Affordable

 Okay, I get it. We live in a capitalist society, so we are somehow beholding to those who play the game exceptionally well. "He who dies with the most toys wins," was how we used to talk about it when I was in high school. Back then, I was indestructible and I had my whole life to make a fortune. The house I was going to buy was going to have hot and cold warming fun issuing from every spigot. I wasn't going to have a robot vacuum, I was going to have a robot that would vacuum. The garage would hold all manner of vehicles for those moments when I felt like going somewhere that might be more fun than the house in which I lived. I could imagine a lot.

The challenge, as it turns out, is that there are a lot of other folks out there who are much better at imagining that I am. These creepy nerds, as we referred to them in high school, ended up winning the game and controlling the board. They got all the toys and the dogecoin and stock options and now we have to listen to their advice about how to live our lives. Let's start with everyone's favorite arbiter of taste, Elon Musk. Setting aside for a moment that his very name connotes a smell that maybe we weren't that interested in to start with, Mister Musk would like us to know that, "If moving to Mars costs, for argument's sake, $100,000, then I think almost anyone can work and save up and eventually have $100,000 and be able to go to Mars if they want." 

If they want. There are a few points in there I would like to point out. Most people like to eat. Most people like to have shelter of some sort. Most people like to have clothes on their backs. 

Most people are not Elon Musk. 

Most people are trying to save money to afford the necessities of life. Which doesn't seem like a big challenge for someone who seems to be able to produce money at rates and by means previously only imagined by high school sophomores scribbling in the backs of their spiral notebooks next to the logos of bands they hoped to be a part of one day. 

Most people no longer believe in the myth of another oddly named human, Horatio Alger. The suggestion that all you needed to do was "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" implies that you had bootstraps in the first place. Or maybe you feel more comfortable following the advice of kerjillionaire and reality TV staple Kim Kardashian who suggested we just needed to get off our non-surgically altered backsides "and work." That's the only way you're gonna get to Mars. 

Or maybe we should let everyone who can afford it get off this planet so we can finally have some peace.