• DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Look at the way he behaves.

    People who behave like he behaves without money don’t go anywhere in life because no one wants them to be around. He’d be working at a packing plant somewhere. Or a fast food counter. I say that because the guy isn’t actually intelligent. He isn’t some engineer that designs cars or rockets. He just bought the companies with the people who actually do that. And it doesn’t take a genius to have a lot of money and invest it in safe bets. Look at Donald Trump. Guy is a moron but it’s pretty easy to take daddy’s money and buy/sell real estate. Musk would still look like the Gollum he looked like before he got REALLY rich and paid to make himself look different. He’d be alone, poor, and sad. I mean, he’s clearly sad now because no one who’s happy behaves the way he behaves. He’s lonely because the only people who interact with him are people that want something out of him. He ain’t poor though, so he’s got that going for him.

    Of course, if he wasn’t born wealthy he wouldn’t be who he is, so this is all assuming that his personality is the same without the lifelong money, which it wouldn’t be. In a way, the born rich thing was kind of a curse for him because he never got to become a real boy or a real man.

    • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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      7 days ago

      Of course, if he wasn’t born wealthy he wouldn’t be who he is,

      Musk wasn’t always as completely off his hinges as he is right now, and I feel like at least half of the reason he got as bad as he did, is because he is constantly, 24/7/365, surrounded by yes men who do nothing but say how great and smart he is (and he has the money and power to ensure this always remains the case)

      Like he was always a bigot and kind of a dumbshit, but he didn’t become unhinged until a few years back.

      Which is why I think a hypothetical middle-or-lower-class Elon Musk would be just.

      … A mediocre internet user. Holds some bigoted opinions. Gets into fights on webforums and social media. Has a low-level job in tech doing something no one cares about for a company everyone hates.

  • Battle Masker@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    either apartheid militant or apartheid apologist. or someone tryna bring it back, but in too low rank a role to do anything

  • StaticFalconar@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    While he’s definitely not the genius he makes himself out to be, he would be still in the tech space, qualified in IT or at the very least basic programming. Try to make a quick buck with some crypto stuff and be that guy you hear about with all the ideas but none of the skills to do anything about it.

    And depending on his luck of who he can fool he has a chance to make it and be rich still. Its just not as rich as he is now with a head start on life.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      I think your somewhat right.

      He would definitely be making millions via crypto rug pulls. The only reason he doesn’t do it now is he has so much money, that it’s easier to just hype a coin like Doge

  • Free_Opinions@feddit.uk
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    7 days ago

    I think he’s an exceptional person in both good and bad. There’s a shit ton of people born into much more wealth than he did but they havent achieved anything even remotely close to what Elon has. Having access to recources helps but it’s not the only factor.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    7 days ago

    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.

        • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.worldOP
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          6 days ago

          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.

    • CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net
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      7 days ago

      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.

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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        7 days ago

        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!”

        • CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net
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          6 days ago

          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.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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            6 days ago

            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.

            • CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net
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              5 days ago

              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