Who enables the oligarchs?

Recently, Elon Musk was approved for a $1 trillion compensation package at Tesla.

I’d say “Let that sink in,” but I don’t think a number like 1 trillion can sink in. It’s not a dollar amount any of us can even imagine. It’s a number that can be compared to the combined annual economies of several smaller countries or the total value of major corporations. For one man.

At the same time, many Americans and Canadians are struggling to feed themselves and their families. The Trump administration in the USA is trying to do away with SNAP, a critical social safety program that helps struggling families buy groceries.

In October alone, Cost-Cutting was the top reason employers cited for job reductions, responsible for 50,437 announced layoffs. Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the second-most cited factor, leading to 31,039 job cuts as companies continue to restructure and automate. AI has been cited for 48,414 job cuts this year. — Challenger, Gray & Christmas

The strange thing I’ve seen about reporting on this topic is people trying to rationalize why Elon Musk should not have received this compensation package due to his behaviour over the last couple of years. As though his behaviour had been different, that it would make such a ludicrous amount of compensation for one man make sense. It would not.

No amount of rationalization would make $1 trillion or $1 billion in compensation make sense or in any way whatsoever ethical when we’re seeing wage inequity grow across North America, as people have trouble feeding themselves and their families, as corporate profits grow but people get laid off in the wake of AI, and society continues to struggle.

Another strange thing I have noticed is that people criticize Elon Musk at all when it comes to this compensation package. He’s the wrong thing to focus on. He’s one crappy, insecure oligarch. What we should all focus on is the people who have enabled this to happen. The board of directors of Tesla, as well as the lawmakers in the states, provinces, and countries in which Tesla operates.

Elon already knows it’s okay to act the way he does, to hoard wealth the way he does, and to exemplify further what’s wrong with modern society and capitalism the way he does. And he knows it’s okay because of the people who enable him to do so. Sure, we need to keep criticizing and condemning awful behaviour from people like him, but much more so, I think we need to focus on those who uphold him, enable him, and tell us how much he deserves and the rest of us don’t with every vote they make at the board table or in legislation.

Tesla Board of Directors (publicly available information)

• Elon Musk
• Robyn M.
• Denholm
• Ira Ehrenpreis
• Joe Gebbia
• James Murdoch
• Kimbal Musk
• JB Straubel
• Kathleen Wilson-Thompson
• Jack Hartung

These are the people who deserve our attention, our outrage, our criticism. These are the people who have decided we should all be okay with people starving while oligarchs exist at all.

Every board member and every member of the legislature where an oligarch exists needs to be held accountable.