The billionaire space race between Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson is well-known by now. In a bid to be the best equipped for privatised space travel, the billionaire trio are constantly battling it out.
No matter which way you look at it, only one of the trio can be deemed anywhere near successful: Musk. While Jeff Bezos has just managed to score a NASA contract, that comes after threats and lawsuits. On the other hand, Musk's SpaceX has a decent history of space successes. But what about the people, the normal people?
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don't care about you
In a recent talk, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres discussed the growing inequality of wealth. As billionaires get richer and richer — especially during the pandemic — the poor still stay poor.
The Daily Star reports that Guterres took issue with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk specifically. Instead of paying workers the share they deserve, the two billionaires are playing around at being astronauts. (Additionally, one of them isn't even good at it.)
Guterres criticised the likes of Bezos, Musk and Branson, saying they're “joyriding to space while millions go hungry on Earth”. The Secretary General continued, saying that the public see “corruption all around them” with “no future at all” for anyone but the rich.
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An old sci-fi trope realised
It’s an old sci-fi trope: the rich escape to live life among the stars while the poor perish on a dying Earth. In the face of billions of people, wealth hoarders like Bezos, Musk and Branson are preparing for just that.
Hilariously, even on the planet the billionaires can't help but dip into sci-fi supervillain clichés. For example, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is investing in immortality research at Silicon Valley. If you can believe it, this is the billionaire’s second time investing in anti-aging tech.
Whether it's space travel or a miracle cure for aging, anything that's truly realised will not be for the lower or middle class.
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