Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed
This makes interesting points that are worth a read, and also could have been a blog post.
The best covers a history of Musk as a character and “Muskism” as an approach to business. The analogy is grounded in an attempt to relate it to Fordism, which feels a little stretched at times. However I’m willing to buy that there’s an industrialist here, setting the tone of an era in the way past ones have. I can look past a few less convincing arguments - it made its point there’s something here to consider.
The subtitle “A guide for the perplexed”, sets a good tone - I am indeed perplexed. My first encounters with Musk’s work felt so different. I recall having a sense that here was one of the internet’s own, perhaps even one of us - now at the helm of capital. In contrast to my imagined oil barons here was someone bringing us green tech cars and making science fiction a reality.
I was enamoured by Tesla, dreamed of solar roof tiles and watched rockets landing like a major sporting event. I even quite liked some of the social media quips. The bits I saw felt like it spoke a nerd language I’d also been steeped in. Flashing reddit creds and internet culture at every opportunity.
Then, gradually you hear of the labour challenges at Tesla, environmental and aerospace obstruction at SpaceX, the acquisition of Twitter and journey since, and, I do not feel the same.
In fact I feel perplexed at my past thoughts. This book was a helpful guide.
The core insight for me was the attempt to situate “Muskism” in a self-reliance ethic borne out of South African isolation. Race and justice are covered, but also don’t seem central to this argument. It’s downstream of it, a need for self sufficiency and a belief that technology could deliver it. A need that drove South Africa as it felt increasingly isolated and under threat of outside forces in its struggle to preserve apartheid.
This helped me bridge my early attraction, and muddled feelings about Musk and his projects. There’s a deep part of me who sees growing uncertainty in an interconnected world and wants to buy a 10kg bag of rice to put under the stairs. Or imagine that a solar setup and a home battery will somehow insulate me against an economic apocalypse.
As if, boiling water and cooking rice frees me from the political complication of the world. As if in the wreckage of such a disaster there’d be no-one else around I’d want to share, band together or create a new community with. These fantasies are really for a simpler world, where I can see all the means of my survival from my home window - and worry less about far away ships and just-in-time resilience.
The tech too, makes sense - there’s part of me who became an engineer for the power trip. The first time you code something up that saves you time, it’s easy to get drunk on a sense of the new power. Things automated, made visible, made controllable. There’s a power trip to it.
I think this explains my early, shallow, interest in Musk.
But if Muskism is grounded and perhaps fueled by that offer to stand on your own two feet despite the world - the authors are careful to note it’s also tied to a Musk business pitched as the indispensable subscription to power it. This is not a cyberpunk dream of decentralised resilience - it’s a claim to personal power that ultimately entrenches the barons that provide the tools. Paypal modernised but never decentralised finance, their account is king. Tesla freed you to fly down the road without petrol, but locked hardware features behind a paywall, Starlink brings global connectivity for a recurring fee and risk of Ukrainian style cutoffs.
The realised promised doesn’t often feel like self reliance, just a new overlord. The book explains this well.
This core point really captured me, and I’ll take it from the book. Beyond that though, there’s quite a lot of lame points and filler. I do wonder if it either needed another edit, or if it was padded up from a long form read to justify its cover as a book.
It plays Kremlinology, ascribing meaning to a love of Factorio and Diablo IV. I agree there’s min/max optimisation there, but it tries to distill a wider character revelation from it that feels weak. Ultimately these floppy threads weaken the fabric of the book’s overall argument. Particularly troubling is that the more spurious bits are stated with the same gravity as its core points.
But it is what it is. A shorter book would really have just been a pamphlet. One there can’t be much market for and I probably wouldn’t have paid for. I don’t begrudge the authors taking an hour or two extra of my time to try and justify the stage they’ve made for themselves here. The point is worth reading, and I support these two getting their daily bread to keep thinking and writing more about their favourite topics.
After "Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed" I read: Thinking in Systems: A Primer
Before "Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed" I read: Children of Strife