At one end of the economy, things look historic, unprecedented, platinum-plated. Last week, Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX went public in the largest initial stock offering in U.S. history, raking in more than $85 billion, turning even the company\u2019s cafeteria workers<\/a> and welders<\/a> into millionaires and Musk into the world\u2019s first trillionaire<\/a>. <\/p>\n The IPO would give Musk and his empire of linked companies the capital to \u201ctake the fiction out of science fiction and create an exciting, inspiring future for everyone,\u201d Musk said<\/a> in a speech last week. For him, that means building data centers in space, bases on the moon and on Mars, and power-generation straight from the sun – as the tech stack helps usher in a galactic, AI-powered utopia. <\/p>\n As Musk got wealthier, polling showed that Americans increasingly think the country is in decline<\/a> and the American dream is dead<\/a>. Progressive lawmakers say the IPO is a sign it\u2019s time to hike up taxes on billionaires. Musk\u2019s meteoric rise \u2014 and his wildly ambitious future plans \u2014 help explain why people might feel this way. <\/p>\n The same accumulation of power and money<\/a> that will let Musk take the \u201cfiction: out of science fiction may mark the end of U.S. democracy as we know it. <\/p>\n Musk seems to genuinely believe he\u2019s working on behalf of humanity, and there\u2019s no doubt his technologies advance core priorities for a more sustainable future. Still, at every turn, the trillionaire has vacuumed up more unilateral power, rising from a mere executive to something comparable to a sovereign leader. <\/p>\n Through X, he steers how hundreds of millions of people express and inform themselves. Through Starlink, SpaceX\u2019s satellite internet service, he controls an ever deeper layer of global web infrastructure. At Tesla and xAI, he is building the autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence that will define next-gen systems in the tech world. And through SpaceX, he is laying the blueprint for the future of human settlement.<\/p>\n All the more amazingly, Musk reached these heights even as his companies defied traditional economics, lifted by an in-group of investors and Musk\u2019s online cult of personality<\/a>. Tesla became the world\u2019s most valuable carmaker<\/a>, even as other companies vastly outsold it. X spent years in financial chaos<\/a> after Musk took over. SpaceX had a historic IPO, even though it reportedly lost nearly $5 billion last year<\/a>. <\/p>\n Musk\u2019s barnstorming 2024 election campaign was the coup de gr\u00e2ce. He bet spent almost $300 million backing Trump and the GOP<\/a> and handed out $1 million checks<\/a> to voters, among the largest political donations in U.S. history<\/a>. In return, Republicans temporarily gave Musk the keys to the federal budget and let him lead the effort to shrink budgets and fire employees.<\/p>\n The trillionaire\u2019s defenders like to point out all the good Musk\u2019s companies do. They argue that left-wing critics of Musk\u2019s wealth are misguided. He isn\u2019t some evil character who took $1 trillion from humanity, they say; he earned it, with tasks both humans really want and desperately need.<\/p>\n “This is a ‘Bond villain’ who’s decarbonizing the world \u2014 last time I checked, people on the left like the environment \u2014 connecting poor people in low-income country, schools, and hospitals to the internet at very low cost, and he\u2019s helping blind people see today and interact with the world today,\u201d SpaceX investor Gavin Baker told a podcast<\/a>. \u201cThat’s a villain?”<\/p>\n The most vital question now is not whether Musk is a hero or a villain. History will decide that. Instead, the question becomes can U.S. democracy itself survive a single man having so much power over so much?<\/p>\n Critics say no. Wealth at the very top is now three times more concentrated than it was during the Gilded Age, economist Gabriel Zucman estimates<\/a>. The second Trump era has seen billionaires, including the one occupying the White House, alongside the country\u2019s wealthiest ever Cabinet<\/a>, merge public office and personal business in unprecedented ways.<\/p>\n \u201dThere is a fundamental tension between extreme wealth and the very possibility of democracy,\u201d Zucman wrote of SpaceX\u2019s IPO. \u201cExtreme wealth is always an extreme power. The power to stifle competition. The power to shape public discourse. The power to influence policymaking.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk has shown himself more than willing to put his thumb on the scale.<\/p>\n On X, he boosts the causes and anti-woke conspiracies he likes<\/a>, while banning journalists and watchdogs<\/a>. Starlink is an influential third party in the Ukraine war,<\/a> enabling and disabling service<\/a> at key moments in ways that have benefited both sides. Through his government work, Musk, himself a massive federal contractor, used his access to slash his disfavored agencies, causes, and humanitarian programs impacting millions, with next to no oversight.<\/p>\n![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2281034191...jpeg\")
Elon Musk claims his unprecedented fortune will be spent on human progress, but he often acted undemocratically in his rise to power (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Musk\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2277742848...jpeg\")
Musk\u2019s long-term goal is to build a utopian society in space, but on Earth, he has become a singular political powerbroker, using millions of dollars of donations and his corporate empire to steer global affairs (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Defenders](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2026-06-12T134836Z_1179152104_RC2DSLANLVC9_RTRMADP_3_SPACEX-IPO.JPG\")
Defenders of Musk say he\u2019s being justly rewarded for making popular, and vital, technologies such as electric vehicles and lower-cost rockets (Reuters)<\/p>\n