4 ms·
Except that he isn't an oligarch, he's an entrepeneur. I suppose you could argue that he got rich with some support by the government (without the NASA contrac
by Tepix 5y ago
Except that he isn't an oligarch, he's an entrepeneur.
I suppose you could argue that he got rich with some support by the government (without the NASA contract SpaceX would not have survived and without the tax credits Tesla would have a hard time, too).
- HWR_14 5y agoAn oligarch refers to the fact that Elon Musk is one of the handful of people in this country with a huge amount of power. Anyone in the top 10 of the Forbes 400 is an oligarch by virtue of being on there, regardless of if they got their money by curing cancer or stealing it from babies. Another way: oligarch described his current state, not the method of getting there.
- soledades 5y agoOligarch does not mean "a powerful rich person"
- HWR_14 5y agoCorrect, an oligarch is part of a reigning elite. In any capitalist society where 10 people control more than 1% of the wealth of a country of 360,000,000 , those people are oligarchs. Let's leave aside that the list I describe includes people who control the majority of ecommerce and the internet cloud backend (Bezos), internet discovery (Brin and Page) and frontend (Zuckerberg) and work machines (Gates and Ballmer). 20% of the list is running private space companies to race to take over Mars or at least own space. One is even doing it as a hobby on the side (or was until recently.) Musk bought a 9.6% chunk of Twitter because people say mean things about him on the internet when he says crazy things. And he's doing it for less than 1% of his net worth. That's an oligarch.
- HereIGoAgain 5y agoSo "it feels right" is your argument here then.. To hell with definitions!
- HWR_14 5y agoWhat are you talking about? I started my post with the dictionary definition of an oligarch. A member of a small ruling elite. If you don't think Musks wealth puts him in that class who do you think is an "oligarch". Because Musk has, and had before the invasion, more global power than any Russian oligarch, had more power in almost any western country than a Russian oligarch.