Musk is going the Genghis Khan route. In 500 years he wants to be genetic ancestor to the majority of humans. To accomplish this goal he must:

1. Have many children (we’re seeing this)

2. Encourage his children to provide him with grandchildren (we see his reaction to his trans child who is therefore unlikely to give him biological grandchildren)

3. Maximize the amount of wealth and assets he earns in his lifetime so that all his children and grandchildren can each be obscenely rich as well, thereby increasing their chances of having many descendants

4. Leverage the capitalist system to give him and his descendants as much control over the means of production and the levers of power as possible, thereby making them more likely to survive societal upheavals

This will give him the posthumous status he desires the most, as people are more likely to forgive historic wrongs if those wrongs were committed by their own ancestors. He can be as horrible as he wants and still be remembered in a good light if the only people around to remember him are people for whom he is intertwined with their own sense of identity.

He expects the future to slowly reduce the amount of children poor people can have as the global population drops due to obvious and intractible economic pressures.

Previous society’s ultra-wealthy were raised socipathic but with some form of social contract as well. Even if it was completely a classist version of the contract with them at the top, there was some form of duty to society - not necessarily the individuals in it. IOW they’d build an orphanage but exploit the hell out of individual workers. Bonus points if you enacted some large public work like libraries or schools with your name on it so people would know it was you that did it.

Now? They get fuck you money, so fuck you. Sure, they engage in philanthropy to their kid’s charity to lighten the tax burden and build their kids’ fortunes. Donate to prestigious universities to build a wing on to the campus that drives tuition even higher with new staffing and maintenance costs. Build bunker mansions for themselves. Support far right government that gives them tax breaks and other deregulation that makes them richer, because fuck you money isn’t enough.

They’re insanely disconnected and selfish. Yes, all of them.

The biggest influence on society for most people is probably what you described and then raise children in a mostly trauma free environment.

100% but that work is very difficult and for some people impossible to do. I watched an interview with a psychologist who had a former mobster as a client (not named Tony). The guy was in his 80s and had been retired from the game for years but kept having nightmares about bloody babies. He was unable to connect his work as a hit man to this nightmares, and always said that he was fine with his occupation.

The threat of groups out of the normal population correcting them, or in worst case firing them, for not kept promises or derailing plans, can keep them from seeing the population as nothing more than numbers and themselves as a superior in-group.

That’s why i think that Swiss’ initiative/referendum right is a prerequisite for a longtime-stable democratic system. I often see that in germany, where politicians do what they want and people complain that they lie in elections anyway. While here, even the president can take the bus to the Bundeshaus.

Why would anyone want to change when the rewards for being awful are so good? Doing the things you described not only make advancement in a dark society nearly impossible, but it takes a personal toll on the psyche and perspective of the person attempting bettering themselves and the world around them. I say this as someone doing the work.

Beautifully said.

Yes, but no. If there were other systems dominate today, I would argue those conditions always coincide. But yeah, capitalism is the only one today

o:

A healthy society expels those types