Elon Musk shared some thoughts about how to alleviate poverty on Twitter late Thursday evening. He’s often criticized for his billionaire status by many critics, especially those seeking to mislead the vulnerable populations into thinking that Elon Musk is responsible for their suffering.
“Education,” Elon Musk said, “is the path out of poverty and Internet access enables education.” Elon Musk said last night in response to the Tesla Owners of Silicon Vally Club who pointed out that by connecting schools in the Amazon, Starlink is enabling people with access to education.
Education is the path out of poverty and Internet access enables education
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 23, 2022
By providing Starlink internet to schools in the Amazon region, SpaceX is helping the area communities gain access to the necessary education that would lift people out of poverty. SpaceX is also in talks with officials in the Republic of Zambia about Starlink services in the country.
This isn’t the first time Elon Musk has pointed toward education as a critical solution to solving poverty. In my own interview with Elon Musk in July, poverty and the Musk Foundation were topics of our interview and I asked Elon which accomplishments his foundation achieved was he the proudest of.
He was quick to tell me that he didn’t think the foundation has done enough. However, an education XPRIZE that focused on improving literacy that he funded was something he felt did some good.
“I think that was cool and I think that did some good. To the degree that one can improve literacy then you’re essentially improving everything about any given society because they can now learn skills,” he told me.
“If you can’t read, basically, it’s hard to lift someone out of poverty probably if they can’t read.”
As for solving poverty, Elon emphasized that literacy and access to the internet were important. He added that we need to think beyond the United States since there are billions of people without internet connectivity or have very low bandwidth.
“For many parts of the world, this is the case–billions of people,” Elon said.
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