Commentary

The Man Who Once Ran Labor Policy Now Wants the Government to Own the Rockets

Posted on by Bill McCarthy

Robert Reich told listeners on his podcast that Democrats should stop sending taxpayer money to Elon Musk’s companies and start preparing to take them over. He named Starlink and SpaceX. He said they ought to become a public corporation because no private person should hold that much power. The remark was not a thought experiment. It was a plan he wants the next Democratic administration to put on the table.

What Reich Said and What He Has Said Before

On the Coffee Klatch, Reich argued that roughly three-quarters of Musk’s wealth depends on government contracts, especially for the Defense Department. He called Musk an example of oligarchic power that threatens democracy and compared the situation to the robber barons of an earlier age. The remedy, he said, is not more regulation or more competition. It is nationalization. “Defund Musk. I mean this,” he told the host. “If we have a Democratic administration—and the Democrats ought to be starting this, not just with oversight hearings, but also laying the groundwork for nationalizing Starlink and SpaceX. Nationalize it. It should be a public corporation.”

This is consistent with the view Reich has expressed for years. He has written that concentrated private wealth distorts markets and politics, that a one-time wealth tax on billionaires is overdue, and that certain industries are too important to remain in private hands. He has described corporate subsidies and bailouts as “socialism for the rich” while calling for expanded public control over sectors he regards as essential. The difference this time is the specificity. He has moved from general arguments about inequality to a named target and a concrete sequence: cut the contracts, hold the hearings, then transfer ownership to the government.

How Nationalization Would Work in Practice

Reich did not spell out the legal steps, but the path he sketched is straightforward. A Democratic Congress would begin with oversight hearings that document the volume of federal contracts, the national-security uses of the technology, and any decisions Musk has made that conflict with official policy. Those hearings would supply the public justification. The next Democratic president would then direct the relevant agencies to renegotiate or terminate the contracts and to pursue legislation or executive action that converts the companies into publicly owned entities. Existing shareholders would receive compensation whose amount and form would be set by statute or by negotiation under threat of condemnation. Employees and management would report to a government board. Launch schedules, satellite deployments, and service decisions would answer to political appointees rather than to the founder or the board he currently controls.

SpaceX has flown more orbital missions in recent years than any other American provider and has restored the ability to launch astronauts from U.S. soil after a long gap. Starlink supplies connectivity that has been used in both commercial and military settings. Those facts are not in dispute. Reich’s argument is that the public interest in those capabilities outweighs the private property interest in the companies that created them.

The Pattern and the Consequence

Reich has spent decades arguing that markets left to themselves produce dangerous concentrations of power and that government must step in to correct them. Nationalizing two of the most successful technology companies in the country is the logical extension of that view. It treats private success that depends in part on government contracts as a temporary privilege that can be revoked once the political balance shifts. Whether that sequence begins after the next election depends on whether enough voters accept the premise that the government, not the people who built the companies, should decide what happens to them next.

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