Tesla shareholders have voted in a trillion dollar pay packet for CEO Elon Musk if the world’s richest man delivers on a set of product sales.

Elon Musk and the eternal question: dys- or utopia?

With self-driving vehicles and robots a key part of the deal, this is a payment for Musk being the poster-boy of possible techno-fascism whereby elites own automated services and AI.

However, such a system is likely unsustainable given it means widespread unemployment. Neoliberal capitalism is set up to force people to work for those richer than them, but there’s no point in that when robots are doing the jobs anyway.

Indeed, even Musk seems to understand this.

Speaking via a conference in Paris in May 2024, Musk said:

If you want to do a job that’s kind of like a hobby, you can do a job. But otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want.

This is progress, it just challenges current identity dynamics. One’s purpose can be intellectual, social, creative, and comedic rather than working for the sake of it. Musk said the lack of a job would require a “universal high income” – otherwise known as a citizens dividend.

The thing is, Musk is also a billionaire who flirts with fascism. It doesn’t seem like capitalist elites will hand the public a new exciting system of abundance and advancement on a platter.

The Tesla deal

Issues with the pay deal also strike at the core of neoliberal capitalism and its fascist leanings. Musk gets a trillion dollar payment, despite other Tesla engineers delivering on the products. Tesla workers do get stock compensation, but we’re talking about a trillion for Musk here.

If Tesla delivers “20m Tesla vehicles, 10m self-driving car subscriptions, 1m humanoid robots and 1m robotaxis”, as well as raises the ‘value’ of Tesla as a company seven-fold, Musk gets the trillion.

A trillion is cartoon, comic-book villain levels of wealth. It’s a joke and people won’t stand for it.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

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