There is an argument floating around that people should not, in protest of Musk’s illegal, unconstitutional and dangerous DOGE program cutting vital programs without Congressional approval, sell their Tesla. Or avoid AirBnB now that their CEO has joined DOGE. There are two versions of the argument, one essentially uncontroversial and one that leaves me scratching my head.
The first version is that not everyone can. Many people are not in a position to sell their car and buy a new one. Sure. Asking people to risk their financial situation on a minor protest like selling a car is not reasonable, in my opinion. If you cannot afford it, you cannot, and not selling a car is not on the level of, say, telling ICE that you think your neighbor might be violating the civil code preventing people from arriving in the US without proper permission (you should also point out to anyone who says that arriving the US or overstaying your visa is not a criminal act — it is a civil matter. You know, like the sexual assault case Trump lost.). People are going to need economic and mental strength to get through the next four years. No sense in weakening either over something that you really cannot control.
However, the idea that selling your Tesla at all is not helpful is silly. There are several flavors of this, but I think they all fall under the “it won’t help so I won’t do it” banner. The weakest is that people who are asked to do it will feel bullied and become a fascist. Look, man, if someone asking you to not support a fascist makes you a fascist, you are already a fascist. The only question was when you were going to start goosestepping down the street and wondering why everyone is laughing while watching the Producers. Nothing I can do for you, son. Most people aren’t that weak minded.
The second version is that there is no ethical consumption in capitalism so why single out Musk? Why it is true that late-stage capitalism makes perfectly ethical consumption impossible (though to be fair, every system has compromises. Even if we get Start Trek level Space Communism, what will we do with the people who are psychopathically competitive but aren’t good enough at sports or performance to attract society’s benediction? What did they do with the frustrated businesspeople in Star trek who couldn’t hoop or sing? Exile to the Ferrengi? Little camps made up like a small-town commercial district? Endless board games? I really do think about this stuff. I have problems.), some consumption is worse than others. Musk and his merry band of little boy incels and their supporters are destroying the country in a very literal way.
They are cutting FAA employees, two weeks after a series of plane accidents and crashes. They cut foreign aid that led directly to death and increases the likelihood of violence across the world. They cut cancer research, and then effectively all medical research at universities. They cut special education programs designed to help disabled kids get on their feet after high school. They fired the people who protect nuclear weapons. And that’s just the worst of the list. They are bad, bad people and the people most dangerous to other citizens. Weakening them, protesting them, is one of the most ethical things you can do today. Yeah, it likely means buying from another car company with impure motives, but that company is not as actively shredding he Constitution as Musk and his band of merry Dunning-Krugerites is. Differences of degree may not be as important as differences in kind, but they still matter.
The final argument, then is that it doesn’t matter. That selling your car is not going to hurt Musk. Maybe. If a bunch of Teslas go on the used car market, that will drive down the price of new Teslas as well. And that, combined with the drop in new car sales, will likely cause Tesla stock — the primary source of Musk’s wealth and thus power, to fall, perhaps significantly. It is massively over valued and if it finally becomes clear that Musk has driven away his customers, it might fall off a cliff.
Or it might not. There is no guarantee that this will work, of course. There are no promises in the world, after all. But it might. And right now, given what we are facing, every single action, every single potential lever, is worth pulling. This might not work. But it might.
An old friend of mine used to run a non-profit that dealt with the most hardcore addicts. Most of their clients did not make it. At a gathering, someone asked why she spent her time “tilting at windmills.” She answered “Because every once in a while the windmill falls over. And nothing in the world feels fucking better than that.” So, yes, this might not work. But Musk is throwing up a lot of windmills right now, and we need to find the ones that will fall over. Because they will be there — but we won’t find the ones that fall if we don’t keep tilting at them. I promise you, when they start to fall, and they will, nothing in the world will feel better than that.
Sell your Tesla, and stay at a hotel rather than am AirBnB. Those might not be windmills that fall over. But then again, they might.
Want more oddities like this? You can subscribe to my free newsletter
