3d ago

Where do you think elon musk would be if he wasn't born into wealth?

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The seed money he got from his father for his first business - split between him and his brother Kimbal, whom his father liked much better than him - was $28,000. After Elon and Kimbal had already raised some funds from other investors, too. Everyone seems to think Musk was born in a vast emerald-encrusted mansion. His family were by no means poor but he's not "old money."
Hate Elon Musk for real reasons, not made up ones.
- Prove it
  
  This article on the company describes his funding sources, with citations for each claim.
  Can you prove the contrary, that he was "born into wealth?"
  
  I don't feel the need to prove musk was born into wealth. Just look up his family and his education. The advantages of being able to take risks with other people's money is insurmountable. Of the millions in America only fractions get access to the education musk had, connections he made, and contacts he most likely inherented. $28,000 doesn't sound like much compared to the billions he now hoards but that is a pipe dream for most Americans and the ability to bet that on a business without fear of losing it all is the definition of privilege. Say Zip2 failed, do you honestly think he would never recover and go on to make another bet elsewhere? That's privilage.
  
  Prove it
  ...
  I don't feel the need to prove musk was born into wealth.
  I hardly need to point out the double standard here.
  
  Just read your own Wikipedia article bruh
  
  The references there talk about them having tens of thousands of dollars to spend on things. That matches with what I linked above.
  
  I say they're wealthy. Wiki says their wealthy. What exactly are you contesting?
- I agree that people tend to overstate his income due to misunderstanding his relationship with his father. And the story about him keeping emeralds in his pockets is murky at best.
  But his wealth compared to the average income of any black person in South Africa in 1971, still makes him vastly better off than any 'colored' child born in the same country, making him institutionally old money by grace of being born white.
  
  Certainly he was above average. But that's not "born into wealth." $28,000 is the price of a modest new car. There are huge numbers of people who are able to get seed money like that from friends and relatives to start a business, but clearly Elon did something more than those people to grow that to the $400 billion his current net wealth stands at.
  The problem is that Musk has become such an intensely politically and culturally polarizing figure that saying even the remotely "positive" thing about him - such as "he's actually a pretty good self-made businessman" - gets interpreted as "boy howdy do I ever love Trump and misogyny!"
  
  When 90% of your countrymen are born into a world where they cannot legally hold the same jobs as you. You are born into extreme privilege.
  After reading the book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors by Edward Niedermeyer I came away with the feeling he really wasn't a pretty good self-made businessman.
  
  Elon Musk started his companies in America.
  If you want to judge Americans by global standards, then basically every single one of them is "born into wealth" because most of the people in the world live below the American poverty line.
  After reading the book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors by Edward Niedermeyer I came away with the feeling he really wasn't a pretty good self-made businessman.
  Going from a $30,000 seed investment to $400 billion dollars would tend to suggest otherwise.
  Call him a terrible person, sure. You can't buy a good personality. But as a businessman the numbers seem pretty clear.
  
  I hear you but I think you're missing my point. His wealth and privilege started in South Africa. He could not have achieved what he did without the opportunity to migrate from South Africa to Canada and then to America.
  As for his business prowess here's just a few key points from the book:
  Musk is cuckoo taking advantage of other people's talent to elevate himself.
  Musk’s funding was critical to x.com's early development, but many of the key decisions that made its merge with PayPal successful were credited to Levchin, Thiel, and others.
  Tesla was co-founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk did not like his position being confined to financier so conspired to have the original founders removed and himself listed as founder instead.
  Tesla has consistently faces financial instability, often operating on the brink of bankruptcy.
  Both Tesla and SpaceX were rescued by massive government contracts from Federal Governmentd desperate to pull itself out of the global financial crisis or a failing oil economy. Not by Musk's talent as a business manager.
  A hamster wheel of investor hype to raise capital driven by false promises is the only thing keeping Tesla afloat. Even their government loans are based on the same high hopes and false promises.
  Musk’s infamous “funding secured” tweet is proof of his success being driven by lies. He was willing to break the law of it meant he could outrun the consequences of his poor management

61 comments