He Acquired a Bunch of Cash Once more

Yesterday, with a single slam of a gavel, Elon Musk got almost 14 percent closer to being a trillionaire.

He desires you to assume you could’t harm him by calling him grasping when issues like this go his approach. In his public life, he has cocooned himself inside a heat little excuse for his outlandish, limitless pursuit of a bigger fortune. He most just lately laid it all out in a tweet on November 3, however he’s been fairly constant about this for years.

The excuse goes like this: human consciousness is nice, however would die out completely if all life on Earth have been snuffed out. Earth is a finite useful resource and can finally grow to be uninhabitable or be destroyed. There is no such thing as a solution to keep away from this, so it’s crucial that humanity discover a solution to persist with out Earth—first by colonizing Mars, after which through the use of that step as a solution to increase into different photo voltaic programs. He wants as a lot cash as potential to get to Mars, subsequently, for those who squint, getting as wealthy as potential is definitely heroic and Elon Musk is our savior. 

This isn’t all improper. There are disasters threatening Earth, and even when we survive these, our planet will solely exist for a restricted period of time, after which it is going to be swallowed by the enlargement of our solar when it depletes the gas at its core and turns into a purple dwarf. There are two frequent methods of shrugging this data off: a) The Armageddon or an analogous spiritual or religious occasion can have ended our troubles by then, or b) Actually, human extinction is good. In case you don’t subscribe to one in all these concepts, then Elon Musk would possibly look like he has a very good level. 

Elon Musk doesn’t have a very good level, nevertheless. And he stays, by any cheap customary, completely nothing aside from a grasping wealthy man. 

The concept the Earth is on target for imminent doom is misplaced. As has been defined endlessly elsewhere, local weather change isn’t going to make our species extinct. It’s simply going to make life right here more durable and worse. The onerous reality is that there’s no escape. We now have to endure the horrible disasters and check out, for generations, to restore the harm we’ve achieved.  

However if you zoom out previous short-term blips that Elon Musk performatively pretends to care about, like declining fertility, you’ll truly begin to really feel fairly hopeful. For many of our species’ existence on Earth, we competed with predators that have been making an attempt to eat us and steal our meals, and we pulled by. Yeah, we’re at present all hooked on scrolling on our telephones, however that doesn’t change the truth that we’re constructed for survival, and we’ll do it on a chilly Earth or a scorching earth, with or with out Teslas and satellite tv for pc web, till, say, the atmosphere becomes unbreathable in roughly a billion years, and, hell, possibly even longer than that. 

All of which is to say that in the long run, the mission of sending combustion-powered gas tubes to the closest planet in our photo voltaic system is a fairly goofy plan for saving our species. There’s no hurry to get off Earth, and anyway, we don’t at present know what to do about the truth that Mars colonists would be irradiated, and unable to grow food in the local soil. You and I’ve the identical Google as Elon Musk, so it’s not like he doesn’t find out about these issues.

However he nearly actually is aware of his fantasies are more and more out of reach within his lifetime. He’ll be pushing 60 earlier than the purpose at which he himself says he’ll finally launch a crewed mission in his a few of his more moderen predictions. He’ll be someplace within the vary of 73 to 83 by the point he now claims there will be a self-sustaining city on Mars. And in latest months the fantasy has gotten weirder nonetheless. He now desires to etch his own AI-written encyclopedia in stone and distribute it on Mars and elsewhere in house.

I can solely guess that Musk is flailing. The truth that he’ll by no means see the creation of a Mars colony is coming into view for him. Perhaps if he actually hurries, he can strand just a few corpses on the lifeless, purple rock that’s Mars—something he has acknowledged is part of his plan—earlier than he himself slumps over lifeless atop his big money pile.

Humanity will stick with it with out him. His time will come to an finish, and the species he desires of saving received’t have wanted him. The present interval of cartoonish inequality between the wealthy and poor will finish. Our species will endure the slings and arrows of life on our imperfect planet, and if we’re fortunate, maybe a day will come sooner or later once we can pilot some unknown type of craft comfortably to a different star and arrange a colony there. Perhaps folks in that colony will learn a e-book that mentions Elon Musk after Croesus and Mansa Musa on an inventory of wealthy guys, again when there have been wealthy guys. 

Anyway, Musk has been combating a years-long legal battle to save lots of the $56 billion Tesla pay bundle that pushed him to the standing of super-billionaire within the first place. Final 12 months, a courtroom agreed with sure shareholders who felt that Musk’s management of Tesla known as the equity of the pay bundle into query, and that bundle was tossed out. Nicely, he simply received his attraction, and because the bundle has gone up in worth over time, he simply bought $139 billion richer. Good for him.