Elon Musk Is Finding Out That Free Speech Isn’t Rocket Science
Elon Musk is the CEO of the Tesla car company. Musk is also a science guy. He worked there for a few years before getting out and creating SpaceX, which, according to the press, is a space company.
The press is reporting that in recent years, Musk has begun to turn down big-time offers to talk to people from SpaceX and Tesla.
They’re saying this was never something that was supposed to be on the table.
Musk said he was not interested in an on-camera interview with the New York Times, which is always going on Elon Musk. He was not interested in taking that interview to Facebook. He was not interested in the media getting access to his private email box.
What he is interested in, apparently, is getting his message out there.
For better or for worse, Musk has been having the biggest year-over-year earnings increase in the history of the car company. He’s currently doing $7 billion a year in business and he is worth close to $21 billion.
Musk’s company, Tesla, recently made the case to the US government to subsidize its car purchases. They said they had to do it to help keep the company afloat.
The US government is the world’s largest investor in Tesla. It gave them a $465 million loan that they needed to use to keep the company going. The government also said it wanted to sell the company to Musk for $2 billion. Musk was not interested. The company is valued right now at $70 billion.
So the US government said “fine, we’ll accept your offer and you can have the company, but only on the condition that you keep your mouth shut.”
Musk said no, he wanted to keep his mouth shut. He thought that was fine. He wanted to keep his wealth private. It was only as the free speech debate became a public affair that Musk began to withdraw his support from the idea of getting his wealth out there.
A few months ago, Musk said he
