> Elon's wealth is mostly in the things he has built himself.
Elon's wealth is mostly in acquisitions. Even PayPal, co-founded by Peter Thiel, was an acquisition by X.com (the bank), at which point Elon was already ousted as CEO. He came back briefly, trying to convert PayPal infra over to Microsoft much to Thiel's chagrin, but then ousted again in favour of Thiel, who renamed the merged company to PayPal.
So PayPal, an acquisition (not made by Elon). Tesla, another acquisition. And like SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, they are built by actual domain experts, with wealth bootstrapped from Elon dad's wealth (who funded Zip2), and Thiel. Thiel successfully built and administered PayPal, along with Amazon one of the few companies to make it unscathed through the dotcom bubble by providing actual business value, and gave a massive boost to Elon's net worth, and it was Thiel that enabled him to acquire Tesla. And it's Tesla's absurd valuation, that's enabled him to buy all the other things he fancies, including a seat at the government.
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.
> 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.
The 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.
It'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.
You'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.
You 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.
Elon's wealth is mostly in acquisitions. Even PayPal, co-founded by Peter Thiel, was an acquisition by X.com (the bank), at which point Elon was already ousted as CEO. He came back briefly, trying to convert PayPal infra over to Microsoft much to Thiel's chagrin, but then ousted again in favour of Thiel, who renamed the merged company to PayPal.
So PayPal, an acquisition (not made by Elon). Tesla, another acquisition. And like SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, they are built by actual domain experts, with wealth bootstrapped from Elon dad's wealth (who funded Zip2), and Thiel. Thiel successfully built and administered PayPal, along with Amazon one of the few companies to make it unscathed through the dotcom bubble by providing actual business value, and gave a massive boost to Elon's net worth, and it was Thiel that enabled him to acquire Tesla. And it's Tesla's absurd valuation, that's enabled him to buy all the other things he fancies, including a seat at the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Business_career