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The First Trillionaire

Entry 2447, on 2026-06-15 at 17:17:45 (Rating 3, Comments)

You might have heard that Elon Musk has just become the world's first trillionaire. Of course, many people hate the idea of one person having that sort of wealth, and because Musk is also so controversial the criticism is even more intense that it might have been for anyone else.

So what are my thoughts on this? Is this something to be celebrated, or is it a clear sign that our economic system is hopelessly biased and unfair?

Well, the system has its faults, there is no doubt about that, and such a gross imbalance in wealth are inevitably going to provoke indignation, but in general we need to realise that a lot of the nonsense being pushed in the mainstream media is biased, misleading, and simply wrong. But, of course, if you know my opinion of the MSM, there are no surprises there!

First of all don't imagine, as many people do, that Musk has a giant pile of cash in his mansion where he hoards all his wealth. You know, kind of like Scrooge McDuck in those old Disney cartoons (which is about the level of sophistication some people have on this).

His wealth is based on the value of the companies he owns shares in, including SpaceX, which is the company where the IPO generated all this extra value. The companies are doing awesome things, and provide work for 170,000 people.

So by "awesome things" what do I mean? Well, Tesla made the electric car a serious option, and even though it isn't dominant any more (maybe Elon is too interested in SpaceX at this point to pay much attention to it) its importance cannot be denied (well, of course, some people will deny it, but they are ignoring the facts because of their ideology).

But SpaceX is what really matters at this time. What has that company achieved?

According to a University of Cambridge study analyzing the modern space economy, SpaceX captured roughly 75% to 82% of all payload mass delivered into orbit globally. In other words, SpaceX launches over three times as much into orbit as every other company and organisation in the world combined.

And look at the celebration of NASA's recent Artemis mission. The media were all over that in a state of fawning admiration, but the technology NASA used is obsolete. None of the components in that launch system are reusable, and it was hideously expensive. Sure, it was a big improvement on the previous lunar missions, but they happened 50 years ago. Shouldn't we be using reusable rockets by now? Well, SpaceX does, although I admit they're not quite ready to take astronauts to the Moon yet.

By the way, just before the IPO one Falcon 9 booster completed its 35th mission; meanwhile NASA's rockets do one. That's why SpaceX is so successful, although I do concede that SLS is used for different missions than Falcon. Starship is a better comparison, and that isn't quite ready yet.

So what about this headline: "The first trillionaire being announced before the end of child poverty is not a success story. It’s a moral failure."

I can understand that commercial success to this extent while child poverty exists is something that many people would find concerning. But the two things are not really related. If Musk's companies didn't exist, there wouldn't be less poverty, there would probably be more, because all of those employees wouldn't have work.

And don't forget, Musk pays massive amounts of tax: tens of billions of dollars worth. That may not seem much compared to his total value, but remember that is largely in stocks and other unrealised gains, which are not taxed in the US. Whether that is fair or not is debatable, but without Musk the US government would have not received those tens of billions.

Musk also offered to donate billions to the UN if it could say how that could be used to solve world hunger. They couldn't, because hunger exists mainly as a result of politics and cultural practices, not because some companies are extremely successful. Again, some context: I do realise this exchange was about point scoring (on both sides) rather than a genuine attempt to solve a problem, but it makes the point that throwing money at a problem often won't solve it.

Here's a satirical comment I saw on X (remember, that's the platform where free speech is now possible, thanks to Musk): "Elon Musk is about to become a trillionaire. If he agreed to pay just 80% of that as a wealth tax to the EU, the EU government could use its efficient operating experience to fund bicycles with solar panels attached to them for over 40 residents of the Netherlands. Elon is being selfish by not paying the wealth tax."

In other words, handing out money to governments as tax is not necessarily a great way to move forward. Child poverty is something which is worth trying to solve, but Elon is kind of busy with all of those other activities right now, and he can't be expected to do everything.

In the end, a good space program is probably more important than solving child poverty. A controversial opinion, I know, but think about it. Child poverty is a bad thing because we care about other people, right? Now what happens when the next great global catastrophe hits (for example, that overdue asteroid impact)? All the humans die. Elon has a better chance of making humans a multi-planet species (and avoiding global catastrophes) than anyone else. Why can't we celebrate that?

I don't honour people just because they have a lot of money. I don't dishonour people because they don't have much. I support Elon because of what he does, not how much money he makes doing it. Rich people aren't automatically the enemy (although some could be). If they use their wealth for the right things I say let's acknowledge that.

Forget the BS in the mainstream media (I saw a particularly silly article at RNZ recently they had simply regurgitated from CNN). Ignore them, and join me in celebrating true brilliance!

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