Before we build a statue of Elon Musk, let’s consider what he’s done with his trillions of dollars

There’s a statue in central Sydney of a man with a dodgy pair of trousers, a set of mutton chop sideburns that defy belief and an unerring gaze forward.

The man is Thomas Sutcliffe Mort. In my mind, he stands as Australia’s greatest entrepreneur, perhaps one of our greatest Australians.

Last week, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.

I’m confident that if Musk ever manages to establish a colony on Mars, there will be a statue erected by Martians in honour of the entrepreneur and businessman who founded civilisation’s first ex-planet colony.

But a key difference between Mort’s view of the world and those of Musk and most other members of today’s ultra-rich is contributing to the political shockwaves that are pulling apart the globe.

When Mort’s statue was unveiled in 1883, five years after his death, central Sydney was clogged with thousands of people – from the NSW governor to working men who had been employed by Mort – to recognise his astonishing life.

You may not recognise his name (although in Melbourne and Sydney you can see the term “Goldsborough Mort” on old brick wool warehouses central to Australia’s first great international service industry, wool brokerage).

But from AMP to Peters Ice Cream to Bodalla Cheese to Elders to Waratah Coal to the Sydney-Parramatta rail line to the Dry Dock Hotel in Balmain to Australia’s refrigerated meat export trade, Thomas Mort’s impact lives on in so many ways most of us cannot fathom.

When Mort died, his total assets were almost $200 million (in today’s dollars). Reasonable, but nowhere close to getting on the Australian Financial Review’s annual rich list.

Musk, after the public listing of SpaceX, is estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth $US1.3 trillion ($1.8 trillion).

No matter your personal views about Musk, the drive and intelligence of the man behind Tesla and SpaceX is almost as astonishing as his wealth.

If he were a nation, Musk would command a seat at the G20.

He is worth 52 times more than Australia’s own wealthiest individual, Gina Rinehart, who herself has proven to detractors she is a brilliantly minded businesswoman.

The world’s first billionaire, JD Rockefeller, was so rich that in 1916 his wealth was the equivalent of 2 per cent of America’s GDP. Musk’s wealth is double that.

The sheer wealth of Musk and the 3500 members of the world’s billionaire class is not what differentiates them from the man memorialised with that pigeon-friendly statue in Sydney.

Thomas Mort went out of his way to build communities and opportunities.

He was the first Australian to effectively establish a co-operative, offering a half share in his Balmain dock and engineering company (that survived almost a century) to his workers in a bid to improve labour relations.

Not quite Musk’s approach to Twitter where he purged about 80 per cent of its staff.

He was heavily involved in the Anglican church. Anyone who has ever watched Muriel’s Wedding, and the scene in which Muriel marries David Van Arkle, has seen one of Mort’s contributions (he financed the construction of St Mark’s Church).

He believed in making his community better, from gardening to helping establish St Paul’s College at Sydney University. OK, he had a penchant for the unusual – he bought furniture owned by Marie Antoinette – but we all need a bit of whimsy in our lives.

Now compare that to the ultra-rich who, largely, appear to want to become even richer and flaunt their wealth. Think Jeff Bezos and his $US50 million Venetian wedding.

There are some outliers. Warren Buffett, famously, has pledged to donate 99 per cent of his wealth.

Musk, who has criticised traditional forms of philanthropy, has donated heavily towards STEM education while arguing his investment in sustainable energy will benefit humanity (plus he has an escape plan for Earthlings when or if we need to evacuate the planet).

While Musk believes the world is in the grip of a “woke mind virus”, Mort helped Sir Henry Parkes found the Empire magazine that was a voice for political liberalism including universal suffrage and land reform.

Musk and the world’s billionaires are now, according to Forbes, worth an estimated fifth of global GDP.

By itself, that statistic doesn’t say much. Many of the world’s billionaires had taken chances or developed an idea beyond the comprehension of most of us, such as Musk’s electric car or his re-usable rockets.

But vast amounts of wealth are being accumulated among a tiny, tiny proportion while the rest of the world’s population believes it is going backwards.

From Brexit to Trump to One Nation, on the extremes of the left and right, the anger at a world that is failing so many ordinary people is unmissable.

Some critics argue that voters are “bitter”, with a sneering suggestion that they’re envious of the intellectual and cultural elite.

But if your world is one where wages are stagnant, access to health services are diminishing, infrastructure is crap, the cost of housing means your children’s future home is so small they can’t swing a cat in their new digs plus you’ve got tech entrepreneurs promising an AI future that could swot away millions of jobs (including your own), then the bitterness is well justified.

Then along comes a billionaire class with lifestyles that seem so utterly remote from reality. Stuff flying to Mars – how about a good-paying job with reasonable schools here on planet Earth?

At a public gathering in 1857, Mort used his address to call for a vast improvement in public housing for poor Sydneysiders while outlining a plan for free libraries where ordinary men could better themselves by reading Dickens and Thackeray.

He declared it would be a “breach of the duty” owed by privileged men like him to future generations not to find a way to improve society.

Ponder that next time you’re scrolling X.

Shane Wright is a senior economics correspondent.

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