Branson vs Bezos: In praise of the billionaire space race

They are rich boys with some very expensive toys. As Richard Branson completes his first space flight, it would be easy to dismiss the race between the Virgin founder and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to be the first billionaire in space as the self-indulgence of a couple of tycoons with too much testosterone and too much money. 

The competition will be seen by some on the liberal left as a symbol of widening inequalities. They will view it as the emergence of a plutocratic class separated from the rest of us, and as proof of the argument that space should be left to the public sphere. Of course there is an element of truth in all of those complaints. Yet the race between some of the world’s richest men to get into orbit is also a demonstration of what free market capitalism does best.

While the rest of us were absorbed, disappointingly as it turned out, in the final of the Euros, Richard Branson finally completed his goal of going into space.