You don't get super rich by treating other people as ends in themselves

Only 0.1% of Elon Musk's trillion-dollar wealth is in cash, with the rest depends on the value of shares in his company on the stock market. But I'm not here to quibble over whether he was richer than historical figures such as Mansa Musa. It's all gauche, unnecessary, and built on the back of industrial level theft.

Instead, I'll just point out that the same person whose decisions withdrew life‑saving resources from millions of the poorest people is also the biggest single beneficiary of policies and markets that created that extreme concentration of wealth. A paper in _The Lancet projects that getting rid of US AID means that, between 2025-2040, there will be 15.2 million additional AIDS deaths, 2.2 (1.5-1.9) million additional TB deaths, and 7.9 million additional child deaths from other causes.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO will probably make him the richest person to ever walk the planet. And while his mountain of horrible personal conduct could fill multiple books, one fact in particular stands out: A year ago, Musk’s actions directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He did it knowingly. And, worse — gleefully.

This is not a serious person, but his abuse of the world is deadly serious. In the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) destroyed the US Agency for International Development, whose mission was a boon to public health around the globe. Musk called the lifesaving agency a “criminal organization” and blithely celebrated spending a weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” It was a good reference if you want everyone to think you’re the killer in Fargo. Mission accomplished, Elon.

Source: The Verge