| ▲ | ethbr1 12 hours ago |
| > most successful businessman in the history of the world You're ranking Musk above Jobs, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Disney, Toyoda, Walton, and Buffett? |
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| ▲ | ANewFormation 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| IMO it depends on what you see as the point of business and entrepreneurship. I don't see money as the goal, but rather on creating great things. So Buffet wouldn't even rank for me, while you would have omitted Musk's closest competitor - Thomas Edison. Put another way, if in 30 years Musk has 10 trillion in wealth would seem, to me, to be much less relevant than if he succeeds in making humanity a permanently multi-planetary species. Advancing humanity in so many different revolutionary fields all at once is something that had not been achieved in a very long time. |
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| ▲ | ethbr1 an hour ago | parent [-] | | I get what you're saying, but I also think you're being reductive in devaluing wealth creation. Why is a company worth more today than it was five years ago? Because it's generating more revenue, has more assets... is better at doing whatever {company thing} is. One can argue that (a) {company thing} isn't good for humanity at all and/or (b) a company which generates more money isn't really more successful, but merely a side effect of capitalist valuing. And maybe... But I'd say there's a pretty strong argument that Buffett is worth what he is because BH made multiple companies very much better at doing what they do. In the same way that Ford or Walton made their money by building companies that did what they did better. And I'd add in the perspective that science and discovery without engineering into mass application is... a hobby with limited impact. The real litmus test is "Can you use this to improve many people's lives?" And when you do that in a capitalist society, you usually have a chance to make a lot of money. |
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| ▲ | taeric 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Many people don't have any real understanding of how wealthy people have been in the past. The Walton family is a fun case. Split the fortune among the family and there are still billionaires in the mix. Edit: should add that Elon is still valued at a good percentage of the US gdp. So, not unreasonable to say that is incomprehensible, as well. By that measure, is similar to Rockefeller, I think. |
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| ▲ | lotsofpulp 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I wouldn’t use the Waltons in this example, considering Walmart is eclipsed by a few companies, and even by 50% by one business that Musk has a significant share of. | | |
| ▲ | taeric 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Silly comparison, all told. Walmart is the single largest private employer. 1.6 million in the US. Literally 10x what Tesla and SpaceX have. Such that it is clear valuation is tough. Look, Elon is worth a lot. Walton family is worth as much, as well. Just split among several people. None of which should be scoffed at. None are made more impressive by pretending the others are less. |
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| ▲ | tgma 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This characterization isn't entirely unreasonable. Isn't Musk objectively the richest businessperson ever in nominal dollars? Inflation-adjusted, I think only Rockefeller or Carnegie may come close, but the variety of businesses Musk has is impressive, and it appears he is just getting started with a long way to go. |
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| ▲ | highwaylights 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Inflation-adjusted I believe Rockefeller was worth more than $400b at the peak of his wealth. The Walton estate now is worth over $350b, but it’s not a fair comparison as it’s had much longer to compound. The other thing is that while SpaceX is incredibly successful, the other companies he’s started aren’t. Tesla (despite its massive growth) is in a market of rapidly growing competitors, and he’s on record saying the company lives or dies on tech his own engineers have suggested in court isn’t coming (FSD). | | |
| ▲ | tgma 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Google Search says Elon is at 334.3 gigadollars so not that far off and he's not dead yet. | |
| ▲ | 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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