I sometimes wonder, what does one need a second 500 billion that the first 500 billion is not enough for?

knicholes an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Getting to Mars, it would seem.

Does anyone seriously still believe this? I thought as a society we had realized Musk is simply BSing whatever he feels like until it becomes untenable.

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dogscatstrees an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Oh, you mean like:

Solar Roof: https://electrek.co/2026/05/14/tesla-solar-roof-promise-vs-r...

Tesla Full Self Driving: https://electrek.co/2026/05/18/musk-unsupervised-fsd-widespr...

Hyperloop / Boring Company mass-transit vision

Mars settlement timelines

X as an everything app

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JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Does anyone seriously still believe this?

I do. It’s not his singular focus. But he continues to personally invest himself in pushing the boundaries of human spacefaring capability. That goal seems more personally invested to him that it does to e.g. Bezos, who mostly has a rocket company to look cool.

	▲	awesome_dude 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I know there's a risk when Musk's name comes up that everyone takes "all against" or "all for" approach - very polarising figure. But I see a lot of that announcement, and the others someone else pointed to as his "aspirational, but ultimately never going to happen" goals - whether he believes the claims are achievable, or not, he says these things to energise people to working/paying for him to try It costs him little to nothing to say, and other people's time, effort, and capital to try (and succeed/fail) Tesla is falling to pieces now, and SpaceX is getting loaded up with completely unrelated projects (xAI) in order to try and make it look saleable (I guess) - it's very difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype.

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DoesntMatter22 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To build more cool stuff. Would be great if he did neurolink for cancer

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lotsofpulp an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because money is just a proxy for power, and the goal is not to have cash, it is to have power. Perhaps via being able to make decisions at various businesses, or being able to travel to a different planet, or being able to influence other people, etc.

Could also partly be a curiosity to see what one is capable of, or maybe wanting to be known for helming an organization that accomplishes xyz.

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lovich an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because he is an addict and one of his addictions is money

	▲	testplzignore an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe he trying to collect every waifu from every gacha game. That would get expensive in a hurry.

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robocat an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Why did he need a second 250 billion after the first 250 billion? Makes me think of a inverted Zeno's paradox.

Why do you need an extra dollar?

I can answer for myself: New Zealand plans to tax the shit out of anyone that has more[A].

You need a fukton more than median wealth to be able to protect yourself against your own government.

The type of person that enjoys chasing money doesn't stop.

[A] via capital gains taxes and wealth taxes. Also one needs an excessive amount more to handle progressive taxation and means testing.

	▲	KaiserPro 23 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I can answer for myself: New Zealand plans to tax the shit out of anyone that has more[A]. New Zeeland is an outlier in that it doesn't have capital gains tax. Its not the end of the world to have captial gains tax.
	▲	rolph an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		"Why did he need a second 250 billion after the first 250 billion" because thats another 250 billion less for a competitor to use against you.
	▲	awesome_dude 41 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Why did you turn that into a whine about a tax that exists in 31 of 38 OECD economies? Go to Australia where you pay a stamp duty for buying (to pay for infra) and a CGT for selling Edit: Changed stamp tax to stamp duty
	▲	jamiek88 an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> Why did he need a second 250 billion after the first 250 billion? Because billionaires are mentally unwell.
	▲	danaris 22 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah, no, this is bullshit. You can't just apply One Simple Rule like this ("more money is always better" / "more money never makes a difference"). There is, objectively, an amount of money above which another dollar, or another billion, will never make a meaningful difference in your overall lifestyle[0]. The amount isn't a single bright line, but like with so many things, there's an area below it where extra money unquestionably improves your quality of life, and an area above it where it unquestionably doesn't. [0] unless "your lifestyle" involves manipulating major governments and controlling the way people the world over think, which I wouldn't consider a legitimate part of "lifestyle"