Eric Peters on the Idiocy of Glenn Beck Comparing Elon Musk to John Galt – He’s No John Galt

Eric Peters from Eric Peters Autos Breaks Down Why Crony Capitalism isn’t Capitalism

By eric

Glenn Beck – after reading ad copy urging his listeners to buy Rough Greens and Relief Factor, which constitutes the bulk of his show – said something so spectacularly wrong the other day that I could not let it pass without comment.

He compared Elon Musk with John Galt – the fictional character created by Ayn Rand in her novel Atlas Shrugged, which was about capitalism. Not crony capitalism. More finely, rent-seeking masquerading as capitalism. The leveraging of government force to get rich. The redistribution of – as opposed to the creation of – wealth.

What are carbon credits?

They are a wealth redistribution scheme. Company A produces something of value for which there is a market, established by the fact that people are willing to exchange their money for it. Like a truck with a V8 engine (or a car with a V6 engine). But the government says these things produce more “carbon” than it says is allowable – according to an arbitrary standard it lays down based on assertions that “carbon” is causing the “climate” to “change.”

The government – more finely, the regulatory bureaucracy – says this excess “emitting” of “carbon” must be cancelled out via either the production of vehicles that “emit” no “carbon” at all – at the tailpipe – for which there is no (or very little market) or via the purchase of credits from another producer of such vehicles in lieu of producing them.

Obviously, none of this form of exchange is voluntary.

That is how Tesla – which is Elon Musk’s electric vehicle operation – funded itself, in the manner of a tick feasting on the blood of a dog. The “carbon credit” being a kind of transfer tax imposed by the government but collected by a for-profit corporation. It is how Tesla sucked dry the once-successful Chrysler, Dodge, Ram and Jeep brands that are now rustling shells of their former selves. When you bought a V8 Ram or Charger or Chrysler 300, part of what you paid – assuming you could afford to – went to Tesla and thus to Musk.

What is a carbon tax?

It is a tax designed to economically punish the use of “too much” energy, defined as that which exceeds your “carbon footprint” – which is defined (arbitrarily, once again) as the the amount of “carbon” your existence generates. If you drive too much – or eat too much meat or keep your house too warm or your house is too large – then you have exceeded the allowable size of your “carbon footprint” and are tax-punished accordingly. The government – which collects the tax – is enriched while you are diminished.

Elon Musk is a proponent of taxing “carbon.” Naturally. He believes the “climate” is “changing” and – much more important – his lifestyle will not be diminished because he could lose 90 percent of his wealth and still be richer than 90 percent of us.

He also stands to benefit from such a tax since his “carbon footprint” is considered small because his battery-powered vehicles are considered to have no “footprint” at all – because they do not produce any “carbon” directly. The “carbon” created indirectly by the manufacture and associated activities involved in making tens of thousands of enormous lithium-ion batteries and pumping them full of electricity is not counted toward the size of his “footprint.” But your gas-powered truck’s “emissions” are. And also your steak dinner and the fact that you turned up the thermostat in your house to keep warm.

What is digital money? It is non-physical money over which you have the illusion of control. Put another way, it is a medium of exchange that only works as long as the digital-electronic mechanisms that you have no control over allow. It can, in other words, be used to control what you are allowed to spend – and on what and how much. You have exceeded the allowable size of your carbon footprint this month – but it’s not yet next month? Well, for the remainder of this month, your digital purchasing power will be limited and there is nothing you can do to get around it. You wave your device at the scanner to pay for the groceries on the conveyer belt but the purchase won’t go through.

No steak for you.

Elon Musk is proponent of digital money (DOGE and Bitcoin, specifically). He is also a recipient of great tranches of government money via his Space X operation. It is not funded by this billionaire. It is funded by taxpayers – who are forced to fund it.

John Galt spent the entire novel battling such rent-seeking, cronyism and grift. He did it chiefly by persuading the productive to stop aiding their exploiters and (ultimately) their destroyers by going on strike. He did not urge them to get rich by getting in bed with the government. He had nothing but contempt for the force and fraud that is the essence of government. He believed in the absolute sovereignty of the individual and that personal worth was a function of the creative capacity expressed via productive work the value of which was measured by the free approbation of the market. That honest wealth did not require anyone else’s wealth to create it.

His symbol was the dollar sign and his coin was gold.

No man could be less Galt-like than Elon Musk – down to the humblest street sweeper, who does honest work and earns his money by providing value for value and without the intermediary of coercion.

Steve Jobs was Galt-like. Preston Tucker is another. Musk is a predatory parody of Galt. One that’s as funny as a basket of dead rabbits.

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