Jess Zimmerman’s Darkly Delicious Pseudo-Conspiracy Theory about the Ultra Rich Leaving the Planet

© 2015 Peter Free

 

18 September 2015

 

 

How I love an insightfully inventive mind

 

Jess Zimmerman, writing in The Guardian, said this:

 

 

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the latest tech billionaire to invest his money in spaceships . . . . [T]hose who want to cruise the galaxy can choose between the sleek new [Blue Origin] rocket . . . or they can opt to ride with Tesla founder Elon Musk on a SpaceX ship, or hop on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

 

Why does everyone who achieves economic dominance over the planet immediately turn around and try to get off it?

 

[A]re they just gearing up to wash their hands of the planet and leave the rest of us to clean up?

 

By pushing outward while ignoring the [environmental] problems . . . [that their business] causes back on the home turf, are they effectively creating a galactic upper class that rests on the backs of the earthbound?

 

Even if that’s not literally the plan, it may be the ultimate outcome.

 

© 2015 Jess Zimmerman, What if the mega-rich just want rocket ships to escape the Earth they destroy?, The Guardian (16 September 2015) (extracts)

 

 

A good story has to be just believable enough to hook us

 

Zimmerman’s does. I will not delight in private rocket building as naively as I did before.

 

 

The moral? — Humanity exists to remind us that our personally unfortunate combination of stupidity and selfishness is actually bottomless

 

Unless economic structures and motivations change, those whose economic activities most destroy the planet will (indeed) be the most capable of leaving it.