Elon Musk and the limits of wealth, power, and morality

BarcelonaElon Musk is the first person with a fortune of one trillion (with a t) dollars, equivalent to all the wealth generated by a prosperous country like Switzerland in a year or, as Oxfam states,, as all that 3.8 billion people have, 46% of the world's poorest population. The stock market launch of SpaceX, a company owned by the magnate that will benefit from the privatization of the aerospace business, is born with a record valuation.

With the biggest stock market debut in history, Musk, who does not hesitate to defend the positions of the far-right and racism, will increase a fortune and, at the same time, a power that seems to have no limits. And it will only be the starting point for other listings on the stock market of major artificial intelligence (AI) projects, such as OpenAI and Anthropic. More air within what many see as a bubble, as well as more wealth and power of influence for their own benefit for a small and powerful elite, about which Pope Leo XIV has even warned. A world in which the planet of finance, which the Thatcherite historian Niall Ferguson spoke about in his book The Triumph of Money

(Barcelona; Debate, 2009), increasingly diminishes the physical or real planet. And which also dynamites the boundaries of morality and ethics with growing inequality in the face of a select minority that is increasingly earning more.

"A large part of SpaceX's valuation is based on future projects, which may or may not technically succeed," say experts. In fact, according to some of the underwriters of the shares, it is an investment for followers or fans of Musk's vision. Or for "opportunists" who buy at the debut, when the shares register a significant increase, and sell them in a short time to obtain immediate capital gains.

In any case, the SpaceX project poses dangers. It leaves in the hands of a single person, who already controls a good part of social networks and the messages that circulate through X (formerly Twitter) and has a privileged, albeit sometimes tempestuous, relationship with the US President, Donald Trump, a business that is now public like aerospace. He wins not only on Earth but also in space. And he contributes to fattening the current account of a prominent member of the global technological elite, who has the capacity to force regulations and taxes that favor them. They are the so-called

technobros

.

head the magazine rankings Forbes magazine rankings of the richest people in the world. Taking this escalation into account, in order to better contribute to the society from which they profit and to contain inequality, perhaps the debate on the taxation of large fortunes should be revived. This is proposed by economists such as the French Gabriel Zucman, with an annual rate of 2% for assets over 100 million euros, and Thomas Piketty, who demonstrated in his book

Capital in the 21st Century (Barcelona; La Magrana, 2014) that inequality grows when capital returns increase more than the economy and proposes progressive taxes on wealth and inheritances. He explains this in an interview conducted by the director of ARA, Esther Vera, which will be published in Ara Diumenge.