IT WAS amazing to learn in a TCW article last month that Elon Musk’s fortune is more than double that of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg combined. Which prompts the question: what is he doing with it?
What he is actually doing is using his company, SpaceX, to build rockets for space exploration, including, ultimately, to colonise the moon in case Earth becomes uninhabitable. It is hard to think of a more daunting task on a space body which has no atmosphere, no water, no soil and gravity that is only about one sixth of that of Earth.
What should he really be spending his fortune on instead?
How about relieving poverty in Africa, or India, or even in his home nation? With more than 800million people living in poverty worldwide there is plenty of scope for action. It is well known that in many African nations women cook over indoor fires fuelled by dung and their lives are drastically shortened by the inhalation of the smoke. The World Bank, totally captured by the man-made global warming hoax, won’t finance fossil-fuel power stations in Africa, only renewables generation. Musk and other multi-billionaires could solve this problem and at the same time build clean drinking water facilities. Then we needn’t worry about the (literally) trillions of dollars wasted on trying to eliminate man-made carbon dioxide from the atmosphere instead of directing the funds to alleviating poverty.
There’s so much more: hospitals, schools, roads, deforestation prevention, and, a really big one, mining by machines instead of by men, women and children wielding pickaxes while inhaling the dust thrown up. Watching this six-minute video made me feel horribly guilty for owning a smartphone. The Democratic Republic of Congo contains more than half the world’s cobalt, and all the cobalt mining is controlled on-site by Chinese supervisors. China now controls 74 per cent of the world’s cobalt output.
Key to all this philanthropy would be ensuring that the funds provided were not trousered by ruling elites.
That is the hard part, but I do not believe it’s impossible. This is how it could be done.
First, forget that useless organisation which should really be disbanded, the United Nations. The trick will be to find a single individual in a position of authority in the DRC who is widely known to be incorruptible. Failing that a foreigner would need to be appointed to run the show. This person should be provided with an office and staff, almost certainly to include expatriate advisers, which would control a bank account into which the philanthropic funds would be paid. Significant funds would have to be directed to the national government to ensure that they supported the programme. Money would then be disbursed to experienced international mining, construction and infrastructure companies who would come in under carefully written contracts which would also ensure that they made attractive profits, with their experienced operations supervisors, surveyors and other experts who would supervise mainly local workers and companies to do the various jobs. This would result in skills training, ongoing employment with salaries and benefits such as medical and a career path for nationals who demonstrated the ability. This process is usually called technology transfer.
Having been a contractor to such companies in the early days of Indonesia opening up to foreign capital investment, I have seen at first hand what oil companies and their downstream development partners do. They create small towns with full infrastructure, schools, medical facilities, places of worship and recreation spaces. Local people become supervisors and in due course managers.
No doubt some will say that this is pie in the sky without offering alternative proposals. That is a defeatist attitude. Of course the programmes will face difficulties and setbacks but those are cop-out reasons for not attempting what would eventually, if successful, transform thousands of lives for the better.
How about it, Elon?
