Right, so his true wealth isn't that liquid ordinarily, and he'd get a lot poorer if people started selling those stocks. His enormous wealth could be just that he's a beneficiary of the 'Stonks go up' stimulus/QE driven world we live in, and Elon Musk might just be one giant malinvestment, to be revealed if the market was actually 'allowed' to fail by the Fed, with an end to artificially cheap credit and cheap margin debt. Or he's truly onto something and he really is that valuable... I know which one I'd pick.

> > Most people are rich ... because they made or did something that's valuable.

> This assumption is doing a LOT of heavy lifting here.

Value is determined by the people. I personally find Pokemon & MTG cards to be worthless, but other people do, and they're where that value is derived.

> The power that flows from value creation is “mild”, whereas the power that flows from political acumen is “direct and high”? Man cmon. Power is power. Have you not noticed the entire lobbying industry and who pays for the majority of it?

The difference between the two is the number of sources of said power.

The power that flows from value creation is “mild”, because there are many avenues/paths for creating value. Value creation is inherently derived from what at least one person sees as valuable in of itself, as thus less concentrated. The changes brought by said value creation is limited to the people that see its value & congregate around it, and when a better/more valuable creation turns up, their decision to leave or stay with the existing creation is ultimately theirs.

The power that flows from political acumen is “direct and high”, is because that power has the ability to control everyone's lives, and that there is only one place where said power is allowed to accumulate: The State. Power inherently concentrates when only one apparatus is allowed to accumulate power. This makes manipulations & corruption of that power much easier to perform, since it inherently concentrates into few hands/figures.