Elon Musk -- from riches to the richest

Melody Smith - Sophomore | Opinions

Ever since October 2017, Jeff Bezos has held the record as the richest man with a momentous wealth of $184 billion, but then on Wednesday, Jan. 6, Elon Musk surpassed Jeff Bezos by $1.5 billion to become the new richest man in the world.

Elon Musk, the prominent South African-born billionaire has made quite the name for himself in recent years. Most of the recognition that comes from his attention-grabbing antics involving the companies he owns, like the plan to build a tunnel under L.A. to alleviate and bypass the major L.A. traffic.

These antics have built up a persona of being the only funny billionaire, this relevancy created through his adoption of meme culture has earned him quite the following online especially on Reddit. All of this comes together on Twitter, where recently, due to some distasteful comments, he has become almost infamous online.

Although a lot of this is focused around the idea that Musk was some inspirational visionary of innovation that will lead the world to the future, all the while being a “self-made billionaire” success story for people to admire is quite simply wrong. Elon Musk is truthfully not a visionary who will save the world, and is not very self-made.

First, let’s start with the self-made billionaire part. It is widely believed that his fortune started off with an emerald mine his father supposedly owned. So far he has shown that he is not the visionary some think. Going back to that tunnel under L.A., the hyperloop as it’s called is a complete sham.

Elon Musk proposed that it would work like a vacuum and shoot you between Los Angeles and San Francisco in half an hour and would only take $6 billion to build. This is quickly seen to be unrealistic, the speeds it would have to take you would be uncomfortable to travel in, and the $6 billion estimated budget is completely off. The companies in charge of building the hyperloop found out it would take double that amount to complete the project.

Musk has repeatedly shown himself on Twitter to be completely out of touch and a completely insensitive billionaire only interested in profits. He really showed this to be true on Jul. 24 where he stated “we will coup whoever we want” after a Twitter user called him out for wanting the coup so he could acquire Bolivian lithium.

The truth is we must never look to a man like Elon Musk, because he is just another proponent of greed just like all the other billionaires claiming they will bring change to the world. Through Musk’s successful pushes to get the Tesla factory up and running again in May as many other businesses shut down due to safety concerns, Musk forced his factory to be opened again, putting his workers at risk. All for the sake of his profit.

So before you go and praise him for working his way up to being the richest man in the world, stop. Think about this -- does he deserve this? Does anyone deserve this much money?