The Guardian | Muskism by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff review – how Elon Musk is reshaping the world by Christopher Webb
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The Guardian | Muskism by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff review – how Elon Musk is reshaping the world by Christopher Webb
Henry Ford changed the face of industry forever – what kind of economic model do Musk’s methods presage?
Genius industrialist or clownish conman, humanity’s saviour from a rapidly crumbling planet or rabid social media troll – the verdicts on the world’s richest person vary in flavour, but most share something in common: they focus on Musk as an individual. In their study, Quinn Slobodian, a historian at Boston University, and Ben Tarnoff, a tech writer, wish to reframe the conversation. The most important question, they argue, is not “who is Musk?” but “what is Musk a symptom of?”
As the title suggests, their answer is “Muskism”, the coinage a deliberate nod to Fordism, the shorthand for 20th-century capitalism built on the pairing of mass production with mass consumption. If Fordism was the last century’s operating system, Slobodian and Tarnoff contend that Muskism is this century’s.
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