Billionaires and democracy don’t mix

Elon Musk and the love of the super-rich for Trump and Putin

Donald Trump and Elon Musk: Made for each other

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Such as X, owned by Elon Musk, who also owns Telsa, which last week awarded him a $56 billion pay package.

Can a man who genuinely imagines that he is worth $56 billion still believe in democracy?

In theory, it should be possible. In practice, the overweening overconfidence you need to think that you are worth even one billion dollars, let alone 56, breeds a contempt for democratic rules.

Egomania can turn you into a Nietzschean ubermensch who determines his own values. Why should Elon Musk allow himself to feel guilty about his wealth? Is he not solely responsible for creating Tesla cars? By what right do pygmies belittle him and seek to rob him?

Let the jealous nobodies whine.

Musk will take what is rightfully his without guilt or any false sense of obligation.

Musk is involved in a court case in the US state of Delaware. Earlier this year, it decided that Musk, who is Tesla’s CEO, was the effective controlling stockholder, even though he only owns about 20 per cent of the company.

Therefore, when Tesla awarded Musk an unimaginably large “compensation” package Musk was in effect rewarding himself.

Musk saw last week’s decision that he did, in fact, somehow deserve $52 billion as a rebuke to the court that would force the judge to think again.

He posted on X a picture of a cake. Musk said he planned to send it to Delaware as a “parting gift”. It was decorated with the words “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” – “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.

Let’s just pause a moment to look into Musk’s mind.

His billions were awarded by Tesla’s shareholders – 77 percent of whom approved the package. In what democratic sense are they the vox populi or indeed the vox dei? Particularly as the judge in Delaware said that a majority of the Tesla board was not independent from Musk due to significant business, financial and personal ties to him

But ​in Musk’s mind they are the only people who matter and the only god he is willing to worship.

It ought to be no surprise that Musk is cosying up close to Trump, regardless of the threat he poses to US democracy, or that he prefers Putin’s dictatorship to democratic Ukraine.

The same tolerance and indeed enthusiasm for authoritarianism can be found among Musk’s billionaire brethren.

Given the choice between protecting democracy and protecting their wealth, they come out against democracy.

Given the choice between accepting that their success is in some part due to luck and the benefits a democratic society has showered on them or accepting the dictatorial methods of Donald Trump, they choose the dictatorial methods.

On the one hand, you can say super-rich men want politicians who will cut their taxes and take away trade union rights. What could be more natural?

On the other hand, you can look at the specific case of Donald Trump, and say the stakes are higher. He is not an old-fashioned tax-cutting, union-bashing Republican. Indeed, he has destroyed the old Republican party.

With his election denial and attacks on constitutional government, he is at the very least a threat to democracy. And yet they will still bankroll him and we need to understand why.