677. Should We Care When Billionaires Go to Space? Here’s Why It Actually Matters

[Brittany]
Hi, Rachel.

[Rachel]
Hi, Brittany.

[Brittany]
I just spoke in a really high-pitched voice.

I could have broken a glass with that greeting, like the opera singers. Well, today, I want to talk about billionaires going to space, which is a topic that we've been, people have been talking about all over the place because some celebrities, it was like Katy Perry. What's her name?

Was it Olivia Munn? I always get her in the other one. Katy Perry.

I'm confused. Another celebrity. She's married to John Mulaney, the comedian, Gail King, who's Oprah's best friend.

And then I can't remember the other celebrities. Oh, Jeff Bezos's fiancee or wife. So it was all this female crew.

They all went up to space and it was like, oh, look, we went to space. Katy Perry got back and she kissed the ground to, like, I'm so glad to be back on earth.

[Rachel]
Spiritual thing about feeling love.

[Brittany]
They were only in space for, so the whole journey was 11 minutes, but they were only in space for four. So it wasn't like they were gone for the parents, you know, and for the parents who've seen Interstellar, it wasn't like they were gone for, you know, 30 years.

[Rachel]
Interstellar is a favorite movie in our house. We love Interstellar.

[Brittany]
I think it's every, I feel like it's everyone's favorite movie. I've just saw it for the first time in the theater when it was re-released in December and I had never seen it before. And I don't like space.

Space terrifies me because the idea of being lost in space just scares me. And let me tell you, I was bawling in that movie theater. That movie was so good.

Especially, I think, as a parent watching it, you probably get a little emotional, I'm assuming, right? Because there's the whole kid thing. We won't go too much in Interstellar.

I don't want to spoil it, but so space is on everyone's mind. And this was not a NASA trip. This was a Blue Origin trip.

And that is Jeff Bezos, the founder, CEO of Amazon. That's his company. And years and years ago, Connor and I did a podcast where I talked about billionaire space travel because that was when it was Elon, Jeff Bezos, and I love him.

Oh my goodness. What's his name?

[Rachel]
Richard Branson. Thank you.

[Brittany]
He's like one of my favorite entrepreneurs. Richard Branson. All were having these, like they all started their own private space companies and they were all like trying to, you know, race to space and people were like, oh, these billionaires were sitting here paying, you know, whatever for eggs and they're going to space.

And that's happening again today. And there's also the silliness of people being like, this is feminism. Let's go to space.

And it was like, you were, you were in space for four minutes. Let's calm down. Let's calm down here.

[Rachel]
Also they'll, they'll throw the line at Adam, like they think of how many people they could have fed and clothed with that money or, you know, climate change alarmism about like the fuel. But then, you know, they all take private jets and that's fine for some reason.

[Brittany]
Oh, that always makes me laugh because I know people like Taylor Swift are taking jets all the time, but no, like she gets a pass.

[Rachel]
Al Gore. Or Al Gore taking, yes. Have you heard about the Al Gore effect?

Like wherever he goes to talk about global warming, it's like always like unseasonably cold, like snowing.

[Brittany]
That's so funny.

[Rachel]
He's the cause of the Gore effect.

[Brittany]
But I want to talk about billionaire space travel because of what we were just talking about a second ago, that people are up in arms like, oh, this is, you know, you could have fed people. And kind of like I just said, like, I do think it's a little bit silly too, just because I don't think the income inequality or the class, you know, stuff is, is silly. What I think is silly is it's like, you know, Katy Perry talking about how she understands love now and the universe makes sense.

And it's like, all right, you were there for four minutes. So that part is silly, but there's a broader lesson here that I want to talk about. And that is why should we care?

Why does it matter that these billionaires are going into space? And I think it does. I think it does matter because it seems silly today.

But Mises, the economist Ludwig von Mises, he wrote a book, Liberalism, and in it he talks about income inequality or this wealth inequality, which is a big point of contention between individualists and collectivists, right? Because the collectivists, they're always thinking like, you have to, you know, nobody should have more than somebody else. So if there's somebody hungry, then we should be feeding them before you even think about going to space, you know, things like that.

But in this, in this book, Mises, this is way before we were going to space, but he wrote and he was talking about how there were all these luxuries back in the day that aren't luxuries anymore. They're just normal things. And they only became normal things because rich people were able to buy them and consume them and then they were able to be made cheaper eventually.

So his example was silverware. And that might seem silly to you. Silverware.

Now, have you ever been to Medieval Times, Rachel? Oh, I love Medieval Times. I've been there once.

I've been there once. I was 13, but it stuck with me because I loved it so much. It's, I mean, this is nerdy, but Rachel and I are both theater kids at heart.

You go and it's kind of like a renaissance fair. Like you pretend you're watching a medieval, like knights are jousting and you have like a night you're supposed to cheer for and they bring you with like this food you're supposed to be like, they give you like a chicken leg and things like that, but they don't give you silverware. You can ask for it.

They'll give it to you, but they don't give you silverware because it's like, oh, it's supposed to be authentic. You're supposed to be like living in the Medieval Times, eating with your hands, getting your face greasy and wipe it on your clothes. But people did in the Medieval Times, they did not have utensils to eat with.

In fact, only the very, very, very rich had utensils. And there was a point in time when people were like, can you believe these billionaires were hungry and they're eating from, you know, silverware from these utensils made of precious metals. How dare they?

And people were all up in arms about it. Now let's look from today's side. It's like, it's silly to think of eating food with our hands, right?

Like that's just so silly to us. We pay to go to Medieval Times to experience, right? That's not something we have here.

Everybody uses silverware. It has a good role, like there's a reason for it. But that was only able to happen because these very rich people started using these utensils.

And then that idea struck somebody else and like, you know, we don't have to make this out of precious metals. Let's make this out of this. Let's, you know, and slowly it got cheaper and it got more affordable and it trickled down to people of, of all, you know, class, social classes.

I mean, look at, you can go to Walmart and you can get, when I first moved into my first college apartment, I think I got like a pack of like four forks, four spoons, four knives for like $3. Granted that was a long time ago, but you can get them for so cheap. Right.

And it's because billionaires did it first. Well, they weren't billionaires like them, but you know, the very, very wealthy same with iPhones. It used to not be that everyone could afford an iPhone, right.

But more people bought it and then they found better ways to produce it. And then it became cheaper or, um, Rachel, remember not everyone had a VCR back in the day.

[Rachel]
Yeah. I have some examples. Yeah.

Actually. So, so there is a famous industrialist here, a developer, land developer, um, famous in Florida called Henry Flagler. Yeah.

Henry Flagler, he was a partner with John D Rockefeller and they formed Standard Oil, which is today Exxon anyway, one of the most fabulously wealthy men on the planet. And he built this mansion called White Hall. It's over in Palm Beach.

And it's a museum now, but in one of the grand music rooms, beautiful rooms, just lush. And um, I learned that, okay, so the walls were kind of shiny. It looked like gold.

I'm like, wow, is that gold on the wall? And the docent said, no, actually that's aluminum. I'm like, aluminum.

You think he could afford something better than aluminum. And she said, no, actually aluminum was a luxury item before they developed a process to make it like cheap. How it is today.

It was like the, the fancy thing. So to put it on the wall was considered back in those days, which would be like 1890s. That was a sign of wealth.

Yeah. That was a sign of wealth. And it was very beautiful.

Um, and another thing is linoleum, linoleum flooring started off as like a luxury product. And you can imagine why, like, uh, before linoleum, it would be like wood floors and they would be subject to getting scuffed and dirty and blah, blah, blah. But I mean, something came along that you could wash easier, like linoleum, you know, it's water resistant.

Um, and, and that was the new, the new fancy wealthy thing. Of course, now it's a linoleum floor is, it's not something that you, yeah, you, yeah, hardwood floor today is like a luxury thing, but you know, things change and things like, like you said, they trickle down, something that's like luxury one day trickles down and it becomes available for everybody. It makes everybody's life better.

So, um, maybe because we have billionaires in space, we'll have like normal people in space one day.

[Brittany]
Exactly. And people might say like, well, why does that?

[Rachel]
I will get my four minutes to learn about love.

[Brittany]
I don't want to go in space. Space terrifies me. But, um, but, uh, yes, but people might be thinking like, well, why, why would going to space be like utensils or be like linoleum or aluminum?

And we might not know that yet. We might not know that yet. And I like not to be all like, I've been watching a lot of like dystopian movies lately, not to be like, maybe we'll run out of resources here and we need to go to another planet, but I don't know.

Maybe we will. Like we don't know. We can't always see what's going to be big in the future.

If you would have told me when I was in elementary school, that I would have a tiny computer that I held in the palm of my hand and that I did everything with, that I talked to people, that I used the internet and I paid everything. I just do two clicks and use Apple pay. If you would have told me that an iPhone was going to be everything or smartphones, I would not have believed you.

Right. That would have been so just incomprehensible at the time. And so we don't know what space might do for us.

We don't know. Maybe there's going to be a cure to something found on another planet. Maybe.

I don't know. It could be anything.

[Rachel]
I know something. My husband is an astrophysicist and he is studying a lot about astronomy. And he says that what we should do is mine the asteroids because there's gold on the asteroids.

[Brittany]
There you go.

[Rachel]
We could we could hop like somehow lasso an asteroid, you know, and and and sit on top of it and like start mining for gold and other rare minerals. So that's one thing. There you go.

But but then but then if we do that too much, then guess what loses value? Gold.

[Brittany]
We can't get two in the week. That's a whole other. That's a whole other thing.

I don't know if I said this quote already. I may have in the beginning, but I'm going to say it again just as we wrap up. And that is Mises put it perfectly where he said today's luxuries will be the necessities of tomorrow.

So we don't know. So is it silly that some billionaires and celebrities went to space? Maybe.

But guess what? They can do it.

[Rachel]
It's their money.

[Brittany]
And I love seeing I love the billionaires have the freedom, financial freedom to do things like this. It takes trailblazers like this to do the things that I would never do that I couldn't afford to do. So should we care about billionaires going to space?

I think so. I think it's actually pretty cool. Maybe it's pretty cool, even if they're being silly about it.

I think it's pretty cool. So we will wrap it up there. Please don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends.

And until next time, Rachel, we will talk to you later.

[Rachel]
Talk to you later.