Okay hear me out. SpaceX. Not a very successful name as compared to NASA. Microsoft. Apple. Amazon or any Chinese space industries. Same goes for Tesla. There are way bigger car brands like Toyota or honda or Bugatti if we are going big. But think about it. Why arnt the owners of these brands the richest person. When they are clearly more successful and prominent… same goes with starlink. All of elons companies aren’t world wide. So how is he the richest. And plus. Him loosing billions of worth of stocks in a span of days dropping from 1T isn’t normal is it…
Are we being lied to?
He’s the richest because the market runs on vibes and he does market manipulation.
Are we being lied to?
Yes, most netwoth over 500 million is effectively imaginary as the value generally comes from share holding in corporations and a good chunk of those are locked from selling until a bunch of business metrics are met.
The amount of money they actually have access to is far lower then the networth.
And importantly people who are wealthy don’t actually spend their own money. They take out credit secured by their assets, for example stocks and so on, and then spend what they want from that credit. As long as the line goes up or at least not far down they are good to go. That said, if their assets lose too much value too quickly they can end up absolutely ruined because the bank will call them on their asset. This was a real risk with the purchase of twitter by Musky Taint, he had a stake in Tesla and when the value of Tesla dropped he almost reached a point where he would have had to sell off stock for cash which would have dropped the value of the stock further, leading to a crash in the stock. The same applies to his other assets, SpaceX and so on, they are all a house of cards which hold the value of the others up.
On top of all of this much of the value of those companies is built from government grants, loans, and contracts. SpaceX has secured contracts which bolster the stock value because they are safe bets, even if no money has changed hands. Tesla had cheaper cars than they should have due to grants from federal and state programs for electric cars.
If you want an example of living off the government teat Musky Taint is a clear winner.
Because tech stocks routinely go way higher than other stocks because they feel there’s a much larger chance of an announcement boosting it to a new high value. Ironically Tesla and spacex are so overvalued that a new high valuation is unlikely to match current stock ticker values. It’s easier to explain as high risk (tech companies for the most part) vs low risk gambling (Amazon, alibaba, pharmaceutical, banking, real estate). They’re all risky, but high risk high reward appeals more to people who have always been bailed out of poor decisions they’ve made.
Okay
Are we being lied to?
Yes and no. They are gamblers. People who own such figures always are, and their “values” are more or less made up.
To understand why, you have to first understand that the systems that brought him all that wealth are not meritocratic.
Its not liquid though, so he isnt really worth that. Still rich as fuck though
ability to liquidate does not have measure on value in a market sense. he is literally worth that much.
Yeah, i’ve never seen so many confidently incorrect answers in one place…
People around here cant seem to separate their hate of the stock market with how accounting actually works…
Securities are definitely considered assets when calculating net worth…
ok? and ability to liquidate does not impact market value? nor does it impact the ability of the rich to use this, very real value, as backing for liquid cash.
to think assets and unrealised gains “arent actually worth that” is one of the stupidist things someone could say.
lmk where i am being confidentially incorrect in my area of over a decade of education.
I’m agreeing with you…
The rest of the thread has a bunch of confidently incorrect answers about how intangible/illiquid things should not be counted for net worth
thank you, im sorry, i wanted to type out how if you were agreeing woth me im sorry but decided against it.
i should stop replying before i get out of bed.
His companies always have been extremely overvalued because he always promises amazing things
That he then deliveres about 1% of what he promises, if anything at all, is mostly ignored because… I don’t know why. Point is, people believe his shit. He is a narcissist with psychopathic tendencies and a serial liar, bit investors don’t care so line goes up
His real wealth, the actual engine of it is paypal. Everything on top of that is money market manipulation.
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a stake in PayPal anymore.
And paypal is shit. No one uses it anymore.
For one thing, nobody owns, like, General Motors, or Apple. Or rather, they’re publicly traded, and I probably own some of it indirectly, and you could buy some of it for a few dollars, yourself. Lot’s of people don’t seem to get this - a company owned by one guy, or even mostly by one guy, happens, but it’s not really the main part of the Western economy, anymore.
Bill Gates was in the lead for a long time, and it’s true Microsoft is how he made is money, but he’s down to holding 0.5% of it at this point. The biggest individual owner is Steve Ballmer, at ~5%.
Someone else more qualified would have to answer in detail why Elon Musk’s stake in several companies are worth more than another guy’s stake in several companies, but that’s the gist. It got that way, because he got lucky a few times in a row. That’s how inequality is made, in general.
He was involved in PayPal early on (after a merger iirc) so most of his money was from PayPal stocks. That might have changed over the last few years, but that’s how he was so rich before
Because PayPal is something that people actually use
Shareholders and shares don’t understand actual value. It’s like bitcoin in a way. A lot of it is moving but nothing is it is being actually used.
I have said the same before. Sure he would be rich with the companies he started but richest??? he never should have even had enough money to aquire twitter.
He didn’t have enough money to acquire twitter. Instead he got loans from the worst people in the world to buy twitter.
Starting of as the son of a family that own, I think it was emerald mines, didn’t hurt. Also getting a special position in the government where he used teenagers and a chain saw to eliminate the government agencies that regulate his businesses also didn’t hurt. Then promising big in a charismatic way and delivering small managed to get him a number of government contracts and grants and finally the most important characteristic need to become wealthy… lack of a moral compass. Guess he just got lucky.
He’s perfected, in part intentionally, in part just by being suited to the part, acting like many stupid people’s idea of a tech genius. Many of those stupid people have way too much money.
There also seems to be a large “if I hear it enough times it must be true” effect. I can’t spot any evidence for him being more than slightly above average intelligence, but I’ve heard even people who dislike him and his politics give lip service to the idea that he is really smart because that’s what is accepted by the mainstream.
Because someone hasn’t removed his head from his neck yet.
