The Economist Magazine Cover For 11-24-2024

The Economist Read in browser November 23rd 2024 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image Insert a clear and simple description of the image Zanny Minton Beddoes Editor-in-chief In most of our editions, the cover featured Elon Musk. Having reinvented carmaking and space travel, he now wants to reinvent government, too. In his spare time. In Britain, on the eve of a crucial vote in Parliament, we returned to write about what for us is a matter of principle: the right to die. Despite America’s economic prowess, much of Main Street, Wall Street and Silicon Valley is frustrated by the government’s profligacy and incompetence. Donald Trump has received a mandate to sort it out and he has turned to America’s richest man. That puts Mr Musk at the apex of power. Our first two ideas illustrate his ascent by putting King Elon on top of the Empire State Building, arms and legs akimbo, to form the X of his social media business. Or he could be soaring into the stratosphere, as if he were one of his own Starship super heavy-lift launch vehicles. Someone suggested that we put him in an X here, too. But then we thought about the exhaust gas. This presents Vitruvian Musk, the Renaissance man who can turn his engineering genius to rewiring the machinery of government. That is a project we support. America has a budget deficit of 6% of GDP and a debt ratio of almost 100%. The Pentagon is struggling to adapt to the age of drones and AI. Federal regulations have reached 90,000 pages, near an all-time high. Even if Mr Musk achieved only a fraction of his liberalisation, America would have much to gain. These covers illustrate our worries: dilettantism and graft. One cover has Mr Musk playing with his toys. Reforming government requires patience and diplomacy, neither of them Mr Musk’s strong suits. In the other he is swimming in gold—and indeed since the start of September the total value of Musk Inc has risen by 50%, to $1.4trn, as investors bet that the boss will be able to extract exceptional rents from his friendship with the president. So combustible are Mr Musk and Mr Trump that some of us questioned whether their relationship might blow up before this cover reached the newsstands. It has lasted to the weekend, at least. But even if it is transient, we worry that it will establish a pattern. As politics expands into trade, industrial policy and technology, the incentives for state capture in America are growing. In Britain MPs look as if they may vote down a bill on November 29th that proposes to introduce assisted dying into England and Wales. They will be squandering a rare chance to enrich people’s fundamental liberties. The Economist believes that people should have the right to choose the manner of their own death. So do at least two-thirds of Britons, who for decades have been in favour of assisted dying for those enduring unbearable suffering. When we have put this subject on the cover in the past we have used images that evoke a peaceful and painless death. Here are two more that share that impulse. But they don’t capture Britain’s situation. You might think the debate over assisted dying would be about principles. But appealing to God or the sanctity of life is no longer a winning argument. In today’s Britain such moral questions operate in a space that is governed by individual conscience, not the state. Those who can no longer defeat the bill on principle have therefore joined those who worry about the details. We wanted a cover that was more pointed. We thought about using typography. This draft playfully combines the bill’s dimming prospects with the underlying proposal. The trouble is that you need to know the story before it makes sense. Opponents of the bill make several arguments. Access to palliative care is too hit-and-miss to give terminally ill patients a genuine choice. The health service is too broken to take on the burden of assisted dying. Patients may be coerced into choosing to die, or fear that they will be a burden. The new law could be a slippery slope that will imperil the mentally ill or disabled. This is more gritty: a patient is contemplating the choices ahead. It illustrates our presumption that people are best placed to decide their own fate. In our view, the arguments of the bill’s opponents do not withstand close scrutiny. In fact, assisted dying does not happen more often in places where access to palliative care is bad. In the NHS doctors already routinely make decisions over life and death; a new law would bring that into the open. As for coercion, the idea that an evil relative might go to great lengths to kill someone who will shortly be dead makes no sense. And the slope turns out not to be slippery: in no case has an assisted-dying law restricted to the terminally ill been quietly expanded. We liked this cover. But it also stands back too far. It belongs to a book about assisted dying, rather than an urgent appeal to wavering MPs. Instead we chose a stark shot of someone’s empty bed. They have only slipped away into the next room. Cover image • View large image (“Disruptor-in-chief”) • View large image (“It’s time: Why Britons should have the right to die”) Backing stories → Elon Musk is Donald Trump’s disrupter-in-chief (Leader) → Elon Musk and Donald Trump seem besotted. Where is their bromance headed? (Briefing) → Why Britons should have the right to die (Leader) → Where British MPs should look before the vote on assisted dying (Britain) Live digital event Subscriber event The year in review Join Zanny Minton Beddoes, our editor-in-chief, for analysis of the most significant events and lives of 2024. 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