Okay hear me out. SpaceX. Not a very successful name as compared to NASA. Microsoft. Apple. Amazon or any Chinese space industries. Same goes for Tesla. There are way bigger car brands like Toyota or honda or Bugatti if we are going big. But think about it. Why arnt the owners of these brands the richest person. When they are clearly more successful and prominent… same goes with starlink. All of elons companies aren’t world wide. So how is he the richest. And plus. Him loosing billions of worth of stocks in a span of days dropping from 1T isn’t normal is it…
Are we being lied to?
Yes, most netwoth over 500 million is effectively imaginary as the value generally comes from share holding in corporations and a good chunk of those are locked from selling until a bunch of business metrics are met.
The amount of money they actually have access to is far lower then the networth.
And importantly people who are wealthy don’t actually spend their own money. They take out credit secured by their assets, for example stocks and so on, and then spend what they want from that credit. As long as the line goes up or at least not far down they are good to go. That said, if their assets lose too much value too quickly they can end up absolutely ruined because the bank will call them on their asset. This was a real risk with the purchase of twitter by Musky Taint, he had a stake in Tesla and when the value of Tesla dropped he almost reached a point where he would have had to sell off stock for cash which would have dropped the value of the stock further, leading to a crash in the stock. The same applies to his other assets, SpaceX and so on, they are all a house of cards which hold the value of the others up.
On top of all of this much of the value of those companies is built from government grants, loans, and contracts. SpaceX has secured contracts which bolster the stock value because they are safe bets, even if no money has changed hands. Tesla had cheaper cars than they should have due to grants from federal and state programs for electric cars.
If you want an example of living off the government teat Musky Taint is a clear winner.
Woah