The U.S. Is Not a Free Market

Ten years ago, Nick got laughed out of a grad school seminar for arguing that the U.S. isn’t a fair example of capitalism — by the same logic his classmates used to exempt the USSR from representing socialism. He’s been waiting for the right case study ever since. This week he found it: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and DOGE’s crusader against ‘wasteful’ government spending, built his entire empire on $38 billion in taxpayer money. SpaceX was seeded by NASA. Tesla was saved by a government loan. Its first profitable year was manufactured by government policy. Nick breaks down the numbers, defines the terms people weaponize without understanding, and compares U.S. corporate subsidies to Europe industry by industry. The free market isn’t a principle. It’s a punchline.