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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
by 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.
- Geee 2y agoIt's not an opinion. The fact that he is the richest man in the world is the proof that his decisions have been succesful. And obviously it's not luck because of repeated success.
- h0l0cube 2y agoYou're obviously too young to have observed the dotcom bubble blow up and collapse, so I fully understand why you're drinking the kool aid. I guess we'll see how things pan out.
- Geee 2y agoYou seem to be arguing that your personal opinion is more correct than what markets say about Elon's companies, and you make this opinion the basis of your argument. Sorry, but you're not being logical here. By any measure, Tesla and SpaceX are extremely succesful companies, and to argue otherwise is just dumb.
- h0l0cube 2y ago> Tesla and SpaceX are extremely succesful companies, and to argue otherwise is just dumb. Definitely not what I was arguing, but I'll leave you to figure out how we got here.
- bdangubic 2y agoBernie Madoff was similar back in the day…
- paulddraper 2y agoWhose investment decisions are radical (and good) by your definition?
- h0l0cube 2y agoThe argument was put for that Elon is an exceptional mind when it comes to capital allocation. My counter-argument is that to have Elon's success, you don't need such an exceptional mind, but it may seem exceptional due to the selection bias of people who typically have accrued wealth. There may be vastly more people with such purported competency of capital allocation, but we'd simply never know because they are less likely to find themselves wealthy in the way that Elon did.