How is it possible to be worth a trillion?

[aurpod1980]

Is it just utter madness that one man can be worth a trillion dollars ? $1000 billion Wtaf

So that's alright then? 🙄

It's still outrageous that one person has this much and the power that goes with it, whether it's in his bank or tied up elsewhere.

Because you’re a selfish prick, that’s how. You don’t see Elon running the equivalent of the Gates Foundation, do you?

It’s because of technology we don’t die in childhood or life in caves. And now seem to have found a cure for obesity.

Me neither. There was a time when we were always hard up and even had the electric cut off at one point when the kids were young. I now have enough and am content.

how shit this world is

Compared to when? Compared to what?

You must have owned a Tesla at some point to have such a strong view on them.

If you ever get frustrated at how slow and inefficient the public sector is think about how better and quicker Musk would do it.

He would wind it right down, but support maintaining taxes because they fund his own businesses.

Look at the awful mess DOGE made.

I love this

I don't think he's motivated by money at this point. He's always had it, it's not what gets him out of bed in the morning. The money is just a way of keeping score.

If you earned 1 million dollars per hour at work, it would take you about 500 years to reach Musk's new net worth. That is disgusting.

Apparently the reason why Ukraine is now doing well in the war v Russia is because Elon basically turned off all satellite technology for the Russians.

He'll go down in history as a hero, that's for sure.

Why?

After one day you'll have almost exactly the same lifestyle as him.

I would have thought that one aspect of Musk that might appeal then is that his tech is predominantly useful and innovative. Space exploration for instance!

Now if he'd invented TikTok I'd be agreeing with you.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gyp523ly8o

I get that most of his wealth is tied up in his companies so I guess it could go up and down… but if this is how we value the wealth of people then it’s not a stand alone valuation of him - it’s the same as the others, therefore based on how we value wealth for these purposes he’s worth over a trillion.

I’m sure you can see a massive gap between ‘being rewarded’ and ‘being a trillionaire’. If you can’t see why the latter is problematic I can’t really help.

But why is it? He’s built wealth by creating new things not capturing it from others. His wealth is in the value of his companies, which have that value because people want his products and believe in his companies.

A millionaire kleptocrat or monopolist is more disgusting than a billionaire entrepreneur.

He didn’t invent anything. He took generational wealth and paid others to do it - and since his wealth has increased so fast I’m going to go ahead and assume there was some exploitation involved along the way.

What?! Are you ok?

where did I say it was easily attainable? I said he didn’t invent anything.
nor did I say the NHS wasn’t fucked up. But that dude t mean Elon would save / improve it. Far from it.

i also didn’t say he hadn’t achieved anything.

As I said, are you ok? You seem to only see the ‘achievements’.

You mean generational wealth from selling Zip2, which he founded?

No, I mean from: his dad the diamond mining Nazi.

Apart from everything else in your post that is incorrect or unsubstantiated, you clearly don't understand wealth in this context.

The calculation of his wealth people are talking about is essentially based on the value other people (people like you and I basically) are putting on the shares in his various businesses multiplied by the number of shares he owns himself.

So the increasing of his calculated wealth that you refer to is directly down to others! So if you went and bought a SpaceX share today (you now can if you want to) at $150 and in three months it's worth $300 then you can have the satisfaction of moaning that Musk is worth $2 trillion (and you'll have made $150 profit.

Of course the shares in SpaceX might fall to $75 in which case Musk won't be a trillionaire at all (and you'd have lost $75).

The point, although I suspect you don't care, is that these headlines get misunderstood. His actual current cash assets (though no doubt enormous by any normal measure) are not a trillion or even a single per cent of that figure.

I don't think you understand economics.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 with $12 billion of investment including by Musk. Over the years further billions of investments were made by Fidelity and Google and particularly Ontario Teachers Pension Fund. Lastly many more billions of reinvestment came from Starlink.

24 years is a long time for the original investors to get a return on their original investment.

So if the original investments were say $100 billion why do you think that is an unacceptable return. If I invested £100 in some risky UK shares and got a return of £1000 some 10 years later- is that unreasonable?

Are you objecting to the rate of the return (if so it's not that unreasonable for a highly risk investment). Or are you objecting to the quantum (in which case are you suggesting that only small value low risk investments in businesses can be made?)

https://global.morningstar.com/en-gb/stocks/6-charts-spacexs-pre-ipo-financials

He's the poster boy for narcissism surely, I watched a YouTube documentary on him and his life not too long ago, he's interesting character I also think he's quite dangerous

His father who was an activist with the anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party you mean?

Musk starting his businesses with generational wealth has been quite thoroughly investigated and debunked:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/