Space Fantasies of the Super Rich
If the Rich Can Afford to Explore Space, They Can Afford to Pay Their Workers More
If you’ve ever read the graphic novel Watchmen, you’re familiar with the character Dr. Manhattan.
Like many other comic book characters, Dr. Manhattan starts out as a mere mortal man, before a scientific experiment gone awry leaves him with god-like powers.
But unlike typical heroes who use their powers to serve and protect the human race, Dr. Manhattan comes to feel increasingly alienated from his fellow humans as his power increases.
“I’m tired of this Earth, these people. I’m tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives,” he thinks to himself.
When his ex-girlfriend, also a super-hero, tries to convince him to stay on Earth, he replies,“Don’t you see the futility of asking me to save a world that I no longer have any stake in?”
Ultimately, he abandons us, leaving this galaxy for one he hopes will be, in his words, “less complicated.”
Like super-powered beings who has grown bored with the trifling affairs of the masses, the richest men on Earth have turned their gaze away from us, too, and towards the stars.
SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Virgin’s Richard Branson have all made great strides in recent years in the realm of private space travel and exploration.
Musk has said he will put people on Mars by 2026, and a million people by 2050. Bezos, who has been competing with Musk for the title of Richest Man on the Planet, wants his company Blue Origin to return humans to the Moon by 2024. Branson’s Virgin Galactic is promoting commercial space flights and space tourism, and, despite some setbacks including the crash of a test vehicle in 2014 that resulted in one death, plans on launching in the near future.
But before the richest people in the world start colonizing other planets, maybe they should fix some of the problems they helped to create here on Earth, starting with their own companies.
After all, it’s the massive income inequality perpetuated by the likes of Amazon that allows one class of people to contemplate going to space at a time when many of their own employees are struggling to make ends meet.
Amazon’s warehouse conditions, for example, are the stuff of urban legend, with stories of workers urinating in bottles to avoid being docked time for bathroom breaks and having their every movement electronically monitored. (The company is currently fighting a union drive at a warehouse in Alabama.)
Although not as notorious, Tesla and Virgin Air have also seen union drives in which their famous CEO’s got personally involved. Musk was recently ordered to delete a three-year-old Tweet that implied employees would lose company stocks if they voted to unionize; Branson released a video asking workers on the eve of a unionization vote in 2012 to reject the union and “protect your independent spirit.” (They took a pass on the “independent spirit” and voted to unionize instead.)
If you can afford to explore space, why can’t you afford to pay your workers more? Musk earns $16 million USD per hour. Bezos earns $13.4 million an hour, and Branson’s net worth clocks in at $5 billion.
History shows that long-term income inequality on that scale is unsustainable, and inevitably leads to civil unrest and erosion of democracy.
Exploring space while their own employees struggle with poverty is the ultimate, “Let them eat cake,” moment, or like Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns.
Musk and Bezos make more in an hour than their average worker earns in a lifetime. Perhaps they should have to solve the issue of income inequality here on Earth before they try to conquer the final frontier.
If rich and powerful men like Musk, Bezos, and Branson aren’t held to account now, they likely never will be. We’ll keep chasing them even as they grow tired of being caught in the tangle of our lives, of this world they no longer have any stake in, searching for galaxies less complicated than this one.
