Elon Musk is officially the wealthiest person on Earth with a fortune of $185bn

[Blade of Grass]

21 minutes ago, willies leg said:

 

Musk is a self-made billionaire.

I read "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future"

You should too.

 

You could also check his wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Early_life_and_family

 

From the Wikipedia page:

 

"Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa.^[14][15] His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada,^[16][17][18] but raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant and property developer.^[19]"

 

^"After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived mostly with his father in the suburbs of Pretoria,^[26] a choice he made two years after his parents separated but which he subsequently regretted.^[28] Musk has become estranged from his father, whom he has described as "a terrible human being... Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done."^[28] He also has a half-sister^[29] and a half-brother on his father's side.^[30]"

 

^"Musk was severely bullied throughout his childhood and was once hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs.^[28][35][36] He attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School^[36] before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School.^[37]"

 

 

 

Good for Elon, he's worked hard, he deserves everything he has, and he's making our world more green, safe, and curious with SpaceX, Tesla, Solar City, etc.

 

I've read the book too (which what I asked you about). He attended private schooling, don't think most poor people can afford that. 

 

I don't disagree that he's self-made, but his family also has money. His father owned his own airplane as a hobby (which he discusses in the book), again, poor people can't afford hobby aircraft owning. 

[StDragon]

43 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Nothing wrong with it on principle however given his standing as the CEO of 2 major publicly floated companies it was very...  bold.

lol. Nah man, he's just checking his tolerance for space cabbage. No doubt, he's reached the high mark...

[Sauron]

32 minutes ago, willies leg said:

Good for Elon, he's worked hard, he deserves everything he has

There are millions if not billions of people who worked much harder and have nothing to show for it today. Let's not pretend any billionaire got where they are through anything but pure luck.

 

Even just looking at Musk's own life, do you think this year he worked 10 times more than he did during the entire rest of his life? Or did he just win at the stock lottery?

 

There are people whose achievements have been fundamental to our every day lives whose names nobody even remembers. Musk is just a businessman who invented nothing and busted unions for personal profit.

55 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Why? He earned it. Capping personal wealth makes little sense.

Why does it make "little sense"? What use can a single man have for 190 billion?

[suicidalfranco]

good for him.

Played his cards right and took risks that all ended up paying him back.

 

[Taf the Ghost]

I do find it kind of funny this happened before Starlink is fully operational. The actually "wealthiest" group of people is those that control the Infrastructure. Anything that people always need will always produce the most effective wealth, regardless of the paper numbers that simply aren't convertible. Starlink, a brand new Infrastructure, was always going to be worth Trillions.

[Taf the Ghost]

Just now, suicidalfranco said:

good for him.

Played his cards right and took risks that all ended up paying him back.

 

And Diablo 2 didn't completely ruin him.

[Drama Lama]

Anton Fugger might still be the richest person in History but I wouldn't be surprised if some billionnaire will surpass him in wealth and I think that this will still happen in the 21. century.

[Drama Lama]

15 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Or did he just win at the stock lottery?

just the stonks lottery.

there was a day when one stock of Volkswagen was worth about 900€ of course just for a short time

[spartaman64]

Also shows how insane tesla valuation is. Even if every car gets replaced by a tesla right now it still almost doesn't justify the valuation.

[Rocketdog2112]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Insane how he multiplied his already obscene wealth by a factor of 10 in a year by doing absolutely nothing.

Reminds me of the Kardashians....

[DrMacintosh]

Nobody earns a Billion Dollars. 

[DrMacintosh]

3 hours ago, willies leg said:

Yeah, that's insane but he actually built it from nothing.

His parents owned a mine. That’s hardly nothing. He bought into most of the companies he runs. He hasn’t really created anything. He’s kinda like Steve Jobs only more privileged since he had money going into life. 

[ToboRobot]

Counting peoples money is so boring.

[DrMacintosh]

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

Why? He earned it.

Do you honestly believe that an honest, hardworking individual can “earn” $185 Billion? I think you would have to be insane to believe that. 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

There are millions if not billions of people who worked much harder and have nothing to show for it today. Let's not pretend any billionaire got where they are through anything but pure luck.

 

Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet got where they are by being business savvy, but don't think for a minute they didn't pull a shotgun clause on someone. Elon belongs in the cray-cray crowd with Richard Branson (also someone wanting to launch space ships.) Rich people who care about fame more than the fortune, and thus spend their fortune on things that will give them attention. Bill and Warren on the other hand stayed out of the public except to occasionally dispense wisdom about how they got to their philanthropic goals. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Even just looking at Musk's own life, do you think this year he worked 10 times more than he did during the entire rest of his life? Or did he just win at the stock lottery?

I don't know, I also don't care that much about him. Are you the same person you were 10 or 20 years ago ? I sure hope not, because that would mean you didn't learn anything. I'd hope that someone like Elon actually learns that if you want to be seen as a good guy and have that attention, he has to actually put things back into the public good. So far, he seems to not really be smart at all, and just takes other peoples ideas and gives them Apple-like luxury polish.

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

There are people whose achievements have been fundamental to our every day lives whose names nobody even remembers. Musk is just a businessman who invented nothing and busted unions for personal profit.

Why does it make "little sense"? What use can a single man have for 190 billion?

 

Elon Musk, is more cartoon Iron Man (Tony Stark), where he has all this money to run high tech businesses, but seeks fame by being the leader of the good guys (remember that sub incident?) He rightfully gets rebuffed for his behavior.

 

 

 

[GDRRiley]

2 hours ago, Blade of Grass said:

I've read the book too (which what I asked you about). He attended private schooling, don't think most poor people can afford that. 

 

I don't disagree that he's self-made, but his family also has money. His father owned his own airplane as a hobby (which he discusses in the book), again, poor people can't afford hobby aircraft owning. 

small aircraft start at around a decent car.
poor people can't sure but middle class sure can

[Arika]

People seem to love to hate on Elon, but he's one of very very very few wealthy people actually advocating for change and doing something about it to make the world better.

[Master Disaster]

26 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Elon Musk, is more cartoon Iron Man (Tony Stark), where he has all this money to run high tech businesses, but seeks fame by being the leader of the good guys (remember that sub incident?) He rightfully gets rebuffed for his behavior.

 

[Bensemus]

35 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

His parents owned a mine. That’s hardly nothing. He bought into most of the companies he runs. He hasn’t really created anything. He’s kinda like Steve Jobs only more privileged since he had money going into life. 

He wasn’t living in a slum but he didn’t just get a couple million from his parents to buy companies either. He got around $40,000 from his dad. I got that much from my parents and I’m not on track to even be a millionaire. While private schools aren’t cheap they also mean very little. Millions of people attend private school and go on to lead normal lives. 

 

Musk founded Zip2.com. Musk founded X.com and later merged with Confinity to form the company that would become PayPal of which Musk was the first CEO. 
 

Tesla Motors was started in 2003 by Eberhard and Tarpenning. They wanted to work with AC Propulsion tzero group to turn their electric vehicle into a mass market product. The AC team wasn’t interested. Wright Joined as the third member a few months later. In 2004 Everhard, Tarpenning, and Wright raised $7.5 million with Musk contributing $6.5 million. Straubel Was the fifth person to join. Musk was make chairman of the board and he appointed Ebernhard as CEO. Musk lead or co-lead the next three funding rounds and brought Tesla’s investments up to $100 million. He invested over $30 million of his own money. He’s been CEO since 2008.
 

Eberhard only sued Tesla and Musk about the founder title issue around 2008-2009, after he had been outed from/left the company in 2007. Tarpenning left the same year. His outing was largely due to him being CEO while the massive cost overruns of the Roadster were happening. He decided to settle after large parts of his lawsuit was tossed out by the judge. The settlement cemented that there were five founders. Musk is among three people who were granted founder status. Eberhard seemed to even want to block Wright from using the title despite him joining before any real money had been raised or a product drafted. 
 

The courts made a decision. I shouldn’t have to point out the current situation in the US and how moronic you can look by going against the rulings of courts with no real arguments. What is your opinion of the case Tesla lost against Top Gear. Do you happen to agree with the courts there? If yes why?

 

I’m not saying Tesla and Musk are perfect. Musk and his mouth is his worst enemy. But there’s nothing to be gained with spreading false info that’s easy to look up. 

[Sauron]

31 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Elon Musk, is more cartoon Iron Man (Tony Stark), where he has all this money to run high tech businesses, but seeks fame by being the leader of the good guys (remember that sub incident?) He rightfully gets rebuffed for his behavior.

Except in fiction Tony Stark is actually responsible for inventing the things that make him rich and powerful. People like Musk are little more than gamblers and are in no way to be credited for the advancements made by the engineers and technicians their companies hired.

2 minutes ago, Bensemus said:

Musk founded Zip2.com. Musk founded X.com and later merged with Confinity to form the company that would become PayPal of which Musk was the first CEO. 

And all you need to do that is find someone with a good idea, give them some money to hire people and pan it out and then be the one startup out of 10000 that ends up being worth something by pure chance.

[Bensemus]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

And all you need to do that is find someone with a good idea, give them some money to hire people and pan it out

He didn’t hire people. He was the lead coder in both companies. I don’t get why people are sooo adamant that Musk can’t have any talent except money. There are sooo many people with millions of dollars yet they aren’t turning into billionaires. Bezos didn’t find some geek and finance him. Gates, jobs etc. All these people were the ones with the idea. They obviously weren’t alone but the fact that they were there at ground zero and stayed till the end shows that they were contributing something critical. Apple even tried to go at it without Jobs and had to buy NeXT out of debt to get him back to save their own ass. The only money Musk has ever had was in the companies he owned. He didn’t bring billions of liquid capital. He got his companies off the ground with what little he had and then what did he bring? According to you that’s where his contributions ended but quotes from his employees beg to differ. They say he’s heavily involved in the designing of his company’s products.

 

What actual evidence do you have that Musk contributes nothing? You also touched on nothing in my post. Are you backing down that he bought his companies or just ignoring that claim now?

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, Bensemus said:

Bezos didn’t find some geek and finance him. Gates, jobs etc. All these people were the ones with the idea.

Uhh Jobs wasn't even a programmer, he had nothing to do with the products aside from a general idea of what he wanted to sell - often he directly made products objectively worse because he didn't know what the things he wanted would entail from a technical standpoint. Gates straight up stole someone else's operating system. Bezos put up a website and shipped a few books, since then he hasn't made a single contribution to amazon's services.

21 minutes ago, Bensemus said:

Apple even tried to go at it without Jobs and had to buy NeXT out of debt to get him back to save their own ass.

Incorrect. Jobs knew through insider information that Apple desperately needed a viable desktop operating system and founded NeXT with the explicit purpose of selling it to them on the condition that they would take him back. He wanted back in, not the other way around. And NeXT was nothing but a shell project so he could get a bunch of engineers working on a unix clone.

24 minutes ago, Bensemus said:

He got his companies off the ground with what little he had

Plus a few hundred thousands in investments, including from his dad.

 

The service zip2 provided wasn't technically revolutionary, it just made a bunch of money through the .com bubble and wild speculation and it hasn't left any significant mark on anything. X.com was not successful until it bought the company that then became paypal and they soon stopped doing anything related to what X.com was originally supposed to be. Being CTO does not usually mean you're the lead programmer, by the way.

 

Regardless, none of that has anything to do with the companies that currently make him money, companies he contributes precisely 0 technical knowledge to. No wonder considering launching a rocket is quite a bit more complex than setting up a static website in the '90s.

16 minutes ago, Bensemus said:

What actual evidence do you have that Musk contributes nothing?

You tell me; what does he contribute to the companies he supposedly leads other than bad twitter PR? More importantly, what does he contribute that is worth over a million times the salary of his average employee?

 

The point isn't whether or not these people have any talent - it's that there are millions of people who are at least equally if not far more talented who have nowhere near the money these asshats have and that is due exclusively to luck.

[Nowak]

3 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

good for him.

Played his cards right and took risks that all ended up paying him back.

He was born to a family that ran an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa and made most of his money through government subsidies and exploitation of others' labor. Do not let him cosplay as a "self made" billionaire when he has never made any money without exploitation and reliance on the state.

 

He didn't even found Tesla, he just stole the title from Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

[lostcattears]

5 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

Bezos in reality is "richer" since all of his wealth isn't tied into Amazon stock where as Elon's net worth is like 99% Tesla stock that he can't sell without financially ruining the company. Bezos could also sell off his stock without sending Amazon stock spiraling through the floor since Amazon stock is way more diversified among investors.

LOL I don't think you really understand... He can sell and it wouldn't affect his company at all. It is a public company he already used the ipo to raise cash for his company. It wouldn't make a difference to his company. Just that if he sells he will be killing a ton of other investors. His company will hardly be effected.

[lostcattears]

5 hours ago, JoseGuya said:

Its insane how people don't understand the difference between having stocks and having actual money. Elon didn't suddenly get more money on his bank account, only Tesla's  shares increased in price. The second he tries to capitalize those stocks, they will drop and crash, and he will be left with nothing. 

No it doesn't work that way.... The price will definitely drop but it most definitely won't be worth nothing The only people he will be hurting is those investors that is still pumping the stock to insane values that it shouldn't even be worth 2/3 of amazon. Even if he sells everything now crashing it by 50% now will still be worth far more then even last year.