ERon Musk is a singular visionary who is propelling humanity towards a better future. For the past two decades, his supporters and the press have admired the bold narrative he weaves into Tesla and his SpaceX. As a result, he was able to escape scrutiny and become the richest man in the world. Every time Musk sends a Tweet, you can check his reply to see the enthusiasm of his millions of followers.
As the constant media attention increased his profile, Musk became the person everyone wanted. He's a powerful man who sold the illusion that the world could be changed by combining technology and market forces. He needs a government role. (Don't talk about the billion-dollar subsidies that have kept his company alive over the years.)
But that collective admiration is inexplicable, It only served to bolster the increasingly hostile billionaires. The holes in these future visions and the dangers of praising billionaire visionaries are getting harder and harder to ignore.
The Tesla Problem
Musk's plan as his CEO of Tesla was to use luxury cars to fund more affordable electric vehicles. Starting at $35,000, the Model 3 was supposed to be such a car. However, the current starting price is $46,990, and most buyers will end up paying more than that. Tesla is considered to be a "green" car model, but the emissions required to produce each individual vehicle are on the rise and there are persistent problems with the quality of production. , which means you're at risk.
More importantly, these vehicles lack a clean, green supply chain. Mining companies around the world are salivating at the opportunities presented by the shift to battery-powered vehicles, which consume far more minerals than the cars we drive today. The International Energy Agency predicts that demand for battery minerals will soar by 2040, with cobalt reaching up to 2,100% and lithium 4,200%.
However, its extraction has serious consequences for the local environment and neighboring communitiesCobalt at a site owned by British mining company Glencore Children of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who died while mining. Despite talking about cobalt-free batteries, Musk said he won a contract with Glencore in 2020 to supply factories in Berlin and Shanghai. The lawsuit was dismissed in November 2021, but an investigationconducted by Global Witness in April of this yearfound that Tesla used child labor in his DRC to extract minerals from mines. Turns out to be one of many companies that could be.
While it may be easy to overlook the consequences that exist at the other end of Tesla's supply chain, these problems extend to the heart of its manufacturing operations. Black workers called the company's Fremont factory a "plantation" after being subjected to racist abuse, and many women He described sexual harassment as a "nightmare." Meanwhile, workers at the Nevada Gigafactory are suing after mass layoffs of more than 500 workers. After reports that Musk praised workers at Tesla's Shanghai factory for working and "burning oil at 3 a.m." Day shift.
Moreover, Tesla customers are also being harmed. The vehicle slammed into a highway median, an emergency vehicle, a transport truck, etc., presumably while using the autopilot feature of self-driving cars. Musk continues to mislead the public as to how secure and capable this system really is. US road safety regulators are trying to remember. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles. And Tesla is just the tip of the iceberg.
Selfish Future
Elon Musk has exercised a virtual monopoly on how we think about the future, but his vision is Will it really bring a better life to most people in our society? "Disruption" is often talked about in the tech industry, but the fact that we'll all be stuck in our cars for decades to come with batteries and upgraded computers is a major revolution. It doesn't seem like
A more sustainable alternative to mass ownership of electric vehicles is to keep people out of cars altogether. This requires significant investment in building a more reliable public transport network and building a cycling infrastructure that allows people to cycle safely. , and revitalize the rail network after decades of underinvestment. But Musk has tried to keep that option in the way.
He has a history of coming up with the wrong solutions to the shortcomings of over-reliance on cars that stifle efforts to give people alternatives. The Boring Company was meant to solve traffic congestion, not the Las Vegas amusement parks it is today. As I wrote in my book, Musk told biographer Ashley Vance that Hyperloop's purpose was to force legislators to cancel California's high-speed rail plan. admitted that it was He had no plans to build it.
Years ago, Musk said that public transport would be surrounded by strangers, including possible serial killers, to justify his objections to the "ass "Pain of pain." But the futures that Musk and many others in Silicon Valley sold us didn't just suit their personal tastes. They were designed to meet business needs and caused as many problems as they claimed to solve.
As Musk sets his collective sights on Mars, the South Texas town of and a nearby wildlife sanctuary will be his personal ambition. sacrificed on the altar of SpaceX recently laid offan open letter calling forto distance itself from its increasingly controversial CEO,employees, butastronomersand. } Indigenous groupsexpressed concern about what Starlink is. in the night sky. Scientists, on the other hand, would say that living on Mars is no easy task. To make his dreams come true, Muskintentionally hides these challenges
to find new inspiration
in creating his vision for the future. , Musk exploitslibertarian tendencies and technocratic secularism inspired by Isaac Asimov's Foundation series}, and not to mention NASA's dream turned Nazi rocket engineer Werner von Braun. Science's visions of the future, carved from the pages of his fiction, are often dystopian and not tweaked to suit the desires of the world's richest man. But there are other authors who offer very different answers to technology and future problems.
Ursula K., 1985. Le Guin took aim at this "imperialist kind of" science fiction and inspired Musk. It will reach, invade, colonize, exploit, and suburbanize. A famous novelist explained that science fiction isn't really about the future. It's about us and our thoughts and dreams. But when she gets confused about it, she says, "We succumb to wishful thinking and escapism, and our sci-fi becomes megalomaniacal and we think of it as prediction rather than fiction."
That is exactly what we are now. Our future is determined by powerful people who seek to recreate thespace coloniesanddystopian virtual reality worldswe read about as children. without considering the consequences. Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Marstrilogy helped spark recent interest in colonizing Mars, describedandMusk's plans as "a rocket." A 1920s sci-fi cliché about a boy who makes "on the moon in his backyard" and is dangerously distracting from the real problems we face here on Earth.
For Le Guin, part of the problem is how to tell the human story. It's the story of one hero, whether a hunter with a bow or a great hero, who is actively pushing toward a solution. A man who moves society forward. It also influences our conception of technology, making technology less of an "active human interface with material" than of "heroic undertakings conceived as triumphs, Hercules and Prometheus", or "building119} is positioned as a call to action. The world'and the more mundane technologies we rely on every day
don't get me wrong. People need to think about the future and a better future, especially in the face of serious challenges like the climate crisis. But we also need to question who the “progress” is sold to us and who it ultimately benefits. The tech industry enjoys positioning itself as our savior of empowerment and convenience, but with it comes unprecedented surveillance, erosion of workers' rights, white supremacist and the empowerment of fascist groups.
For years, Elon Musk has sold us fantasies to distract us from the futuristic reality he seeks to construct and to get people to accept his increasing belligerence. I was.What we really need now is not more cars, dreams of colonization, or technology, while addressing the pressing challenges facing us, whether they generate corporate profits or not. , a collaborative project to improve the lives of billions of people around the world. That's something Elon Musk could never achieve.
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