He got to where he is through a combination of hard work and luck (a large part of which was the birth lottery), like everyone. Imagine if Woz was intensely interested in building Apple, and had Jobs' judgement.
As far as I know, he's planning on a time frame of 200 years to build a sustainable city. He's also intending on building thousands of Starships, by making them as rugged and as cheap as possible without sacrificing safety.
There are plenty of people born into more favorable conditions than Elon Musk, who haven’t had 1/10,000th of the success that he has had.
It's largely a necessary, but not sufficient condition for major success.
People that rise from nothing to achieve massive success are the exception that prove the rule.
That said, the average westerner is not struggling to survive, and the average westerner does not end up founding 3 world changing companies and amassing a wealth of $200 billion. Not even the average birthright 1%er achieves that.
Also, Musk was not a founder of Tesla.
Lawsuit says otherwise.
What doesn't change regardless of that settlement is the fact that Musk didn't actually found (or "start" if folk wanna get all nitpicky bEcAuSe SeTtLeMeNt SaYs So) the company, invested a year after it was founded, and didn't become CEO for another four years.
If I incorporate a company and then bring my friend onboard a day later, is he a founder? Why or why not?
Early investor is what he was, along with chairman, then CEO, but it's disingenuous to call him a founder. The settlement you referenced is really just dick swinging.
You may personally feel he's not entitled to the title, but that's just it, a personal feeling. He's literally legally entitled to have this title. Why contradict people on the internet, and say "actually, Musk is not a founder of Tesla"? If anything, it is (right now) disingenuous to claim he is not a founder, given that maybe not all people know the full history and some may believe that he didn't (legally) earn the title.
I think pg would agree. He’s made the distinction in the past, and he knows more about startups than pretty much anybody. You can’t onboard a founder; it’s not a personal feeling, and some legal ruling doesn’t change that.
And if we appeal to authority, there's actual evidence that Musk (who knows a lot about startups!) feels he was a founder. So should we believe Musk, until pg says otherwise?
Americans have a lot of discretionary income. While there is a part of the population that cannot afford an unexpected $400 expense, that only applies to 10-15% of the population, per Federal Reserve studies.
none of these people are building a rocket company in their lives.
Also Jeff Bezos was born to a high school attending mom who worked as a secretary and went to night school after she quickly became a single mom - he built a rocket company
I can’t figure out if this is an HN thing, but this cult mentality of “anyone can do it” needs to die out.
How do you think this works? Do you think 'anyone can do it' means winning the lottery? It means working really hard, getting lucky along the way, and being smart - that likely means getting into finance if it's the 80's and early 90's and tech if it's late nineties and aughts. It doesn't happen overnight.
The reality is, though, that you don't have to be born to millionaires to be one of the richest people in the world.
You’re quoting the fed and seem a little out of touch with the realities that most Americans face on a day to day basis. I didn’t grow up in a bad part of town. I’m a successful programmer.
The Federal Reserve and BLS data accurately reflects the realities average Americans face day to day in my experience. Individual situations are always somewhat unique and varies a bit depending on where you live in the US, but the statistics are broadly correct.
Musk was a co-founder. He joined the company as effectively employee 4. He became chairman of the board after employee 3 (including the two original co-founders) and was the primary designer of the Roadster from that early point. He basically bankrolled the entire original set of funding (around 90% of it).
The universe actually did run that experiment: Kimbal Musk is the younger brother of Elon. He too was born at the right time, the explosion of the word wide web, and made very favorable investments and is presumably filthy rich. But he doesn't have the drive to build rockets.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/11/11/the-ot...
It is similar to Jeff Bezos brother Mark. Mark Bezos lead by every conventional measure a successful life: high managing career in advertising and at a charity non-profit, wife and 4 kids. But without his brother he wouldn't have a Wiki entry.
I think this mindset is mistaken.
This is an extremely privileged and out-of-touch POV.
I've never seen someone use the phrase "exception that proves the rule" non-ironically. Why is it more than just a class of exceptions? How does it prove anything?
So, our awareness of a small number of exceptions proves the fact that there is an underlying rule that applies to the majority of non exceptional instances.
Apparently there have been only nine people between 1750 and 1950 worth over $100 billion dollars. (Wikipedia, so who knows) Of them, 6 were not born into privilege:
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Stephen Girard, John D. Rockefeller, Carnegie, John Jakob Astor, and Henry Ford.
Including the modern era adds another 9, only 2 of which were not born into privilege - Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos. You could argue definition of privilege and add Sergey Brin in there maybe.
So depending on your definition of privilege and 'massive success,' you might be only just correct, with 10/18 people worth over $100 billion in the last 250 years or so coming from privilege.
Elon Musk was born in South Africa so compared to anyone born in the USA or EU he has lost the birth lottery, I guess.
The inequality is much more severe meaning that you might actually have access to more resource and power.