Once a darling of the left, Elon Musk is now being vilified by people on both sides of the political aisle. Unhappy with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) work, and his efforts to trim the federal budget, crazies on the left have been burning Telsas and disavowing him. President Donald Trump, who values loyalty more than anything else, has now discarded him as a punishment for his complaints about Trump’s unrestrained spending, and for calling the president’s new budget reconciliation bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), a “disgusting abomination.”
Anyone else would have been tempted to retreat and lick his wounds in private. Not Musk. He is sticking to his convictions, and showing the country’s leaders and politicians, by example, the courage of his convictions and the way to stick to one’s beliefs despite massive attacks. Americans would be collectively better off as a society if they would follow his example and not listen to politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Let’s look at the gospel according to Musk.
Foremost, he is an innovator like few others in human history. Tesla, Space X, and Starlink are remarkable achievements. Tesla made electric vehicles cool when the big automobile companies ignored EV technology; Space X has surpassed NASA as the driving force in space exploration; and Starlink has brought high-speed internet access to most of the planet. Musk’s efforts have unleashed creative destruction, the process that replaces what worked in the past with innovations that are reshaping the world.
How Musk runs his businesses also matters. He hires talented employees and demands that they work hard. For Musk, hiring and retaining employees is a simple calculus. Do the employees pay for themselves by generating more value to the company than the wages they are paid? If yes, they are hired and kept on as part of the team. If not, they are let go. Moreover, Musk pays efficiency wages, which are higher than the market rate, to reduce turnover and reward excellence. That approach flies in the face of unionized shops in the automobile industry and government. It is this way of thinking that has led Musk to offer his time to the Trump administration and create DOGE.
Unfortunately for the country, Musk’s attempt to streamline the government workforce and update antiquated government systems has been met with hostile resistance from many. From a business perspective, this sad episode reveals just how hard it is to change how a business functions without having new ownership and leadership — which is exactly what Musk did when he slashed Twitter’s workforce by 80%.
When Musk sees the OBBBA, he sees an omnibus spending bill filled with bloated add-ons that cost billions a year and trillions over a decade. This is anathema to Musk who takes the long view when conducting government business. For him, investing in new innovations is a lengthy process: After securing the necessary funds, the following steps include building prototypes and testing one’s ideas, before finally launching the finished product. Failure along the way is to be expected. To Musk, each setback is a useful learning experience, allowing one to eventually scale up production to lower costs and deliver the product to more consumers. Just imagine Musk — a man who values efficiency, hates waste, and wants to get the most benefit from how he spends his money — reading the proposed OBBBA, with all its waste and bloat.
Musk understands what finance experts have taught since ancient Babylon, and most of us already know that overspending handicaps your future. You can’t run a government with a 37 trillion national debt, any more than you can effectively run a company with too much debt. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue; it transcends political affiliations. We are paying 1.2 trillion a year in interest just to service the debt. All politicians have let us, the people, down by not putting the future of our country first. Think of it this way, the deficit is like a leak in your plumbing that you ignore. The leak slowly gets worse over time and eventually the pipe completely fails. Every bloated reconciliation bill brings us one step closer to economic calamity. Neither Musk, nor I, can tell you exactly when it will happen, but know that if you cannot get your fiscal house in order, that day will surely come. When it does, it will be the end of the American experiment as we know it.
We need to wake up and listen to Elon Musk’s gospel. He is not beholden to the left or the right, only to the truth, a truth that can set all of us free from the bondage of indebtedness.
