Is there anything sillier than a billionaire? Thanks to a billionaire, a red sports car is now pootling about outer space. Elon Musk — PayPal tycoon, visionary loon — whooshed it up there on a rocket. “It’s kind of silly,” he says. Yes it is. It is also kind of an ad for Tesla Motors. He is not that silly. Either way, he has made us all look a little ridiculous. When aliens discover a sexy red sports car off-roading through the cosmos they are going to think Earth is having a midlife crisis.
We are. One hundred and forty-five people became billionaires last year, according to UBS. Data gathered by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index reveal that in 2017 the world’s richest 500 people became $1tn richer. That is more than three times the GDP of Denmark. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the three richest men in the US own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the country’s population.
Fortunately, for us all, Musk is building a city next. On Mars. By the 2060s. You can go but it will probably cost you $200,000 to get there. Musk is not the only billionaire with a fruity idea about building a city and the cash to do it. Peter Thiel — who co-founded PayPal with Musk — seed-funded a floating city that the Seasteading Institute is building off the coast of French Polynesia. Google billionaire Larry Page has a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc working on how to build a city from scratch.