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Mega rich to hitch ride with Elon Musk after Earth is destroyed
So many rock and roll references to what this writer is talking about... My parents and the Church have always taught me that envy of others' good fortune is a bad thing.Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the latest tech billionaire to invest his money in spaceships: on Tuesday, he debuted his space travel company Blue Origin’s newest rocket. Now, those who want to cruise the galaxy can choose between the sleek new rocket and the stubbier model Bezos announced in April – or they can opt to ride with Tesla founder Elon Musk on a SpaceX ship, or hop on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. It's good to be the king... At this rate, would-be space travelers will be able to choose their favorite tech company, find its richest guy and buy a ticket on his craft of choice. Why does everyone who achieves economic dominance over the planet immediately turn around and try to get off it? I think the main point with privately funded space travel is that it is privately funded. A few years and they'll be building a Death Star, right? The “boys and their toys” explanation is the obvious one – once you’ve bought all the cars and boats and planes you want, why not buy a rocket? (We don’t have a “girls and their toys” ethos yet because the cards are stacked against women getting to this level of obscene wealth, but I suspect a lot of us would want to buy rocketships, too.) You can always drop your drawers in the presence of the men who have such toys. Hey, it could help.
 Space is inherently cool, and even if it weren’t, space is inherently other – which matters a lot to the man who has everything terrestrial. By the same token, someone who already has a watch that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars can buy a watch that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars but comes from space.That statement doesn't seem to make any sense. Or is it just me? He's too subtle for me, right? Of course, uber-wealthy tech entrepreneurs aren’t just buying rockets for their personal amusement. They’re founding or investing in space travel – they want to get you off-planet, too. Well, not you-you, but someone like you with much, much, much more money. Jealousy, sarcasm, pettiness, all in a single sentence. And that’s where the vogue for billionaire space travel magnates gets a little weird –and maybe even sinister. It’s already very true that money expands your world; the person with the funds to have a car is less restricted in her movements than the person without one, and the person with a huge plane and the money to fly it is less restricted still. Warning: Kommie thinking ahead.  The expansion of rich people’s travel horizons comes at a price for everyone, both rich and poor. With the exception of America’s weirdly-expensive Amtrak system, cost and luxury scale with fossil fuel consumption; travel that costs more and feels more indulgent is also travel that has a cataclysmic effect on the environment. The faster and further you can afford to travel, the greater your environmental footprint. And often, the people less able to travel are the ones left holding the toxic-chemical and pollution-filled bag.Like the Chinese who are building solar panels so you can feel better about the environment. So pioneering space travel is an environmental hazard? I guess it is, since everything's an environmental hazard. Companies like Blue Origin are using money and resources to push outwards, to expand the worlds of their rich customers all the way into space. But those same customers – and some of the owners – are making their terrestrial money in the classic capitalist terrestrial way: by working around any obstacle to profit, including environmental regulations and conservation efforts. Yep. That's Jeff Bezos all over. Almost all industry is environmentally disastrous, after all; truly prioritizing earth-friendliness would destroy most companies. Capitalism is a terrible economic system, but it has been provably superior to any other over the course of human history. If the most objectionable aspect to capitalism is that a small number of people have accumulated wealth for the express purpose of doing whatever they want with it, then I am good with that.  Truly prioritizing earth friendliness would have us living in thatched huts and scratching in the dirt with pointed sticks, assuming our betters allowed it, which they likely wouldn't. You don't build solar panels out in back of your shack. Nor do you produce integrated circuits that make computers possible. If all companies were destroyed there wouldn't be any of the little amenities that make life in the 21st century so much better than life was in the fifth or sixth century. There hasn't been a plague to wipe out two thirds of the population of Europe lately. There's a reason for that and it's not prioritizing earth-friendliness. Some people with a great deal of money care more about the fate of the world than others, but they’re all willing to cut corners if it affects the bottom line. You can tell because they have a great deal of money; you can also tell because they’re willing to spend it on a ride in a spaceship. That reasoning is so circular it made me dizzy. All wealthy people have one other thing in common, perhaps you failed to mention. They have risked their money, their very substance so that they can earn a profit providing better goods and services for a reasonable price. Those products arguably have made life on this planet better. How do they do that? By spending money. Which raises the question: are they just gearing up to wash their hands of the planet and leave the rest of us to clean up? By pushing outward while ignoring the problems it causes back on the home turf, are they effectively creating a galactic upper class that rests on the backs of the earthbound? Even if that’s not literally the plan, it may be the ultimate outcome. But if they all take off into space and move to Jupiter or Alderan then those of us left behind can get on with prioritizing earth-friendliness. Posted by: badanov 2015-09-18 |
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