Elon Musk is a singular visionary driving humanity toward a better futureor at least thats what he and his admirers want us to believe. For the past two decades, supporters and news outlets have praised him for the bold narratives hes woven around Tesla and SpaceX, and by extension allowed him to evade scrutiny and become the worlds richest man. Any time Musk sends a tweet, you can check his replies to see the devotion of his millions of followers.
As his profile has been elevated by relentless media attention, Musk has become the figure everyone was looking for: a powerful man who sold the fantasy that faith in the combined power of technology and the market could change the world without needing a role for the government. (Just dont talk about the billions in subsidies that kept his companies going over the years.)
But that collective admiration has only served to bolster an unaccountable and increasingly hostile billionaire. The holes in those future visions, and the dangers of applauding billionaire visionaries, have only become harder to ignore.
As CEO of Tesla, Musks plan was to use luxury vehicles to fund a more affordable electric car. The Model 3 was supposed to be that vehicle, starting at $35,000. But the current starting price is $46,990, and most buyers end up paying even more. Teslas are supposed to be the model for green automobility, but the emissions required for the production of each individual vehicle are on the rise, and there are persistent problems with production quality which means theyre at risk of not lasting as long as vehicles from other carmakers.
More importantly, those vehicles dont have a clean, green supply chain. Around the world, mining companies are salivating at the opportunity presented by a shift to battery-powered vehicles because theyre so much more mineral-intensive than the ones we drive today. The International Energy Agency expects demand for battery minerals to soar by 2040, including up to 2,100 percent for cobalt and 4,200 percent for lithium.
But that extraction comes with serious consequences for local environments and nearby communities. In 2019, Tesla was named in a lawsuit over the deaths of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo who died mining cobalt at sites owned by British mining company Glencore. Despite talking about cobalt-free batteries, Musk proceeded to sign a deal with Glencore in 2020 to supply its Berlin and Shanghai factories. The lawsuit was dismissed in November 2021, but in April of this year, an investigation from Global Witness found that Tesla was among a number of companies that may be getting minerals from mines using child workers in the DRC.
It may be easy to overlook consequences that exist at the other end of Teslas supply chain, but these problems extend deep into the heart of its manufacturing operation. Black workers dubbed the companys Fremont factory the plantation after being subject to racist abuse and a number of women described sexual harassment at the facility as nightmarish. Meanwhile, workers at the Nevada Gigafactory are suing after a mass firing of over 500 people, following reports that Musk praised workers in Teslas Shanghai factory for burning the 3 am oil by working 12-hour shifts and six-day weeks while sleeping on the factory floor.
To top it off, Teslas customers are also being put in harms way. Its vehicles have slammed into highway medians, emergency vehicles, transport trucks, and more, while using its supposedly self-driving Autopilot feature. Musk continually misleads the public about how safe and capable the system really is, even as the U.S. traffic safety regulator is poised to recall hundreds of thousands of vehicles. And Tesla is just the tip of the iceberg.
Elon Musk has wielded a virtual monopoly on how we think about the future, but will his visions really deliver better lives for most people in our society? For all the tech industrys talk of disruption, keeping us all trapped in cars for decades into the future by equipping them with batteries or upgraded computers doesnt feel like much of a revolution.
A much more sustainable alternative to mass ownership of electric vehicles is to get people out of cars altogetherthat entails making serious investments to create more reliable public transit networks, building out cycling infrastructure so people can safely ride a bike, and revitalizing the rail network after decades of underinvestment. But Musk has continually tried to stand in the way of such alternatives.
He has a history of floating false solutions to the drawbacks of our over-reliance on cars that stifle efforts to give people other options. The Boring Company was supposed to solve traffic, not be the Las Vegas amusement ride it is now. As Ive written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in Californiaeven though he had no plans to build it.
Several years ago, Musk said that public transit was a pain in the ass where you were surrounded by strangers, including possible serial killers, to justify his opposition. But the futures sold to us by Musk and many others in Silicon Valley didnt just suit their personal preferences. They were designed to meet business needs, and were the cause of just as many problems as they claimed to solveif not more.
As Musk sets our collective sights on Mars, a town in south Texas and nearby wildlife reserve are being sacrificed on the altar of his personal ambition. SpaceX recently fired employees who wrote an open letter asking it to distance itself from its increasingly controversial CEO, while astronomers and Indigenous groups have expressed concern about what Starlink is doing to the night sky. Meanwhile, scientists will tell you living on Mars wont be an easy task. In service of his dreams, Musk is purposefully obscuring those challenges.
In crafting his future visions, Musk draws on the libertarian tendencies of Robert Heinlein and a technocratic longtermism inspired by Isaac Asimovs Foundation series, not to mention the dreams of Nazi-turned-NASA rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. Future visions cribbed from the pages of science fictionoften of the dystopian varietyand reshaped to fit the desires of the richest man in the world dont serve the broader public. But there are other authors who provide very different answers to the questions of technology and the future.
In 1985, Ursula K. Le Guin took aim at this imperialistic kind of science fiction that inspires Musk, in which space and the future are synonymous: they are a place we are going to get to, invade, colonize, exploit, and suburbanize. The renowned novelist explained that science fiction is not actually about the future; its about us and our thoughts and our dreams. But when we get confused about that, we succumb to wishful thinking and escapism, and our science fiction gets megalomania and thinks that instead of being fiction its prediction.
Thats exactly where we find ourselves now: having our future dictated by powerful people who seek to recreate the space colonies or dystopian virtual reality worlds they read about as kids without considering the consequences. Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Mars trilogy helped inspire some of the recent interest in colonizing the red planet, has called Musks plan the 1920s science-fiction clich of the boy who builds a rocket to the moon in his backyard and one thats dangerously distracting us from the real problems we face here on Earth.
For Le Guin, part of the problem is how we tell the human story: as one where a singular hero aggressively pushes it toward resolution, whether its the hunter with their bow or the Great Man driving society forward. It also infects our conception of technology, positioning it as a heroic undertaking, Herculean, Promethean, conceived as triumphor as a call to buildrather than the active human interface with the material world and the more mundane technologies we rely on every day.
Make no mistake: there is a need for people to think about the future and what a better one looks like, especially as we face serious challenges like the climate crisis. But we also need to question the idea of progress being sold to us and who it ultimately benefits. The tech industry enjoys casting itself as our savior, delivering empowerment and convenience, but along with it has come an unprecedented expansion of surveillance, an erosion of workers rights, and the empowerment of white nationalist and fascist groups.
For years, Elon Musk sold us fantasies to distract from the reality of the future hes trying to build, and to get people to accept his growing belligerence. What we really need right now is not more cars, colonization dreams, and technokings, but a collective project to improve the lives of billions of people around the world while taking on the immediate challenges we face regardless of whether it generates corporate profits. Thats something Elon Musk can never deliver.
More Must-Read Stories From TIME
Contact us at letters@time.com.
Read the original here:
Elon Musk's Flawed Vision and the Dangers of Trusting Billionaires - TIME
- A Murder At The End Of The World's Retreat Guests Explained: Who ... - Screen Rant - November 18th, 2023 [November 18th, 2023]
- The Moon People: Assimilation and the Jewish Literary Transvestite - Tablet Magazine - November 18th, 2023 [November 18th, 2023]
- Will two generations of Moon walkers shake hands? - OnlySky Media - November 18th, 2023 [November 18th, 2023]
- SpaceX Prepares for Second Starship Launch as it Eyes Moon and ... - OPP.Today - November 18th, 2023 [November 18th, 2023]
- Invincible Season 2 Episode 3 Review - But Why Tho? - November 18th, 2023 [November 18th, 2023]
- TV Recap: "A Murder at the End of the World" - Chapter 1: Homme ... - Laughing Place - November 18th, 2023 [November 18th, 2023]
- Thursday: Hili dialogue Why Evolution Is True - Why Evolution Is True - November 18th, 2023 [November 18th, 2023]
- Space Habitat Market to grow by USD 169.38 million from 2023 to ... - PR Newswire - November 18th, 2023 [November 18th, 2023]
- Cosmic conservation: Why experts argue portions of the solar ... - Salon - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- We havent even set foot on Mars and we are already setting up a ... - Softonic EN - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- NASA's MOXIE Experiment Triumphs in Generating Oxygen ... - The Weather Channel - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- ECOVIEWS: Thermal vents produce bizarre life forms | Features ... - Charleston Post Courier - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- Elon Musk's 'most powerful rocket ever made' is finally ready for launch - Technext - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- What's the Bare Minimum Number of People for a Mars Habitat? - Universe Today - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- India may be moving to change its name to ancient Sanskrit term ... - FOX Bangor/ABC 7 News and Stories - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- My Nuclear Family - The Good Men Project - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- The MCU Multiverse Is Continuing A Great Marvel Trend - Screen Rant - April 30th, 2023 [April 30th, 2023]
- How Starship Will Change Humanity Soon - by Tomas Pueyo - Uncharted Territories - April 30th, 2023 [April 30th, 2023]
- China is taking 3D printers to the moon - TechRadar - April 27th, 2023 [April 27th, 2023]
- Mae Martins SAP showcases affirming, optimistic humor - The Wellesley News - April 27th, 2023 [April 27th, 2023]
- Of Moths and Marsupials - bioGraphic - April 27th, 2023 [April 27th, 2023]
- Teachers Rejoice! OpenAI Released Tool to Catch ChatGPT Writing - January 31st, 2023 [January 31st, 2023]
- Are You Smarter Than ChatGPT? OpenAI Tool Aims to Detect AI-Generated ... - January 31st, 2023 [January 31st, 2023]
- What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) ? | IBM - January 31st, 2023 [January 31st, 2023]
- Overview | Earth's Moon NASA Solar System Exploration - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- Moon Phases | Moon in Motion Moon: NASA Science - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- All About the Moon | NASA Space Place NASA Science for Kids - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- January 21, 2023: Closest New Moon Since the Middle Ages - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- Colonization of Europa - Wikipedia - January 4th, 2023 [January 4th, 2023]
- American Colonization Society | abolitionist organization - January 4th, 2023 [January 4th, 2023]
- Deimos (moon) - Wikipedia - December 28th, 2022 [December 28th, 2022]
- Everything NASA is taking to the moon before colonizing Mars - December 21st, 2022 [December 21st, 2022]
- Chinese Lunar Exploration Program - Wikipedia - December 21st, 2022 [December 21st, 2022]
- Moon - Wikipedia - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Artemis is our first step toward space colonization - Big Think - November 21st, 2022 [November 21st, 2022]
- Supermoon - Wikipedia - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Captain Kirk Went to Space and Saw Absolutely Nothing - TheStranger.com - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- We'koqma'q First Nation helps keep tradition alive with ribbon skirt bank - CBC.ca - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Review: Andor Episode 6 gives a heartbreaking victory to the rebels of Aldhani - Winter is Coming - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- National Indigenous Peoples Day 2022: Everything to Know - Newsweek - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Who's the enemy here? - The Korea JoongAng Daily - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Avatar: Where We Were and Where We're at The Minnesota Republic - Kent Kaiser - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Glitching Time and Time-Based Media The Brooklyn Rail - Brooklyn Rail - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- New Artwork on the Toronto Sign Pays Tribute to the Rights of Indigenous Language Speakers Worldwide - Storeys - September 29th, 2022 [September 29th, 2022]
- Is it finally time for a permanent base on the moon? - Popular Science - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Venice Review: In Viaggio is a Fascinating Rorschach Test of the Pope - The Film Stage - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Bon Apptit's 2022 Heads of the Table Awards - Bon Appetit - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Coast Salish sweat-lodge keeper welcomes all to share in healing - Broadview Magazine - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- In Guam, even the dead are dying: the US military is building on the graves of our ancestors - The Guardian - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Living Underground on the Moon: How Lava Tubes Could Aid Lunar Colonization - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Colonization of the Solar System - Wikipedia - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Under Capitalism, the Colonization of Space Means the ... - Jacobin - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- A New World of Heavenly Art - The Epoch Times - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- New Releases Tuesday: The Best Books Out This Week - Book Riot - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Diving into student research at the Summer 2022 SEA Fellows Symposium - UMaine News - University of Maine - University of Maine - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Skywatch for the week of August 22, 2022 - WQCS - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- Law alum's career heads into orbit with unexpected passion for space law - University of Calgary - August 23rd, 2022 [August 23rd, 2022]
- Heres where we might really be able to set up a colony on the Moon - BGR - August 10th, 2022 [August 10th, 2022]
- Travel Bug: You don't have to be a diver to enjoy Palau - Pacific Daily News - August 10th, 2022 [August 10th, 2022]
- Avatar Was James Cameron's Tribute To A Legend Of VFX Filmmaking - /Film - July 31st, 2022 [July 31st, 2022]
- Sonic Youth : Sister, EVOL, Bad Moon Rising - The trilogy | Treble - Treble - July 31st, 2022 [July 31st, 2022]
- NASA's Lunar Orbiter spots comfortably warm 'pits' all over the Moon - The Register - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Will 3D Printing Be Used for the First Commercial Mission to Mars? - 3Dnatives - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Abe Leaves Behind Complex Legacy in Japan's Neighborhood - The Diplomat - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Moon Off-Roading In The Wild GM Electric Car That Makes Hummer EV Look Normal - SlashGear - June 30th, 2022 [June 30th, 2022]
- A conversation with a poet whose home burned to the ground - Yale Climate Connections - June 30th, 2022 [June 30th, 2022]
- Before Langley Air Force Base: The muddy history of Shellbanks, Sherwood and other plantations of Elizabeth City County - Daily Press - June 30th, 2022 [June 30th, 2022]
- colonization of Australia | Britannica - June 24th, 2022 [June 24th, 2022]
- NASA Reveals Three Design Concepts For Nuclear Power On The Moon - SlashGear - June 24th, 2022 [June 24th, 2022]
- Interview: Small modular reactors get a reality check about their waste - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - June 22nd, 2022 [June 22nd, 2022]
- Of Wazhazhe Land and Language: The Ongoing Project of Ancestral Work - Literary Hub - June 22nd, 2022 [June 22nd, 2022]
- The Oddest of Organs: A Brief History of the Tongue - Literary Hub - June 22nd, 2022 [June 22nd, 2022]
- 'For All Mankind' Season 3: Episode 2 - Recap And Ending, Explained - Who Was Chosen To Head The Mars Mission? | DMT - DMT - June 20th, 2022 [June 20th, 2022]
- New moon - Wikipedia - June 11th, 2022 [June 11th, 2022]
- Why Neil deGrasse Tyson Is Skeptical About Mars Colonization - June 3rd, 2022 [June 3rd, 2022]
- Bitcoin And The Great Filter - Bitcoin Magazine - June 3rd, 2022 [June 3rd, 2022]
- Art Attack: Where to Find Art on First Friday Weekend in Denver - Westword - June 3rd, 2022 [June 3rd, 2022]
- Scramble Campbell on His Two Decades as Red Rocks' Artist-in-Residence - Westword - June 3rd, 2022 [June 3rd, 2022]
- Pro and Con: Space Colonization | Britannica - May 31st, 2022 [May 31st, 2022]
- How Many Humans Could the Moon Support? | Live Science - May 31st, 2022 [May 31st, 2022]