Suzanne Harrington: Dear Elon Musk, isn’t there better things to do with €44 billion?
What could you do with $44bn? Well, loads, actually. $44 billion exceeds the GDP of 104 of the world’s 190 economies.
So if you had $44bn to spend you could – off the top of my head – fund clean energy production, fund research into clean energy, fund those affected by the transition away from unclean energy (like coal miners, oil workers), fund the distribution of energy-efficient devices like heat pumps (to places like Ukraine and anywhere else reliant on Russian gas).
Fund new ways of living so that we survive climate catastrophe. Fund the resettling of climate refugees.
Fund the feeding of the globe’s starving people. The UN Food Programme has done the maths – just $6bn was all that was needed to keep the most vulnerable alive in 2022.
Annually, we need $30bn to combat world hunger. You could do that. You could be a useful human.
Or you could use your spare $44bn to buy an online micro-blogging site famed for its toxic, polarising discourse.
“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilisation,” said the Silicon Valley oligarch who just bought Twitter.
No, mate. Everyone having enough food to keep them alive, and an unpoisoned planet to live on, is the future of civilisation.
But you go right ahead, and spend billions that could so hugely help humanity on something that will instead help white supremacists, conspiracists and all the other -ists to carry on death-threating each other in 280 outraged characters. Invite Trump back on as you’re at it. Free speech, right?
It’s hard to articulate the disgust I feel for Elon Musk, but I’ll give it a go. He is said to be worth $264bn.
Of the 190 global economies, this makes him individually richer than three-quarters of them, 148 countries, so that he – an individual human – is richer than, for example, Finland, Portugal, Peru, Vietnam.
And while he didn’t personally invent capitalism, being richer than 148 countries is disgusting.
As is the idea of ‘philanthropy’, the word we use to describe rich people financially masturbating in public.
There should be no need for the gross ego-stroking of philanthropy, no opportunity for any individual human to play god with their cash. Yet here we are, dependent upon it.
But instead, ‘Muck’ (Freudian typo) invests billions in space ships. He’d like to colonise Mars or something. Which is like going on a luxury holiday when your house is on fire – perhaps being richer than 148 countries results in the kind of grandiosity normally found on locked psychiatric wards.
Neither he nor any of those other Silicon Valley oligarchs have ever used their insane wealth for the genuine good of humanity; instead they spunk it on vanity projects, while assuaging their guilt/managing their public image by hurling the occasional billion towards Africa.
And we continue to tolerate a system which allows this, which props it up. Where is our disgust?
