SpaceX’s IPO: too much power in one person's hands?
With a valuation of around 1.8 trillion US dollars, the space technology company SpaceX is going public today, June 12. Founder and majority shareholder Elon Musk – already the richest person in the world by far – is expected to become the first ever trillionaire. The staggering figures provoke some admiration and a lot of consternation in Europe's press.
The land of visionaries
For Le Figaro, one thing is certain:
“The US remains the world's most formidable machine when it comes to inventing the future. SpaceX is the perfect illustration of this. Valued at nearly two trillion dollars, the company is on the verge of the biggest IPO in history. ... One of America's strengths is its ability to mobilise immense amounts of capital around a vision of the future. ... SpaceX is no longer just a rocket manufacturer. With Starlink and its ambitions for missions to the Moon and Mars, along with its AI applications, the company is transforming space into a new economic and strategic arena.”
Influence without democratic controls
Politiken warns:
“In this sense, Musk embodies a new kind of power: power that is private, global and virtually free from democratic monitoring. If this power is allowed to grow unchecked, we run the risk of creating a society in which technology empires could well carry more weight than the institutions of democracy. No single individual should be able to wield political and economic influence on such a scale.”
Remember Musk's toxic rhetoric on X
De Standaard points to how Musk uses his power:
“What such a concentration of power and wealth in a single individual will mean for the world has barely been discussed in the feverish build-up to Friday. ... Given Tesla's rising sales figures, it can't hurt to remind ourselves once again of the visionary's dark side. In the name of freedom of speech, he never misses an opportunity to spread the toxic rhetoric of the population replacement theory via his private social media platform X.”
Communalisation would be better
The taz finds the move worrying:
“What can be done about a corporation that controls critical infrastructure and operates in a space that, according to the Outer Space Treaty, belongs to everyone? ... One solution would be communalisation: infrastructure that everyone needs belongs in the public domain, not in a portfolio. Meanwhile, the financial and start-up worlds are hailing Musk as the king of the stock market. As if this same man were not the leader of a transnational, far-right network. The [British] East India Company was only stripped of its power when the costs of its dominance could no longer be ignored. It need not come to that this time.”