To make this concrete, suppose that Elon Musk never immigrated to the US. SpaceX and Tesla are never founded, or are founded in some other country.

The American electric car market is never kickstarted, none of the American employees of SpaceX or Tesla are hired, there is no space renaissance.

Keeping out Elon Musk is somewhat good for United Launch Alliance and for Ford, but it's worse for all the Americans who have to buy worse cars and pay more for satellite internet.

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sokoloff 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

To make this concrete, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors. Musk later invested and, most certainly, made it vastly more successful than the two founders were on track to do, but Tesla Motors was already founded without requiring Musk's immigration to the US.

	▲	charliea0 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's a very fair point. :)

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kashunstva 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> suppose that Elon Musk never immigrated to the US

That’s certainly one version of how events may have been different - a sort of “It’s a Wonderful Life” scenario. (Though comparing Elon Musk to the kind and ethical George Bailey would be quite a stretch!) But it’s not inconceivable that other possibilities would have emerged.