Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, says he will sell $6 billion worth of Tesla stock and donate the proceeds to the United Nations’ food agency if it could show how the money would solve world hunger.
If you grew up in the 80s you’d know the long sordid history of rich, often white, celebrities trying to raise money to end the various ills of the world in a contest to see who is the most giving, most generous, most caring person with the biggest wad of cash. Everything from the ASL ice bucket challenge to that time a bunch of mullet toting musicians got together to let us know that it won’t be snowing in Africa this christmas time.
Of course, they weren’t contributing their own vast swaths of cashola to the cause; if they had, their annual incomes could have ended global poverty ‘four times over’, according to a report from Oxfam. Celebrities, and rich world figures often like to do these big public displays, and while charity appeals and fundraising has it’s merit they do very little to meaningfully impact the lives of those who need it most
The latest celebrity to make a shallow gesture in an effort to seem woke and charitable is multi-billionaire Elon Musk. However, where Bob Geldof and his compatriots at least made somewhat of an attempt to contrbute in some way, the efforts of the Tesla founder were limited to a singular tweet.
A recent statement given by David Beasley, director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), on CNN claimed that the US’s 400 top billionaires could save 42 million people across 43 countries from famine by donating just .36% of their net worth increase last year. This prompted Musk to force himself back into the public psyche.
In response to this statement, Musk, who recently earned more money in one day ($36 billion) than anyone ever before, promised that ‘If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it’. Despite this being only 16.67% of his daily earnings on 25th October, and only 2% of his total net worth, he has thus far donated a total of $0 due to his lack of trust in the WFP.
Elon Musk has always been known for his unpopular and regrettable tweets, having fulling on twitter meltdowns, tweeting in favour of the red pill movement and once cryptically tweeting a bunny emoticon.
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 17, 2021
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/ >🚀
This sparked a series of tweets from Beasley defending his position. He stated in a reply to Musk’s tweet: ‘Headline not accurate. $6B will not solve world hunger, but it WILL prevent geopolitical instability, mass migration and save 42 million people on the brink of starvation. An unprecedented crisis and a perfect storm due to Covid/conflict/climate crises.’
In response to Musk’s empty promise, Jake Paul, notable for his internet noteriety and recent boxing career tweeted in response to Musk ‘Yo @elonmusk if you donate $6 billion to the UN to end world hunger I’ll also donate $10 million if this gets 690k retweets.’. Which begs the question, maybe he should donate money to prevent the death of millions without asking for an juvenile amount of retweets first? if anything is for certain, if live-aid couldn’t end world hunger it is unlikely all this twitter showboating will.
