The Harvard Syndrome: What Does Elon Musk Know About Running A Country?
By
Leonard Zwelling
A long time ago, probably during my first year of medical school, I was introduced to the ailment called the Harvard Syndrome. In short, people who go to Harvard are assumed by some to know everything, including who will win the World Series. Harvard has been living off of this nonsense for hundreds of years.
The essence of the Harvard Syndrome is that if you are smart and able in one field, you are smart and able in most others. This is patently false.
Fast forward to Elon Musk, the new leader of the United States’ economy and foreign policy. Mr. Musk has been very successful at three important things as far as I can tell: making and selling electric cars, developing rocket ships that can land themselves, and making money at everything he touches. These are significant accomplishments and have made him the world’s richest man. But he is not the world’s smartest man. I’m not sure who is, but it is not Elon Musk.
How do I know?
See the article from The Wall Street Journal on January 14, that reports Mr. Musk’s support for the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) an extreme right-wing group critical of Germany’s remembrance of the Holocaust. Furthermore, AfD wants the sanctions on Russia lifted and it wants to resume gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. AfD is also critical of electric car subsidies which directly impact Mr. Musk and “called for Germany to leave the European Union—a decision that would make it harder for Tesla to export cars it makes in its plants near Berlin.” In other words, Musk’s support for AfD is against his own best interests. How smart is that?
A German lawmaker is quoted as saying: “if Musk’s rocket science and knowledge of electromobility were as superficial as his analysis of German politics, his cars wouldn’t drive, and his rockets wouldn’t fly.”
Check out this video of Musk. Maybe he is channeling his inner storm trooper.
https://youtu.be/joV-9FFoA3Q?si=Gmj70lQRKqGu3scv
This is why Elon Musk’s presence so close to Donald Trump is so concerning for so many. In essence, what the heck does Musk know about running a country? Musk is a brilliant developer of technology and a master at commercialization of that technology. But his choice to back a far-right Nazi-sympathizing group of German politicians is very troubling. If that’s the level of his judgment, I fear what more he will bring to his job with the Department of Government Efficiency.
There can be no doubt that the government is inefficient. Anyone who has worked in the military, in an executive bureaucracy, or in the halls of Congress knows this to be a fact. If Mr. Trump can fix this, even to a small extent, more power to him, BUT fixing is not done with a sledgehammer and that is kind of the way Mr. Musk works when he takes over a company. If X malfunctions for a few weeks, no one is really hurt. If the federal bureaucracy hiccups at all, the whole country pays a price.
Mr. Trump may have been duped into believing Mr. Musk’s version of the Harvard Syndrome. He made X work, he can make the federal government work. Maybe. I just hope the checks and balances inherent in our system of government are not suspended in the name of efficiency.
But of course, Mr. Trump has his own problem with the Harvard Syndrome. He believes “I’m, like, a smart person.” If he’s really so smart, he will keep Mr. Musk on a short leash.
I believe that Mr. Musk is indeed really smart, but not at politics. I believe that Mr. Trump is not smart, but he is President. You don’t have to be smart to be President. Then again, it doesn’t hurt.
