Elon Musk doesn’t want to live for eternity, and says politicians shouldn’t rule forever either

“If we live for too long, I think it ossifies society—there’s no changing of the leadership because leadership never dies," Musk said during a conference appearance last month in France. “For a lot of people, they just don’t change their minds, they just die—that inhibits the new ideas."

His latest comments follow his suggestions over the years that there should be age restrictions on serving in public office, and a growing restlessness among some about the generational power shifts at play—or, rather, not at play.

“The physicality of the brain becomes startlingly obvious upon inspection: it is a biological computer," the billionaire tweeted this past week. “Our brains shrinks [sic] over time as we age and when you see the brain of someone with severe dementia, the damage is not subtle. What is surprising is that it functions at all."

Age is on many minds these days as President Biden, at 81, faces pressure to step aside in the midst of concerns over his mental acuity.

Private emails between the billionaire investor Peter Thiel and the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, circulating on social media in recent days, reveal both businessmen suggesting the natural handoff of power between the older and younger generations had stalled with baby boomers, those born just after World War II, hanging on too long.

The emails, from 2020, were made public as part of litigation against the social-media company in Tennessee over its impact on young people.

“In a healthier society, the handover from the Boomers to the younger generations should have started some time ago (maybe as early as the 1990s for Gen X), and that for a whole variety of reasons, this generational transition has been delayed as the Boomers have maintained an iron grip on many US institutions," wrote Thiel, who had been on the board of Facebook’s parent, Meta Platforms.

Thiel said some of the baby boomers’ ability to hang on to power derived “from the self-referential narcissism of the Boomers as this unusually large cohort of people voted for people like themselves and could afford to ignore anyone younger."

Zuckerberg, who is 40 years old, wrote that society is on the cusp of generational change as more millennials, generally defined as those born from about 1980 until 1996, and those who are younger cast their votes, and as the older generations shrink, predicting a millennial-aged president elected by 2032.

“Many important institutions in our society (e.g., education, healthcare, housing, efforts to combat climate change) are still run primarily by boomers in ways that transfer a lot of value from younger generations to boomers themselves," Zuckerberg wrote.

It is kind of like the old saying: Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everybody wants their elders to step aside, but…. Both Thiel, 56, and Zuckerberg have been among the more prominent investors to put money into so-called longevity research aimed at fighting off the effects of time.

Musk, who turned 53 years old a few weeks ago, has said he doesn’t have any longevity investments. “I am not aware of any secret technology to combat aging," Musk said during a Wall Street Journal event in 2021. “It is important for us to die."

While he hasn’t weighed in specifically on the latest Biden age issue, Musk has been one of the leading voices in calling for an age cap for those in public office.

Last summer, for example, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican who is 82 years old, appeared to freeze up during a news conference, Musk was quick to weigh in, tweeting, “We need a constitutional amendment. This is insane."

In 2021, Musk suggested that someone shouldn’t be allowed to run for office who is older than 69, arguing that there are already minimum age requirements for serving as president or in Congress. “Reciprocally, there should be maximum age limits too," he concluded.

While the number 69 is a favorite of Musk’s for innuendo-filled jokes, on this matter, he seems to be picking the figure based on a more bureaucratic precedent. “70 is currently the age when you receive maximum social security benefits," Musk added in 2022. “In other words, that’s when the govt concludes that you can’t hold a job!!"

He has also raised concerns about former President Donald Trump’s age, though that was when the two were exchanging public jabs; they have seemingly made amends, aligning over their mutual opposition to Biden.

As a self-proclaimed history buff, Musk has even peppered his argument over the years with callouts to the nation’s Founding Fathers, who included notable members in their 20s and 30s. “Didn’t occur to founders of USA that people would live so long, so they put in age minimums (for wisdom), but not age maximums," he tweeted in 2022. “Back then, George Washington was the ‘old guy’ at age 44!" he added last year.

But it isn’t all jokes. “I’m not poking fun at aging," Musk said at the Journal event in 2021. “I am just saying that if we’ve got people in very important positions that have to make decisions that are critical to the security of the country, then they need to have sufficient presence of mind and cognitive ability to make those decisions well because the whole country is depending on them."

Twenty years from now, we’ll check in on Musk’s stance on aging and giving up power.

Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com