Do you recall that Ian Fleming novel where the evil villain plotted inside his hollowed-out volcano on a tropical island to … provide cheap and reliable internet access? I’ve read every book and can name all seven Bond actors, but this one is stumping me. Apparently, there was also one where the baddie decarbonises the motor industry? Nope, can’t put my finger on it either.

The people at the Financial Times (FT) are said to be fans of one specific Bond where he finally meets his nemesis in a Roman villa and puts his Walther PPK to the menace’s temple: “Really shouldn’t have saved free speech,” Bond says, dressed in suspenders. “The world simply cannot tolerate your efforts to assist people trapped in permanent vegetative states. Bye.”

Given the FT’s coverage of Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire (“Elon Musk is a real-life Bond villain”), it can be assumed that the people working there were thrilled with the dreadful ending of No Time to Die, where Bond is killed. “Bond must be reborn,” they might have said. “We will now assemble a team to petition franchise owners Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson about the new, reborn 007.”

What would that team look like? I suspect Keir Starmer will be drafted in, and he’ll ask that his friend Richard Hermer, the British Attorney General, who chases ambulances ferrying terrorists, joins the character treatment process. Mark Carney, Chris Roper, Hamas, Zack Polanski and maybe a Nazi communist like Maine’s Democratic candidate Graham Platner too. “Doctors” who sell puberty blockers on daytime television and “social democrats” of Ugandan Indian extraction will join the media partners News24 to help refine the new age spy’s features.

And what will their new Bond look like? At once, shaky. “Neurodivergence”, the voiceover on the trailer will boom in cinemas, quoting the lines composed by the FT’s market analysts, “is the most seductive power in the world.”

Neurotic Behaviour

At this newspaper we’ve reluctantly accepted the neurotic behaviour of the FT as normal service. In no mood to be left behind in the scramble to the bottom, last week The Economist described supporters of a British party currently leading in the poll as “bastards” – another dig at Musk, who openly supports one of them. Also on Friday, in Canada’s The Globe and Mail, a writer called Chris Gay offered tips on how to “hate Elon Musk properly”. Generous people, these.

This wave of disgust leaves the world’s commentators powerless to correct the epic financial retardedness that Space X’s IPO sparked. Subsequently newspapers, television news channels, and social media platforms bristled with oddly permissible misinformation – but like negotiating peace between two rival bouncer gangs selling ecstasy in the same West Rand nightclub, trying to explain elementary laws of stock valuation to overeducated people isn’t easy. Expropriating Musk’s money, these people say, must happen and when it does, everyone will be a millionaire with access to life-saving healthcare and no more climate anxiety.

But Elon Musk does not “have” one trillion dollars. You’ll probably encounter individuals with more immediate liquidity in places like Dubai or India where pallets of $100 notes are stacked in 747 hangars. If the howls of redistribution were to bully Musk into redeeming shares in all his companies plus other interests, cash would probably total about $150 billion and if some Democrats got their way and issued cheques to all the world, everyone would get roughly just under $20 – or a choice-grade bottle of cava. But that would exclude the Democrat’s distribution fees, or Somalians, so by the time that’s priced in, there’d be barely enough to buy something inedible from the hot section at a local Engen.

Such a move would end Tesla and Space X and xAi and Starlink and Neuralink and everything else, meaning thousands would lose their jobs and the prices of other megacaps would tank – homes to vast pension and benevolent funds. X would no longer exist, and while this would be celebrated by people who frequently use it (if nothing else, to tell everyone else how terrible it is), it is a pacifier to millions enraged by the voluntary degeneration of western governments.

Journalists working for financial media who’ve claimed that Musk’s wealth comes from the government should be forced into resitting their expensive degrees and their professors vetted for signs of mental infirmity. Properly executed tenders may express peripheral requirements for “representation” or other social fads of the day, but price ultimately determines the preferred vendor. SpaceX was able to outsmart established institutions by innovation and persistence – in doing so, a shape of monopoly was interrupted with renewed competition, one of the market’s fairest and most compelling forces.

The Musk Haters

The group hating Musk is forming distinctive edges. They love the censorious European Union without really knowing what happens inside it, or are willing to support Keir Starmer, despite undeniable inadequacies and failure, all because he appears as opposition. Here, they will accept his substantiation to curtail freedom of speech – not altogether convincing, but alas, horse-trading. In a slight to Tesla’s success, they will side with the excesses of net zero and be willing to absorb the impact that madness demands – they will defy the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruling on trans spaces if Musk supports it, or kneel before wealth taxes, or the exclusion of white working or middle-class candidates from employment, if they sense the initiatives will enrage him.

Thus, the only reason to dislike Musk is the fact that his success has prompted some of the most vindictive, asinine, and childish behaviour our generation will ever know. We are firmly trapped in a post-jealousy era, where one man’s space endeavours are invalid – but the tethered bottle cap, cycle lanes, and website cookie policies represent the pinnacles of civilisation.