Opinions on billionaires \u2013 their very existence, that is \u2013 tend to be polarised. People either worship them or despise them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those who worship them, read their books (ghost written, generally) on how to be successful, follow their tweets and write Facebook posts fawning over how prophetic their favourite billionaire is, tend to be the same people who think capitalism, especially unfettered capitalism, is a good thing. Of course these are the same people who hold the logically flawed belief that endless economic growth on a finite planet, without catastrophic consequences, is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there are those capitalist evangelists who realise the flaw in this view, and see space exploration in order to mine other planets as the answer to feeding our lust for an excess of things we don\u2019t need. What they seem to forget is that in order to become an interplanetary species (if that is biologically even possible), we\u2019d have to completely destroy Earth, which we are well on our way to doing. The amount of resources we\u2019d need, the amount of fossil fuel we\u2019d have to burn, would leave Earth resembling a ball of Swiss cheese floating in a sulphurous bubble. No amount of solar or wind or wave or even nuclear power is going to change that, as they too, require resources to manufacture. Besides, space looks pretty, but is a really, really awful place to live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Elon Musk\u2019s stated ambition is to use his obscene wealth to make us an interplanetary species, which paradoxically explains why he seems to be the most worshipped billionaire of all. People who love money love money, and that is, sadly, most people. Currently valued at $251 billion according to Business Insider India, he is also the richest man on earth. Another reason for the worship by billionaire wannabes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Personally, I\u2019m with those who see billionaires in our contemporary world as a suppurating boil in a society which seems to think it\u2019s acceptable that a few spend millions of dollars on sports cars and other completely unnecessary ego toys while their literal neighbours, along with almost a billion people across the world, suffer from hunger. That\u2019s not to mention homelessness, preventable deaths by under-researched diseases (mostly in Africa, of course), and the fact that the richer you are, the more you contribute to global heating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in the interest of a balanced view, such as maybe someone like Musk actually does some actual good, and the formation of a balanced opinion, I read Elon Musk: Risking it all<\/em> by Michael Vlismas, who calls himself a journalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a painful task. Not because it challenged my views on Musk and billionaires in general, but because not only did Vlismas take the tone of a gushing, star-struck fanboy, it made me keep company with Musk; someone whom I previously only disliked in the abstract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n South Africans in particular seem to bow to Musk, claiming him as one of ours because he grew up here. Musk, like the billionaire he is, doesn\u2019t give a shit. This much Vlismas seems to acknowledge; Musk went to US because that\u2019s exactly the selfish, uber-capitalist society that fosters a wannabe billionaire\u2019s dreams. Only Vlismas doesn\u2019t put it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vlismas shows an astonishing lack of critical thinking in his unauthorised biography. Perhaps because an actual critique of Musk would not go down with the hordes of Musk acolytes, and most of those who don\u2019t like Musk wouldn\u2019t bother to read it anyway. Can\u2019t say he doesn\u2019t know the market, but there are a number of places where it becomes embarrassing. Such as when he writes about what a \u201cbrave decision\u201d it was for Musk to leave South Africa for Canada after matric in order to avoid conscription. Seriously? Travelling overseas is generally a teenager\u2019s dream, he had an uncle in Canada, and his escaping conscription was hardly a political decision. And then Vlismas writes how the uncle wasn\u2019t there when Musk arrived, leaving him with $2,000, a backpack full of books and nowhere to go. Bear in mind this was 1989 and $2,000 was a fortune, especially for a teenager on a travelling jaunt. Vlismas then goes on about how hard Musk worked on the family farm in Canada, putting his back into the \u201cunglamorous work\u201d \u2013 for six weeks. This is but one example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s also, of course, then uncritical espousal of Musk\u2019s vision to prevent \u2018the extinction of human civilisation\u2019 by taking us into space, as if human civilisation wouldn\u2019t be in danger of extinction through global heating if people like Musk put their energies into holistic, sustainable practices which would halt runaway climate crisis by perhaps finding ways to scale up already invented methods of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to an industrial scale, such as turning plastic waste back into the fossil fuel from which it was manufactured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a lot in the book about Musk\u2019s obsession with space exploration being about making his boyhood dreams sparked by sci-fi comic books a reality. As if this is a good thing and there isn\u2019t a reason we mature and put away childish things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vlismas does write a few pages reflecting the views of Musk\u2019s critics, but within the general tone, it is little more than a shallow nod to fact they exist. Overall, this book gives little insight into what makes Musk \u2013 who undeniably has an inventive mind \u2013 tick. For all the focus on his apparently troubled boyhood, the only time he was able to elicit any of my sympathy for young Musk was when he writes about how he was so badly beaten by bullies at Bryanston High \u2013 which he attended before his father transferred him to Pretoria Boys \u2013 that he was hospitalised for two weeks. But if one really has to read between the lines, the conclusion is that Musk is probably a sociopath, albeit a very intelligent one, which many are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, this is something Vlismas doesn\u2019t explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *For a few hours, the header stated the author was Mark Gevisser. Unreserved apologies to Mark.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Opinions on billionaires \u2013 their very existence, that is \u2013 tend to be polarised. People either worship them or despise them. 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