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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Musk is the exception though, he explicitly did not take his money 'home', he invested it (all of it!) back into new projects.

Most people that somehow made a lot of money would not do this.

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Musk is not an exception. History is absolutely filled with entrepreneurs in the same vein. Disney, Rockefeller, Ford, Jobs, Branson, just to name a few.

And those may be some of the more standout examples, but there are hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who have made similar reinvestments or expansions to some smaller effect.

The carpenter who invests his post-tax capital in buying better tools or increasing his skill is producing a net-positive effect for society by improving the quality of carpentry available to people in his area.

Our economy is in large part, the net effect of the sum of all those micro-improvements.

I don't think you get to compare those living the high life with Elon Musk. He gives me the impression that he'd rather re-invest every last cent he has into new projects than that he'd ever splurge 10's of millions on himself.

Branson and Jobs for instance own (and owned) huge boats that they had built especially for them and spend(t) lavish amount of money on themselves, their houses and so on.

Instead of building a boat for himself Elon Musk decided to back Tesla.

The Rockefellers and Ford are of a different era, hard to compare their wealth and what they did with it back when they made it with todays world. Disney doesn't even belong in that list (for me).

he'd rather re-invest every last cent he has into new projects than that he'd ever splurge 10's of millions on himself

Take A Tour Of Elon Musk's $17 Million Bel Air Mansion[1]

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-tour-of-elon-musks-hous...

To be fair, $17 million is 0.14% of his net worth.

I don't own my apartment, but if I did, it would be approximately 100% of my net worth.

Right, but the OP said Musk didn't do stuff like that, which is what I was pointing out was incorrect.

Ah, good point. I didn't know about that.

> He and his five sons had lived in the house for three years, which Musk rented before he felt financially secure enough to buy.

Is an interesting line in that article. The 'still rents a house' line stuck with me from somewhere, I didn't know what kind of a house it was. It's a bit larger than mine, that's for sure :), and I hope he enjoys it.

I wonder, how much time does he even have to enjoy it?

>>Take A Tour Of Elon Musk's $17 Million Bel Air Mansion

And why exactly is that wrong?

It's not

The vast majority of billionaires are people whose names and actions, entrepreneurial or not, none of us know. Just because you can name a handful of successful rich businessmen over the last century, doesn't even come close to proving that most billionaires are like Musk.

name one.

billionaires don't sit on their capital.

The entire Walton family. (That's six).

they own walmart equity, you know, one of the largest employers on the planet. they have foundations, you know, that help the less fortunate: http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/

you guys have a lot of neat ideas for other people's money.

You asked for names, you got names. Nobody said anything about how they should spend their money.

Actually they are the biggest welfare recipient on the planet. They pay workers so little and abuse them so that they must rely on government help, provided by the taxes they avoid paying. They are a parasite.

They pay their workers $10 an hour plus health benefits. For the low-skilled labor that most Wal-Mart employees fulfill, that's a pretty good deal.

Isnt walmart pretty famous for paying low spectrum wages ?Foundations are based on avoiding a future tax contribution of your income,unless the inheritance tax is zero i.e unlike Joe public who dosnt have one so your definately spending a very decent amount of other peoples money

Why is this getting downvoted? Most of the Walton family's money is in Walmart stock, not sitting in a savings account.

I did name one.

One that did. I don't know of any others that did.

Musk is driven in a way that no Gates, Jobs, Ellison or anybody else of such wealth is. I don't see him with a huge mansion or a yacht, just more projects.

musk is young, and gates is probably the great living human being. of all the people you gripe about, you've chosen a guy who gave, what, everything to humanity?

> gates is probably the great living human being.

I'm sorry, I remember a totally different Bill Gates all too well. I'd definitely not list him as 'the greatest living human being'.

and musk is a dick now. it's a product of age and aggression.

> and musk is a dick now.

Why?

> it's a product of age and aggression.

Should I wonder about your age now?

> gates is probably the great living human being

Amazing how a person can go from most hated in tech to most revered in the space of few years.

Actions speak louder than words. He facilitated great damage to the tech industry back then. Today, he uses his accumulated wealth to honestly try and fix several big problems on this planet, and he's very smart about doing it right. I say that if he deserved hate then, he deserves the praise now.

Unless your a doctor assistent in a undeveloped country using a old windows program ( which came with a dumped computer from a massive toxic rubbish tip curtosy from the 1st world) and about to loose all your life saving data because you cant upgrade and dont even know about having any upgrate.programmes ,apps arnt even available or being sold like Coca Cola everywhere at a relative price point.Plus some countries can use this copyright law very effectively against budding buisnesses and the programmes arnt actually sold legally in that poorer country anyway

Gates is incredibly driven. Take a look at the corporate history from the 90s. Then look at what his foundation does. Man's a shark. Gets stuff done.

Musk is just the Lebron James or Michael Jordan of entrepreneurs. It doesn't matter that others aren't as good as him or as driven as him to keep improving. There is an entire league of entrepreneurs out there doing things that aren't as well-publicized but still very fundamentally important to our society and how it works.

And your ignorance of the fact is probably that you never stop to talk to some of the business owners in your area, and see what they're planning.

You can only find so many stories at the height of public consciousness and Musk just happens to be one of them.

As for buying mansions and yachts, you can't tell me that that's any different than you buying the latest iPhone or car when you already have a perfectly usable phone.

Hell, we could all be getting by with Nokia 3350s if we really want to take that argument there. We don't really need color screens, or internet in our pockets. It's really just a convenience after all, and there are many less fortunate out there in 3rd world countries without phones at all.

Here's where we begin to argue about what poverty means and what 'filthy rich' means. They aren't clearly defined.

I'm for people who earn money, fairly and legally, using it however they see fit. If they want to build space ships, awesome. If they want to buy yachts, awesome.

Even the yachts employ people and produce net effects on the economy that could be argued as positive things. Many engineers and craftsmen are employed by the yacht industry.

I happen to live in one of the yacht capitals of the world, Fort Lauderdale, and there are over 100,000 people employed in that industry here alone.

> There is an entire league of entrepreneurs out there doing things that aren't as well-publicized but still very fundamentally important to our society and how it works.

I'll happily agree to that.

> And your ignorance of the fact is probably that you never stop to talk to some of the business owners in your area, and see what they're planning.

You're incredibly funny.

> As for buying mansions and yachts, you can't tell me that > that's any different than you buying the latest iPhone or > car when you already have a perfectly usable phone.

> Hell, we could all be getting by with Nokia 3350s if we really > want to take that argument there. > We don't really need color screens, or internet in our pockets. > It's really just a convenience after all, and there are many less > fortunate out there in 3rd world countries without phones at all.

I'd have bought another one if they let me but I'm still on the nokia dumb phone that I bought 5 years ago and I probably will be as long as it works. I have some smart phones lying around for development and testing (ubuntu, an android phone and an older iphone), but I have never felt the need to carry one with me when I go out the door.

> Here's where we begin to argue about what poverty means and what 'filthy rich' means. They aren't clearly defined.

We're all filthy rich.

> I'm for people who earn money, fairly and legally, using it however they see fit. If they want to build space ships, awesome. If they want to buy yachts, awesome.

Sure. But the space ships are a tad more impressive to me than the yachts.

While I agree with you for the most part, according to this[1] Musk does seem to have a mansion. It says the value is only $17 million though, so pretty far from Gates[2].

[1]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/6e27fcba-309d-494e-b8...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates'_house

Yes, someone else already pointed this out. I wasn't aware of it, another commenter a few days ago wrote that he rented a place because he'd dumped all his money into his investments (in fact, that he had to borrow his rent money).

It seems that that has been fixed in the meantime.

I think I'll disagree about Gates. I know you remember him more from his Microsoft career - I was young enough then that for me he was just a boogeyman used by Linux fans to justify their self-perceived superiority, etc., so we have a difference in perspective. The Gates I know is mostly the Gates of today, and it seems to me that he's both incredibly driven and finally found the moral compass. From what I know, he and his wife are now doing great work for mankind, and they're incredibly smart at making it as effective as it can be. Does this offset his sins from the past? I don't know. But I applaud what he's doing today.

Here is one nice example of something that I'm unlikely to forget any time soon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_controversie...

Note that Gates was still very much involved in Microsoft at that time.

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