How Elon Plans to Stave Off Boredom While Saving the World

Let’s start with some perspective. Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter purchase is the equivalent of $133 million for each of America’s approximately 330 million citizens. Feel free to check my math.

Why did I break out the purchase in those terms, and why should it matter to you?

Because none of us has the innate capacity to scale huge numbers, we tend to gloss over them — their magnitude creates an opaque barrier to understanding.

Elon’s pre-Twitter net worth stood at an estimated $270 billion. He would need to spend $1 million daily for 270,000 days to deplete that fortune. Lest you think that’s possible — 270,000 days is 739 and three-quarters years.

Yeah. It’s that much money. Unless he quickly starts spending his money and attention to address the universal mortality problem, he won’t be able to enjoy spending it all. He wouldn’t be able to finish it all in 10 extravagant lifetimes.

That kind of money insulates from the normal challenges of normal life. It is by definition—abnormal. Without having to worry about bills to pay, one might even grow bored. The options seem infinite… Colonize Mars? Implant microchips in brains? Tunnel from LA to SF? End world hunger? Smoke weed with Joe Rogan?

What’s a gazillionaire to do?

What I’m driving at is that when any person hoards that kind of wealth—the kind that can buy up a social media platform with which he has some ideological disagreements—then buys said company, it is normal and rational to feel skeptical about the intent.

So when any person hoards that kind of personal wealth—the kind that can buy up a social media platform with which he has some ideological disagreements—then buys said company, it is normal and rational to feel skeptical about the intent.

We who care about “big picture issues” should have all our alarm bells ringing.

Money has only ever been and forever will be a means to some other end. It is a medium of exchange. The accumulation of wealth does not equate to genius, or benevolence, or human worth. It means you’re really good at making money. By all accounts, he is galactically good.

Elon is exchanging $44 billion… for what exactly?

A private individual now owns a company that boasts roughly 200 million active daily users. As of January of this year, it had 396.5 million users worldwide. That’s a lot of personal data. And it’s now in the hands of someone with a professed fascination with AI and neural linking, among other things.

What a playground.

Of course, the magnanimous Elon, who has given away only a fraction of his vast fortune to humanitarian causes, has framed this purchase as an imperative for the good of civilization. Same as his electric car company… his rocket company… his Boring company… his neural linking company… and his solar panel company.

Don’t you see? Elon is the Great (Rich) White Hope. He alone recognizes our existential problems — and is determined to save us from ourselves. Uncensored tweeting is a colossal win for humankind.

Think of the flood of creative brilliance he’s unlocked. Sages and philosophers everywhere will finally feel free to uncloset themselves and begin enlightening us with pithy help in 280 characters or less.

And if the deep thinkers and fonts of wisdom don’t emerge like excited cicadas at the news of Elon’s selfless purchase—at least haters can now hate, and trolls can now troll without fear of reprisal in Twitter jail. All good.

Thanks, Uncle Elon. This will fix everything.

How could we have been so blind?

Jealousy, no doubt.