‘The Greatest Capitalist In History’? A Review of Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk.’
Early in Alex Gibney’s new documentary, “Musk,” the Silicon Valley mogul is introduced to a MAGA rally as “the greatest capitalist in history.”
However one regards Elon Musk — electric vehicle and space pioneer, drug-addled chaos agent, fascist enabler, megalomaniac, all of the above — this movie makes a convincing case that he is not a “great capitalist,” let alone the greatest ever. On the business front, he has combined an uncanny ability to hoover up government subsidies and contracts with a P.T. Barnum-level talent for hucksterism. From this mixture, he built an historic fortune based on the value of the stock of one company, Tesla. A master of the free market or an exemplar of rugged individualism, Musk is not.
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