I've been throwing around the word “corruption” here for a while now. It's been on my mind recently, and the word shows up in any post where the subject is related to politics or money. The whole world is going to hell in a hand-basket, and I'm upset about it. Upon reflection, it has occurred to me that all of the things that are driving this hell bound train boil down to corruption in one of its many guises. So it's worth considering corruption as a stand-alone issue, and examining individual facets of the corruption diamond.
We will be better able to spot corruption if we give a bit of thought to the possible ways that it may be recognized among all of the background noise that we must deal with in our new screen-driven wonderland.
Today's facet is hypocrisy.
Elon Musk is a good poster-child for hypocrisy. Every one of his harebrained ideas is presented as something that will greatly change the world for the better. Only coincidentally will they all make billions of dollars for him. Self-driving cars; the hyper-link; hypersonic air travel; and, of course, the colonization of Mars.
All of the smiles and the “advances” mask a dark truth. The rocket engine, and the entire apparatus, that would enable the super-fast travel idea would, not coincidentally, also be used to create hypersonic missiles. The real goal here is a government contract for one or two thousand hypersonic missiles capable of reaching any point on the earth lickety-split. Those will cost a bundle.
See how this works?
I loved Adam McKay's new Netflix movie, “Don't Look Up.” Spoiler alert! The government comes up with a feasible plan to divert the world-ending comet, but that plan is canceled in mid-flight after the slightly mental billionaire's team of scientists discover that the entire comet is made up of rare-earth minerals, gold, and platinum. It's worth 174 trillion dollars! They have a substitute plan to possibly save the earth with a chance of retrieving the comet and extracting its value. The Trump-like president, and her party, are totally on board. They all can smell the money. The residue of this plan is unspeakable.
You know Musk's plan to colonize Mars? All of that technology would be very useful for a massive effort to monetize the asteroid belt that is just beyond Mars. He can smell the money too. I'd bet my tattoo and one of my few remaining real teeth that mining asteroids is the real goal of Musk's Mars song and dance.
The self-driving cars and the hyper-link are just bullshit distractions. They will never amount to much. The cars require a vigilant human back-up driver to override the system's errors. As I have always maintained about automatic transmissions in cars: I have to sit here anyway, and I'll select my own damn gears, thank you. Besides, I predict that they will never work safely on our existing analog roadways. The hyper-link is pure pie in the sky. Both would require vast infrastructure for their support.
I know nothing about Musk's flame-thrower idea, nor do I wish to be informed about it.
What a world we live in! It's like everyone's bullshit-detector has simultaneously failed, and no one has noticed. And no one wants to piss off the billionaires. You might get banned from Facebook! You might get kicked off of Amazon Prime!
Listen to what they say, the billionaire class and the politicians, but take it all with a good grain of salt. Watch what they do, certainly. Real profit, however, lies in carefully considering what their real motives might be. Is there money in this idea somewhere for them? If so, there lies the truth.
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