Today, the SpaceX initial public offering is expected to push Elon Musk’s net worth into 13-digit territory, making him the world’s first trillionaire.
(To put that into perspective, his paper wealth will be more than double South Africa’s entire GDP.)
How do you view this milestone?
Inspirational
Dangerous
Other (let us know below)It is sucking funds from more worthy investments.
the logical outcome of a rigged system
Lest we forget that the richest man in the world dismantled USAID. Feels like there’s a metaphor here about inequality
If he were a trillionaire and used his enormous wealth for good or paid his fair share of tax that would go into social programmes in his country of residence, then I would have less problem than watching someone amass wealth but not bring any obvious benefit to society.
Instead he’s stoked racist tension in the country of his birth, and claims that South Africa won’t sign on to Starlink because of his race (rather than the fact that he doesn’t want to play by the rules of SA’s business environment….whether those policies are right or wrong is a different conversation). If I want to do business in another country, i must abide by their policies, end of story.
Further to that he maniacally took a chainsaw to his DOGE adventure, which resulted in the slashing of benefits and projects that sought a more equal society in America and the termination of USAID (and America will see the cost of that in years to come, where the current uncontained ebola outbreak is the first example).
Clearly this individual wants to accumulate wealth for its own sake, but his extreme wealth comes at extreme cost to the rest of the planet (jist go and look at the cesspool of hatred that X has become as it spews hatred, anger, bigotry, intolerance and every kind of -ism).
I’m so sad that Elon was a South African export.