Peter Theil is certainly one of the leading American oligarchs, but, to my mind, Elon Musk is in many ways far more important in this moment than Theil. Musk is far more ambitious about creating and controlling the future, not through politics, with which we have grappled for centuries and know something about, but through the control of the technologies and technological approaches we can take to our future -- as well as control over the future of the mass messaging that Rupert Murdoch so brilliantly captured within the last mass messaging revolution. Musk’s “long term is” is extremely dangerous because he doesn’t care about short-term “setbacks” for people or planet. It’s all about marshaling the forces, both material and ideological, to dominate our national (if not global and certainly interstellar) visioning and aspirations.
Elon Musk’s megalomania is at the scale of Peter the Great, et al, while Theil’s is merely pedestrian Trumpian authoritarianism. “Muskism” is the far more dangerous of the two.
Peter Theil is certainly one of the leading American oligarchs, but, to my mind, Elon Musk is in many ways far more important in this moment than Theil. Musk is far more ambitious about creating and controlling the future, not through politics, with which we have grappled for centuries and know something about, but through the control of the technologies and technological approaches we can take to our future -- as well as control over the future of the mass messaging that Rupert Murdoch so brilliantly captured within the last mass messaging revolution. Musk’s “long term is” is extremely dangerous because he doesn’t care about short-term “setbacks” for people or planet. It’s all about marshaling the forces, both material and ideological, to dominate our national (if not global and certainly interstellar) visioning and aspirations.
Elon Musk’s megalomania is at the scale of Peter the Great, et al, while Theil’s is merely pedestrian Trumpian authoritarianism. “Muskism” is the far more dangerous of the two.