Quote:Political positions Politically, Musk has described himself as "half Democrat, half Republican". In his own words: "I'm somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative."[108]
Quote:This is why i am a capitalist! Suck off Socialists!!
Not so fast, and drink some decaf! One can applaud all Musk has achieved without labeling him a pure, market capitalist, which he clearly isn't. And how much 'socialism' do you think would be encompassed in his self-described social liberalism?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
Quote:Subsidies
Musk has stated that he does not believe the U.S. government should provide subsidies to environmentally friendly companies, as was done with Tesla Motors and SolarCity, but the government should instead use a carbon tax to discourage "bad behavior". Musk argues that the free market would achieve the "best solution", and that producing environmentally unfriendly vehicles should come with its own consequences.
Musk's statements have been widely criticized, with Stanford University Professor Fred Turner noting that "if you're an entrepreneur like Elon Musk, you will take the money where you can get it, but at the same time believe as a matter of faith that it's entrepreneurship and technology that are the sources of social change, not the state.
It is not quite self-delusion, but there is a habit of thinking of oneself as a free-standing, independent agent, and of not acknowledging the subsidies that one received. And this goes on all the time in Silicon Valley."[117] Author Michael Shellenberger argued that "in the case of Musk, it is hard not to read that as a kind of defensiveness. And I think there is a business reason for it.
They are dealing with a lot of investors for whom subsidies are not the basis for a long-term viable business, and they often want to exaggerate the speed with which they are going to be able to become independent".
Shellenberger continues, "we would all be better off if these entrepreneurs were a bit more grateful, a bit more humble". While journalist and author Jim Motavalli, who interviewed Musk for High Voltage, his 2011 book about the electric vehicle industry, speculated that "Elon is now looking at it from the point of view of a winner, and he doesn't want to see other people win because they get government money – I do think there is a tendency of people, once they have succeeded, to want to pull the ladder up after them."[118]
In 2015, Musk's statements came under further scrutiny after an LA Times article revealed that SpaceX, Tesla Motors and SolarCity had together received an estimated US$4.9 billion in government subsidies; the article further noted Tesla Motors and SolarCity's dependence on government support, their continued annual financial net losses, and questioned the possibility of their self-sufficiency. Numerous analysts also pointed to large amounts of government support as a common point to all three of Musk's companies, with one analyst (Dan Dolev) arguing that Musk "definitely goes where there's government money" .[119
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