6 ms·

Parasocial delusion. You don't know Elon Musk personally, you can't speak to his character like this. The facts are that if he was so benevolent he wouldn't be

• ben_w 3y ago
  > The facts are that if he was so benevolent he wouldn't be a billionaire. End of story. I don't trust his benevolence, but that doesn't follow. Money at that level exists as an indicator of the marginal amount someone else will pay to own a right to the expected future 20-ish years of the profits of the companies he owns, multiplied up as if there were enough people to buy all of it. This kind of accounting can easily value the average final year university student in the UK at around a million pounds even if they've never had so much as a summer holiday job. Sometimes this is enough to buy out the business, other times the attempt runs out of buyers and the price crashes part way through. If Alice has a plan to save the world and doing so involves creating a company that someone else thinks can be asset-stripped for a trillion dollars, then Alice will be "worth" a trillion dollars. Of course, I just wrote "Alice" rather than "Musk" because I want to make it clear I don't think Musk is anywhere near this angelic; it's just an illustration.