Introduction
Of all of the figures in Trumpworld, Elon Musk is probably the most vulnerable to boycotts and so it’s little surprise that boycotts against him are already in full swing.
This article from The Washington Post is a bit old (June 2024) but it lays out the sources of Musk’s wealth. Here’s a nicely done chart from the article,
Tesla
As you can see, the bulk of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla and since Tesla sells primarily to individuals like you and I, that’s the first target to attack. Two simple steps to take are,
- Don’t buy a Tesla. And if you own a Tesla, sell it.
- Don’t buy Tesla stock. And if you own Tesla stock, sell it.
Tesla stock is particularly vulnerable because, as David Zipper of Slate magazine points out, it’s already vastly overvalued and is vulnerable to having its bubble popped. He notes that the total stock valuation (at the time he wrote the article) was $1.15 trillion! “To put that figure into perspective, it is five times as high as Toyota’s, 25 times as high as General Motors’, and 31 times as high as Ford’s. (Each of these companies builds vastly more vehicles). Equally stunning is Tesla’s astronomical price-to-earnings ratio of 181, which assumes mind-boggling profit growth.” In short, then, a large portion of Musk’s wealth comes from the fact that the stock market believes that Tesla is the wave of the future; that, eventually, it will return profits that are more than Toyota’s, General Motors, and Ford combined. A determined boycott will show the market that this is not the case and crash the stock and Musk’s wealth along with it.
After you dump Tesla and its stock, however, there’s still plenty you can do. Check out the details at Tesla Takedown which coordinates peaceful protests at Tesla dealerships and letter writing campaigns to mutual funds which own Tesla stock. And if you find your resolve wavering a bit, they have plenty of links to stories explaining how what Elon Musk is doing is very much contrary to both the ideals and the economic wellbeing of the United States.
Space X
Unfortunately, SpaceX is much less vulnerable to our actions. For one thing, it doesn’t have any publicly traded stock for us to sell. Instead, all of its stock is privately held – Musk holds a bunch of it (perhaps over 40% of it!) and the rest is held by employees and private investors.
Furthermore, Space X generally doesn’t sell to regular people like you and I – since they pretty much only shoot rockets into space, their customers are large corporations and governments. In order to affect this business, we’d have to apply pressure to those corporations and governments to change vendors.
The one place Space X IS vulnerable, however, is through its Starlink business. Starlink is a large collection of satellites in low-Earth orbit intended to facilitate communications which includes bringing Internet to remote locations. While Starlink does a lot of large business with corporations and governments, they also sell to individuals and it’s important that these individuals turn their backs on the company. You can read about some alternatives here.
xAI/X
The latest of Musk’s companies, xAI, is his attempt to get into generational AI. The company’s major products are all AIs or AI related software and include Grok, Aurora, and PromptIDE. Needless to say, you should not use any of them.
X, of course, is the social media network previously known as Twitter. Musk bought it, renamed it, ran it into the ground, and then turned it into a playspace for hard right-wing nationalists. Most recently he’s moved X under the xAI umbrella so that’s why we’ve got them both listed under the same heading. He has lost billions in X but he still has a few billion more left to lose and we can help him along by boycotting the network. A lot of former Twitter/X users have found their new home at Bluesky.
The Boring Company
The Boring Company is Musk’s tunnel building company which has a well documented history of overpromising and underdelivering. Since it works only with local governments, it’s not something that you and I can boycott. And since the company is privately held with 90% of shares owned by Musk himself, we can’t do anything to drive the stock price down. However, if the company ends up coming to your town, you might find it helpful to pass these articles on to your local elected representatives,
- Elon Musk’s tunnels to nowhere
- ‘We have consistently flirted with death’: Elon Musk wanted the Boring Co. to build a tunnel system below Las Vegas. Former employees say they feared for their lives while working there
- Elon Musk’s Boring Company ‘ghosted’ San Antonio on transit tunnel plan
These are just a sampling; there’s plenty more you can dig up on Google!
Neuralink
This company, not to be confused with the unrelated cryptocurrency of the same name, seeks to implant computer chips into people’s brains to allow them to control nearby computers. The object is to allow patients with devastating neurological injuries resulting in blindness, paraplegia, or quadriplegia to bypass their disability and gain some measure of increased autonomy.
If you find yourself in this position and feel that Neuralink can help you, we urge you not to allow a boycott against Elon Musk to stand in your way. Our first priority for you is your health and if Neuralink can help you with that, please proceed with our blessings. Be sure to do your research in advance, however, as there are other companies working in the same space and you should choose the one that will work best for you – especially given the criticisms leveled at Neuralink and Musk’s other companies. Good luck to you!