Method to Musk’s madness

In the space of a few days, Elon Musk has advocated, if not in so many words, two surrenders 5,000 miles apart.

The Ukraine, he declared last week, should sue for peace, which is another way of saying she should agree to be incorporated into Russia within a couple of years if not straight away.

And yesterday Musk insisted that Taiwan should become a special administrative region of China, which means getting instantly gobbled up by that communist dictatorship.

Both pronouncements have caused an outburst of indignation in all the predictable quarters, and Musk’s statements are indeed beneath contempt. Yet others suggested his proposals must be assessed against the backdrop of his medical condition.

For Musk self-admittedly suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, known to produce what is commonly referred to as a one-track mind.

In Elon’s case, that one track is lightning fast, having enabled him to race to the world’s greatest wealth (although Putin may have something to say about that ranking). He is unquestionably one of the sharpest business operators I’ve ever observed in action, if only from afar.

As someone who has had to contend with serious illnesses all my life, I tip my hat to Elon for refusing to succumb to his condition. Yet his detractors still insist he’d be better off sticking to what he knows.

True enough, instead of simply continuing to pile up billions on top of one another, Musk forces himself to veer – actually career – off that single, beaten track into seemingly unrelated areas.

Climatology, space travel, colonising other planets, artificial intelligence, economics, domestic and international politics have all been graced with Elon’s pronouncements, ranging from dubious to mutually exclusive to frankly insane.

Yet he isn’t short of an audience. Since Elon is very much in the news all the time, the star-gazing public issues him an unlimited line of intellectual credit.

This is typical: anyone often seen on TV is accepted as an expert on every subject, not just the one that got him on TV in the first place. Thus people from Peoria to Musk’s native Pretoria take seriously the very same views that would get a lesser man sectioned.

The world, insists Musk, will soon be devastated by artificial intelligence. And if that doesn’t get it, declining population and global warming will.

The saving steps Musk proposes seem hard to reconcile with his professed libertarian views, but let’s not forget that Asperger’s. The lad doesn’t seem able to tie all the loose ends together, if none has to do with making billions.

Thus, according to him, humanity may delay the catastrophe by controlling AI and introducing a carbon tax, but these exercises in bare-knuckled statism are only palliatives. Much as we try to prevent such a gruesome end, our planet will soon become a scorched wasteland where only robots roam.

But not to worry. What do you do when termites, dry rot, bad neighbours or a subsiding foundation make your house uninhabitable? That’s right, you move.

Following this irrefutable observation, explains Elon, mankind should become a “multiplanetary species”. The first step would be to colonise Mars, creating a polity there based on direct democracy. All Tesla-driving people will have an equal say in every piece of legislation, and never mind outdated parliamentary institutions.

While his other political views are marginally less eccentric, on close examination they seem just as insane for being at odds with one another. I’ve already mentioned that Musk’s proposed carbon tax doesn’t quite jibe with his staunch libertarianism.

But he also advocates a universal basic income, which, whatever you may think of it, is as anti-libertarian as one can get this side of the Soviet economy, circa 1938.

Then in the last two elections, Musk voted for Clinton and Biden, who are to libertarianism what Fido is to a lamppost. In between, he endorsed the rapper Kanye West for president, presumably with the ticket also including Eminem as VP candidate.

Now he wants to strengthen two evil dictatorships by letting them swallow two smaller countries courageously defending their freedom. I don’t know what Asperger’s does to one’s moral sense, but on this evidence it can’t be anything healthy.

You might accuse me of trying to medicalise words and actions I find objectionable, and you’d have a point. But in fact, by ascribing Musk’s off-the-wall pronouncements to Asperger’s, I may well be too kind to him.

Could it be that his mind only pretends to be off-track, while remaining firmly on it?

For example, his politics have been described as too omnivorous for integrity, what with Musk contributing to both main parties in the US. However, a closer look will reveal that he invariably supports candidates in the states where he has vested business interests.

Or consider his proposed carbon tax. If introduced, what would it do to the sales of electric cars, such as the Tesla, to take one random example? Quite.

By the same token, Musk’s attachment to the idea of space travel is inseparable from his company SpaceX that earlier this year launched its first spacecraft. Though I doubt this will lead to the colonisation of Mars, the former adman in me admires the publicity rewards doubtless reaped by the Tesla.

Yet the economic effect of those measures would be small potatoes compared to Russia and especially China opening their markets to the Tesla. And the quickest, possibly only, way of opening those markets is to curry favour with Putin and Xi. Considering how many Teslas are already made in China, Musk must be doing something right.

One detects the cold calculating mind of a businessman behind Asperger Elon’s crazy ideas, and that worries me more than any red-hot insanity would. I’ll take irrational madness over rational amorality any day.