SIBERIAN winds are sweeping the streets of Paris for almost a week now. With below-zero temperature and snowflakes flickering in the dry blasts, we are once more gathered, close to bursting logs in the fireplace, in the drawing room of Count André de la Roche. The topic of discussion this evening is computer revolution that has shaken the world.

“I think this is the end of capitalism,” says Bernard Monnier, a diehard Marxist and regular writer in a number of intellectual magazines.

“I am convinced,” he continues, “…that the age of total domination of the society by big business is over. With the internet and social networks that can be used for free by anyone anywhere in the world, people have already started communicating with each other from one end of the globe to the other. Using modern means we can act today for the good of humanity without thinking about making profits, just the way Karl Marx had dreamt.”

The Count lights his pipe and looks around, an amused expression on his face. “Not only Marx,” he says, “but think also of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro while you’re about it.”

Loire Valley journalist Jean Lauvergeat takes the hint and clears his throat:

“The electronic turmoil is not only destroying old values, cultures and civilisations but also the control elected governments used to have over businesses in democratic countries. Today, the world’s biggest hotel company with a worth of $31 billion has no hotel of its own. It has no staff, no salaries hence no taxes, but it can book you a room anywhere in the world. There are restaurants with no kitchens who can deliver selected meals and drinks at your doorsteps following an exchange between your smartphone and a company somewhere in the Silicon Valley. Same is true for taxis, supermarket shopping and what have you.

“But I’d like to recount a very strange and interesting story about an American billionaire only a few people know about, though he was a lot in news recently.

“His name is Elon Musk. Older generations can still remember the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or Nasa, the legendary American agency responsible for satellite launches and rocket missions to the moon. All that heroism is a thing of the past today!

“Worth $22 billion, Musk owns his private companies handling tunnel digging and satellite launches for entirely personal gains. He has his typical sense of humour that would have been considered a sign of vulgarity and illiteracy only 10 years ago. His tunnel business is called the Boring Company and the space enterprise is named the BFR. I won’t dare to repeat the full appellation, but let’s say the Big Something Rocket.

“Early last month, on February 6 to be exact, Elon Musk launched a missile that released once high enough, his private sports car, an electric Tesla with a flexible statue of Musk himself at the driving wheel going on an endless, and probably meaningless, voyage in the space.

“Musk who attended the operation that cost him $100 million, with a three-day beard and dressed in rumpled collar-less shirt and jeans with holes at the knees, later commented that he was sure the car will one day reach the planet Mars and the Martians will use it to drive it back to the Earth.”

As Lauvergeat finishes his tale, the Count casts a sweeping glance at all of us and says: “I agree with Jean. I hope he has convinced you all that we are living in an age when money-making is dumping all old values in the junkyard. Capitalism has never been as triumphant, but also as ruthless, as we are witnessing today.”

—The writer is a journalist based in Paris
ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2018