Hey Elon Musk:
Now that Texas has become a state governed by Democrats, after you spent a small fortune to prevent their takeover of the Lone Star State, you might want to leave your properties in Boca Chica and Austin and move back to the Bay Area.
San Francisco remains a haven for wealthy men. A number of them recently helped Mayor Daniel Lurie fight corruption in City Hall, while he overlooks their own roles in fostering inequality.
As you no doubt noticed, while Texas Senator-elect James Talarico was criticizing your spending more than $225 million to prevent his win in that state, California’s voters declined to initiate a wealth tax on billionaires. They probably won’t tax trillionaires here, either. Maybe San Francisco is the sanctuary city for you.
I know you never completely left the Bay Area. You still have some offices and operations in Palo Alto, Hawthorne, and San Jose. But you removed X (formerly Twitter) headquarters from San Francisco, and established enough residencies out of state that you could avoid paying the billionaire tax if it passed. But Prop 40 didn’t pass.
I’m not saying you’ll be welcomed by everyone in San Francisco, but Mayor Lurie is likely to roll out a long red carpet for you. You might want to consider moving X headquarters back here, and set up some new offices for Space X and your other holdings. We have ample office space available downtown, although your competitors in the AI Industry are taking over some of it. I’m guessing the mayor will lend you a room in City Hall, maybe his own office, until you can buy your own buildings.
If you come to San Francisco, you’ll be far away from Senator-elect Talarico and his fearful words (which I quote) that Elon Musk “wanted a senator who was going to do his bidding, who was going to sell off Texas land to his data centers, who was going to give our Texas water [to him], who was going to give our taxpayer dollars to him. And I think he knows that I have a history of standing up to billionaires in state government. I have a history of tackling corruption and cleaning up government.”
You won’t hear that kind of speech from Mayor Lurie.
I suspect that some San Franciscans would prefer Talarico and his kind of speech about wealth to yours, but I don’t think Talarico is willing to change locations right now, whereas it might be to your advantage to relocate to a city where the local government doesn’t stand up to billionaires, where the mayor welcomes billionaires’ support (if not their orders) and their money in PACs to change the City Charter and make government less democratic.
There might be some protests against your return, particularly if you try to open a data center here or flood the streets with yet more driverless vehicles or heil white supremacists. The “Tesla Takedowns,” those joyous, carnivalesque objections to fascism and trillionaires that have been held outside your auto showroom in San Francisco, will probably become more vociferous if you return.
In fact, your occupation of the City by the Bay could increase local opposition to wealth inequality and undemocratic government. And if you move here not just to avoid Talarico, and not just to add some of your wealth to the mayor’s campaign chest—if you could move here and, instead of funding MAGA campaigns against progressives, contribute a few hundred billion to programs for affordable housing, healthcare, education, public transit, and the struggle against climate change, that would markedly increase local support for your return; even James Talarico might approve.
Joel Schechter has written several books on satire.
