Walter Isaacson, whose biography on Elon Musk is set to come out this fall, repeated his narrative about the Tesla CEO as a kind of flawed genius.
One really contradicts the other.
A person can only generate so much money by not caring about other people. If they cared about other people, they would spend their money to improve something instead of hoarding it for themselves or distribute it evenly between themselves and those they exploit.
An empathetic person would know that they have no right to have that much money.
They would be able to see that they were lucky in an exploitive system and they would understand that their work is not worth more than the work of other people.
You can’t be rich and be a good person at the same time, because money is generated by exploiting labor and you can only generate more money by exploiting more work.
In the very end this money belongs to the people who carried Elon Musk through his life. He did not invent those rockets. He did not program those cars. He did not dig the lithium for the batteries under extremely dangerous conditions out of the ground while being paid peanuts. What he contributed to his wealth is the willingness to exploit other people.
