It was reasonable for the World Food Programme to ask Musk to chip in to avert global disaster. His response was less so
Elon Musk has six children and four companies. He is trying to put chips into our brains, build self-driving cars, save the world from an artificial intelligence apocalypse, and colonise Mars. In short, the guy has a lot going on. One would think he would barely have time to eat, let alone tweet – and, indeed, Musk has claimed that he is in meetings most of the day and the time he spends on Twitter is “like, almost nothing”. Still, the casual observer would be forgiven for thinking that the billionaire lives on Twitter. Musk seems to make headlines every other day because of his inane online activity, which largely consists of cracking juvenile jokes (including a recent sexist gag about T.I.T.S), opining on cryptocurrencies, and getting into online spats.
Musk’s latest Twitter beef is with David Beasley, the director of the World Food Programme (WFP). Beasley’s crime was this: he suggested that Musk, who recently became the richest person in the history of the universe and the first person ever to be worth more than $300bn, might help the hungry. According to the WFP, 42 million people are on the brink of famine due to a combination of the climate crisis, structural poverty, conflict and the pandemic. In a recent interview with CNN, Beasley called on the 1% to “step up now, on a one-time basis” to give $6bn, which is just 0.36% the total increase in net worth of the world’s top 400 billionaires last year. Beasley then name-checked Jeff Bezos and Musk, pointing out that the latter saw a $6bn increase in his net worth in just one day last week.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
