I sympathize with the author, and I think a lot of the comments here are missing at least part of the point of the post.
Maybe its 12 years of catholic school plus a philosophy degree talking, but in times of peace my brain likes to hold everyone guilty of all the good they didn't do. This applies to me, you, congress, billionaires, and so on. The author swaps my "good" for "awesome stuff", but I think the feeling is probably similar.
In other words, I think that being a billionaire and doing nothing ambitious with their money is much less impressive than not being a billionaire. I think the author is remarking upon that in a similar way.
I think the author is slightly incorrect in thinking Musk is the only one, but that doesn't really detract from his general point.
(Of course, billionaires don't "owe" us/society anything, though some might be able to argue that society allowing one person to accumulate such wealth ought to have some kind of obligation, but as it stands they don't, and that's probably a topic for another time)
Maybe its 12 years of catholic school plus a philosophy degree talking, but in times of peace my brain likes to hold everyone guilty of all the good they didn't do. This applies to me, you, congress, billionaires, and so on. The author swaps my "good" for "awesome stuff", but I think the feeling is probably similar.
In other words, I think that being a billionaire and doing nothing ambitious with their money is much less impressive than not being a billionaire. I think the author is remarking upon that in a similar way.
I think the author is slightly incorrect in thinking Musk is the only one, but that doesn't really detract from his general point.
(Of course, billionaires don't "owe" us/society anything, though some might be able to argue that society allowing one person to accumulate such wealth ought to have some kind of obligation, but as it stands they don't, and that's probably a topic for another time)