J'Accuse of December 6, 2024 the Elon Musk case and the outsized compensation denied to Tesla. American feudal democracy and the degeneration

Hammage to the judge of the Delaware Court. Kathaleen St. Jude McCormic

A singular story that resurfaces the very famous Elon Musk, the South African migrant who has become the magnate with unlimited fortune that influences the political course in his country and in the world. It is about the billionaire compensation of 101 billion dollars for the executive role as CEO at Tesla. A bold and scrupulous judge of the Delaware Court. Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, has just confirmed a few days ago, the decision she had made in January of this year, according to which the compensation package is excessive and unfair to the other shareholders of Tesla. This package, originally approved in 2018, is considered the largest compensation ever granted to an executive of a company listed in the United States. It is now worth about $101 billion, based on Tesla’s closing price on Monday, and is made up of 303 million Tesla stock options, but was worth about $56 billion when the court blocked it.

At the same time, Tesla’s board of directors argued that the huge compensation package was necessary to keep Musk at the company. But, although the board voted to reaffirm the package in June of this year, the judge ruled that this vote could not overturn his initial decision. Now this story has economic, political and ethical implications.

From an economic point of view, as noted by Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the compensation due to Musk is clearly not only outrageous, exorbitant and astronomical, but also infringes on the rights of the shareholders who would receive a lower and unequal compensation compared to Musk. In fact, if American democracy is based on law and the free market system in economics, the conciliation between the two principles of equality of rights and at the same time protection of the freedom of citizens to do business and to derive legitimate benefits from it, in this case the prevalence of one over the other would nullify all the protections and the same respect for the rights of each. But the most questionable and I would even say unjust and antidemocratic thing is that the unlimited enrichment of a subject like Musk deriving from his dominant position and the resources gained with the capital that is invested in the financial system without him putting in a drop of sweat of physical work, says a lot about a feudal system passed off as being the most just and advanced legal and economic system in the world.

On the political level, the unregulated and unlimited enrichment allowed by the liberal system would pose an economic problem when the hundreds of billions would do nothing but generate other billions, as we have seen with the Tesla view, giving rise to one or more dominant positions in the entire financial, industrial, telecommunications economy, as happened with the purchase of Twitter, now X, in short we are faced with an ogre who devours everything in front of him and who not only becomes dangerous and uncontrollable day after day, precisely by virtue of the dominion he exercises, he would become the conditioner and the DOGE, that is, the clearer of all the new rules, cultural and political models and customs themselves. Furthermore, precisely because of this enrichment allowed by the wild liberal system, entering politics, as happened with Trump's re-election, would pose a problem of direct and indirect conflict of interest, thus harming the rights of other political subjects who represent the other factions and parties of the nation in question. It is a problem that signals a re-barbarization of democracy and a weakening of civil society and of the political parties themselves that mediate political consensus. It is a serious period in which we are witnessing events in which Musk himself arrogates the right with his C face to criticize Italian magistrates, calling for their dismissal. How come an "arrogant emigrant, who became an American and a magnate, dared so much to denigrate our judicial system, which is precisely a guarantor of that migration coming from Africa, the native continent of Musk himself?

On an ethical level, the issue raised by the Delaware judge is very clear: the compensation granted by Tesla to Musk is excessive and is not compatible with a democratic system. From this perspective, there is a need for a real political revolution that regulates market freedom in the most egalitarian sense possible. It is not possible that in the twenty-first century we are still talking about situations that recall the dark ages when everything belonged to monarchs and aristocrats in an unlimited and hereditary manner. With the American liberal system we have allowed the degeneration of democracy through the proliferation of markets and rules that have created immense and unimaginable economic and social inequalities. In short, we have thus buried the growth and development of democratic societies where true wealth is not that of money earned with bitcoins or financial speculation, but that which invests the entire community, through its productive and innovative apparatus, and is reflected in the standard of living, in social and health guarantees for citizens, in the leveling and diffusion of culture and science and above all in the provision of bridges and I would say with a significant term of social elevators, which would allow everyone the same opportunities and ultimately the same rights and duties.