Knowing how to step aside in front of one's guests, complimenting them and remaining graceful in all circumstances are rules of good manners in different societies.
In the name of this unofficial but commonly shared relational code, guests at a boring or even detestable event often keep quiet until they have left their hosts and can express themselves freely.
These conventions are not to Elon Musk's taste.
The iconoclastic serial entrepreneur revels in breaking social and business codes and rules. And he's shown this once again during an interview given at the World Government Summit in Dubai.
Musk was interviewed there via videoconference. And as he often does, the billionaire CEO of Tesla (TSLA) did not hesitate to speak out, a trademark to which his 129 million followers on Twitter are accustomed.
'Too Much of a Single World Government'
The billionaire scathingly criticized the idea of a world government. For him the idea of a world government or circle wherein the most powerful on the planet meet to cooperate and discuss the problems that they consider important would lead our civilization to collapse.
"One thing I should say, and I know this is called the World Government Summit, but I think we should be maybe a little bit concerned about actually becoming too much of a single world government," Tesla's CEO said via video interview on Feb. 15.
"If I may say that we want to avoid creating a civilizational risk by having frankly, this may sound a little odd, too much cooperation between governments," the tech mogul continued.
"If you look at, say, history and the rise and fall of civilizations that really all throughout history and facilitations have risen and fallen, but it hasn't meant the doom of humanity as a whole because they've been all these separate civilizations that were separated by great distances."
He bases his argument -- that too much cooperation between governments is bad for civilization -- on what might have happened if Rome at the time of its glory had maintained close ties with other governments. The fact that this was not the case, according to Musk, was a good thing for civilization.
"While Rome was falling, Islam was rising. And so you had ... the sort of caliphate doing incredibly well, while Rome was doing terribly. And that actually ended up being a source of preservation of knowledge, and many scientific advancements."
'Seemed Like the Right Venue': Musk
As a result, he believes "if we are too much of a single civilization," then "the whole thing may collapse."
"Obviously not suggesting war or anything like that, but I think we want to be a little bit wary of actually caught a little too much. It sounds a little odd, but we want to have some amount of civilizational diversity, such that if something does go wrong with some part of civilization, that the whole thing doesn't collapse, and, you know, humanity keeps moving forward," Musk concluded.
This criticism of the World Government Summit at the summit comes as no surprise to those who follow Musk. In January, he had declined the invitation of another powerful club, the World Economic Forum. But he then spent weeks sharply criticizing the forum, becoming the face and voice of anti-globalists.
The difference however is that Musk had not traveled to Davos. He made his criticisms on Twitter, the social network he has owned since the end of October. He seems to regret not having traveled to Davos to formulate his criticisms there. At least that's what a message he posted on Twitter suggests.
When a Twitter user pointed out that he was criticizing the World Government Summit at the summit itself, Musk replied that this was the place to do it. That's one way of saying that it has more impact to tell these powerful clubs directly the dangers they pose rather than to do it from a distance.
" @ElonMusk speaks out against the idea of a 'World Government' at the 'World Government Summit; and warns it could lead to civilizational collapse," the user said.
"Seemed like the right venue," the billionaire responded.
