People are complaining about Elon Musk more than usual after his takeover of Twitter. At first, people complained that he was wasting money, since he could have instead solved world hunger for a fraction of the price of Twitter. (https://www.newsweek.com/could-elon-musk-have-solved-world-hunger-instead-buying-twitter-1700942)
Nov 28, 2022·edited Nov 28, 2022Liked by Michael Huemer
Forget Musk's efforts to save the human race, transition the world from carbon fuels, his other projects. And forget the Gates Foundation's attempts to end malaria. And Andrew Carnegie's libraries. Forget philanthropic projects of the wealthy. Or whether those projects are driven by ego or love of mankind. Put all that aside.
Our ancestors lived in caves, infested by parasites, chased by predators, constantly on the edge of starvation. Today we have nice things like indoor toilets and medicine. Electric light, refrigerated food, airliners, the Internet. We didn't steal that wealth from other cavemen or from space aliens. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game.
People created those technologies, that wealth. Out of plants and animals, dirt and air, and their own cleverness and work. Who did that? All of us, yes, but a few made vastly larger contributions than others.
Our society is wealthy because of Boulton's engines, Carnegie's mills, Vanderbilt's railroads, Edison's lights, Gates' software, and Musk's cars and rockets. Most of us have always plowed our farms, woven our cloth, done our jobs. And mostly broken even - fed ourselves, raised our children, helped our neighbors survive...and created very little that was new.
But some people are better at creating wealth than others. Just as an Albert Einstein is rare, or a Tiger Woods, or a William Shakespeare is rare, there are a few rare people who are vastly – incredibly – better at creating wealth than most everyone else. Today we call them "billionaires".
They may not be better than most of us at physics, or golf, or literature, or in any other way, but they have a rare talent for creating wealth. Billionaire's money (when honestly earned; I exclude crony capitalists and kleptocrats) mostly reflects value created. Value that benefits us all.
Earning a billion dollars is **really** difficult. See how many try, and how few succeed.
And the living standard at $100 million is virtually identical to that of $100 billion. Most rational people retire when they have enough - long before billionaire status. We are very lucky that a few of these astoundingly productive and capable people keep working - keep chasing dreams - long after their personal material needs are satisfied. They made our world, and will make our future.
Sure, Musk makes us look bad. But only in the sense that Mahatma Gandhi does. Nobody should feel jealous of Shakespeare's writing, Edison's inventiveness, Einstein's discoveries. Nor should we resent them for their talent and success. Au contraire.
"We resent people who earned their riches. Why? Because when we see someone who has done so much better than us, that reflects badly on us."
That's far too uncharitable. I would say, instead, that:
(i) something like the "labor theory of value" comes intuitively to most people, and only gets broken either by explicit study of economics or experience working in highly productive fields that don't superficially look like "labor";
(ii) therefore, it's also intuitive to feel that wealth earned by means other than obvious "labor" must have been coerced or swindled from others in some way, especially when that wealth is of an order of magnitude impossible for anyone to earn via "labor" in a thousand lifetimes;
(iii) for those who can understand abstractly how the kind of ways Musk earned his wealth are enormously productve, they still participate in a society where the labor theory of value is intuitive, and in which sensitivity toward others' feeling of being swindled, is an invaluable sign of social solidarity.
"The amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced, i.e., the extent to which his activities have helped to satisfy other people’s desires, because you get money in a free market by giving other people things they want."
This is a remarkable statement. Would you say the same thing about the Koch brothers, the Sackler Family, or the robber barons of yore? Sometimes rich people get rich by doing shitty things.
Set Musk in particular aside, because the larger issue here is how should we feel about billionaires in general.
1) Character evaluation depends on intentions: Billionaires generally wouldn’t have produced less wealth if they didn’t think it was altruistic to do so. Because everything billionaires do is out of self-interest, we shouldn’t think of them as specially morally praiseworthy.
2) Character evaluation depends on recency: I think badly of Musk because he seems to be headed in a bad direction. Sort of like a doctor who saved a thousand lives but just last week committed a murder (Note for people who don’t understand the concept of analogies: I’m not saying Musk killed anybody). What adjectives would you use for that person? I wouldn’t say they’re a “good person” because their actions *recently* have been terrible.
In the same way, although Musk has done a lot off good in the past, Musk should be criticized because he’s unbanning most banned people on Twitter, which I expect will make our political culture more hostile, ugly, and 4-Chan-like.
3) People don’t typically despise Billionaires *for being billionaires*. We know this because our attitudes towards billionaires in general are either positive or indifferent: there are 2k billionaires, and only 2 of them are seriously criticized (Musk and Bezos). So, we’re criticizing .01% of this class of people. I'd argue we're really criticizing people with too much ego who put themselves in the news, or maybe people who make the news for bad working conditions regularly.
Take the first example: Kanye West was a billionaire (though not by a ton), and he's no longer one. That didn’t take away any of the criticism; despite being far less monetarily successful, he is still widely despised. The real issue seems to be his antisemitic tweets and enormous ego.
Nice post. However, there may be alternate explanations for why there is general suspicion about people like Musk.
(1) Luck vs. Effort: there is research suggesting that humans have innate sharing rules: items that are high variance and, therefore, somewhat insensitive to effort and initiative are expected to be shared equally within the "band," while low variance items, which can be predictably obtained in amounts proportional to effort, are not expected to be shared.
(2) Our evolutionary history has not prepared us to expect (those rare) individuals whose productivity is many orders of magnitude larger than the vast majority.
(3) Modern markets, which are evolutionarily novel, make the connection between effort and reward difficult to fathom.
(4) Intentions matter more than outcomes: again, looking at deep time, humans have lived in mostly small groups where a person's intentions matter much more than whether they are able to deliver on this occasion or that. This is no longer true in the context of mass societies and markets with their invisible hand effects, where the best of intentions can create hell on Earth (e.g. socialism) and conversely where folks acting on less-than-lofty motives still end up doing an enormous amount of good (e.g. "evil" billionaires and "robber barons").
(5) Reverse Dominance Hierarchies: there is evidence that humans have a disposition to gang up on the "alpha" (those with a large power differential in their favor) in their band and to limit their power or in extremis eliminate that individual.
(6) Although dyadic exchange guided by the profit motive has been present over deep evolutionary time for humans, it wasn't the main form of benefit delivery. Most benefits came from family, close friends, and allies and band members and were outside the framework of dyadic exchange - they were shared rather than exchanged this for that. Although we partake in exchange we are disposed to be suspicious of our exchange partners precisely because they are not engaging with us for the "right" reasons: they are not our family, friend, or ally.
Taking (1) - (6) together, Musk and Gates and other like them may be seen (implicitly) as exploiters writ large and therefore dangers to us and our "band".
“First, the amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced…”
Here is the crux of why I disagree with this article: it equates economic value with moral value.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not obscenely rich, apparently you forfeit the right to criticize the wealthy as they move to shape society in their own image of the good.
“What are YOU doing?” is heartily patronizing to every person who didn’t have half, a tenth, a hundredth the opportunity to amass a hoard of gold. Elon Musk was born into privilege. Any person who chose instead to serve the public in other ways - perhaps in service to the democratic government our humble author apparently so despises for its coercive power - you aren’t contributing as much as Elon! Therefore, you have no right to criticize the great and powerful wizard of Tesla!
Has Elon produced more moral value than most other people on the planet? I wouldn’t say so, although I suppose it’s open to argument how much good Tesla’s innovation has done. The value judgments of this piece ignore every scientist and engineer who made those technologies possible. It arrogates to Musk every credit that anyone under the auspices of Tesla or any of his other companies ever did, and equates that to Musk’s moral value.
Musk isn’t uniquely bad (not even close to the Koch brothers) but he’s certainly not above reproach. He isn’t a uniquely wonderful human being who produces enormous moral value. He’s a tremendously wealthy and influential person who has spread damaging conspiracy theories while also overseeing great innovations. Like most human beings, he has a distinct vision of the good, imperfect and worthy of more critique because of his disproportionate influence on society.
“But at least he’s trying to do something good.”
The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. Calling Musk’s critics wastrels benefits no one. It is of concern to every single person what wealthy people choose to do with their vast fortunes, because those fortunes give them undue influence over the lives of ordinary people.
We aren’t using social pressure to punish the people who do the most good, whatever the hell that means. Economic good? Moral good? Social regulation of the most powerful classes in society is natural and obvious. Those with the greatest influence, those most active in using that influence, should fall under strict public scrutiny. Just as our democratic government falls under scrutiny, imperfect, but nonetheless present.
Elon receives criticism because he has disproportionate power to affect change, not because people are jealous of his fucking paper. Your conflation of moral and economic value fills me with incandescent rage.
Although I enjoyed this article, my initial impression was that it seemed too uncharitable to Musk's critics, who might at times be mistaken but could easily have their hearts in the right place. My personal opinion of Musk has not been/is not uniformly positive, so I'm biased towards skepticism about blanket judgments of a population that includes me.
After reading the responses of Musk's critics in the comments below, I've changed my mind. Without exception, they seem to be driven by what I can only call bad motives. Nasty people, again without exception. I don't want to be associated with them. Quite remarkable.
I won't say that my opinion of Musk has been improved, but I'm certainly more sympathetic to Huemer's article than I was when I first read it. I owe a debt of gratitude to the commenters who took time and effort to expose themselves as exactly what the article claims they are, and I am also grateful to Mr. Huemer (or should it be Prof. Huemer? idk) for highlighting the ubiquity of pure envy that I too often overlook.
Insightful as usual. I only add one humble suggestion: some people have a tendency to assume that others - especially the rich - are always driven by ulterior motives, even when they seem to act in an altruistic way. I often mention the release of Tesla's patents in conversation with people who attack Musk, as an instance of altruistic action: the response that I usually get is "There must be some other reason why he did that"; in other cases, people simply insist that it cannot be true. Not sure why some people are inclined to interpret the actions of others in this way: do they have an a priori pessimistic view of human nature? Do they have the urge to feel morally superior by attributing to others a bad character? Or maybe they are secretly selfish themselves, so they're inclined to ascribe the same attitude to everybody? I don't know.
Yes, Elon Musk clearly wants to save humanity from global warming. That's why he pushes personal EVs and sabotages efforts to expand public transportation, because he cares so much about the environment. That's why he won't let other EVs use Tesla's charging network. That's why he flies around in a private jet. That's why he avoids eating meat. That's also why he is launching tons of satellites into space so, which burn incredible amounts of fossil fuels, because he cares about, wait.... Well, surely getting internet access to rural poor areas is worth that, because those people can afford 600 dollar installation fees and $100/month subscription fee.
And he clearly cares so much about humanity, that's why his plan to save humanity is to fly rich people to mars to escape earth. That's why he illegally busts unions, because he cares about people. That's why he forced people to work during the pandemic, causing 100s of cases of covid in his factory. Because he just loves people sooo much.
Elong Musk is a clown. He's a horrible person. He's a pathological liar and scammer. And speak for yourself, as he's definitely not better than me. Which doesn't say much, as he is, in fact, a lot worse than the average person. Idk how a philosopher, who sometimes writes so intelligently about some things, like ethical veganism and moral realism, can have such silly takes.
Side note: what EA thinks the government shouldn't spend money to solve extreme poverty? It's a silly strawman. We criticize useless billionaires like Musk, and we also criticize the government. It is possible to do both.
"we are subconsciously resentful that that person is making us look bad by being better than us."
Perhaps, or perhaps people are just bad at math, and think he could just wave a wand and solve world hunger but he refuses to, or have a none consequentialist ethical system in which being a billionaire is bad.
I mean i guess its almost certainly a combo that varies from person to person.
Nurse here- Gates' vaccine practices in developing countries are nothing to be happy about. The average person can't name 2 ingredients in any injection or explain the toxicology of vaccines, let alone explain why it's so healthy for these compounds to be permanently stored in our bodies.
It is one of the leading causes of modern diseases, the timelines add up with the ushering in of mass injections. We are sicker in industrialized Western society than impoverished Africans- Billy boy is spreading this to these developing countries for reasons that have nothing to do with our well-being.
Lots of points that really made me think. Most of the previous comments hit on issues I had, but I would still offer that our government gets hours of criticism everyday across mainstream media about how it’s not doing a good job, not to mention all of social media posts and written articles.
Um, lots of people resent the royal family. Probably it's mostly in countries that HAVE a royal family, but in those countries it's fairly common (and occasionally a majority view). Members of royal families are subjected to mockery and criticism. They appear as actors in conspiracy theories.
It's fair to object to particular criticisms of Musk (or Gates, or Charles III) as being stupid. It's fair to point out good things that Musk (or Gates or Charles III) have done. But pointing out the good that they've done is not a valid way to answer the criticisms. "You say he's done bad things? What about the good things he's done? Hunh? What about them?" Having done good things in no way makes it wrong to criticize the bad things they do.
Hell, even if Musk were better than me (I doubt he is), it still wouldn't make it wrong for me to criticize him for doing bad things. Any criticisms must be answered on their merits (or lack thereof).
> I was also struck by the people wringing their hands about a rich person controlling Twitter, people who weren’t concerned about a different group of rich people who controlled Twitter before Musk.
And here I see a couple of important differences that argue against your position. Twitter was not free of criticism before Musk took over. It was criticized for letting Trump post; it was criticized for blocking Trump from posting. But what used to be criticisms of a company have become criticisms of an individual -- because that individual has taken complete control of that company. Now there is a face that we can put in the photo next to the article where before we had to put a logo. If he hadn't been rich he wouldn't have been able to put himself into a position where he gets criticized for such things, but that doesn't mean he's being criticized /because he's rich/.
Rich people are not criticized for being rich. They may be criticized for how they became rich. They may be criticized for not spreading their wealth around. They may be criticized for using their wealth to advocate for less free speech or for freer speech from haters. They may be mocked/criticized for eating pizza with a knife and fork.
Rich people get more criticism because their actions are more likely to be known to people who disagree with those actions. To the extent that royals have power in a country (even if only soft power) they likewise get criticized. Powerful people get mentioned in conspiracy theories because conspiracy theories turn on there being people using power in secret. People who have power in public might reasonably be believed to use those powers in secret as well.
> No one is going to start tweeting complaints that Huemer isn’t optimally spending his money to stop world poverty, that Huemer isn’t stopping disinformation, or that Huemer’s power is a threat to democracy.
And yet you do get criticized -- by people who know (more or less) who you are and what you do and say. Not because you're wealthy; not because you have a Ph.D.; for your specific acts and omissions.
You lost me on Gates. Intent matters. Gates, his family, and their associates for generations have regarded us as stupid cattle to be herded and culled, and not worthy of the agency to make our own decisions and govern ourselves.
He's an "altruist" in the same way that I care whether the cows and hogs I raise for food are sick. I am affectionate to them and responsive to their suffering but in no way do I respect their autonomy as intelligent beings or want there to be any less disparity in the power between us.
Gates is a megalomaniac. I don't dislike him specifically because he's a billionaire. I dislike him because he's a globalist powerbroker that wants to turn me into a digital serf for my own good.
Forget Musk's efforts to save the human race, transition the world from carbon fuels, his other projects. And forget the Gates Foundation's attempts to end malaria. And Andrew Carnegie's libraries. Forget philanthropic projects of the wealthy. Or whether those projects are driven by ego or love of mankind. Put all that aside.
Our ancestors lived in caves, infested by parasites, chased by predators, constantly on the edge of starvation. Today we have nice things like indoor toilets and medicine. Electric light, refrigerated food, airliners, the Internet. We didn't steal that wealth from other cavemen or from space aliens. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game.
People created those technologies, that wealth. Out of plants and animals, dirt and air, and their own cleverness and work. Who did that? All of us, yes, but a few made vastly larger contributions than others.
Our society is wealthy because of Boulton's engines, Carnegie's mills, Vanderbilt's railroads, Edison's lights, Gates' software, and Musk's cars and rockets. Most of us have always plowed our farms, woven our cloth, done our jobs. And mostly broken even - fed ourselves, raised our children, helped our neighbors survive...and created very little that was new.
But some people are better at creating wealth than others. Just as an Albert Einstein is rare, or a Tiger Woods, or a William Shakespeare is rare, there are a few rare people who are vastly – incredibly – better at creating wealth than most everyone else. Today we call them "billionaires".
They may not be better than most of us at physics, or golf, or literature, or in any other way, but they have a rare talent for creating wealth. Billionaire's money (when honestly earned; I exclude crony capitalists and kleptocrats) mostly reflects value created. Value that benefits us all.
Earning a billion dollars is **really** difficult. See how many try, and how few succeed.
And the living standard at $100 million is virtually identical to that of $100 billion. Most rational people retire when they have enough - long before billionaire status. We are very lucky that a few of these astoundingly productive and capable people keep working - keep chasing dreams - long after their personal material needs are satisfied. They made our world, and will make our future.
Sure, Musk makes us look bad. But only in the sense that Mahatma Gandhi does. Nobody should feel jealous of Shakespeare's writing, Edison's inventiveness, Einstein's discoveries. Nor should we resent them for their talent and success. Au contraire.
This is one of those essays that can help me be a better person. You told the truth and pulled no punches. Thanks so much!
"We resent people who earned their riches. Why? Because when we see someone who has done so much better than us, that reflects badly on us."
That's far too uncharitable. I would say, instead, that:
(i) something like the "labor theory of value" comes intuitively to most people, and only gets broken either by explicit study of economics or experience working in highly productive fields that don't superficially look like "labor";
(ii) therefore, it's also intuitive to feel that wealth earned by means other than obvious "labor" must have been coerced or swindled from others in some way, especially when that wealth is of an order of magnitude impossible for anyone to earn via "labor" in a thousand lifetimes;
(iii) for those who can understand abstractly how the kind of ways Musk earned his wealth are enormously productve, they still participate in a society where the labor theory of value is intuitive, and in which sensitivity toward others' feeling of being swindled, is an invaluable sign of social solidarity.
"The amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced, i.e., the extent to which his activities have helped to satisfy other people’s desires, because you get money in a free market by giving other people things they want."
This is a remarkable statement. Would you say the same thing about the Koch brothers, the Sackler Family, or the robber barons of yore? Sometimes rich people get rich by doing shitty things.
Set Musk in particular aside, because the larger issue here is how should we feel about billionaires in general.
1) Character evaluation depends on intentions: Billionaires generally wouldn’t have produced less wealth if they didn’t think it was altruistic to do so. Because everything billionaires do is out of self-interest, we shouldn’t think of them as specially morally praiseworthy.
2) Character evaluation depends on recency: I think badly of Musk because he seems to be headed in a bad direction. Sort of like a doctor who saved a thousand lives but just last week committed a murder (Note for people who don’t understand the concept of analogies: I’m not saying Musk killed anybody). What adjectives would you use for that person? I wouldn’t say they’re a “good person” because their actions *recently* have been terrible.
In the same way, although Musk has done a lot off good in the past, Musk should be criticized because he’s unbanning most banned people on Twitter, which I expect will make our political culture more hostile, ugly, and 4-Chan-like.
3) People don’t typically despise Billionaires *for being billionaires*. We know this because our attitudes towards billionaires in general are either positive or indifferent: there are 2k billionaires, and only 2 of them are seriously criticized (Musk and Bezos). So, we’re criticizing .01% of this class of people. I'd argue we're really criticizing people with too much ego who put themselves in the news, or maybe people who make the news for bad working conditions regularly.
Take the first example: Kanye West was a billionaire (though not by a ton), and he's no longer one. That didn’t take away any of the criticism; despite being far less monetarily successful, he is still widely despised. The real issue seems to be his antisemitic tweets and enormous ego.
Nice post. However, there may be alternate explanations for why there is general suspicion about people like Musk.
(1) Luck vs. Effort: there is research suggesting that humans have innate sharing rules: items that are high variance and, therefore, somewhat insensitive to effort and initiative are expected to be shared equally within the "band," while low variance items, which can be predictably obtained in amounts proportional to effort, are not expected to be shared.
(2) Our evolutionary history has not prepared us to expect (those rare) individuals whose productivity is many orders of magnitude larger than the vast majority.
(3) Modern markets, which are evolutionarily novel, make the connection between effort and reward difficult to fathom.
(4) Intentions matter more than outcomes: again, looking at deep time, humans have lived in mostly small groups where a person's intentions matter much more than whether they are able to deliver on this occasion or that. This is no longer true in the context of mass societies and markets with their invisible hand effects, where the best of intentions can create hell on Earth (e.g. socialism) and conversely where folks acting on less-than-lofty motives still end up doing an enormous amount of good (e.g. "evil" billionaires and "robber barons").
(5) Reverse Dominance Hierarchies: there is evidence that humans have a disposition to gang up on the "alpha" (those with a large power differential in their favor) in their band and to limit their power or in extremis eliminate that individual.
(6) Although dyadic exchange guided by the profit motive has been present over deep evolutionary time for humans, it wasn't the main form of benefit delivery. Most benefits came from family, close friends, and allies and band members and were outside the framework of dyadic exchange - they were shared rather than exchanged this for that. Although we partake in exchange we are disposed to be suspicious of our exchange partners precisely because they are not engaging with us for the "right" reasons: they are not our family, friend, or ally.
Taking (1) - (6) together, Musk and Gates and other like them may be seen (implicitly) as exploiters writ large and therefore dangers to us and our "band".
“First, the amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced…”
Here is the crux of why I disagree with this article: it equates economic value with moral value.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not obscenely rich, apparently you forfeit the right to criticize the wealthy as they move to shape society in their own image of the good.
“What are YOU doing?” is heartily patronizing to every person who didn’t have half, a tenth, a hundredth the opportunity to amass a hoard of gold. Elon Musk was born into privilege. Any person who chose instead to serve the public in other ways - perhaps in service to the democratic government our humble author apparently so despises for its coercive power - you aren’t contributing as much as Elon! Therefore, you have no right to criticize the great and powerful wizard of Tesla!
Has Elon produced more moral value than most other people on the planet? I wouldn’t say so, although I suppose it’s open to argument how much good Tesla’s innovation has done. The value judgments of this piece ignore every scientist and engineer who made those technologies possible. It arrogates to Musk every credit that anyone under the auspices of Tesla or any of his other companies ever did, and equates that to Musk’s moral value.
Musk isn’t uniquely bad (not even close to the Koch brothers) but he’s certainly not above reproach. He isn’t a uniquely wonderful human being who produces enormous moral value. He’s a tremendously wealthy and influential person who has spread damaging conspiracy theories while also overseeing great innovations. Like most human beings, he has a distinct vision of the good, imperfect and worthy of more critique because of his disproportionate influence on society.
“But at least he’s trying to do something good.”
The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. Calling Musk’s critics wastrels benefits no one. It is of concern to every single person what wealthy people choose to do with their vast fortunes, because those fortunes give them undue influence over the lives of ordinary people.
We aren’t using social pressure to punish the people who do the most good, whatever the hell that means. Economic good? Moral good? Social regulation of the most powerful classes in society is natural and obvious. Those with the greatest influence, those most active in using that influence, should fall under strict public scrutiny. Just as our democratic government falls under scrutiny, imperfect, but nonetheless present.
Elon receives criticism because he has disproportionate power to affect change, not because people are jealous of his fucking paper. Your conflation of moral and economic value fills me with incandescent rage.
Respectfully,
Connor
The part about Musk is good. Bill Gates on the other hand promoted lockdown tyranny China style, pity he didn’t withdraw on a private island instead.
Although I enjoyed this article, my initial impression was that it seemed too uncharitable to Musk's critics, who might at times be mistaken but could easily have their hearts in the right place. My personal opinion of Musk has not been/is not uniformly positive, so I'm biased towards skepticism about blanket judgments of a population that includes me.
After reading the responses of Musk's critics in the comments below, I've changed my mind. Without exception, they seem to be driven by what I can only call bad motives. Nasty people, again without exception. I don't want to be associated with them. Quite remarkable.
I won't say that my opinion of Musk has been improved, but I'm certainly more sympathetic to Huemer's article than I was when I first read it. I owe a debt of gratitude to the commenters who took time and effort to expose themselves as exactly what the article claims they are, and I am also grateful to Mr. Huemer (or should it be Prof. Huemer? idk) for highlighting the ubiquity of pure envy that I too often overlook.
Insightful as usual. I only add one humble suggestion: some people have a tendency to assume that others - especially the rich - are always driven by ulterior motives, even when they seem to act in an altruistic way. I often mention the release of Tesla's patents in conversation with people who attack Musk, as an instance of altruistic action: the response that I usually get is "There must be some other reason why he did that"; in other cases, people simply insist that it cannot be true. Not sure why some people are inclined to interpret the actions of others in this way: do they have an a priori pessimistic view of human nature? Do they have the urge to feel morally superior by attributing to others a bad character? Or maybe they are secretly selfish themselves, so they're inclined to ascribe the same attitude to everybody? I don't know.
Yes, Elon Musk clearly wants to save humanity from global warming. That's why he pushes personal EVs and sabotages efforts to expand public transportation, because he cares so much about the environment. That's why he won't let other EVs use Tesla's charging network. That's why he flies around in a private jet. That's why he avoids eating meat. That's also why he is launching tons of satellites into space so, which burn incredible amounts of fossil fuels, because he cares about, wait.... Well, surely getting internet access to rural poor areas is worth that, because those people can afford 600 dollar installation fees and $100/month subscription fee.
And he clearly cares so much about humanity, that's why his plan to save humanity is to fly rich people to mars to escape earth. That's why he illegally busts unions, because he cares about people. That's why he forced people to work during the pandemic, causing 100s of cases of covid in his factory. Because he just loves people sooo much.
And he took over twitter because he cares about free speech, of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlL4xvn6xWE
Elong Musk is a clown. He's a horrible person. He's a pathological liar and scammer. And speak for yourself, as he's definitely not better than me. Which doesn't say much, as he is, in fact, a lot worse than the average person. Idk how a philosopher, who sometimes writes so intelligently about some things, like ethical veganism and moral realism, can have such silly takes.
Side note: what EA thinks the government shouldn't spend money to solve extreme poverty? It's a silly strawman. We criticize useless billionaires like Musk, and we also criticize the government. It is possible to do both.
"we are subconsciously resentful that that person is making us look bad by being better than us."
Perhaps, or perhaps people are just bad at math, and think he could just wave a wand and solve world hunger but he refuses to, or have a none consequentialist ethical system in which being a billionaire is bad.
I mean i guess its almost certainly a combo that varies from person to person.
Nurse here- Gates' vaccine practices in developing countries are nothing to be happy about. The average person can't name 2 ingredients in any injection or explain the toxicology of vaccines, let alone explain why it's so healthy for these compounds to be permanently stored in our bodies.
It is one of the leading causes of modern diseases, the timelines add up with the ushering in of mass injections. We are sicker in industrialized Western society than impoverished Africans- Billy boy is spreading this to these developing countries for reasons that have nothing to do with our well-being.
Lots of points that really made me think. Most of the previous comments hit on issues I had, but I would still offer that our government gets hours of criticism everyday across mainstream media about how it’s not doing a good job, not to mention all of social media posts and written articles.
> Interestingly, we don’t resent the royal family
Um, lots of people resent the royal family. Probably it's mostly in countries that HAVE a royal family, but in those countries it's fairly common (and occasionally a majority view). Members of royal families are subjected to mockery and criticism. They appear as actors in conspiracy theories.
It's fair to object to particular criticisms of Musk (or Gates, or Charles III) as being stupid. It's fair to point out good things that Musk (or Gates or Charles III) have done. But pointing out the good that they've done is not a valid way to answer the criticisms. "You say he's done bad things? What about the good things he's done? Hunh? What about them?" Having done good things in no way makes it wrong to criticize the bad things they do.
Hell, even if Musk were better than me (I doubt he is), it still wouldn't make it wrong for me to criticize him for doing bad things. Any criticisms must be answered on their merits (or lack thereof).
> I was also struck by the people wringing their hands about a rich person controlling Twitter, people who weren’t concerned about a different group of rich people who controlled Twitter before Musk.
And here I see a couple of important differences that argue against your position. Twitter was not free of criticism before Musk took over. It was criticized for letting Trump post; it was criticized for blocking Trump from posting. But what used to be criticisms of a company have become criticisms of an individual -- because that individual has taken complete control of that company. Now there is a face that we can put in the photo next to the article where before we had to put a logo. If he hadn't been rich he wouldn't have been able to put himself into a position where he gets criticized for such things, but that doesn't mean he's being criticized /because he's rich/.
Rich people are not criticized for being rich. They may be criticized for how they became rich. They may be criticized for not spreading their wealth around. They may be criticized for using their wealth to advocate for less free speech or for freer speech from haters. They may be mocked/criticized for eating pizza with a knife and fork.
Rich people get more criticism because their actions are more likely to be known to people who disagree with those actions. To the extent that royals have power in a country (even if only soft power) they likewise get criticized. Powerful people get mentioned in conspiracy theories because conspiracy theories turn on there being people using power in secret. People who have power in public might reasonably be believed to use those powers in secret as well.
> No one is going to start tweeting complaints that Huemer isn’t optimally spending his money to stop world poverty, that Huemer isn’t stopping disinformation, or that Huemer’s power is a threat to democracy.
And yet you do get criticized -- by people who know (more or less) who you are and what you do and say. Not because you're wealthy; not because you have a Ph.D.; for your specific acts and omissions.
Great take on Musk.
You lost me on Gates. Intent matters. Gates, his family, and their associates for generations have regarded us as stupid cattle to be herded and culled, and not worthy of the agency to make our own decisions and govern ourselves.
He's an "altruist" in the same way that I care whether the cows and hogs I raise for food are sick. I am affectionate to them and responsive to their suffering but in no way do I respect their autonomy as intelligent beings or want there to be any less disparity in the power between us.
Gates is a megalomaniac. I don't dislike him specifically because he's a billionaire. I dislike him because he's a globalist powerbroker that wants to turn me into a digital serf for my own good.