Elon’s Party, by Eric Peters

With the billions he’s made off the U.S. government, Elon doesn’t come off as an authentic cost cutter. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Elon is upset with Trump and has decided to form his own party, the America Party. Trump responded the other day by suggesting it might be time to look into Elon’s rent-seeking over the years.

Just desserts couldn’t be sweeter.

Musk has made billions off the government. More finely, off of government spending and now he has the audacity to complain about government spending, a la the Big Beautiful Bill just passed by Congress. Perhaps because it does not contain enough spending that will benefit him. He certainly never complained about such spending before.

How much has the government spent on Space X? Whether one thinks it is worth spending money on rockets and such is not the issue. The issue is whether it is proper to spend other people’s money on it. More finely, whether it is morally justifiable to rob millions of Americans of their money in order to “fund” (note the bland terminology government uses that an honest mugger would never have the audacity to use) some project that puts billions into the pockets of a privately owned, for-profit company such as Space X. Musk is a billionaire and – supposedly a whiz at business. Well then, why doesn’t Musk use his own money to launch his rockets? Instead of using the government to force millions of Americans to “fund” his operations, why doesn’t he persuade investors to back them? If they are worth backing, why wouldn’t they?

Legitimate businesses do not need to rent-seek because they don’t have to.

This can be expressed another way. Illegitimate businesses rent-seek because they have to. Because if they didn’t rent-seek, they’d be out of business.

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