8 ms·

I disagree. Wealth accumulation is absolutely a good thing. Elon does good things. EVs, rockets, Starlink, Neuralink etc. This is stuff that people want. More c

by Geee 2y ago

I disagree. Wealth accumulation is absolutely a good thing. Elon does good things. EVs, rockets, Starlink, Neuralink etc. This is stuff that people want. More capital is allocated to good things when the same person can manage more capital. Elon's wealth is mostly in the things he has built himself. In addition, Elon isn't even that rich, when compared to other entities, which aren't a singular person. As an example, BlackRock manages over $10 trillion of assets (that's 30x compared to Elon), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asset_management_firms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asset_management_firms Elon is not the richest entity in the world, and he doesn't have any special powers to bludgeon anything, like none of these large companies have, unless they do some weird market manipulation tricks (which should be illegal anyway).

lxgr 2y ago
> compared to other entities, which aren't a singular person And you're seriously arguing that that's not a pretty important difference? > he doesn't have any special powers to bludgeon anything I've seen him described in all kinds of ways, but "without special powers" is a first.
mediaman 2y ago
Using BlackRock as a comparison is really disingenuous. They're basically a Vanguard. They hold assets as trustee for the actual owners of the wealth. BlackRock and Vanguard can't wake up one day and decide to put in a bid for OpenAI because of some personal vendetta. You are confusing "assets under management" (AUM) with actual net worth. Blackrock's net worth is $43 billion, compared to $11 trillion in AUM, because 99.6% of the top-line number you chose is actually just client money. Musk, meanwhile, is around $400 billion, so you have the numbers backwards; Musk has about 10x the net worth of the nation's largest fund manager.
soared 2y ago
Elon did good things. And then it went to his head. Look at almost every tech billionaire today and how many good things they (aren’t) doing. And the argument is moot anyway - he wasted tens of billions on Twitter. If he was doing good things (true scotsman) he would’ve built schools.
- roywiggins 2y ago
  Remember when he didn't solve world hunger? https://truthout.org/articles/musk-pledged-6b-to-solve-world-hunger-but-gave-it-to-his-own-foundation-instead/ https://truthout.org/articles/musk-pledged-6b-to-solve-world...
  - Geee 2y ago
    “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it,” Musk said. They didn't come up with a plan, because it's obviously impossible to solve world hunger with $6 billion. If it was possible, why USAID $40 billion annually couldn't do it.
    - roywiggins 2y ago
      As far as I can tell, WFP never said they could "solve" world hunger with $6B. They did put together a report about what they could do with $6B, which didn't seem to interest Musk after all. CNN maybe wrote a bad headline? Doesn't really seem like the sort of thing to pretend to offer and then deny 42M people food aid over, but then I'm not a trillionaire. I don't think he bothered to actually read the story, instead just tweeted after reading a screenshot of a headline. He got mad about something the WFP didn't even say, and then people decided they must have said that because he got mad about it. They didn't! If he really wanted to know what $6B could do, he could have donated it and found out. It was cheap enough for him to donate $6B to sit in the "foundation" that he personally controls, so it's not like he was hard up for cash. https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/26/economy/musk-world-hunger-wfp-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/26/economy/musk-world-hunger-wfp... > Correction: An earlier version of this story’s headline incorrectly stated that the director of the UN’s food scarcity organization believes 2% of Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger. He believes it could help solve world hunger.
Arcterus 2y ago
Saying he isn't even that rich and then saying that he has 1/30th of the total assets managed by BlackRock is completely absurd. I frankly don't understand how you can think one person controlling 1/30th the value of all of BlackRock's managed assets is totally fine and normal. Additionally, as mentioned by others, BlackRock invests on behalf of clients, so unlike Musk, they can't just throw around their money willy-nilly, so the comparison is just disingenuous. To put this in perspective, the net assets of Google are around $300 billion, and their total assets are around $450 billion. Musk's net worth is roughly $400 billion.
SergeAx 2y ago
> More capital is allocated to good things Or bad things.
wyre 2y ago
>Elon's wealth is mostly in the things he has built himself This is straight up wrong. Musk built Zip2 with his father's money, but everything beyond that has been built off of investing money he received from Zip2's sale to Compaq and any wealth accumulated since then. He's funding ideas, but don't lie to yourself and say that he's building them himself.
rybosworld 2y ago
Why would it be valid to compare a company's AUM to someone's personal net worth? Blackrock doesn't control how the vast majority of that money is spent...
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Because otherwise the weird mental contortions get super uncomfortable!
h0l0cube 2y ago
> Elon's wealth is mostly in the things he has built himself. Elon's wealth is mostly in acquisitions. Even PayPal, co-founded by Peter Thiel, was an acquisition by X.com (the bank), at which point Elon was already ousted as CEO. He came back briefly, trying to convert PayPal infra over to Microsoft much to Thiel's chagrin, but then ousted again in favour of Thiel, who renamed the merged company to PayPal. So PayPal, an acquisition (not made by Elon). Tesla, another acquisition. And like SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, they are built by actual domain experts, with wealth bootstrapped from Elon dad's wealth (who funded Zip2), and Thiel. Thiel successfully built and administered PayPal, along with Amazon one of the few companies to make it unscathed through the dotcom bubble by providing actual business value, and gave a massive boost to Elon's net worth, and it was Thiel that enabled him to acquire Tesla. And it's Tesla's absurd valuation, that's enabled him to buy all the other things he fancies, including a seat at the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Business_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Business_career
- Geee 2y ago
  That's exactly what I mean. Elon makes decisions to manage capital and talent, in order to make good things for the world, and thus accumulates more capital and talent to make more good things. He started from Zip2 and built his way to managing multiple companies, each of which make groundbreaking products and services. These products and services wouldn't exist without Elon. They wouldn't exist if capital wouldn't be allowed to accumulate. Capital should be allowed to accumulate to those, who find the best use for the capital and use it in the most efficient way for the service of the world. That's the idea of capitalism. Now, if he makes bad capital allocation decisions (like what this news is about), then he loses the capital to someone smarter than him, to someone who finds better use for that capital. That's also capitalism. Doing irrational or "bad" things isn't possible, without it resulting in losing that capital.
  - h0l0cube 2y ago
    > built his way > each of which make groundbreaking products and services It's like you didn't read a word I said. But to respond to your claim, which I've heard many times before – including from Paul Graham. Maybe he's some genius at allocating capital in your eyes or something, but I don't think his investment decisions were even that radical, but they are within the conservative circles of people who usually have that capital behind them. If, in some fantasy land, you could give more people the same level of wealth (i.e. real purchasing power) that Elon had in the 2000s, I'm certain a lot of people would have put that money into electric vehicles and batteries. They were exciting at the time, and had demonstrably great potential for returns, but they required enormous capex. Conservative old money wasn't interested in making that kind of all-in investment, but that's just because the kind of person that hoards wealth, isn't the kind that makes those kinds of bets. Elon had the luck of being wealthy enough, and also being an outsider with an aspirational mindset. That isn't so special, beyond the dumb luck of riding the coat tails of Peter Thiel's company.

by Geee 2y ago

lxgr 2y ago

> compared to other entities, which aren't a singular person And you're seriously arguing that that's not a pretty important difference? > he doesn't have any special powers to bludgeon anything I've seen him described in all kinds of ways, but "without special powers" is a first.

mediaman 2y ago

Using BlackRock as a comparison is really disingenuous. They're basically a Vanguard. They hold assets as trustee for the actual owners of the wealth. BlackRock and Vanguard can't wake up one day and decide to put in a bid for OpenAI because of some personal vendetta. You are confusing "assets under management" (AUM) with actual net worth. Blackrock's net worth is $43 billion, compared to $11 trillion in AUM, because 99.6% of the top-line number you chose is actually just client money. Musk, meanwhile, is around $400 billion, so you have the numbers backwards; Musk has about 10x the net worth of the nation's largest fund manager.

soared 2y ago

Elon did good things. And then it went to his head. Look at almost every tech billionaire today and how many good things they (aren’t) doing. And the argument is moot anyway - he wasted tens of billions on Twitter. If he was doing good things (true scotsman) he would’ve built schools.

roywiggins 2y ago
Remember when he didn't solve world hunger? https://truthout.org/articles/musk-pledged-6b-to-solve-world-hunger-but-gave-it-to-his-own-foundation-instead/ https://truthout.org/articles/musk-pledged-6b-to-solve-world...
- Geee 2y ago
  “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it,” Musk said. They didn't come up with a plan, because it's obviously impossible to solve world hunger with $6 billion. If it was possible, why USAID $40 billion annually couldn't do it.
  - roywiggins 2y ago
    As far as I can tell, WFP never said they could "solve" world hunger with $6B. They did put together a report about what they could do with $6B, which didn't seem to interest Musk after all. CNN maybe wrote a bad headline? Doesn't really seem like the sort of thing to pretend to offer and then deny 42M people food aid over, but then I'm not a trillionaire. I don't think he bothered to actually read the story, instead just tweeted after reading a screenshot of a headline. He got mad about something the WFP didn't even say, and then people decided they must have said that because he got mad about it. They didn't! If he really wanted to know what $6B could do, he could have donated it and found out. It was cheap enough for him to donate $6B to sit in the "foundation" that he personally controls, so it's not like he was hard up for cash. https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/26/economy/musk-world-hunger-wfp-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/26/economy/musk-world-hunger-wfp... > Correction: An earlier version of this story’s headline incorrectly stated that the director of the UN’s food scarcity organization believes 2% of Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger. He believes it could help solve world hunger.

Arcterus 2y ago

Saying he isn't even that rich and then saying that he has 1/30th of the total assets managed by BlackRock is completely absurd. I frankly don't understand how you can think one person controlling 1/30th the value of all of BlackRock's managed assets is totally fine and normal. Additionally, as mentioned by others, BlackRock invests on behalf of clients, so unlike Musk, they can't just throw around their money willy-nilly, so the comparison is just disingenuous. To put this in perspective, the net assets of Google are around $300 billion, and their total assets are around $450 billion. Musk's net worth is roughly $400 billion.

SergeAx 2y ago

> More capital is allocated to good things Or bad things.

wyre 2y ago

>Elon's wealth is mostly in the things he has built himself This is straight up wrong. Musk built Zip2 with his father's money, but everything beyond that has been built off of investing money he received from Zip2's sale to Compaq and any wealth accumulated since then. He's funding ideas, but don't lie to yourself and say that he's building them himself.

rybosworld 2y ago

Why would it be valid to compare a company's AUM to someone's personal net worth? Blackrock doesn't control how the vast majority of that money is spent...

llamaimperative 2y ago
Because otherwise the weird mental contortions get super uncomfortable!

h0l0cube 2y ago

> Elon's wealth is mostly in the things he has built himself. Elon's wealth is mostly in acquisitions. Even PayPal, co-founded by Peter Thiel, was an acquisition by X.com (the bank), at which point Elon was already ousted as CEO. He came back briefly, trying to convert PayPal infra over to Microsoft much to Thiel's chagrin, but then ousted again in favour of Thiel, who renamed the merged company to PayPal. So PayPal, an acquisition (not made by Elon). Tesla, another acquisition. And like SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, they are built by actual domain experts, with wealth bootstrapped from Elon dad's wealth (who funded Zip2), and Thiel. Thiel successfully built and administered PayPal, along with Amazon one of the few companies to make it unscathed through the dotcom bubble by providing actual business value, and gave a massive boost to Elon's net worth, and it was Thiel that enabled him to acquire Tesla. And it's Tesla's absurd valuation, that's enabled him to buy all the other things he fancies, including a seat at the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Business_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Business_career

Geee 2y ago
That's exactly what I mean. Elon makes decisions to manage capital and talent, in order to make good things for the world, and thus accumulates more capital and talent to make more good things. He started from Zip2 and built his way to managing multiple companies, each of which make groundbreaking products and services. These products and services wouldn't exist without Elon. They wouldn't exist if capital wouldn't be allowed to accumulate. Capital should be allowed to accumulate to those, who find the best use for the capital and use it in the most efficient way for the service of the world. That's the idea of capitalism. Now, if he makes bad capital allocation decisions (like what this news is about), then he loses the capital to someone smarter than him, to someone who finds better use for that capital. That's also capitalism. Doing irrational or "bad" things isn't possible, without it resulting in losing that capital.
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  > built his way > each of which make groundbreaking products and services It's like you didn't read a word I said. But to respond to your claim, which I've heard many times before – including from Paul Graham. Maybe he's some genius at allocating capital in your eyes or something, but I don't think his investment decisions were even that radical, but they are within the conservative circles of people who usually have that capital behind them. If, in some fantasy land, you could give more people the same level of wealth (i.e. real purchasing power) that Elon had in the 2000s, I'm certain a lot of people would have put that money into electric vehicles and batteries. They were exciting at the time, and had demonstrably great potential for returns, but they required enormous capex. Conservative old money wasn't interested in making that kind of all-in investment, but that's just because the kind of person that hoards wealth, isn't the kind that makes those kinds of bets. Elon had the luck of being wealthy enough, and also being an outsider with an aspirational mindset. That isn't so special, beyond the dumb luck of riding the coat tails of Peter Thiel's company.