Elon Musk Isn’t Saving Humanity

Paris Marx is joined by Manu Saadia to discuss the roots of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’ visions for space, and why they serve the billionaires’ need for control, not the betterment of humanity.

Manu Saadia is the author of “Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek.”

• Elon Musk said he’s accumulating wealth to make life multiplanetary. Jeff Bezos said he can only think to spend his Amazon “winnings” on space.
• In “Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity,” Daniel Deudney outlines the two space paradigms discussed in the episode. You can also read a review of it.
• Werhner von Braun, who was key to the US Apollo Program, was a Nazi scientist who came to the US after World War II.
• Carl Sagan said “there is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. … For the moment, Earth is where we make our stand.” Elon Musk laughed at this and claimed Mars is the alternative, but Shannon Stirone explained why he is very wrong.
• Salvage published an editorial on the immediate need to repair the damage done by capitalism.
• Science fiction mentioned: Ursula Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed,” Octavia Butler, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Heinlein.

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