Abak Hussain
Recently, Elon Musk changed the wording of Tesla’s mission statement. It used to be “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Boring, a little heavy on the NGO-speak, and lacking the awesomeness that Musk is always dying to project, right? So now, Tesla’s mission, according to the official website, is “to build a world of amazing abundance.”
Even someone like Musk realizes the word sustainable sounds a bit too phoney in the context of anything to do with his world. And so: replace it with ‘amazing’ for amazing results. How versatile that word is! Amazing could mean anything or nothing, and that’s perfect for his flexible needs: To use and abuse the technology and financial system of the world for his own gain. To build up a brand (which he was not the founder of) and sell its product under the guise of sustainability to guilty rich liberals all the while doing other things that are in no way reducing emissions. To align himself with a dysfunctional government entirely for his own benefit. And now, we’ve been hit with the grotesque headline that has been a long time coming. He’s finally a trillionaire. SpaceX has gone public and its valuation has been through the stratosphere, no pun intended. Now he’s so rich that apparently the difference in wealth between him and Bezos is greater than the difference between Bezos and me. How do you make sense of such a world?
How strange it is to live to see a reality where the word trillionaire is not a joke or the stuff of bad science fiction. But then, in recent times we have had to make peace with words nobody asked for but are now essential to understanding the zeitgeist. AI slop, deepfake, rage-bait, parasocial, aura farming, vibe coding … this is the picture of today. And now, trillionaire. This the latest but not the last manifestation of the broken system of late capitalism. This system multiplies wealth for those already sitting on it while exploiting the workers who make it all possible. I have sincere and hardworking friends who haven’t gotten paid in months. Chances are you have also had to fight your employer at some point or other to get the dues that are rightfully yours. And then you have the likes of Musk, who create nothing of real value, just exploit a broken system; which it is possible to do only if you are devoid of ethics. Tesla and SpaceX were built upon, and they run upon, the ideas of other people; engineers and visionaries far more talented than Musk.
So here’s a generational wealth nepo baby from a pro-Apartheid South African family who gamed the broken system at the right time, and lubricated by his amorality and narcissism managed to become the richest person in the history of the world. Look, here’s the world we live in: struggling with poverty, genocide, injustice, human-induced climate change, and look, here’s Musk, with his trillion-dollar assets, borrowing against capital that does not serve humanity or fulfil people’s needs, leaving a massive carbon footprint, dodging taxes, corrupting the entire framework of economy and humanity. Here’s Musk in all his amazing, appalling abundance.
What a cruel joke.
But then, those at the top have always been some of the scummiest examples of humanity, have they not? If people actually stopped defending a toxic system, and rose up against injustice whenever they saw it, billionaires and autocratic leaders would not be able to rise in tandem, strengthening the nexus with their every more. Trouble is, they have flooded mass consciousness with propaganda. We hear a sort of “people get rich because they hustle for it” narrative which really blows smoke over the truth of income inequality, and valorizes the rich people at the top. This is why you have poor people defending autocrats, despots, billionaires, and now a trillionaire. They eat up propaganda on Instagram and sometimes in book form (for those who are OK with a bit of long form reading).
And the messaging of these books and social media posts is simply new techno-capitalist wine in a bottle as old as the human desire to get rich quick. Musk and Bezos and Zuckerberg did it, and you can too — that’s what these messages say. You just need to learn the game, hustle hard, upskill, pivot, learn AI, and uncritically drink up the lessons of tech titans because they have made it and you … well … haven’t. Get up at 5am, hit the gym, do a 5 to 9 right after your 9 to 5 … no no don’t do a 9 to 5 at all, quit your job and be your own boss, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take … and on and on it goes. We are fed a narrative that the billionaires we see on the Forbes list are disciplined, smart, well-read people who are always working and always doing the right thing, sacrificing and hustling and grinding and whatever it takes, that they are tougher and bolder and more willing to endure pain than you and I. And many of us, so keen are we to emulate these figures rather than critiquing them, fall into the hustle culture trap. Not only do we now fail to get justice or a better life, we believe it is our own fault for not succeeding. This is exactly what the billionaire cohort wants.
The likes of Musk, and his friend Trump, would like you to believe that the world is comprised of “winners” and “losers.” That you do what it takes to succeed and that is all that matters. But at the heart of this ideology is a profound moral failing. If I am seen lying, cheating, abusing others, depriving people of their rights, hoarding resources while others perish, I will not be rewarded by my school, my parents, my elders, or my society. Why then should the 1% be given a pass even after it has been shown time and again that they are not in any way the good guys? Can we not take some of the zeal we have for growth and progress in tech and Big Business, and re-direct it towards a more ethical, equitable order?
Abak Hussain is Contributing Editor at MW Bangladesh.
