I honestly laughed when I saw Tesla’s board chair defending a trillion-dollar compensation package for Elon Musk. An entire board of directors announcing their grovelling fealty to a man they describe as "uniquely capable of saving the world."
The notion that brilliance entitles someone to endless indulgence is a dangerous superstition. But it is precisely that superstition Tesla’s board is sanctifying.
The heresy I espouse is simple: Musk does not deserve this package.
In fact, he deserves to be fired.
Tesla’s sales are slipping. The Cybertruck has become a punchline. Chinese competitors are eating Tesla’s lunch. But the board chair, Robyn Denholm, tells us that what really matters isn’t what’s happening now but what Musk might achieve if they dangle a pile of stock so colossal it almost defies comprehension.
I’ve been around long enough to know that money functions as a stand-in for faith. We had prophets and priests. Now we have "visionaries." Musk has been cast in that role. The board doesn’t say, “He’s earned this.” They say, “He must be fed, or he’ll leave us.” Which is less an argument than a confession of dependence. And dependence, in governance, is a dangerous thing.
Why do so many otherwise sober professionals convince themselves that one man alone holds the keys to the future? Why do millions of ordinary people treat him less as a businessman than as a cultural hero?
Because our traditional institutions have lost their credibility. When government feels paralyzed, when universities feel irrelevant, when religion feels like a relic, the only people who seem to move history are the entrepreneurs. We imbue them with powers they may not actually have, because we crave the sense that someone, somewhere, is still capable of building.
If a mid-level executive presided over declining sales, he'd be fired. But when Musk divides his attention among rockets, social media, fringe politics, and 4Chan-a-decade-ago trolling, we tell ourselves he's too extraordinary to be constrained by ordinary rules. The extraordinary, of course, always demand extraordinary compensation.
There’s a word for this, though we rarely say it: fealty. The Tesla board is showing fealty to its sovereign. They argue that without this package, Musk might abandon them. They don’t stop to ask whether that’s a problem of his making or theirs. They don’t ask whether tying the fate of a trillion-dollar company to one man’s mood is wise. They accept the premise that their job is to prop up their lord.
How do you explain to a worker earning $70,000 a year that the richest man in the world is being promised a trillion-dollar windfall because otherwise he might lose interest in his job? How do you explain it to a young student deciding whether the future lies in science, in art, in public service, or in commerce. What lessons are we teaching about value, merit, and responsibility?
I don’t doubt that Musk has his talents. He has a genuine gift for spruiking. But a society that equates sales acumen with an exemption from normal standards of accountability is not a healthy society. We end up inflating flawed individuals into demigods, and in so doing, we shrink ourselves.
The insistence that Tesla cannot exist without Musk is precisely the kind of fragility that dooms organizations. Apple survived Steve Jobs’s death. Microsoft thrived after Bill Gates. Institutions that matter are bigger than any one man. If Tesla cannot be that, then it deserves its decline.
Maybe we should want Musk to leave Tesla. Maybe we should let him chase Mars or LARP as a prophet and masturbate to AI porn on his own dime, while more grounded executives run his car company.
Will the shareholders approve the latest rort? Probably. Will Musk hit his targets? Based on his current focus - tweeting about "The Left" - it's doubtful. But the larger story here is about us, about a culture that confuses audacity with virtue and mythmaking with governance. A trillion-dollar pay package for a distracted billionaire is not merely a quirk of one company. It is a mirror held up to an age that has grown tired of restraint and hungry for spectacle. The reflection is not flattering.
Here's the question that should haunt every shareholder: when you invest in Tesla, are you buying into a business, or into a cult?
The former can yield profit.
The latter consumes devotion until nothing remains.
