There's lots of implicit assumptions or this would be a book, but remember that Musk has a rocket and wants to colonise Mars, and that Mars is so bad that it is currently 100% populated by robots.

For the billionaires without rockets, there's also a whole bunch of deserts conveniently filled with lots of silicon.

(Or as Mac(Format|World|User) put it sometime in the 90s when they were considering who might bail out Apple and suggested one of the middle east oil barrons, a "silly con").

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SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Musk smokes a lot of weed. We won't have a colony on Mars in his grandshildren's lifetime.

	▲	ben_w 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		His lifetime, I agree unlikely, but also I think that will be short: he's pissed off too many other powerful people and will get the western equivalent of Russian oligarchs "falling out of a window". The economics he talks about are all nonsense. No bank will lend someone $200k for the ticket to go to Mars on the offchance they might be a successful pizza restaraunteur. But like I said, if you're (e.g.) him and you buy your own hype… (His grandkids' lifetimes are another question entirely. Things are changing too fast).