I’ve long admired Elon Musk as a technological
visionary. But I worry about his sense of responsibility to the public.
Last week Musk announced on Twitter
that he intended to turn Telsa, the electric-car maker he founded, into a
private company. He said the funding was “secured” – a
claim that sent Telsa stock skyrocketing – yet he produced no evidence that the
funding was nailed down.
There are laws against corporate
officials making these sorts of untethered claims, because if untrue they could
hurt lots of innocent bystanders – including unwary investors and employees.
Does Musk’s behavior remind you of
any other powerful person who also makes unfounded claims on Twitter that send
heads spinning?
Donald Trump is no Elon Musk. Musk seems
to genuinely care about the future of humanity.
But, like Trump, Musk loves to upend the
status quo by breaking norms and maybe even some laws.
He also seems share Trump’s unrelenting
combativeness and penchant for hitting back. A few
weeks ago, after a British diver involved in the Thailand cave rescue termed Musk’s
offer of a submarine a publicity stunt, Musk called him a pedophile.
Musk has little patience for the
media. At a recent quarterly earnings conference he refused to
answer what he termed “boring” or “bonehead” questions.
Musk and Trump aren’t the only notable
people in modern America exhibiting these tendencies.
Think of Travis Kalanick, the pugnacious
founder of Uber. Or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Which raises the question: Is it necessary
for true innovators to break norms and rules?
Some years ago the most fashionable
buzzword in business was “disruption.” Real entrepreneurs, it was said,
disrupt the status quo. They shake up conventional ways of doing things and upturn
hidebound institutions.
Trump loyalists think that’s exactly
what he’s doing in Washington.
But there’s a less charitable view of
why these outsized personalities break the rules. They feel entitled to.
Consider Martin Shkreli, who, after
buying the rights to sell Daraprim, a lifesaving drug, promptly raised the
price by over 5,000 percent.
Shkreli was unapologetic. And he lashed
out at journalists who criticized him, even buying Internet domains associated
with their names and then mocking them on the sites.
(Last March Shkreli was sentenced to
seven years in prison for criminal fraud in an unrelated scheme to bilk his
former hedge fund investors.)
Add the former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. And
many of the people Trump has surrounded himself with over the years.
Trump himself continues to place himself above the
law.
All these men (note the absence of
women) are driven. They’re often brilliant. (Trump is a gifted conman.)
They’ll also do whatever it takes to get
what they want. They believe the norms other people
live by don’t apply to them.
Their attitude toward the law is that
anything they want to do is okay unless it’s clearly illegal. And even if it’s
illegal, it’s okay if they can get away with it.
And they have contempt for anyone who
gets in their way.
Researchers have found
that great wealth and power often correlate with less compassion and stronger feelings
of entitlement.
The very rich cheat more
on their taxes, are more likely to shoplift, and more likely to cheat at games
of chance.
The research doesn’t tell
us the direction of causation – whether the rich act these ways because
they’re rich, or if they got rich because they act these ways.
Whatever the causal relationship, the
era we’re now in has created a few big winners – who, at least in their own
eyes, are so successful they’re entitled to do whatever they want.
In the words of railroad magnate
William H. Vanderbilt, “the public be damned.”
Vanderbilt said this in
1882, during America’s first Gilded Age – whose entrepreneurs created
railroads, telephones, electric power, and steel mills, but who also bent the
laws to suit their purposes.
Their wealth was
unprecedented. Yet most workers barely eked out a living.
We’re now in the America’s
second Gilded Age.
Last week it was
reported that in
2017 the average CEO of the 350 largest firms in the U.S. received $18.9
million in compensation. That’s a 17.6 percent increase over 2016.
At the same time, the typical
worker’s compensation remained flat, rising merely 0.3 percent.
The first Gilded Age fueled
a progressive era that tamed and regulated its excesses, beginning in 1901.
In very different ways, Trump and
Musk epitomize America’s second Gilded Age. Will their audacity and excesses
usher in a second progressive era?
