How much of Elon Musk's wealth comes from government help? Virtually all of it | Hacker News Reader

How much of Elon Musk's wealth comes from government help? Virtually all of it

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23 pointstotetsu16 comments

Yes, but many tried to build rockets and failed. Many if not all new, critical businesses are built with government subsidies. The question is whether those businesses ultimately help society.

With SpaceX and Tesla at least - it seems clear the answer is yes.

It is? In what way is society being helped by Elon?

Admittedly, morals and values vary widely, along with the idea of "what is helping," but what Musk sells is transhumanist fantasy, technocracy, and a religion of surveillance and control by elite people.

If that's what you support then he's helping.

Since you seem to be earnest here: 1. Tesla single-handedly spurred the widespread consumer adoption of electric cars. 2. He's the first person to ever get rockets to orbit and back - governments had been trying for years.

Yes space satellites will be used for surveillance, but you should be much more worried about your digital footprint than your physical one.

I dunno - there are people to be worried about as supervillains maybe. Musk doesn't seem like the worst of them.

You can argue with his values, but his impact... harder to do.

I definitely concede that he popularized electric cars in the modern era (they predated gasoline cars in invention) and I'm grateful for that.

But just as the US managed to kill the electric car the first time, no actual social benefit of electric cars is accruing here in the US. Is that Tesla's fault? Somewhat.

At his core, Elon lives his values. I don't think they're socially motivated.

There is significant value to reducing pollution (in human health and flourishing).

That said, GP comment is intellectually dishonest. It doesn't account for the negative externalities of his choices/politics that, as you correctly identify, are tied to his values.

I think his personal impact is overstated. Maybe I have a bad taste in my mouth from overzealous fanboys, but all I see is a manchild who likes scifi and tech, and threw a bunch of money he didn't work very hard to get in the first place at the right problem at the right time. The reason Tesla and SpaceX succeed is because of every person at the company besides Musk.

Have you forgotten Musk nearly sabotaging their own company with tweets tanking their stocks?

I think I will take the word of the world’s foremost rocket engine designer and person who was in the room over that of a random Internet commenter.

People are well incentivized to gas him up or they don't want to cross his cultists so it's just easier to go along with it. Just listen to him talk with confidence about something you know about and extrapolate rather than trusting what someone else is saying about him.

I have a Tesla with a Starlink mini inside it for rural area roadtripping. It has worked extremely well. For power I can plug into any electrical outlet I see or stay in RV parks with adapter plugs.

People may hate Elon but not seeing the value his companies brought to general people is willfully misunderstanding it in this case. And of course, without Tesla where would the electric car market be? Only the Chinese would have good EVs while the US falls ever behind and continues to ban them as they do now.

But that's exactly where we are with electric cars. Only the Chinese have good ones. Surely we don't think they had to wait until Elon figured it out.

They did, actually, as Tesla entering the US is what spurred innovation from them, as the Chinese government pointed to Tesla as something native car makers should emulate. Before the introduction of Tesla in the Chinese market it wasn't nearly as good as today.

https://fortune.com/2024/08/09/elon-musk-may-not-fully-under...

To my mind, that's evidence of China's long and effective history of copying innovation and scaling it up. That process is agnostic as to the source of the invention. If someone else had popularized electric cars, China would still be the dominant maker.

In other words, a person with Elon's demonstrated values isn't a requirement for inventing something important for society. I would argue that it holds back the actual potential of world-changing intentions if your personal values are about escaping this world because you have the money to do so, in your unrealistic sci-fi fantasy book world.

In the real world, not even a single person lives on the moon/Mars nor would benefit in any way from doing so, though their existence would be at great expense -- paid to Elon by taxpayers. So, no thanks.

I don't care what Elon personally believes as long as the tech he's making makes it out to general users. If anything, his companies are directly related to extraterrestrial territories like Starlink for Internet communication and electric vehicles and solar cells because there is no petroleum on Mars. So not sure why you're talking about his values like they mean anything (or don't).

Transhumanism is our certain future, it's not about Elon Musk, it will happen regardless with or without him pushing for it, when we know for a fact something is coming, better accelerate.

It would be delusional to think that we won't all have BCI or similar chips in the next let say 30 years, I mean which human would want to be left out and have no incomes and no interconnected capacity? Working individuals will not have a real choice (with a few exceptions of course). Realistically we will control every device around us (and agents) with our mind in the next decade.

One thing he does provide is a large amount of jobs (directly & indirectly).

Belief on one deterministic future is characteristic of all religions, which I why I labeled transhumanism that way. All religons are certain that they're inevitable and the folks who don't agree are delusional.

While it's certainly as valid as any other religion, I'm not signing up.

In the event of religion, it was also true, if we look at Muslim/Catholic countries and the history, it was inevitable, so the ones that were outsiders and refused to partake did ruin their lives somehow (and most likely many died for it), eventually, things change (the fall of religion) but that's a different step.

You might not want to sign-up and it's brave and I hope you keep up those words and decide in 40 years to not go in the "VR" and the BCI and the AI world but if you don't, the consequences will be real and it will affect drastically your life and family (probably because no real incomes will be possible).

You might also simply be banned in a lot of places of society and Internet, Internet soon will require to be KYC and use a phone from certain company (Google/iPhone) and physical places as well you will not be able to pay and so-on, many restaurants there is only QRcode and without a phone you just can't dine in :/ (total absurdity), you might not have the choice, Covid proved it for many, many countries did impose access with QRcode in shops and if you didn't want to partake in the tech, you couldn't access that store.

I personally believe that it's kinda like currently, the ones that have a job that is already heavily assisted by AI and don't is left behind, if you are a developer today and refuse to use AI, your chances of being hired is very very low realistically, tomorrow it will be the same with new major techs, but it's true that all developers have the choice to not partake, but in practice, the damage is severe.

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