Billionaires in space have been in the news lately. What’s most notable about this topic isn’t that humanity has achieved major commercialized space flight milestones. What’s remarkable is the jarring realization that society as a whole is getting the micro end of the stick. I’ll recount facts about Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, William Shatner, and more. I will then summarize a disturbing realization that compelled me to write this article. I hope we all realize billionaires in space have given us a blaring wake-up call.
Jeff Bezos
As a person, I respect Jeff Bezos. He’s a driven businessman on a mission, he has turned many opportunities into goldmines, and I like Amazon products. I dislike the invasiveness of the products, but I like the user experiences.
However, there’s a dark side. In the case of Jeff Bezos, he puts profits over people. Bezos never learned that happy employees make great companies, or he doesn’t care. Most of Amazon’s workforce are dispensable cogs in a wheel, and many of them consistently work overtime. It’s a grueling grinder that Bezos has set up to squeeze all he can get out of his employees.
Bezo’s wealth is obscene. A good netizen created this beautiful chart to illustrate it.
Bezos is worth almost $200,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros, and it’s for more than many of us perceive it to be.
Elon Musk
I’ll start by saying that Elon Musk trolls Jeff Bezos because he’s richer than him. Musk’s net worth is approaching 300 billion dollars, and he paid no federal income taxes in 2018. He is on track to become the first trillionaire with his SpaceX venture. We, the people, have cared and fed for these people, and they complain about paying their share.
Here is what Musk has to say in response to a tax plan proposal from Ron Wyden.
William Shatner
I promised I would talk about Mr. T as in Tiberius. I ran into Shatner when I lived in Studio City, CA. I was at a nice bar called The Tuning Fork on Ventura Place. It’s excellent; I highly recommend it. As William entered the bar, I waved to him, and he waved back like we were old friends. Afterward, I went back to chatting with my friend and drinking a delicious beer. Fun times.
Story aside, I feel like Shatner was a pawn on Jeff Bezo’s chessboard. After shooting two dicks to space simultaneously then telling everyone thanks or paying for it, Bezo’s PR stance was rocky.
Enter Shatner
The Realization
When I sat down to write, I thought about the state of our country. Life flipped upside down like a game night table when the pandemic started. We have all had a very rough go of it, and we still aren’t out of the woods.
We are witnessing a political party willing to take us all down with it.
While all of this is happening, billionaires in space are laughing all the way to the bank. They accumulate power and have no concern about how they might save the republic. They evade taxes as Republicans give them everything, yet they still want and more. Greed has gone wild, and way too many adults have stopped adulting.
How is any of this behavior acceptable? These obscenely wealthy people are where they are, thanks to all of us. They are milking their employees for every red cent they can get, and they are quickly becoming the only employment option for most citizens. What will you do when your only employment option is Amazon because Bezos wanted to be richer than Musk?
Never forget.
People don’t become billionaires by being generous; they do it by exploiting people. If they were paying workers based on value output, they wouldn’t be worth billions.