By LUIS FELIPE MIGUEL*

The world's biggest billionaire and a clumsy loudmouth, Elon Musk is living proof that meritocracy is nonsense.

1.

The fiction of meritocracy is today the main ideological device for legitimizing social inequalities. They are not unfair; they are a reflection of differences in merit between individuals. The most talented, the most intelligent, and those who work the hardest get the best positions, wield more power, and earn more – who can complain about that?

The subtext is that, in a world where everyone wants money, those who become rich have shown themselves to be more competent. This is not new; John Locke, in the 17th century, already thought that the worker proved his inferior rationality by the simple fact of not being able to become a property owner, which would justify his exclusion from active citizenship (along with other less rational human beings, such as children and women).

There are many ways to refute the meritocracy discourse. It is possible to observe that the starting conditions are far from being equitable. For example, the student who has to work, in addition to attending classes, has twice the effort to perform half as well as the student who does not have to worry about supporting himself. Only a lot of bad faith prevents us from recognizing this. If you need to draw it, it is already drawn: I never tire of recommending it Toby Morris's comic on the subject.

Or we can remember that no natural difference between talents comes close to the chasm that, in human societies, separates the very poor from the very rich. There may be a big difference between a strong person and a weak one, but not the – literally – millions of times, that is the result of the calculation when we divide the wealth of a Jorge Paulo Lemman by that of a minimum wage worker. In fact, Jean-Jacques Rousseau settled this issue back in the 18th century, in Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality among men.

Or, we could point out that most of the inequality that exists is due to chance, especially the lottery of birth. The correlation between being rich or poor and being born into a rich or poor family is, as we all know, astonishing. If anyone thinks that it is a superior genetic load that was passed down from parents to offspring, I suggest they get in touch with the “living thought” of the heirs out there – Jorginho Guinle’s videos on TikTok or Hélio Beltrão Jr.’s articles will do, it doesn’t matter.

It is also possible to say that the focus on merit and interpersonal competition exiles commitment to our common humanity and solidarity with our fellow human beings. Or that no talent, however great, can bear fruit in the absence of cooperation with other people; therefore, there is no justice without solidarity.

Or, taking a slightly more philosophical approach, that there is no merit in having merit: being more intelligent, more determined or more productive is also a characteristic due to chance, to the genetic lottery. If we have learned (fortunately) that we cannot punish anyone for being born with a disability, coherence forces us to recognize that it is not fair to reward someone for being gifted with extraordinary talents, except to the extent that these talents benefit everyone. Here, we can return to Rousseau, but another option is to read an enlightened liberal author from the 20th century, John Rawls.

These are all effective ways to demonstrate that meritocracy is a sham.

2.

Another way is to look at Elon Musk. He is the richest man in the world, with a fortune approaching 400 billion dollars – yes, a few trillion reais.

You know that $50 million jackpot you've been dreaming about? Well, Elon Musk could spend that money every day for well over a century before his fortune runs out.

But wait a minute: is this the guy that meritocracy rewards?

A guy who pays others to play for him so he can pose as a video game master? Who shows up stoned at his company’s board meetings? Who is willing to put his business at risk so he can send a rude tweet? Who believes Donald Trump will save America? Who is over 50 years old but continues to read the world through superhero comics, as far as anyone knows his only intellectual diet? Who dreams of wives. reborn because he can't deal with real women? Who insists on initiatives that he already knows will fail and repeatedly associates himself with guaranteed failures, like dancing robots and the eternal promise of self-driving cars "next year"? Who bought a large technology company, Twitter, and fired almost everyone "to cut costs" and then had to deal with the fact that everything was going down the drain?

As head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk has been working at full steam ahead on his destructive activities. He himself has admitted that the stated goal of reducing government spending has not been achieved. But the repeal of regulations, the promotion of incivility, these hidden goals have been achieved very well, thank you very much.

With his companies suffering hardships, Elon Musk stepped down. But it wasn't just his position as the Trump administration's short-lived czar. He left his mark on his companies as he increasingly asserted himself as the leader of global neo-fascism.

The most emblematic of them, Tesla, lives a contradiction. It is an electric vehicle manufacturer, that is, its marketing says that it contributes to saving the planet. (That is not true; the planet cannot be saved under the empire of private automobiles, but that is another discussion.) But the extreme right, with which the South African businessman aligns himself, insists that saving the planet is for communists and sissies; the good citizen burns fossil fuels.

Tesla’s actual and potential customers are thus focused on opposing Trumpism. In Europe, sales have plummeted. One could point to competition from cheaper and more efficient Chinese electric vehicles, but they still face distrust from local consumers – yet BYD has already become the best-selling brand.

3.

Tesla's troubles began when Elon Musk decided to participate in European far-right events, including rallies by German neo-Nazis. alternative for Germany, and the Donald Trump government.

In the United States, pressure is growing for owners to get rid of their Teslas. Some Tesla stores have been vandalized and the Trump administration has announced that attacks on Musk's carmaker will be classified as domestic terrorism.

Sometimes cars are graffitied with swastikas. Sensationalist he said: “Oil on Tesla”.

I liked it. I have a deep-seated hatred for Tesla cars—for their dishonest environmental marketing, for their futuristic door handles that bite your fingers, for their equally futuristic and terribly uncomfortable seats, for their habit of catching fire for no apparent reason.

So, I laughed at the photo of the graffitied cars and also at the good idea of Sensationalist. I wondered what Elon Musk's grandfather, the one who fled Canada for South Africa after his pro-Nazi movement was outlawed, would think of this.

Things of karma.

But, when you stop to think about it, there is an ethical issue involved here.

We live in a society that pushes people to buy private vehicles. In many cities around the world, with insufficient and dilapidated public transport systems, anyone with some money needs a lot of willpower not to buy a car.

At the same time, as we all know, there is no such thing as a good big corporation – they all exploit labor to the max, defraud taxes and environmental legislation, corrupt politicians, support authoritarian regimes, and finance disinformation. By pulling on the thread of their production chains, we inevitably end up with child labor, slave labor, and environmental disasters.

It's not just an impression. A few years ago, I had in my hands a report from an NGO that analyzed the 500 (I think it was 500) largest global corporations. It analyzed working conditions, exploitation of child labor, environmental protection, transparency in consumer relations, human rights, corruption of public officials, subversion of the democratic order. Several issues, involving the companies, their subsidiaries and the production chain induced by them. The result is easy to summarize: all the corporations failed in all the issues.

Volkswagen, Chevrolet, Ford, BYD, Toyota, Fiat, it doesn't matter. They're all like that. Tesla is no different. It just has a more clueless owner.

The consumer cannot be held responsible for the choices made by companies. Otherwise, we would have to abandon all, literally all, the comforts of civilization. As long as capitalism exists, I regret to say, this will be the case.

Would you like someone to graffiti your Gol or Polo in protest against Volkswagen, which supported Nazism, supported the military dictatorship in Brazil, created software to mask how much it pollutes and, on top of that, vilifies the memory of Elis Regina with that grotesque advertisement generated by artificial intelligence?

I guess not.

Another issue is the boycott related to future sales, which in the case of Tesla has occurred almost spontaneously. Consumer boycotts are difficult to achieve, as anyone who has studied the prisoner's dilemma knows (a classic model used to indicate the problems of coordinating action between non-hierarchical agents). But when it is adopted by a significant portion of people, even if this portion is a minority, companies feel it.

Yes, the others are the same or almost the same. But they all think (or should think): what if we are next?

McDonald's is now closing stores all over the Arab world. I have my own list – companies identified by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement as accomplices in the genocide of the Palestinian people, such as Carrefour and McDonald's itself; Nike, for its production conditions in Southeast Asia; Zara, for racism; Ypê, for Bolsonarism… It's not a big deal, maybe it's just another way of believing that I'm doing something.

That doesn't mean I would think it would be cool if someone came and ripped a t-shirt I bought in one of these places in the name of activism. You have to have a little common sense.

* Luis Felipe Miguel He is a professor at the Institute of Political Science at UnB. Author, among other books, of Democracy in the capitalist periphery: impasses in Brazil (authentic). [https://amzn.to/45NRwS2].

Originally posted on the author's social media.

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