Elon Musk discussion thread

What’s more likely?

  • Billionaires go to Mars, poor fokkers stay on Earth
  • Billionaires stay on Earth, poor fokkers get sent to Mars

0 voters

There you go :smiley:

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Ha! But there needs to be a third option. We save the planet, but any brave fokkers who wish to go to Mars have the means.

If Sunzu - the art of war still applies then we better have no means to escape until we’re all done saving the planet.

Yeah the truth is somewhere in between probably.
Especially because we haven’t talked about when.

I usually mean the first wave, the initial colonization of Mars. Not suitable for most rich people so they most likely won’t go but send milirary guys and scientists, just like elsewhere dangerous and far away.

In the second wave… probably depends A LOT on how the first wave does and what they manage to create there. And even then I am sceptic.
It is an environment unlike we have ever encountered. Even in the great age of exploration you could not get that far away in such a hostile environment.

For decades I have seen the same argument:
“Why spend $$ on XYZ when that money could be spent on insert name of humanitarian project here?”

The answer is simple–because it never will be. The Pentagon’s budget can jump 40% because it’s “necessary” and at the same time Congress will dicker about $500 million for school lunches or whatever.

If the money wasn’t spent on space, it would NOT be spent on that other stuff instead, it just wouldn’t be spent. Or, equally likely, it would be spent on some other “but WHY???” program.

Global literacy or health care or whatever isn’t impressive to the masses or to those in power. It doesn’t matter that it’s never been done before or how many it will help, what matters is the people in power have it and giving what they have to people below them doesn’t spin their wheels. Not only does it dilute their accomplishments the more everyone else has, there’s no LEGACY left behind. Unless they are truly without ego (and no self-made rich or powerful person is, only perhaps their heirs) they want to “make their mark” not just help people quietly and be forgotten.

Unless human nature fundamentally changes, and we all start acting like we’re living in Star Trek The Next Generation with no money and no scarcity, it will never happen. That’s the major flaw of communism–it requires mass selflessness that is not in evidence.

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I kinda hate it, but yeah.

So to you it all boils down to vanity?

What he has done with Tesla is commendable and Starlink looks promising if you don’t mind a few thousand extra objects in orbit. He seems to have disrupted the established who seemed happy to just continue doing what suited them.

If it takes an eccentric billionaire to force some change for the better then I don’t care…doing a better job than most so far.

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I just look at the hedge fund billionaires and their terrible ilk. Hoarding money and using it to change policy and putting nothing back into the system.
At least the dude is actually spending his money. Rightly or wrongly he is creating jobs, creating industry, new technologies and opportunities for the future.
I might not get on with him if I met him and I’m damn sure he’s probably an asshole but I think he is at least a different kind of mega rich asshole.

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In the end most things done by people are, so it is a reasonable conclusion I guess.

Most people who donate large sums, build charities, schools, universities, foundations or anything else probably do it because it makes them feel good and their name is on it. Or for tax evasion.

I can’t speak for the UK, but plenty of hedge funds in the US do benevolent fund raising. One of our MSP hedge customers moved to St. Croix and spent 10 years upgrading the public school IT infrastructure. I know because they would fly us down to install Cisco routers and switches. The fund’s owner takes his wife and 3 daughters to work at Atlanta inner city soup kitchens at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are good people. My wife and I have attended many corporate fund raisers and often run into the same financial groups every year. Contrary to popular belief, they aren’t all demons.

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Ok I withdraw what I said @chipwich with my apologies. I generalised and thats wrong.

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For my German-speaking brethren