The headlines scream with the breathless urgency of a Victorian stockbroker spotting a railway boom. SpaceX, we are told, is now valued at a staggering £1.41 trillion. UK pension funds are being ‘urged’ – nay, commanded – to secure a stake in this ‘historic IPO’. Let us pause, sharpen our quills, and consider the implications of this financial theatre with the cold eye of a Gibbon surveying the decline of empires.
First, the valuation. £1.41 trillion. A number so vast it loses all meaning, like the inflation of the Roman denarius under Caracalla. It is a figure built not on solid earth but on the ether of speculative mania, a testament to our age’s worship of technological transcendence. SpaceX is a remarkable company, no doubt. It has achieved what no state agency could: reusable rockets, a Martian vision. But a trillion-pound valuation? That is not business; it is theology. We are not investing in profits; we are buying indulgences for a secular salvation.
Now enter the UK pension funds, those staid guardians of our grey-haired future. They are being ‘urged’ – by whom? The usual chorus of consultants, asset managers, and government cheerleaders who believe that the only path to national prosperity is to hurl the life savings of British workers into the maw of Silicon Valley’s latest deity. The logic is as old as the South Sea Bubble: ‘This time it’s different.’ It is never different. It is the same hubris, the same herd instinct, dressed in the sleek garments of aero-foam and algorithm.
Consider the prudential history. British pension funds were once the bedrock of Victorian thrift, investing in railways, canals, and government bonds – dull, dependable things that built a nation. Today, they are urged to chase unicorns. Why? Because yields are low, the argument goes. Because the state has savaged gilt returns with quantitative easing. So the solution is to gamble the widows’ pensions on a rocket company whose profitability rests on launching other people’s satellites and dreams? This is not investment; it is a desperate wager on a future that may never arrive.
One hears the siren song of ‘national champions’. The UK, we are told, must have a stake in the new space economy. But since when did the British state – which cannot manage a railway timetable or a hospital waiting list – become a venture capitalist? The pension funds are being pushed to buy into SpaceX not because it is a prudent allocation of risk, but because our political class has run out of ideas and now clings to the coat-tails of American billionaires. It is the intellectual decadence of an empire that once built ships; now it buys shares in them.
And what of the IPO itself? A ‘historic’ event, no doubt, but history is full of such moments that ended in tears. The South Sea Company, the Mississippi Company, the Dutch tulip mania – each was ‘historic’ in its day. Each promised unimaginable riches. Each ended with the small investor holding worthless paper while the insiders decamped to country estates. The SpaceX IPO will be no different. The smart money will have exited long before the public can buy. The pension funds, lumbering and elephantine, will be left holding the bag when the inevitable correction comes.
But the deeper issue is cultural. We have lost faith in the slow, patient accumulation of capital that built the Victorian world. We now demand instant gratification, a technological messiah to redeem our stagnant economies. The worship of Musk is a symptom of this: a desire for a strongman with a rocket ship to carry us away from our mundane problems. The pension funds are merely the institutional echo of this popular delusion.
So let the pension trustees beware. Do not be seduced by the shimmering rocket. The history of financial cycles is written in blood and folly. The fall of Rome was not caused by barbarians alone, but by the decadence of a ruling class that believed its own propaganda. If UK pension funds pour billions into SpaceX, they will be committing the same sin: mistaking a speculative bubble for a permanent revolution. The prudent course is to wait, to watch, and to remember that in the long run, gravity always wins.
