1. Our Socialist Future
You might not be interested in socialism, but socialism is interested in you.
National socialism is at the heart of Trumpism, which currently controls all three branches of government. Democratic socialism is on the march in the Democratic party.1
Why would the richest, most advanced economy in the world be re-examining the fundamentals of its social compact? I have two names for you: Elon Musk and Brian Kelly.
Last week Elon Musk’s company awarded him the richest pay package in human history. If Musk meets his targets, he will be paid $1 trillion.
It is important to place this award in context.
Tesla has just had the worst year in the history of the company. Elon Musk made the brand toxic. Tesla sales around the world fell off a cliff, even as overall EV sales increased everywhere. While Tesla imploded, Chinese EV maker BYD replaced it as the world leader in EV sales.
In every other business, a CEO who hobbled his company in this way would be fired. But Tesla’s board gave Musk a . . . huge raise?
Their logic is that Tesla suffered terribly because Elon Musk hurt the company; so the company will pay him $1 trillion to incentivize him to stop hurting the company.
That’s a new kind of “capitalism.” For the sake of today’s discussion, we’ll call it Tesla Capitalism.2
In Tesla Capitalism3 executive pay is correlated to success in roughly the same manner that the company’s stock price is correlated to its P/E ratio.
But the problem with Elon Musk isn’t just that he has slipped the surly bonds of meritocracy. It’s that he’s evil.
I don’t use this word lightly. But if you can read this report on the deaths caused (so far) by the shuttering of USAID and come to any other conclusion, I’ll listen with a genuinely open mind.
So far as I can tell:
Musk was hellbent on dismantling USAID.
Prior to its destruction, USAID was noncontroversial and had broad bipartisan support.
There was no public debate about the cost or benefits of USAID. Donald Trump did not campaign on a promise of destroying USAID.
The only reason USAID was shut down was because Musk had a personal fixation with it. Dismantling USAID wasn’t in the Republican platform. It wasn’t part of Project 2025. Had Musk not been involved in politics, no one in the Trump administration would have touched USAID.
But because Musk had given Trump a quarter of a billion dollars, he was given the keys to the entire federal government and was able to manifest his person obsessions.
Musk then “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper.”
And now 600,000 people—two-thirds of them children—are dead.
Whether this was an intentional act of racial cleansing or merely depraved indifference, Musk is operating at a scale normally reserved for war criminals.
2. Geaux Tigers
Brian Kelly is not a war criminal. He is the recently fired coach of LSU’s football team. Kelly was hired by LSU in 2021. He was given a ten-year, $95 million contract. Last week he was fired by LSU for poor performance. Four years into his contract, his team has consistently gotten worse.
Kelly is demanding that he be paid the $54 million remaining on his contract. For doing nothing.
There’s that Tesla Capitalism again.4 Now let me tell you a story about Coach Kelly.