🇺🇸🛰️🇪🇺 Elon Musk, Monopoly, and Political Power. Does History Ring a Bell? In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly broken up under antitrust laws. America recognized that allowing one businessman to accumulate enormous control over an essential industry was dangerous. Now, more than a century later, look at Elon Musk, SpaceX, Starlink, xAI, and Tesla. (Soon, he wants to merge some of these to create a global, technocratic monstrosity.) We’re watching one billionaire accumulate extraordinary control over satellite communications, technology that governments, militaries, businesses, and entire countries increasingly depend on. And now, according to the Financial Times, the U.S. ambassador to the EU is threatening “devastating” retaliation if Europe restricts SpaceX from parts of its market. What the hell? Since when is the United States government supposed to act as the enforcement arm of a billionaire’s business empire? This is not just about market dominance anymore. It’s about economic power turning into political influence, and potentially using government power to protect private business interests. Rockefeller had Standard Oil. Musk has Starlink, SpaceX, xAI, etc. Different centuries, different technologies, but some disturbingly familiar patterns. This is supposed to be democracy, not a damn technocracy run by billionaires. I am all for free markets and capitalism with social democratic guardrails, just like in this case (don’t confuse that with pathetic kumbaya democratic socialism, which will most likely lead to damn socialism, and communism is next), but I am also against monopolies, political influence, and intimidation in business. Enough is enough, FFS!