He ended up with all of the profits, but he didn't put in all of the work. A lot of people worked very hard for that wealth, either for salary or a minuscule fraction of the profits.
He gets to keep the lion's share of the profits because he was the one who took the risk with his capital. And bully for him; well done that man. But we treat him as if he had all of the ideas and wrote all of the code, and that's simply not true. It's a myth that the wealth owners tell us.
All of these products would exist with the CEOs who get the credit. If it weren't them it would have been someone else. Their expertise as CEOs is not to get the product done, but to get it done a week earlier than the other guy. And even that much is more luck than skill.
There's no way to say "Musk took this money from someone else". But that's different from "He has a million times as much wealth because he is a million times more valuable."
Obviously not. The investors got their share, and employees got their stock options.
> But we treat him as if he had all of the ideas and wrote all of the code, and that's simply not true.
What were the names of the crew of Captain Cook's ship? Who was under the command of General Sherman? Who won the battle of Yorktown? Who created Standard Oil? We give credit to the head of something, not to the people under his command.
> If it weren't them it would have been someone else.
Nobody knows that.
> And even that much is more luck than skill.
If I hit a home run once, I would attribute it to luck. If I hit a home run 3 times, then I have skillz.
Gates maneuvered 3 dramatic changes in Microsoft, where other companies failed at the transition. Jobs made 3 fortunes. Musk has made several diverse fortunes.
At some point, you're going to have to give these people credit.
Musk has created a million times more wealth than others. If his life story was a novel, I would have put it down as absurd.
When you accept a salaried position, you sign a contract. The contract lays out your compensation, stock options, etc. In return you turn over the intellectual property you produce to the company.
This is an entirely mutually voluntary arrangement.
If the company does not deliver on its contractual obligations to you, you can take them to court, and you'll win.
If you don't get more than you accepted in the contract, you have no cause to claim being "screwed over".
If you don't read the contract before you sign it, that's on you.
P.S. I've added adendums to employment contracts listing the separate intellectual property that was mine and would remain mine. I never got any pushback on that. Also, I've started side projects while employed, and before working on them, I'd get a signoff from an executive that it was not covered by my employment contract. And I never got "screwed over".
You can always trick investors. For example all the overpromising Musk has done over the years. Also when you are that famous you can sell lower quality goods for a higher price that people will buy because they are associated to you.
All true. That's why there are laws against fraud.
What do you think of the tricks that California pulled to have billions vanish with not a mile of track laid? Or all those hospices with no beds? Or this fun one:
Unfortunately, as a taxpayer, I am on the hook for those tricks. With a business, I can do some due diligence and then decide if I want to get in or not.
I suspect you and I are being fleeced far more by government waste and fraud than by businesses.
In the article I linked to, $8 million disappeared without a trace. I doubt anyone will be prosecuted over that. I'm not sure why. How about Caltrain producing 0 miles of track? Nobody is being prosecuted over that, either. Or the $100 million raised by Fire Aid (to aid the victims of the Palisades fire), and nobody knows what happened to the money.
Do you believe that means there's no hanky panky going on?
> I suspect you and I are being fleeced far more by government waste and fraud than by businesses.
lovely how US politicians have been able to successful lie their way into making gullible people like you believe this - quite remarkable… I am always in awe what they can accomplish
Tesla was quickly going bankrupt when Musk decided to buy into it. It was not an "established business". It had no plan, no car, no design, no sales. When you sell a controlling share to another person, the other person then controls the business.
The “created vs transferred” thing is more nuanced than that.
At some point, accumulated wealth becomes power, and that power can be used to pull energy, attention, labor, and public resources out of the system for one person’s agenda.
And in Tesla’s case, the stock value creation story is insanely unorthodox, to be charitable. A lot of that valuation was supercharged by years of market-moving hype done personally by Elon: 10+ years of FSD timelines that never happened, the more recent “buy a Tesla, it’s an appreciating asset!” super-lie, the mission gradually being abandoned, GOP craps on EVs and it’s crickets from Elon, etc.
Now we have the ultimate example of wealth gravity distortion: Musk helped put Trump back in power, and the relationship looks openly transactional. But Elon is not just benefiting from Trump’s transactional nature. He is also benefiting from an administration where white collar crime and regulatory accountability seem to have basically stopped being real things.
So with all that, the kind of shady behavior Elon pulled that might normally trigger government scrutiny or enforcement is now being smothered by political influence.
Even today, Tesla appears to be the highest P/E outlier in the S&P 500 among profitable companies. So the market is not just valuing the current business. It is valuing the story, the hype, and increasingly Musk’s ability to buy influence to stay outta trouble.
And to be clear, I’m not trying to pretend nothing real was built. SpaceX is impressive. Tesla really did help kickstart the EV market. But that does not make up for the harm, distortion, and unaccountable power being exercised now.
So yes, maybe the wealth was “created” in an accounting sense. But the concern is what happens when that created value becomes an unaccountable force acting on everything else.
If TSLA is in a bubble, at some point it will implode. And then the wealth that was created is destroyed - it won't be transferred out of the company, either.
> Musk helped put Trump back in power, and the relationship looks openly transactional.
Both parties accept help from wealthy people, and yes, they do expect something in return. I don't see that Musk got anything out of it, though. Musk received 0 benefit from DOGE.
> But that does not make up for the harm, distortion, and unaccountable power being exercised now.
What power do you think Musk is exercising now?
> He is also benefiting from an administration where white collar crime and regulatory accountability seem to have basically stopped being real things.
I gave you examples of no accountability in government things. I don't see any decrease in accountability.
> Even today, Tesla appears to be the highest P/E outlier in the S&P 500 among profitable companies. So the market is not just valuing the current business. It is valuing the story, the hype,
Sure. And I bought TSLA years ago. I didn't believe his FSD hype. But he delivered on it anyway. If TSLA stock implodes, it's only going to hurt the shareholders, not you.
> and increasingly Musk’s ability to buy influence to stay outta trouble.
USAID was not involved with regulating Musk's companies.
Let's say Musk has all that private data. What did he do with it? Is he extorting anyone? How does it help his rocket business? Is he draining anyone's bank accounts?
Wealth is not created, it's stripped from the natural commons and it is, despite being massive, obviously finite. What you're referring to is "value creation"--the transformation of this natural wealth into a form that some other humans find valuable at a point in time. This value creation is rewarded via capitalism by the accumulation of monetary instruments which very much represent an appropriation of this wealth. If this system wasn't zero sum then we wouldn't have inflation?
The vast majority of it was stored underground as petrochemicals. A fact made immediately apparent by looking at like any chart. Is this a serious conversation?
In the vast majority of cases that energy could have come from other sources, though the cost would have been somewhat higher. In the hypothetical case of solar would you still describe it as being finite or stripped from the natural commons? I suppose raw land area or 1 AU solar sphere surface area could be viewed that way but it seems reductionist to me.
What if I use what would otherwise be a waste product to create something people are willing to pay for? For example sawdust. Is that not value creation?
It was not transferred to him.
The same goes for Bezos, Jobs, Gates, etc.