Shortly after ordering Twitter in October for $44bn, Elon Musk – who is also the CEO of SpaceX and the self-proclaimed “Technoking” of Tesla – sent a confirmation to Twitter employees giving them two options. The first was to commit to being “very strong” and working “long hours very hard”. The second was to quit.
Musk had already laid off almost half of Twitter’s staff – as anyone with only $44bn to spare buying the social network has a penny-pinching business.
And so my editors forced me to go back on my promise not to write about Elon Musk again. But, hey, this is capitalism, and we’re all tough.
On the surface, writing about Musk must be like shooting fish in a barrel. A 51-year-old South African living in the United States sends his guts out, makes penis jokes, gets down on anti-black racism, and creates self-driving electric cars that crash into parked cars. Unfortunately, this fish is the richest man in the world, who has unlimited control over worldly things such as the stock market and the presence of Donald Trump on Twitter and is now determined to make people a “civility that travels in space” – the city we love. it or not.
As Musk told Time magazine, which shamelessly crowned him “Man of the Year” in 2021, “the next big thing is to build a self-supporting city on Mars and bring animals and terrestrial creatures there”. According to Time reports, Musk predicted that Mars will rule in five years. Eventually, rocket ships would send 100 people at a time to the Red Planet and then back to Earth, powered by Made-in-Mars fuel.
Of course, it’s not very encouraging that the person leading the conquest of space is the same person who once tried to bribe a college kid $5,000 to crash. A Twitter account which tracks Musk’s private jet using publicly available data. When the bribe didn’t work, Musk began to ban the young man.
But if Musk’s cosmic experiment succeeds, what would a Muskian Mars look like? Even if you leave out important things like breathing, it’s nice to think that nature can be pretty, um, hardcore.
At first, workers’ rights may not exist. Musk has already broken the world’s labor laws with glee, threatening workers who want to pursue a union, targeting employees, and being accused of promoting sexism and discrimination in the workplace. And it reopened one of its California factories in May 2020 against the restrictions of the coronavirus pandemic, which led to hundreds of cases of COVID-19.
On Mars under Musk, taxes would be non-existent – especially for billionaires like him who previously did not want to give even the smallest part of their wealth to the US government taxes that are collected on behalf of the people. Naturally, Musk and his companies have not hesitated to receive billions of dollars in donations and government contracts.
Regarding the design of a self-sustaining Martian city, the 2021 “Man of the Year” explains that “it will be like Noah’s ark of the future” – but with more than two animals because “it’s a little weird if there are only two”. Back in 2020, he thought “what million” of vitamin C will be needed to sustain human life on Mars, where a system of “direct democracy” and self-government will be established.
Never mind that Musk’s idea of ”democracy” is actually what Musk thinks should happen in any form – just as his self-identification as a “non-free speech” means that Musk and only Musk can say whatever he wants. .
To be honest, “free speech” no longer applies to critical journalists and activists who are being removed from Twitter to allow right-wing propaganda to run free and roam the digital world. An example of Muskian “democracy”, meanwhile, consider the reinstatement of Trump’s banned Twitter account, which took place after a 24-hour “investigation” of Musk’s Twitter followers.
A small majority of those polled voted for Trump’s return, with Musk writing: “The people have spoken… Vox Populi, Vox Dei” – a Latin phrase meaning the voice of the people is the voice of God.
One that is playing “God” in the equation (hint: it’s not Trump).
But what, in the end, can anyone do on Mars, except make fuel for Musk’s rocket ships and eat lots of vitamin C? Time magazine tells us that Musk envisions the future of robotics and a myriad of goods and services. ‘No one is your boss.’
Undoubtedly there were many Twitter users who wanted this to happen in November when boss-man Musk sent his “hardcore” threat. It remains to be seen how a rapidly killing human race and a capitalist Earth will face the boom in productivity and labor robots to boot – or how you can get away from working “hard long hours” to avoid it. working at all.
And who knows what “too much for everyone” means from someone whose net worth has reached nearly $300bn. What will eight billion non-Musk people agree is “too much”?
In other words, the details of Muskian’s speculation need to be refined.
Ultimately, the future Mars launch envisioned by Musk would involve launching into space everything that is wrong with Earth. Growth, after all, is the name of the game in capitalism – and what better place than nature to grow the universe?
Musk is drawn to Mars because it is a tabula rasa: a place where laws, taxes, and other complexities cannot interfere with megalomaniacal, narcissistic violence. The filthy riches of the world do not cut it; Musk is shooting for the stars – or becoming the CEO of Mars.
But as much as everyone likes “Technoking” is working to expand his multi-disciplinary CV, it seems that, at the end of the day, he just wants to be the god of the universe. And if Musk’s Martian dreams come to an end, rest assured that nothing will come of it on Earth.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect Al Jazeera’s influence.
