As the richest person on planet earth, Elon Musk is increasingly recognized as the driver of  modern Technocracy. His grandfather was head of the Technocracy, Inc. movement in Canada during the 1930s and 1940s. Musk's son, named "X Æ A-12", follows the Technocrat dislike of personal names.

The author of this article is a professor of history at Harvard and has thoroughly researched the Technocracy movement and Musk's modern role to extend it. It also touches on Musk's leadership in the so-called 'space cult" which seeks to populate Mars and other planets. ? TN Editor

The last week of October, Bill Gates (net worth: $138 billion) celebrated his 66th birthday in a cove off the coast of Turkey, ferrying guests from his rented yacht to a beach resort by private helicopter. Guests included Jeff Bezos (net worth: $197 billion), who after the party flew back to his own yacht, not to be confused with the "superyacht" he is building at a cost of more than $500 million.

The world's richest person, Elon Musk (net worth: $317 billion), did not attend. He was most likely in Texas, where his company Space X was preparing for a rocket launch. Mark Zuckerberg (net worth: $119 billion) wasn't there, either, but the day after Mr. Gates's party, he announced his plan for the metaverse, a virtual reality where, wearing a headset and gear that closes out the actual world, you can spend your day as an avatar doing things like going to parties on remote Aegean islands or boarding a yacht or flying in a rocket, as if you were obscenely rich.

The metaverse is at once an illustration of and a distraction from a broader and more troubling turn in the history of capitalism. The world's techno-billionaires are forging a new kind of capitalism: Muskism. Mr. Musk, who likes to troll his rivals, mocked Mr. Zuckerberg's metaverse. But from missions to Mars and the moon to the metaverse, it's all Muskism: extreme, extraterrestrial capitalism, where stock prices are driven less by earnings than by fantasies from science fiction.