SpaceX Evolution (Chapter 14)
A serialized version of this book for SubStack
Link to First Installment: https://chrisprophet.substack.com/p/spacex-evolution
CHAPTER 14: X.COM RIGHT OR WRONG
“I think it’s a false dichotomy to look at government and sort of industry as separate...government is the ultimate corporation…a monopoly that can’t go bankrupt, or usually cannot go bankrupt.”1 ~ Elon Musk/WSJ CEO Summit
It seems Elon has been doing a lot of thinking about where companies end and governments begin and decided they are not entirely dissimilar in nature. In some ways government could be likened to a corporation, except they levy taxes to provide people with services, such as social support and national security. From this perspective government does appear to act like a monopoly over the territory they control, yet this monopoly is incomplete because other national territories have their own competing governments.
The United States was created with similar laws and language to Great Britain, i.e. they are a scion of the old world yet functionally separate, due to the difficulties administering the New World from far distant Britain. Similarly SpaceX intend to create new territories in space and on new worlds, such as Mars, which are also quite isolated from Earth, due to the vast intervening distance. SpaceX’s commercial approach will grant them a great deal of influence over all this and when you add the effect of other Musk companies, that influence only multiplies. It could be argued these sister companies have been specifically created to produce the technologies necessary for space applications over the long term, e.g. surface vehicles, solar arrays, energy storage, boring machines, optical processing AI, touchless computer interfaces etc.
“The visit to Musk Land [SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity] started to make a few things clear about how Musk has pulled all this off. While the ‘putting Man on Mars’ talk can strike some people as loopy, it gave Musk a unique rallying cry for his companies. It’s the sweeping goal that forms a unifying principle over everything he does. Employees at all three companies are well aware of this and well aware that they’re attempting to achieve the impossible day in and day out.”2 ~ Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk biographer)
Considering X.com’s role is to draw all these Musk companies together, that would appear to grant it a similar monopolistic role to government, at least over the realm of space. China might eventually manage to send a handful of astronauts to Mars but likely this would become an ambassadorial mission, because everything important (e.g. tech, research and resources) will be centered on Mars city.
While Mars will have freedom to vote their own laws and administer justice, likely they would be largely dependent on X.com to provide everyday necessities. SpaceX would be the only means of access for any new world, due to their low commercial rates and extraordinary technology, yet standing behind them is X.com. It seems quite likely many Musk companies will choose to headquarter on Mars due to its freedom from regulation and lack of corporate taxation. So if X.com does effectively morph into a ‘space government,’ most likely its seat will be on Mars, at least for the first few decades. The prospect of a company transforming into government probably sounds outlandish because it runs counter to how we perceive nations work and are created. However, at one point many people believed only kings or queens could rule a country – until those monarchs were effectively replaced by representative bodies in Rome, Britain, France, Russia etc. It seems the catalyst for such transformations are citizens banding together to have a voice in how their countries are run and address inequalities…
“I think highly dynamic social, political and economic situations are the new normal, and you are now better prepared to succeed in them.”3 ~ Gwynne Shotwell’s alma mater speech to Northwestern University graduates
In his Wall Street Journal interview, Elon argues that citizens are poorly served by governments because the feedback loop is slow to non-existent; in effect they are territorial monopolies which largely serve their leaders. However, all Musk companies are set-up with fast feedback in mind, in order to better serve the customer and improve conditions. Therefore this new brand of government offered by X.com, which you could call techno-humanism, might function comparatively well in serving their citizen’s urgent needs. In the inhospitable realms of space, citizens will require a far better response than provided by comparable Earth governments. Certainly a bureaucratic approach to solving problems in space would be anathema and quite possibly prove fatal to its fundamentally more exposed citizens. Overall Elon seems to have taken the most practical approach to administering pioneer settlements, the techno-humanist path would appear to have distinct advantages.
“What does physics say we can do, because physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation.”4 ~ Elon Musk
It is quite possible too that X.com will have its own electronic currency, which given their reach could become the standard currency of space. If all Musk companies use this new currency, which we’ll call Xcoin, that would offer enormous stability and security to its users. For example: it seems likely X.com will continue to expand its reach and riches through the infinite tracts of space, hence if Tesla employees were paid in Xcoin, they would effectively receive a pay rise in every paycheck, compared to local fiat currency. While the value of most fiat currencies steadily depreciate due to quantitative easing, negative interest rates and inflation, Xcoin’s value should steadily increase in concert with X.com’s expanding influence. Note, this corporate currency wouldn’t be comparable to ‘company scrip’ because it would be freely traded on the currency markets, so readily convertible to almost any kind of money. Overall, local fiat currencies couldn’t hold a candle to Xcoin, backed by the ubiquitous X.com megacorporation. Xcoin will become a true space commodity, readily transported and converted to whatever holds value, anywhere in the solar system. Essentially Xcoin would become the reserve currency for humanity, with Mars the safest place to store it, along with all manner of other assets and valuables, due to its inherent isolation and peerless security.
After Tesla briefly experimented with using Bitcoin, they became unhappy with the blockchain mining process, causing them to discontinue accepting it for product payments. Apparently Bitcoin mining consumes vast amounts of power which is largely supplied by conventional energy generation methods that damage the environment, such as coal fired power stations in China. However this early test has likely proved invaluable, allowing Elon to iterate into some e-currency far closer to his final requirements, i.e. fast transactions, no fee and universally accepted.
In the final evaluation, whether something like X.com is viewed as good or bad depends on the people involved in its operation. Those who go to the moon and Mars will likely hold similar attitudes to the people who work at SpaceX, Tesla et al, hence could be viewed as champions of humanity. While some might see them as starry-eyed idealists, these companies rely on equality, diversity and open values to function at peak efficiency, which requires a pretty liberal workforce. Hopefully these are the people who go on to administer X.com and in the process ensure humanity’s more extreme traits remain left behind on Earth.
Mars government
A commercial company is not ideally suited to governing a large populace such as proposed for Mars, hence X.com will probably create some organization which is better adapted to this role. Certainly the plan at present is for SpaceX to create the constitution for the Mars colony, which should then allow citizens to enact and repeal laws through direct voting on each issue, in place of the more conventional representative democracy we employ on Earth. So this new form of space government wouldn’t be corporate in essence, only by origin, hence Mars will enjoy the most representative form of government possible, supported by a network of highly responsive companies. Overall as governments go, this X.com backed ‘distributed administration’ doesn’t seem such a bad prospect, certainly a tenable alternative to fractious Earth governments, given their current trajectory.
“Musk is attempting to set up…a peaceful, business friendly, respectful, healthy, replacement for government, with Mars and potentially the moon base as a prototype – and working in Tesla is a mini-prototype of that. You essentially get universal basic income, awesome health care and if the company does well you get massive money through stock returns. Well Musk, it looks like he is attempting to create a government model like that… Elon is essentially creating the United Federation of Planets (from Star Trek) and he jokingly said: would I be emperor – or god emperor?”5 ~ Joe Justice, Tesla Agile consultant
Big picture
Likely the direct democracy model used on Mars would be reproduced, where possible, on other worlds such as the dwarf planet Ceres, moons of Saturn and various deep space outposts. However, these would likely act as regional governments with X.com acting as the overarching authority which binds them together. Given X.com’s broader role, this implies a few things about its constitution, allowing us to sketch some of its functional divisions: -
Solar Administration – likely comprised of a single person (similar to a president), attended by their support staff.
Board of Advisors – staffed by representatives from all inhabited worlds and outposts. Their recommendations would be escalated to the solar administrator’s office to shape X.com policy and future goals.
Intelligence Bureau – given how widespread and diverse these space settlements appear, some facility for intelligence gathering would seem inevitable. Likely this bureau would more closely resemble the NSA than CIA in form and function, perhaps only consisting of a few AI analysts plus a handful of field operatives to provide human intelligence.
Essentially these functional divisions would be an extension of what we now see at SpaceX (a CEO advised by board of directors), with the addition of an Intelligence Bureau.
Link to next installment: https://chrisprophet.substack.com/p/spacex-evolution-chapter-15
1 https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/10/elon-musk-government-is-the-ultimate-corporation.html
2 ISBN: 9780062301239, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future” by Ashlee Vance
3 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/spacex-president-gwynne-shotwell-2021-commencement-address.html
Governments are just groups of people who have come together to achieve something. The same is true for a corporation. Indeed though, a government can be thought of as a “super” corporation because it gives itself a monopoly on violence.
The feedback loop problem that Musk often references are very real, but the solutions often are not. I have suggested using sortition, quadratic voting, and a “deletion” mechanism that allows for the easy removal of laws as a possible pathway to improving this feedback loop.