Why Is This Man Exuberant?

 

Well, he has just become a trillionaire, one of the many reasons Elon Musk must feel chuffed these days. Being a master of the universe is surely a heady experience, one denied to almost everyone on the planet. But this visionary entrepreneur, according to a recent column by Mark McQueen, represents an opportunity for all of us, and should be thus lionized, not villified as he is by many:

I don’t care whether Musk is personally worth $1 billion or $1 trillion — both are tough to fathom. But he didn’t steal that money from his neighbours, like some embezzling tinpot dictator. And by allowing others to invest alongside him, Musk’s actually sharing his unique gifts in a far more tangible way than the world’s most talented opera singer or footballer.

Do you want to guess which group of Canadians probably don’t hate him? The beneficiaries of the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan.

A canny $300 million pre-IPO investment into SpaceX is now worth more than $20 billion to 346,000 Ontario teachers. It’s a windfall that must surely be the single best payday in the history of their plan. For every teacher in the plan, the pension fund has already gained over $35,000 from Musk’s efforts — capital that can be used to enhance future pension benefits or reduce payroll deductions.

Silicon Valley’s much maligned “Bro culture” delivered handsomely for our educators, a sector that’s about 75 per cent female.

Not so fast, says Star letter-writer Tony D'Anrea of Toronto:

Mark McQueen argues that entrepreneurs who amass millions or trillions are good for Canada because their success helps fund teachers’ pensions — 75 per cent female, no less. On first glance, his claim that one man’s towering fortune lifts us all seems a prosperous insight. But it does not follow that every rich person’s singular fortune is a social good.

McQueen treats Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire as a win-win. Instead it’s a zero-sum game. Adam Smith wrote convincingly about how self-interest working cooperatively achieved “the wealth of nations.” There is no proof that the wealth of one man benefits a greater number.

The “rising tide” defence of extreme wealth requires the tide to actually rise. Consider the ledger. Musk spent $250 million helping elect Donald Trump, then ran DOGE, which gutted some of the very programs McQueen credits the wealthy with sustaining. USAID dismantled. Children’s cancer research defunded. The Department of Education abolished. A boon for Canada’s teachers’ pensions is cold comfort in the face of all this gutting of programs. Some of these programs may have even benefitted Canadians down the road. 

The issue is not entrepreneurship but scale. Beyond a certain point, extreme wealth purchases political influence, reshapes public priorities and amplifies one individual’s power over millions. No Musk fortune, no Trump war in Iran, no daily trauma visited on the Cuban people and no unending disruptions of the world order.

A trillion dollars in one pocket is not a social dividend. It’s a bill the rest of the world is paying.

Readers of McQueen’s millionaires’ prosperity gospel should remember: “caveat emptor”.

With great power comes great responsibility, something people of Elon Musk's ilk seem to have conveniently forgotten.

Ideological Soulmates

 

 

Well, it appears Pierre Poilievre, that would-be master disinformation-trafficker, has found his true soulmate in another man-child, Elon Musk. They have had a meeting of the minds when it comes to the CBC - dearest Elon has agreed to PP's request that the publicly-funded networked be labelled "government-funded media," a tag that used to apply only to propaganda outlets like RT (Russia Today).

"Government-funded media is defined as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet's funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content," according to Twitter.

National Public Radio in the U.S. announced earlier this month that it is leaving the platform after Twitter labelled its account as "state-affiliated media," saying that doing so undermines their credibility by "falsely implying that we are not editorially independent."

U.S. public broadcaster PBS followed suit, also leaving Twitter after it received the "government-funded" stamp.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre recently called on Twitter CEO Elon Musk to add a "government-funded" label to accounts that promote "news-related" content from CBC.

Such a designation will undoubtedly provide sweet succor to the simple  amongst PP's clan of followers (but aren't they all a bit simple?) and will undoubtedly raise his 'street cred' with them. And just in case some of them missed the significance of this label, PP tweeted out that the CBC has been "officially exposed" as "Trudeau propaganda, not news."

The CBC was quick to admonish the thinking behind this assault of the media:

The CBC is a Crown corporation, wholly owned by the state but operated at arm's length from government.

In a statement Sunday night, CBC corporate spokesperson Leon Mar emphasized the government does not influence CBC's editorial content.

The CBC is a Crown corporation, wholly owned by the state but operated at arm's length from government.

Such machinations, of course, only help to illustrate PP's discord-sowing ways that make him manifestly unfit to sit in the prime minister's office; they also, however, demonstrate something else a credulous electorate should bear in mind: his hypocrisy:

Angry Talking Heads

 

When I was a teacher, it used to bother me to no end that it only took one or two ignorant, badly-behaved kids to spoil the atmosphere and discourse in a class. For those who think it should have been a simple matter to silence those voices, well, let's just say they don't understand the reality and the dynamics of teaching.

I feel the same frustration today when I see angry men-children like Elon Musk and his Canadian counterpart, Pierre Poilievre, spreading their mischief to gain either attention or political advantage. Take, for example, Musk's impish decision to label publicly-funded media as government-funded, the implication being that they are merely organs of government propaganda. In the United States, this has led both NPR and PBS to close their Twitter accounts.

Not to be outdone, our own domestic mischief-maker, Pierre Poilievre, wants the same designation for the CBC. This is perhaps not surprising, coming from the man who is trying to exact as much political mileage as possible out of his promise to defund the CBC.

Like the problem students I dealt with, they clearly have too much power to influence the agenda. Unlike the classroom, however, all of us have a role to play in mitigating such madness, as pointed out in the following letter from a Star readers:

Trying too hard to make CBC the enemy, April 13

Bruce Arthur is right to pay attention to Elon Musk and Pierre Poilievre championing the word freedoms in order to destroy it when it comes to the public funding of national media like the CBC. Clearly these two are not reformers but transformers and destroyers of our democracy. As antistatist freedom fighters they appeal to everyone’s sense of liberty while bringing about its end in the media.

Like the typical 1980s neo-con U.S. President Ronald Reagan who identified government as the enemy of the people, Musk and Poilievre regard publicly funded media to express the national will of its people as illegitimate. They demand that the marketplace is the only way to provide free and balanced reporting.

The fact that such free enterprise thinking resulted in Fox News, becoming the lying propaganda media for Republicans only is ignored.

The fact that Musk bought Twitter promising to free it up so that everyone would be heard but turned it into the embodiment of censorship is overlooked. (Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opposition is censored in Indian and Substack notes’ links are censored in the U.S.)

The fact that magical thinking that freedom bestows legitimacy on anything done in its name has proven to do major harm to democracy is ignored.

History has shown that public funding for national media like the CBC is the only democratic economic system that allows individuals to vote for how their money is to be used in the media. They can vote out the government and replace it with a different policy about its funding.

Musk can’t be voted out. Poilievre with such anti-democratic views should not be voted in.

Tony D’Andrea, Toronto

Perhaps a tall order from Mr. D'Andrea, but one that none of us who believe in a healthy democracy can afford to shirk.

 

 

 

Mr. Musk Unmasked

Once more, Unlearn16 reveals something important, and her observations I could not disagree with. Yesterday, she pierced the facade perpetrated by the Ford government about the soon-to-be striking school support staff in Ontario. This time, she turns her laser-focus on Elon Musk and his purchase of Twitter. 

Well-worth the three-minute listen.

 

Theatre Of The Absurd

I'm feeling too burnt out these days to put thoughts to words, my ever-constant cynicism about people and politics reaching new levels. Therefore, allow me to post some editorial cartoons that help to capture the absurdity of what we call politics and life.

H/t Michael de Adder

H/t Graeme MacKay

H/t Patrick Corrigan

H/t Theo Moudakis

Change Of Pace Friday

A former colleague of my sent me this. I guess it has been around for a while, but it is new to me, and seems relevant given our current spate of dysfunctional Titans.