ESSAY: SOLVING FOR X

[Editor’s Note]: In 1987, I chose to attend The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me tour instead of finishing a paper due the next day. No regrets about the concert. Some regrets about Dr. Barnes’s quiet disappointment.

This replacement piece is submitted 38 years later in the spirit of delayed accountability and as proof that yes, Dr. Barnes, I was listening. Your class is why I still care about writing. I learned to read and evaluate several texts into a synthesis of opinion and there may yet be hope for my wretched soul. Thank you.

Inheriting the Algorithm: Elon Musk and the Legacy of Technocratic Power

Introduction: The Man Beyond the Meme

Once hailed as a messianic fusion of Edison, Tesla, and Iron Man, Elon Musk has undergone a cultural metamorphosis from lauded inventor to ironic meme; from futurist entrepreneur to chaos merchant and techno-troll. Yet beneath the pop cultural noise and partisan caricature lies a deeper and more urgent question: What is Musk actually building?

His actions suggest more than impulse or brand management. They hint at a long game. One rooted not in party politics, but in ideology. A belief system wired into his lineage, shaped by a 20th-century vision that predates Silicon Valley and outpaces Mars.

To understand Musk’s present influence, we must examine his inheritance, not just wealth or eccentricity, but a philosophical framework drawn from the once-influential technocratic movement. A movement that sought to remake society around expertise, control, and systems. A movement once led in Canada by his grandfather, Joshua Haldeman.

Historical Context: Joshua Haldeman and the Technocratic Dream

In the 1930s, amid economic collapse and rising authoritarianism, Technocracy Incorporated proposed a radical alternative: replace politicians with engineers, and govern society like a perfectly calibrated machine. Their blueprint was sweeping; abolish money, implement “energy accounting,” and restructure North America into a centralized “Technate” run by scientific elites.

Joshua Haldeman, Elon Musk’s maternal grandfather, was a prominent Canadian leader of this movement. When Technocracy Inc. was banned in Canada during WWII, Haldeman emigrated, not to another Western democracy, but to South Africa, a country entrenched in racial segregation. While no direct evidence links him to Apartheid advocacy, the move raises questions. Was it convenience, ideological sympathy, or colonial ambition?

The original technocratic movement faded. But its core assumptions that society can be engineered, that expertise trumps representation, that systems are purer than people, never died. Musk didn’t need to study his grandfather’s pamphlets. The belief system was already whispered to his cradle.

Ideological Parallels: DOGE, Data, & Disruption

Musk’s appointment as head of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) in the post 2024 administration wasn’t a lark. It was a logical outcome. DOGE, framed as a cost-cutting exercise, operated through algorithmic audits and AI led restructuring. Federal agencies were reorganized, minimized, or erased. Actions guided not by policy debates, but machine learning models.

Strikingly, Musk’s appointment came just days after a sudden, unexplained firing of federal Inspectors General, watchdogs tasked with uncovering waste and fraud. If fiscal responsibility were truly the goal, why remove the people most equipped to find inefficiency? The answer lies not in transparency, but in clearance.

DOGE didn’t deliver its promised “trillions in cuts,” but it succeeded in other, more revealing ways:

Regulatory bodies overseeing Musk-affiliated industries were hollowed out.
Contracts flowed disproportionately to Musk-linked firms.
Competing vendors were sidelined through algorithmic favor.

DOGE became a shadow ‘Technate’: a para government where data replaced debate. Civil servants were terminated by spreadsheet. Welfare programs were “optimized” into oblivion. The optics of efficiency masked the machinery of consolidation.

Cultural and Political Implications: Meme Lord & Kingmaker

Musk’s alliance with MAGA wasn’t born of belief, it was born of opportunity. Like Trump, he recognized the vulnerability in a movement suspicious of institutions. He didn’t fill that vacuum with policy. He filled it with persona.

By posing as the “genius outsider” who loathes bureaucrats, Musk became a post truth technocrat: an engineer of systems who disdains the institutions they replace.

Observers liken him to a cuckoo bird, invading nests, pushing out founders, and claiming credit. From Tesla to Twitter to DOGE, the pattern repeats: others build, Musk dominates, the narrative shifts.

He recast Twitter (now X) as a gladiator pit of speech. He disrupted crypto markets not through invention, but through vibe. He declared that “civilization must scale reproduction,” with himself as exemplar, blurring the line between fertility initiative and Silicon Valley eugenics.

Ethical Considerations: When Optimization Devours Democracy

Technocracy promised liberation through logic. But logic without ethics becomes control. Neuralink offers healing, but also surveillance. Starlink connects the globe, but bypasses national governance. DOGE trims waste, but severs democratic process.

When society is treated as a codebase, the human cost becomes a rounding error:

Consent is a checkbox.
Citizenship is an API call.
Governance becomes an update to the Terms of Service.

Musk’s worldview appears to operate on a principle: power is not granted, it is accumulated through intelligence. Legitimacy flows not from the governed, but from the algorithm.

It’s tempting to see Musk as a lone Spock steering the future. But Star Trek gave us more than Spock. It gave us Kirk’s gut, Bones’ empathy, Uhura’s diplomacy, Scotty’s grit. The bridge was a balance.

A society run by Spock alone isn’t progress. It’s programming.

So we must ask if Musk’s vision is a 2025 evolution of his grandfather’s dream or did he betray that dream, turning technocratic governance into personal empire?

Conclusion: The Endgame Is In Motion

Elon Musk is not democracy’s destroyer. He is its next challenge.

His projects aren’t side quests. They are infrastructure. He isn’t posting chaos for fun. He is building systems of influence and governance without government, power without consent.

This isn’t alarmism. This is alignment. Cultural, technological, and political alignment toward a world where decision-making is delegated to metrics, and leadership is a feature, not a vote.

We are not watching a man build rockets. We are watching him build governance for a system that doesn’t need permission. One that logs in, integrates, and optimizes.

But will it endure? Will his long game out trump Trump and the MAGA movement? Or, like the Technocracy movement of the 1930s, will Musk’s model collapse under the weight of its own inhuman logic and the resistance of the governed?

That answer is not in the code. It’s in us.

Reference Section: Technocracy, Musk, and the Modern State