🏆 Elon Musk: Humanity's MVP

Humanity has many valuable players doing immense good for fellow human beings and for this planet we live on. But no one does more good than Elon Musk. He is our Most Valuable Player.

With Tesla, he is taking on one of humanity's biggest problems, climate change, and doing more than anyone else to accelerate our transition to sustainable energy. Without Musk the electrification of cars and other vehicles would maybe not even have started. Now old and new companies are racing and spending enormous amounts of money to grab this new market.

With SpaceX, he does more than anyone else to extend human consciousness beyond Earth. With previous rocket technology, humanity would have stayed on Earth. Not reusing rockets made space extremely expensive and expansion to other planets and space stations across the solar system would not have been possible. The moon landing was exceptional, but we haven't gone back since 1972. The same would have happened with an eventual Mars mission, if Musk and SpaceX hadn't pioneered reusable rockets. Imagine the day when humanity has a self-sustaining city on Mars. We are no longer a species that are confined to one planet. And there is no way for humanity to survive long term if we only live here on Earth. Thanks to Musk the likelihood of that happening in my lifetime has gone up dramatically.

With Neuralink he is speeding up the learning process of humans. Instead of reading and slowly typing, we will be able to just access knowledge and ideas directly into our brains.

With Boring Company he is solving the problem of traffic congestion. Not my favorite Musk project though, except the name.

And he is just getting started. The enormous projects with Tesla and SpaceX are not nearly done, Neuralink is just getting started. And imagine what more he will do in the future.

Elon Musk has dedicated his life to increasing the chance of humanity's future being a good one. He has been working 14-18 hours every day of the week for decades, literally, towards that goal.

But what about his Twitter account?

Yeah, what about it? Yes, sometimes he says stupid things, but mostly it makes him transparent. He frequently replies to people, not choosing them based on how many followers they have. Would it be better if he communicated only via press releases and staged events? I like his style on Twitter and elsewhere, but that is not a requirement to admire and support what he is trying to achieve.

Musk - the inspiration

Maybe the mission of his companies and his personal mission is not his greatest achievement. Maybe it is the inspiration. Others see what a single human being can achieve. Not alone, but how one person together with others can shape the future of humanity and make it better. Young and old, me included, see what is possible and try harder to achieve our dreams.

For me, Elon Musk is Time Person of the Year for many years to come. But his biggest achievement is all the Time Persons of the Year that will follow him, that he inspired into action.

Mathias Sundin

I heard "Humanity's MVP" first from Steven Mark Ryan, and thought it was exactly right.