![California Bureaucrat Says the Quiet Part Out Loud](https://www.econlib.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/90.jpeg)
The California Coastal Commission on Thursday rejected the Air Force’s plan to give SpaceX permission to launch up to 50 rockets a year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
“Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” Commissioner Gretchen Newsom said at the meeting in San Diego.
The agency’s commissioners, appointed by the governor and legislative leaders, voted 6-4 to reject the Air Force’s plan over concerns that all SpaceX launches would be considered military activity, shielding the company from having to acquire its own permits, even if military payloads aren’t being carried.
This is from Alex Nieves, “California officials cite Elon Musk’s politics in rejecting SpaceX launches,” Politico, October 10, 2024.
I think the public choice model of the behavior of government officials gives insights. One insight is that the officials will follow their own interests and that these are often unrelated to the more general interests of the population. Politicians, anticipating this criticism, not mainly from economists but mainly from everyday citizens, often try to dress up their actions in the language of public interest or common good.
But every once in a while, the mask slips. Gretchen Newsom just let the mask slip. Notice her statement, which is her list of her grievances against Elon Musk. Ask yourself if there’s any connection between those three grievances and whether it would be a good idea to let Musk launch rockets from Vandenberg.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas L Hutcheson
Oct 14 2024 at 10:02am
Agreed! A CEO’s erratic behavior should not influence this kind of low level cost benefit analysis.
Scott Sumner
Oct 14 2024 at 4:40pm
I also agree. But I have to say that “erratic behavior” is an awfully polite way to describe what Musk has been doing, which is perhaps the most inexcusable behavior that I’ve ever observed in major US entrepreneur.
Jim Glass
Oct 14 2024 at 8:27pm
What’s to object to?
Mactoul
Oct 15 2024 at 12:09am
But why would these new citizens vote Democrat in perpetuity?
There have been millions of new citizens since 1965 and still Republicans are winning elections and even presidency.
Matthias
Oct 15 2024 at 3:56am
One wonders if Musk is playing deliberately stupid here, to win some political points, or if politics itself has rotted his brain?
There’s many reasonable arguments one can make. This ain’t one of them.
Matthias
Oct 15 2024 at 3:53am
Just about everything?
From the same rant:
You would think that would count as an argument of extending the gift of migration to more humans..
Thomas Strenge
Oct 15 2024 at 5:58am
Is it? Biden cut Tesla from the EV subsidies because they aren’t Union made. A Biden judge in Delaware tried to rescind Musk’s giant pay package based on the claims of a a 9-share shareholder. FCC cancelled Starlink’s rural broadband contract because X revealed government censorship. DOJ sues SpaceX for not hiring asylum seekers even though its military technology prohibits it from doing so. These are just a few examples of Democrat harassment before Musk went full Trump, but Musk is to blame?
Warren Platts
Oct 15 2024 at 12:57pm
Not to mention that the FAA and EPA are also after him…
Warren Platts
Oct 15 2024 at 1:07pm
Because Elon endorses Trump. Something educated people are not supposed to do, I reckon..
Dan Jennings
Oct 16 2024 at 5:28pm
it isn’t just political support for Trump that has California officials hating on Musk. They do so because Musk criticized California politics, policies, and then move his business out of their grasp… tax dollars are mightily important.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 14 2024 at 5:40pm
David: I agree–as I also agree with both Thomas and Scott. In your interesting post, I would only ask whether your “general interests of the population” are Rousseau’s “general interest,” (which he apparently uses as a synonym for the “general will”).
David Henderson
Oct 14 2024 at 6:06pm
I was careful to say “more general interests,” not “general interests.” If a politician has a small group of people he or she wants to help, and there is a larger group of, say, consumers or taxpayers, I say that this large group is “more general.”
Mactoul
Oct 15 2024 at 12:12am
Matthias
Oct 15 2024 at 3:59am
A petty desire for revenge is still their own personal desire?
Jim Glass
Oct 15 2024 at 6:14pm
Let’s all remember the real Trump-Musk mutual admiration society…
Hmmm… What generated such sudden love among the formerly ‘no love lost’? Between the man who used to proclaim his life goal is was to save the world from climate change with his electric cars, and the politician who debunked both? It’$ $uch a my$tery.
Maybe Trump’s comment above is the most honest thing he’s said in his entire campaign, and Elon is showing it? Fetching already.
Dan Jennings
Oct 16 2024 at 5:38pm
I’m certain that trump and Musk made amends on a deal involving subsidies, but you can’t forget what the democrats have done over the last several years, to Elon.
he didn’t leave California because of Any new found relationship with Trump of promises from Trump for subsidies if Elon left Cali.
Elon didn’t purchase Twitter and give journalist Matt Taibbi full access to Twitter files because of any relationship with Trump.
It could very well be a that Elon Musk became disillusioned with the direction of the Democratic Party as have Journalists Bari Weiss, Michael Schellenberger, Andrew Sullivan, and even Matt Taibbi. Of these folk, some still say they won’t vote for Trump by they will not vote For Biden, Walz, Harris, or most in the Democrat Party.
Censorship, gun confiscation, Abuse of judicial system, enormously high spending to cause high inflation, and promises of rapacious taxation tends to turn people away from those who promise to do these very things.