Behind the mask of futuristic “innovation,” Musk’s wealth is built on destroyed communities, stolen wages, unearned tax breaks, and polluted waters. His companies wreck Texas and everyday people pay the price.
Musk’s trillion-dollar wealth is greater than the total GDP of the world’s 92 poorest countries combined. He has chosen Texas as his base of operations and personal playground for one reason only: because the state and local governments are willing to roll over for his companies. SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, Starlink, and Musk’s other companies are profitable because they receive massive tax incentives at residents’ expense. They take advantage of weak or non-existent regulations that allow them to destroy the environment, and even gamble with workers’ lives on the jobsite, to save money on their bottom-line profits. Musk’s enrichment is built on our impoverishment.
SpaceX launch sites: McGregor, TX and Starbase, TX
SpaceX has two main launch sites in Texas. One is located in McGregor, outside of Waco. The other is far more infamous: in the city of Starbase, formerly known as Boca Chica.
Both sites have a record of environmental and labor violations, but “Starbase” is the example par excellence of how SpaceX uses its massive coffers and threats of eminent domain to bully residents into submission.
Boca Chica, Texas was a small village in south Texas surrounded by a federal wildlife refuge and state park lands. The surrounding lands have been described as environmentally sensitive: “a hemispheric meeting place of terrestrial, coastal and marine environments where neotropical and North American central plains wildlife and plant communities mingle,” also a critical site for hundreds of unique species and migrating birds. It is considered sacred territory for the Carrizo-Comecrudo tribe.
In 2012, SpaceX identified Boca Chica as a location for their new launch site. They began buying up the surrounding land and by 2015, had constructed a facility. Rocket launches and explosions became disruptive to daily life. In 2019, officials sent alerts encouraging residents to stand outside their homes during an experimental launch in the event that an explosion could create shockwaves and break windows.
That same year, SpaceX made an offer to buy every house in Boca Chica for three times their market value, but with a three-week deadline to accept, which the company said was “non-negotiable.” Residents were threatened with talk of eminent domain if they did not agree. SpaceX threatened the remaining residents one year later with another “final and best offer,” with the threat that for residents who stayed, “the scale and frequency of spaceflight activities at the site continue to accelerate, your property will frequently fall within established hazard zones in which no civilians will be permitted to remain[.]”
The implication could not have been clearer: SpaceX always intended to turn the entire area of Boca Chica into an industrial wasteland. Musk even stated in 2018 that “we’ve got a lot of land with nobody around, and so if it blows up, it’s cool.”
By 2025, they had succeeded in capturing enough of the area to officially incorporate it as “Starbase, Texas.” The “mayor” of this city and its two commissioners are all employed by or closely connected to SpaceX, evoking the dictatorial “company towns” of a century past.
An average SpaceX launch discharges tens of thousands of gallons of industrial wastewater directly into the surrounding environment. This includes a number of pollutants as identified by a 2024 TCEQ report. Activists have documented habitat destruction, air and water pollution, wildfires, disruptive noise and vibrations, and more from the site.
SpaceX has shown the same disregard for its own workers as it does for the environment. A 2023 Reuters report showed that Texas SpaceX workers had suffered at least 600 unreported workplace injuries in roughly a 10-year period. This represents only a portion of the real number of injuries, which is unknown because SpaceX rarely submits injury reports. The company often ignores these legally mandated reporting requirements.
The injuries detailed by Reuters are horrific in nature and scale:
The records included reports of more than 100 workers suffering cuts or lacerations, 29 with broken bones or dislocations, 17 whose hands or fingers were “crushed,” and nine with head injuries, including one skull fracture, four concussions and one traumatic brain injury. The cases also included five burns, five electrocutions, eight accidents that led to amputations, 12 injuries involving multiple unspecified body parts, and seven workers with eye injuries.
At least one SpaceX worker even died due to lax safety standards. In 2014, Lonnie LeBlanc died while transporting foam insulation to SpaceX’s McGregor facility. SpaceX did not provide any securing straps for transporting the foam, leading LeBlanc to try to secure the foam with his own body. SpaceX did not report LeBlanc’s death.
Tesla Gigafactory: Austin, TX
One of Tesla’s flagship factories was built post-pandemic in Del Valle, an unincorporated area near Austin. This factory has benefited greatly from a massive tax handout even as its workers have accused the company of widespread wage theft and labor violations.
In 2020, Del Valle Independent School District awarded Tesla a $68 million tax incentive to build the Giga Factory in their area. This kind of “reverse Robin Hood” tax incentive rewarded an already wealthy company an obscene amount of money at the expense of an impoverished local school district.
Even before the factory was finished, Tesla’s factory was already christened in blood. In 2021, Antelmo Ramirez, a construction worker, died of hyperthermia on the jobsite. Tesla did not report his death to the local authorities. They were ultimately fined $14,502 for the labor violations leading to Ramirez’s death, less than half of the cost of the cheapest Tesla model.
By 2022, just one year into the factory’s operation, the Workers Defense Project had accused Tesla of widescale wage theft and labor violations based on their work with factory workers. But this has not stopped Tesla, which has instead sought to further deregulate itself and exempt itself from local laws.
In 2024, Tesla received an exemption from Austin’s extraterritorial jurisdiction. This means that despite being in Austin’s greater metropolitan area, Tesla does not have to follow any of Austin’s local environmental restrictions or regulations. The company enjoys all of the benefits of being located in a large urban area, with none of the obligations to workers, the city, or the environment.
That same year, a second death occurred at the Gigafactory. Victor Joe Gomez Sr., an electrician, died at the factory inspecting electrical panels that should have been turned off at the time of inspection. Tesla was fined $49,650: less than the price of a single Cybertruck.
Tesla lithium refinery: Robstown, TX
In 2023, Tesla broke ground on a lithium refinery in Robstown. This is just 16 miles east of Corpus Christi, which is experiencing a severe water crisis caused by heavy industrial use.
Tesla initially touted an “acid-free” process that is allegedly cleaner than traditional lithium refining. But a 2026 lab test found traces of hexavalent chromium (a known carcinogen) in Tesla’s discharge water, along with high sodium and chloride levels, strontium, and ammonia. Lithium itself was also found in the discharge. This refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of wastewater per day into the surrounding environment.
Multiple facilities: Bastrop County, TX
Musk is currently working to build multiple facilities in Bastrop, Texas, farther east of Austin. Facilities for The Boring Company, SpaceX, X, and Starlink all have presences in Bastrop, often at the same facilities.
It is in Bastrop County that the character of Musk’s economic dictatorship is laid bare. Sprawling, multi-company facilities in various stages of construction crush any illusion that the companies Musk has bought are acting independently. Musk’s companies have bought up hundreds of acres of land in this rural, agriculture-heavy county, turning them into large industrial sites. In turn, these sites have received tens of millions in tax incentives from state and local entities.
The full impact of Musk’s Bastrop county takeover is not fully known, but the Boring Company alone has received repeated citations for discharging untreated wastewater and failing to control erosion, even as that company has applied for permits to dump 142,000 gallons of wastewater every day into the Colorado river.
Musk treats Texas as his personal dictatorship
Elon Musk owns about 90 companies across Texas to do his personal bidding. Some of these companies quietly buy up and develop thousands of acres of land for his massive flagship companies. Other companies exist for paying nannies, supporting Donald Trump, or even just to acquire extra residences for himself.
Never has it been clearer: the dictatorship of Musk must be dismantled. The people of Texas have bled and died for his private empire. His obscene wealth was built on the public’s suffering: it should be used for the public good instead!
Featured image: Engine test at “Starbase,” Boca Chica, TX in 2021. Wikimedia Commons.
