he also claimed he was the first person with Asperger’s Syndrome to host the show. He wasn’t. It was Dan Aykroyd.
In fact, he has a track record of distorting facts, as he did when Tesla introduced “full self-driving cars.” They weren’t. Here are just a few examples of either exaggerating facts or bullying behavior to achieve his goals:
He misled investors, then settled with the SEC. It seems like a century ago, but it was not so long ago that the SEC was seeking to ban Musk from acting as an officer or director of any public company, as well as civil penalties.
Musk spread misinformation about the virus early in the pandemic. More recently, he tried to downplay the COVID-19 virus, arguing in March 2020 that there would be “zero cases” in a month, tweeting that “coronavirus panic is dumb.” We know now that early hesitancy and scepticism about the scale of the pandemic from the government officials and public figures have cost lives.
Musk also illegally tried to prevent his factory workers in California from unionizing.
His company Neuralink raised ethical concerns. With Neuralink’s brain chips, he’s basically tried to fix medical conditions with hardware problems. His co-founder just recently announced that he left the company weeks ago, without giving a reason for his departure and only tweeting that he will be now focusing on “science.” An investigation by STATNews cited former employees describing “years of internal conflict” and rushed timelines clashing with “science’s slow pace.”
In Texas, Musk disrupted communities where he builds companies. In Boca Chica, Texas, Musk’s employees harassed residents and pressured them to sell their homes, the Wall Street Journal reported.
These residents didn’t see Musk as a superhero or humanity’s savior who will lead colonization to Mars.
“He destroyed the area, the community, the friendships, the neighborhood, I feel like he dropped the bomb on us,” one resident told the WSJ. “I’m very concerned about our environment on Earth, why don’t we fix that first. He can do whatever he wants, but I don’t feel like the means don’t justify the ends, not from what I’ve seen.”
We don’t need to demonize billionaires or blame all of society’s ills on them. But do need to hold them accountable.
Innovation in social media and big tech also evolved, unchecked, for years until it was too late. Governments are still wrestling with those repercussions, from figuring how to regulate social media giants to how harmful algorithms can be to society.
Space travel and a new generation of self-driving electric vehicles are wonderful goals for our planet, but it doesn’t mean Musk or any billionaire should be allowed to dictate how we achieve these goals here on Earth or in space.