I am providing you, in this blog posting, with a link to an article in The Guardian. That article, by Arwa Mahdawi, is titled as follows: "Doubt That Elon Musk ‘Earned’ His Trillion? Rightwing Media Says You’re In An ‘Impotent Envy Cult.’"
Clicking that link to the title of Mahdawi's article should take you to the article itself. If you read my blog regularly, you may remember another article, about Jeff Bezos, which examined the same question, but with the focus on Bezos, not Musk. The question being explored, in both articles, is more or less this one: Did these billionaire/trillionaire guys actually "earn" the prodigious wealth that has come into their hands? If you don't think they did, the claim is that you are part of that "Impotent Envy Cult" that certain media types (the "rightwing" media, says Mahdawi) claim to have identified. Those who celebrate the wealth being accumulated by Bezos and Musk - and the other billionaire types, I'm pretty sure - think those who have now acquired such wealth have truly "earned" it.
In my earlier blog posting, focused on Bezos, I conceded that there is a good argument that Bezos did, in fact, actually "earn" the wealth that has flowed his way. A similar argument might be made with reference to Mr. Musk.
However, those two individuals weren't the only ones responsible for their economic success. WE deserve a lot of the credit, too. With respect to Bezos, and his invention of Amazon (an invention that should also be credited to his former wife, as I always like to remind people), the billions that Bezos acquired have come from our own participation in the marketplace that he thought up and brought into existence. The same thing is true of Musk, though he, candidly, really hasn't had quite the same kind of direct impact on people's daily lives that Bezos has had - at least that's my own evaluation.
In both cases, though, the economic success of these business founders has depended on the rest of us. Some people paid a lot of money for one of those Tesla automobiles that Musk has helped create, and the U.S. taxpayers have paid a lot of money for those space shots that have made Space-X successful. The "Starlink" system, bringing cellphone service to the world (a Musk idea made into reality) is the closest thing to what Bezos did, and it, too, has brought benefits to all of us and to the public.
Again, though, profits have flowed to Bezos and Musk because we, members of the public, have paid our own money to utilize the services that Bezos and Musk have made available. When superlative profits occur, in a situation like that, we should concede that those who "created" the things that we now pay for should be richly compensated. But... we, the public, should also share in the economic benefits, because it's true, as I frequently declaim, "we're all in this together," and compensation should flow through to the members of what I'd call the "Public Appreciation Cult" that has helped create the riches now claimed solely by Bezos and Musk. Those are riches that should benefit us all.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment!