Musk & Other Predatory Billionaires Are Doing Tremendous, Unsustainable Damage— We Need To Stop Them

All year, we’ve been advocating nationalizing Musk’s businesses, stripping him of his wealth and deporting him back to Africa. Some people think we’re joking. They don’t read DWT carefully enough. He— and other billionaires— are a danger to the nation unlike any other individuals are. We need to protect society from that danger. Most dangers of that nature can be handled through taxation— wealth taxes, estate taxes and marginal tax rates of 90% above $10 million. But Musk is different from even the most venal of other billionaires, like the Mellons, Uihleins, Miriam Edelson, Jeff Yass, Ken Griffin, Paul Singer, the Koch family, the Walton family and Peter Thiel.

Early yesterday, CNN reported that election officials are outmatched by Musk’s disinformation machine, in battleground states who say they are “struggling to combat the wave of falsehoods” the slimy fascist billionaire is spreading on Twitter. Musk is putting everything he’s got into stealing Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan for Trump with debunked, divisive election fraud claims.

Meanwhile billionaire cash has deployed at the greatest rate in American history— at least $2 billion dollars worth, both in the presidential and congressional races. Top billionaire contributions went primarily to Trump, around five times more than went to Kamala. Over a third of Trump’s contributions and 6% of Kamala’s has come from billionaires. Not even counting the value of what Musk is delivering for Trump on Twitter, his approximately quarter billion dollar cash investment in Trump and the GOP won’t be fully revealed until after the campaign is over.

Yesterday Ryan Mac reported that Musk has “met with fellow billionaires and businessmen to strategize on how to elect Trump, despite criticizing similar elite gatherings last year as akin to ‘an unelected world government.’ He has poured nearly $120 million into a fierce effort to support Trump, after criticizing other social media billionaires for getting involved in elections. And his platform has suppressed news stories from outlets he sees as biased against Trump, despite his stated commitment to free speech. In the business world, Musk is prone to hyperbole and product predictions that [always— 100% of the time] fall short.  But his public political turnaround— which began as he made his offer to buy Twitter— has revealed something else: a willingness to completely reverse himself on publicly expressed beliefs.”

As Twitter has become more political, its owner has continued to contradict himself on his own role in the presidential election. In March, after The Times reported that he had met with Trump, Musk posted that he was “not donating money to either candidate for US President.” (More reporting from The Times showed that by the time of that statement, Musk had already been meeting with other billionaire Republican donors and businessmen to strategize on how to elect Trump.) [Mac appears afraid to use the word lie and liar in regard ti Musk, for whatever reason.]

Last year, in a wide-ranging interview with the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Musk spoke out about a series of donations that Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, had made during the 2020 election.

“My understanding is that Zuckerberg spent $400 million in the last election, nominally in a get-out-the-vote campaign, but really fundamentally in support of Democrats,” Musk said during the interview, echoing a misleading right-wing talking point. The money— derided by critics including Trump as “Zuckerbucks”— went to two nonprofit organizations that disbursed aid to more than 2,500 election departments dealing with budget shortfalls as they adopted new voting practices during the coronavirus pandemic. The money did not support Democratic candidates.

Since his statement, Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, started his own political action committee, the America PAC, into which he has poured nearly $120 million. Much of that has gone toward funding a canvassing operation to support Trump’s campaign in battleground states as well as cash giveaways and a $1 million lottery for potential voters that has come under criticism.

Musk has targeted his efforts at voters themselves, offering those in swing states the chance to win a million dollars every day until Election Day if they sign a petition and provide his PAC with their personal information. On Monday, the district attorney of Philadelphia sued Musk and the America PAC for running an “unlawful lottery” to extract a political pledge. Musk’s lawyers have asked that the case be moved to federal court, where a judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania will decide whether to take the matter up or return it to state jurisdiction.

Other critics of Zuckerberg have remained silent on Musk’s efforts. Among them is Vance, who slammed Zuckerberg’s 2020 donations as “election meddling.”

“The simple truth is that in 2020 our oligarchs used their power and money to do everything they could to steal an election,” Vance said in a 2021 op-ed he co-wrote in the NY Post.

I’m not advocating violence against anyone at this point but I’d like to take a few examples from history about how other societies have dealt with the problem of oligarchs, plutocrats and kleptocrats. Let’s start in Ancient Greece (6th century BC), where, in the face of a deeply divided society— particularly debt-burdened farmers— the Athenians appointed Solon to enact sweeping reforms. He canceled debts, banned debt slavery and redistributed wealth through legal and economic reforms. By limiting the power of wealthy aristocrats and instituting broader citizen participation in governance, Solon broke the oligarchic hold on the economy. His reforms laid a foundation for Athenian democracy, showing how economic checks can support political equality.

In the later years of the Roman Republic (2nd century BC), the Gracchi brothers— Tiberius and Gaius— championed land reforms to counteract the expanding wealth and influence of the senatorial class, who were amassing vast tracts of land. They proposed limits on how much public land any individual could own and redistributed land to the poor. Though they were both assassinated for their efforts, the reforms spurred debates about wealth, inequality, and the sustainability of republicanism, highlighting the dangers of plutocracy to the very survival of the Republic.

The early Islamic caliphates (7th century) instituted zakāt, a form of wealth tax, as part of a broader system for curbing wealth disparities. This required individuals to give a percentage of their wealth to support the poor and marginalized. Though primarily religious, zakāt also functioned as a form of social redistribution, helping to ensure that wealthier members of society contributed to the well-being of the community and maintaining social harmony.

My personal favorite is the French Revolution (1789-99), the most famous historical example of revolt against a plutocratic aristocracy. With the aristocracy and clergy controlling most wealth while ordinary citizens suffered under heavy taxes and food shortages, the Revolution confiscated nobles’ property, redistributed wealth and abolished feudal privileges, dismantling the power structure that had allowed the elite to dominate. Though the French had no choice but to resort to violence, the Revolution remains a vivid example of how plutocratic excess can trigger sweeping societal upheaval.

Revolutionary periods, such as the Russian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution, saw wealth seized from elites entirely, albeit often through extreme methods including violence. These historical examples show that when wealth inequality grows unmanageable, societies may react in radical ways, reclaiming resources for state or public control. Musk and the other fascist billionaires are pushing the U.S. in that direction.

Some nations, like those in Scandinavia, have enacted strict campaign finance regulations, capping private contributions and even banning them in some cases. This directly limits the influence of wealthy individuals and forces political systems to rely on public funding rather than billionaire donors, creating a firewall against plutocratic sway. And in some European countries, sectors like utilities, transport and healthcare have long been either fully or partially nationalized. This approach prevents individual tycoons from controlling essential services while ensuring the public’s interest remains the priority. Nationalization should be used to disrupt such figures’ outsized influence in critical industries. The U.S. utilized antitrust laws to curb the power of monopolistic moguls like Rockefeller in the early 20th century. This tactic—spearheaded by progressives and populists like Teddy Roosevelt— demonstrated that even the wealthiest and most powerful corporations could be dismantled if they posed a threat to economic democracy.

In the post-World War II United States, marginal tax rates on top earners reached as high as 91% during the Eisenhower years, effectively redistributing wealth and preventing the hyper-consolidation of assets in individual hands. This approach, echoing Roosevelt's New Deal, was designed to limit economic domination by a few powerful interests.

So who screwed the country? Let me write a little more about it and post it in a few hours. Come back; hint: neither Reagan nor Trump— either of who certainly did immense damage— started the trend.