Ground control to Major Mark: You are missing out! Every other Master of the Universe (well, three of them by last count) has his own spaceship. Poor Mark. All you have is a social media empire that is causing a whole lot of people to despise you. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your own spaceship and just leave all this rancor and criticism behind?
The tech Robber Barons have such a large portion of the world’s wealth that the thought of merely doing typical fat cat philanthropy – endowing universities, building public monuments to themselves, constructing new wings in hospitals, etc. – bores them to tears. They seek a more universal immortality, indeed an other-worldly one! And their success in the tech world imbues them with the time-honored arrogance of all the supremely wealthy – the almost religious conviction that they know better than anyone how the world should be transformed and improved.
But Zuckerberg isn’t a member of the cool crowd anymore, if he ever was. The dweebish, defensive persona aside, his billions and his accomplishments are suspect. The social media juggernaut is facing hostility from all sides. Its algorithmic propagation of hate speech, paranoia, disinformation, conspiracy theories and social neurosis has launched a thousand ships of pumped up psychopaths. Is it any surprise that a platform that only grew meteorically because of Ivy league envy and FOMO would ultimately turn on its master?
Musk, Bezos and Branson have their spaceships. What more could a God of Industry want in life? And if they manage to accomplish something worthwhile for humankind in the process of indulging their massive egos, I will tip my hat to them. But I am not sure that putting most of the wealth on this earth in a few hands is ever a good idea. And let’s face it, the history of Robber Barons, Pharoahs, Emperors, Czars and other plutocrats is a pretty sad one and doesn’t generally work out well for the world.
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