Elon Musk is Person of the Year 2021

It is worth over 300 billion US dollars. According to the Times, he does not want to be fully described as the richest person on earth. He thinks it is quite possible that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be richer than him, because: “I cannot invade countries and such.”

Time Magazine has named “Person of the Year” for almost a century. Sometimes several people or entire groups can be named Person of the Year. It was Angela Merkel, as well as Barack Obama or Donald Trump, but also “The American Soldier”.

Times Person of the Year should be someone who has shaped the previous twelve months most clearly – for better or for worse. The appointment of the “Person of the Year” is a rather neutral sign of influence.

For the year 2021, the makers of Time Magazine clearly see one person ahead. In 2021, Musk is not only the richest person in the world, but “perhaps also the richest example of massive change in our society,” said Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal in his “laudation”.

Now Musk is not the only rich person on earth. Nevertheless, he is not comparable with the other representatives of his class – he is “in a class of its own”. He sees it as his task to “solve the greatest challenges in the world”. Over the past two decades, he turned several industries inside out. This included traditional industries such as car manufacturing or space travel, which have always had a very special meaning for the USA, as well as some other future topics, including the development of new infrastructures, artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, payment systems and, increasingly, money itself his gimmicks with cryptocurrencies ”.

Felsenthal describes Musk as a “provocative personality” who “often seems to indulge in division and aggressive ridicule”. He gives the “world access to his self via social media”. Time Magazine sees the major influence Musk has on the future of the earth in his work around the construction of electric cars on the one hand and in opening up the universe on the other.

For example, Musk “almost single-handedly created” the market for electric vehicles. Now the conventional automakers would overturn to catch up Tesla’s lead. If the earth cannot be saved, Musk could become the creator of a “futuristic Noah’s Ark”. His company SpaceX is already a world leader in the construction and flight of rockets and crews. According to Musk, the key to opening up space lies in “making rockets for space travel as reusable as airplanes”.

Certainly Musk’s rise would not have been easily conceivable without increasingly dysfunctional governments, without the ongoing decline of traditional institutions or the growing gap between prosperity and opportunity, muses Felsenthal. Well, so be it and – like it or not – we were now living in Musk’s world – an effect that some would call proof of the failure of capitalism. While others welcome the fact that money is now with those who are also able to manage it sensibly – Musk’s favorite accusation against governments, by the way. Most recently he had meant that he could not pay taxes on senseless public spending, that he needed the money to colonize Mars.

At just 50 years of age, Musk still has plenty of time to write his and our future. To do this, he will definitely have to come up with a few more companies. It is to be expected of him.

First of all, the following applies:

Because he created solutions to an existential crisis, because he embodies the possibilities and dangers of the age of tech titans, because he drives the most daring and disruptive changes in society, Elon Musk is Times Person of the Year 2021.