{"id":75337,"date":"2021-07-24T14:13:58","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T18:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=75337"},"modified":"2021-07-24T14:14:38","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T18:14:38","slug":"billionaires-should-not-existon-earth-or-in-space-but-should-they-decide-the-latter-they-should-stay-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=75337","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBillionaires should not exist\u2026on Earth or in space, but should they decide the latter, they should stay there.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our billionaires are blasting off. Good riddance!<\/h1>\n

Could space become the \u2018final frontier\u2019 in the struggle for a more equal world?<\/em><\/h3>\n

By Sam Pizzigati
\nIntrepid Report<\/p>\n

Three of the richest billionaires on Earth are now busily spending billions to exit our Earth\u2019s atmosphere and enter into space. The world is watching\u2014and reflecting.<\/p>\n

Some commentators see our billionaire trio\u2014Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk\u2014as heroic heirs to the legacies of Charles Lindbergh and Sir Edmund Hillary, the first mere mortals to high jump the Atlantic alone and scale the world\u2019s highest mountain.<\/p>\n

Our billionaires racing into space, other charmed commentators are adding, aren\u2019t just thrilling humankind. They\u2019re uplifting us. The technologies that the space operations Branson, Bezos, and Musk \u201cdevelop could benefit people worldwide far into the future,\u201d says<\/a> Yahoo Finance\u2019s Daniel Howley.<\/p>\n

But most of our commentators seem to be taking a considerably more skeptical perspective. They\u2019re dismissing the space antics of Branson, Bezos, and Musk as the ego trips of bored billionaires, \u201ccynical stunts by disgustingly rich businessmen,\u201d as one British analyst puts it<\/a>, \u201cto boost their self-importance at a time when money and resources are desperately needed elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSpace travel used to be about \u2018us,\u2019 a collective effort by the country to reach beyond previously unreachable limits,\u201d writes<\/a> author William Rivers Pitt. \u201cThat was the Cold War propaganda, anyway, and it had an unavoidable allure. Now, it\u2019s about \u2018them,\u2019 the 0.1 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best of these skeptical commentators can even make us laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, billionaires?\u201d comedian Seth Meyers asked<\/a> earlier this month. \u201cThis is what you\u2019re going to do with your unprecedented fortunes and influence? Drag race to outer space?\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s enjoy the ridicule. But let\u2019s not treat the billionaire space race as a laughing matter. Let\u2019s see it as a wake-up call, a reminder that we don\u2019t only get billionaires when wealth concentrates. We get a society that revolves around the egos of the most affluent among us and an economy where the needs of average people go unmet and don\u2019t particularly matter.<\/p>\n

Characters like Elon Musk, notes<\/a> Paris Max, host of the Tech Won\u2019t Save Us<\/em> podcast, are using \u201cmisleading narratives about space to fuel public excitement\u201d and gain tax-dollar support for various projects \u201cdesigned to work best\u2014if not exclusively\u2014for the elite.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three corporate space shells for Musk, Bezos, and Branson\u2014SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic\u2014have \u201call benefited greatly through partnerships with NASA and the US military,\u201d notes<\/a> CNN Business. Their common corporate goal: to get satellites, people, and cargo \u201cinto space cheaper and quicker than has been possible in decades past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Branson, for his part, is hawking tickets for roundtrips \u201cto the edge of the atmosphere and back,\u201d at $250,000 per head. He\u2019s planning some 400 such trips a year, observes<\/a> British journalist Oliver Bullough, about \u201calmost as bad an idea as racing to see who can burn the rainforest quickest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The annual UN Emissions Gap Report last year concluded that the world\u2019s richest 1 percent do more to foul the atmosphere than the entire poorest 50 percent combined. That top 1 percent, the UN report adds<\/a>, would have to \u201creduce its footprint by a factor of 30 to stay in line\u201d with the 2015 Paris Agreement targets. Opening space to rich people\u2019s joyrides would stomp that footprint even bigger.<\/p>\n

Bezos and Musk seem to have grander dreams<\/a> than mere space tourism. They\u2019re looking \u201cto colonize the cosmos,\u201d with Bezos pushing \u201cartificial tube-like structures floating close to Earth\u201d and Musk talking up the terraforming of Mars. They essentially see space as a refuge from an increasingly inhospitable planet Earth. They expect tax-dollar support to make their various pipe dreams come true.<\/p>\n

And how should we respond to all this? We should, of course, be working to create a more hospitable planet for all<\/em> humanity. In the meantime, several egalitarian wags have been circulating online petitions that urge our terrestrial authorities not to let orbiting billionaires back on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cBillionaires should not exist\u2026on Earth or in space, but should they decide the latter, they should stay there,\u201d reads<\/a> one petition nearing 200,000 signatures.<\/p>\n

Ric Geiger, the 31-year-old automotive supplies account manager behind that effort, is hoping<\/a> his petition helps the issue of maldistributed wealth \u201creach a broader platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Activists like Geiger are going down the right track. We don\u2019t need billionaires out to \u201cconquer space.\u201d We need to conquer inequality.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/www.intrepidreport.com\/archives\/33159<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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