The Greediest Man on the Planet
It’s grotesque.
Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire, and that is grotesque.
He has been the ‘richest man on the planet’ [on and off, depending on the stock market] for a few years, but SpaceX going public has now made Musk about three times more wealthy than the next richest person.
Notice how this gets talked about: wealth, ‘personal fortune’, money, riches.
But I think we should be talking about greed instead.
Because that’s what it is. If you were to spend $1 million every day, it would take about 2 years and 8 months to spend $1 billion - but it would take you 2,740 years to spend $1 trillion … it’s incomprehensible, almost to the point of being meaningless. And yet, it’s what the system we have built does. It’s the game that is being played by a handful of people, and - like the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes - I think we need to name it for what it is.
Elon Musk is not a wealthy, successful man. He’s a greedy, dangerous narcissist.
I doubt many people reading this will be celebrating Musk’s wealth greed - if you’re here, you likely have some understanding of how this is a particularly ugly symptom of the metacrisis. The SpaceX valuation is based on hype and expectation, separated from our material and energetic realities, driven by the growth obligation built into the financial system, and a consequence of the perverse incentives embedded in the superorganism.
In response to all this -
- Sarah says it’s time for more feminine energy
- Douglas recommends trusting our guts
- And Rachel has a story about a community pushing back
I think they’re right.
PS I wrote a follow up to this - find it here. I’m also rather glad I Changed My Mind About Elon a few years ago.