In fact, most of the money that Musk brings to the table is actually other peoples’ money, including taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies, grants, low interest loans, and tax breaks.
Let’s be clear; Musk was only “the richest person in the world” in the sense that someone becomes a wealthy tycoon playing Monopoly. The valuation of Tesla, which at one point eclipsed the top six automotive manufactures combined despite the fact that each of those companies built as many cars in six weeks as Tesla did in all of 2020, is completely specious, FOMO-driven speculation with no basis in an objective reality of what Tesla could render in profit over decades of production. Musk’s other manipulations show that he understands very well that his ‘wealth’ is little more than an economic slight-of-hand.
Musk, of course, is not Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller or Henry Ford, and not even the fictitious Tony Stark or D.D. Harriman that he imagines himself to be. Despite all of his pretensions about having earned everything himself at great risk and having founded many technology companies on little more than the sweat equity of his own brow, several of the companies he has credited himself with founding were actually started by others who were driven out after Musk came in. No, Elon did “solve the payment problem on the internet” by starting PayPal, and despite having himself retroactively listed as a founder of Tesla he neither started the company nor fulfilled the legal obligations to the actual founders who he forced out after taking over as a later investor.
He shows little detail technical knowledge of the companies where he claims to be the genius expert involved in the design of every system, and is often clearly and inaccurately parroting phrases that he has clearly just heard someone else use. He has attempted to deflect criticism by alternately playing the victim, pretending to be on the autistic spectrum, and attacking people both in court and public forums who lack his financial resources and legions of weirdly fawning adorationists ready to step in and troll anyone who denies the greatness of their God Emperor, including pursuing an one-sided petty feud with a former minor official of the SEC because this is apparently what wealthy technology tycoons who sleep on their production floors and claim to live in $50k houses do with their spare time.
Musk’s dalliances in right-wing politics, embrace of conspiranoia, and supposed devotion to “free speech” (if and only if it is the kind of speech he approves) all mark him as far more of a Frederich Flick than the Greatest American Business Hero he tries to cosplay at being. Of course, his willing supplicants here and elsewhere leap in and whinge about how badly he is treated and how misunderstood Poor Elon is, often by poorly imitating his attempts at insinuation and insult.
Stranger